Three weeks. The boy had been in his home for three weeks, he got on well with the other kids, Willow seemed to have a weakness for the pale complexion because she blushed when he entered a room, he'd been quiet, polite, the perfect child really, there was just one thing that concerned Harry about this—the news reports.
Five, there had been five accounts of crimes, slaughters, and most of them now close to Godric's Hollow, the same types as the ones that had been plaguing London until recently.
There had been several accounts of his wards going off in the middle of the night, something was going on here and hard as he might, Harry couldn't avoid it like Snape wanted him too. He'd taken to staying up to the time around when the buzzing happened, sitting somewhere within the house, a book in hand, a tumbler at his fingertips, or a plate of snacks on his lap.
Now was no different, only this time, he wasn't the slightest bit tired and he had Snape across from him snoozing in the armchair, a book splayed across his chest, his reading glasses (those had surprised Harry when he had seen them, but apparently from the look the man gave, Harry had already witnessed it and had the same reaction the first time) crooked on his nose.
HUM, HUM, HUM.
Emerald eyes narrowed as it began, 'Tempus', a bright green iridescent clock shimmered into existence before his very eyes, illuminating the man behind it with a green glow.
It was 12:30 am.
He'd decided he wasn't going to do anything tonight, merely figure out if what he thought was going on, was in actual fact, "going on". Now, from the time now, there should be at least two hours between the next hum entering his head.
He flipped through several books and sipped from his filled tumbler of amber liquor, before he heard the hum once more, heard a muffled crash upstairs (the man across from him jerked in his sleep, dark eyes blinking open), and cast a tempus. '2:30 am' he whispered, emerald eyes locking with frowning obsidian.
'What?'
'It's 2:30, Severus.'
'So?' he shifted within his armchair and snapped the book closed, placing it on the coffee table between them. Harry shrugged a twitch in his jaw. 'What precisely are you up to Potter?' He narrowed his black eyes; Harry shrugged once more as he stood, taking his socked feet up the staircase—the man followed, padding as silently as Harry until they paused before the blue door. 'Potter…?'
'Shhh' he pushed a finger to his lips and pressed his head to wood. There was movement from within, from what it sounded like it was the opening and closing of the wardrobe, the shuffling of getting out and in to clothes and then the ruffling of blankets. Snape's head came to rest beside his with a raised eyebrow an a quirking smirk as their noses touched and Harry's eyes closed involuntarily.
'Are we suspicious Potter?' He asked this whence they had gone back downstairs.
'Shut up' he groused, tossing back a tumbler of scotch.
'Hah' it was a bark of laughter, which caused Harry to widen his eyes and his mouth to drop an inch from the tumbler; his lips glistening. 'You are coming back to yourself.'
'Am I?' He questioned.
'You are.' He nodded once, the quirk to his lips still there.
-Neither of them went to sleep, conversing until they could hear footfalls coming down the stairs, Harry sat up straighter, his words pausing. Harry angled his head at the doors, 'Kitchen' he murmured at the confused stare.
Together they stepped into the kitchen, two children sat here.
'Morning' Harry smiled.
'Mornin' Uncle Harry, Professor.'
'Good morning'
'I wish to ask you something, but I might wait until we have everyone awake and eating breakfast.' He continued to smile as he made himself and Severus coffee. It wasn't long; perhaps 15 minutes or so before the rest of the household was downstairs and conversing around the kitchen table.
'Ahem' Harry cleared his throat, standing from his chair; eyes followed him with curiosity. 'With the permission from parents, and the children of course, would it be alright if I take the impressionable children outdoors, into London?'
'Of course Harry, if you—'
'I will of course be accompanying Mister Potter.'
'Oh well, that's great, but are you up to it Harry?'
'Yeah, I feel great.' He smiled hugely.
'Well then, you are more than welcome, but I don't think Lil'ra will go.'
'That's fine; it's more to the older children anyway.' He smiled sheepishly.
There were some laughs but as soon as the children were done eating, they raced up the stairs to get dressed; you could hear their feet pounding on the upper floor. 'It iz very kind of zyou Harry, where iz it you plan to take ze children?'
'Specifically?' He asked, draining the rest of his coffee; he needed to get dressed too. There were nods of confirmation, 'Children like parks right?' he questioned, 'I thought maybe they'd like to go out to a park or something—not one of the ones that…' They were all staring incredulously so he thought he'd clarify for them, even though this was technically a massive lie. 'Excuse me though; I need to get dressed myself.'
'I will duck back to Hogwarts; I'll be back in 20 minutes.'
'Alright, that's fine Severus.'
-Harry pointedly watched the children as they made their way into the park, in fact, he made a point to watch the porcelain face with emerald orbs. His pale eyelashes, almost not existent were fluttering as they stepped onto the green earth; there were patches of black grass, seared by fire—from the reports that Harry had searched extensively in the last few weeks, it was almost as if some of the people slaughtered here had spontaneously combusted, others had been merely…stabbed and then set alight.
'Uncle Harry?'
'Yes Willow?'
'Why are we in Green Park, isn't this one of the…one of the—'
'One of the crime scenes…' supplied Zavier, hands in his pockets and eyes scanning the ground and around the trees. 'Why did you bring us to a crime scene?'
'Aren't children interested in this stuff?'
'No.' Marcel shook his black curls. 'We aren't.'
'Uh, I'm sorry, let's go to the market then?'
'But that's—'
'A market is a market, it's actually a place full of stores filled with interesting items and contraptions, regardless of it having been one of the first crimes; people still attend them.' He gathered them and together, they took the bus to the Thames boardwalk. 'There see, lots of people gather to see the market stalls, come on, it won't harm you, you might even like something and Uncle Harry will buy it for you.'
'Potter'
'Mm?'
'What is that you are trying to accomplish by doing this?' It was whispered into his ear and he shivered at the warm breath on the chilled appendage.
'Honestly?'
'Yes'
'I'm not a 100% sure myself.'
-They went to several parks and markets, even a water park that caused both adults to transfigure all their clothes into swim suits in the bathroom—they had, had to wait five minutes before they could do any such thing, busy as it was.
They also got strange looks as they travelled with the mixed group, they even got comments that Harry flushed at and Snape grouched at, most of them from old folks and overly polite receptionists and ticket personnel, they were all something along the lines of; 'Oh, how lovely, such lovely parents, taking your children to the water park', 'Bold aren't we, but such a lovely couple', 'bit older that one, maybe he's taking all his children to the park?'
That one had Snape hurrying up their footsteps and walking around the corner. Through this entire adventure, Harry watched Ay's reactions. By the time they had reached home and Harry had fiddled with the key in the front door, Ay's head was permanently lowered, he barely spoke, and his eyes barely focused on anything for overly long. If it happened again tonight, then Harry would do something about it.
Chapter 6,
Tonight,
Tonight marked the night,
The night…
The day had been horrible, besides the waterpark, but that had been the only fun part of the day, the rest of it had him reliving all the horrible things he'd done since he'd turned seven. Did the man perhaps know? If he knew, then this was going to be twice as hard to accomplish, not that it wasn't already twice as hard already—if he hadn't spoken that name the first time he'd came here, if he hadn't given him jam sandwiches, or this room, or hadn't seen this necklace that hung from his neck.
He sighed downtrodden as he perched on the edge of the bed; the maple digging into his buttocks through the pyjama's that he had borrowed from Zavier—the boy was nice. They were all nice; he didn't want to do this.
Why couldn't he just find the right time or the right spell to shove these missions in those men's faces? Why was he so scared that one day they'd proclaim him useless and kill him? That was what it was, it was fear, fear that one day, this leash would choke him if he didn't obey them; they were out there, they knew where he was, they knew how to get to him.
There was no choice.
He slipped from the maple, feet thudding onto the carpet, slipped out of the borrowed clothes, standing in nothing but his green underwear, he folded them carefully and sat them on the made bed; he would not be sleeping in it tonight, tonight, it was the last time he would be in this house, forever.
He choked as a sob escaped his lips, hands scrubbing crossly at them, he pushed open the wardrobe took out his mission suite and the rest of the clothes, the shoes, the pack, and exempting the suit, shoved everything inside the backpack.
He stared around the room as he pushed his head into the soft black material of his long sleeve formfitting shirt, it covered to his wrists, and then gloves would cover to his first knuckle; a harness of dark leather was wound around his torso for his weapons and flash potions, and his legs slid into leather jeans designed for combat, black boots that slid to his knees were slipped over his white socked feet and then with a heated sigh, he slipped a glamour of black over his hair.
'Now…' out the window.
-'What are you doing Ay?'
He jumped a foot into the air, not expecting a voice to greet him as he returned. He spun on his heel as he closed the window and drew the curtains, gloves scourgified of blood. 'Mist—'
'I suppose.' He was leaning against the doorframe, shadowed by the light filtering in through the hallway behind him; his hair covered most of his face and kept one green eye glowing in the darkness. 'Where do you keep going, or should I say why?' 'Or further yet…' he didn't let the startled child get a word in, 'Why are you, a seven year old boy, murdering thousandths of people?'
'I…'
He shook his head, 'No, you can't get out of this. Sit down.' He pointed to the bed, he felt really disappointed, angered even; even if this boy was not his son, he had taken him into his home, he had fed him, taken him on an outing, and he'd given him his son's room. 'Sit down' he growled when the boy didn't comply, slamming the door as he came into the room and dropped himself on the mattress.
The footsteps were quiet, nimble, and slow but he finally sat on the edge of the mattress as if ready to flee at any second; it was a good choice, the boy had survival instincts.
'You can tell I'm displeased?' There was a silent nod. 'Good, do you understand the reason?' There was more silence and he sighed heavily, 'I have been through a lot of shit in my life Ay, I had a prophecy declared after I was born deciding that only I could kill a Dark Lord that plagued the world, I first defeated him when I was barely two years old, he took away my parents, I was placed with relatives that cared nothing for me, He followed me to school, I killed a teacher that had been chosen by Voldemort to be a parasite for his own soul when I was Eleven, I almost died, my friend almost died, I have almost died more times than I would care to admit, all whilst attending Hogwarts, and my Godfather was ripped from me before I really knew him more than a few years, I actually did die to get rid of something evil when I was seventeen—do you understand where I'm going with this?
I found love after the Second Wizarding War was won, but I barely remember it, I married that women and we bore a child together, his name, Aura, and they were taken from me when he was barely two years old, for all intents and purposes I took my own memories. I have been through so much, and I don't want to be selfish, but aren't you being a bit disrespectful to me, to my home, my generosity?'
There was a swallow and he stared harder at the bowed head, dispelling the glamour as he did so; the boy jerked but did nothing else like the first time they had met in St. Mungo's.
'I'm…I…I'm sorry.'
'Are you?'
Silver hair moved up so as to peer into the emerald mirrored back, the silver strands fell over those brilliant shimmering orbs, the tear drops sliding down the porcelain face caused Harry to rear back ever so slightly on the duvet; was this truth? Or was it acting?
'I…I'm sorry…I'm…I…I'm so sorry!' he cried the words as he flung himself toward Harry, a silver flash appearing in Harry's peripheral—he felt a spike of pain before he registered that the boy was running out of the room and down the hallway, the silver dagging dripping Harry's blood on the floorboards.
'Ay! NNNG!' He doubled over as he threw himself to his feet, his hand blinding reached out for the wall as his stomach contracted painfully; he wasn't very game to look down, not as he saw the handprint of red on azure wall beside the open door.
Doors were slamming open down the hallway, he moved himself, one hand on the wall and the other on his stomach; it was deep. 'Ay!' he shouted, colour draining from his face. He ignored as Snape appeared beside him, urging him to stop and tell him what the shouting was about; he was in his nightshirt—it would have caused Harry a few snickers if he could spare the breath, for it had a cauldron on the front that bubbled green glob onto the shirt, but this wasn't the time for snickers at his Ex-Potions Teacher's night clothes, he had a seven year old to stop.
'Ay!' He shouted again, urging himself agonisingly down the hallway to the children's bedroom; sure that the child had come this way. He paused at Zavier's open door and heaved a breath as the boy was floating on the roof, a bat in his hands, eyes wild.
'Uncle Harry!'
'It's alright, Severus take Zavier downstairs, I'll send the others.' There was hesitation but the man nodded slowly, grasping the floating boy's ankle and mindfully moving him to the stairs. Harry sweat beading on his forehead, not concerned for his own health, moved down the hallway; he stopped at Marcel's room, he was in the corner, eyes just as wild as his brother's, covered with a protego and holding his own dagger—though it was plastic; he sent him downstairs too. Lil'ra was safely ensconced in her crib with her mother's protective spells protecting her from harm; he breathed a breath and floated her down the stairs carefully. Next was Willow, she wasn't in her room; which caused Harry a semi-heart attack.
'Willow?!' He shouted, urging himself quicker down the hallway, blood dribbled down his clothes to the floor, dropping onto the floorboards. 'Willow?!'
'Harry?'
'Her…'Mione…' He breathed, having some trouble. 'You're, you're alright.'
'Yes?' She frowned, 'What's—'
'Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!'
They both jumped into action as they heard the screams, skidding into Ron and Gabrielle's bedroom, where it seemed to come from; it was still going. Harry's mouth dropped open as he spotted the scene inside. Gabrielle was huddled on the bed; hands clasped over her stomach with her daughter protectively between one arm and huddled into the blankets, her face as white as a sheaf of paper, tears travelling down her flushed cheeks. Ron was in nothing but boxers with his wand pointed down at a huddled figure in the corner, the limbs trembled around the head of silver that splayed across the floor; 'Ron!' Harry screeched, wrenching the wand from the unfocused gaze of one of his best friends. 'He's a child!'
'He's a murder.' He growled. 'He hurt my daughter.' He further hissed, knuckles cracking as he tried to advance. Saying nothing to the contrary Harry moved to intercept the angered man, emerald eyes roaming over the young girl once more; there was an open wound across her neck, slowly soaking the collar of her nightgown red.
Harry clenched his jaw, eyes screwing shut in a new kind of agony. 'I'm sorry.' He whispered, keeping his hands clasped around his friend's wand, then advanced on the whimpering child, his shirt was scored open as he lowered himself. 'Ron, what else did you—'
'He came in here like that, I only did that.' He pointed down to the quivering in anger.
'Alright, I'm going to need some answers now; the truth Ay.' He lowered his voice, though it wasn't hard to do with how angry he felt, then grabbed the boy around the middle; he didn't protest, though he did whimper and clutch the back of Harry's shirt as he pressed him into his side as he exited the bedroom—his friends followed, standing in the door arms crossed as they converged in the sitting room.
Hermione of course went to her sons' and daughter when she saw their frightened faces, though Lil'ra was still fast asleep in a conjured basinet.
Harry threw the boy into an armchair, uncaring as he bounced and clawed at the material, his throat whimpering and his eyes producing copious amounts of tears behind the silver strands of limp hair. He turned after a piercing stare with the lowered white head and whispered into the Professor's ear as he withdrew a small green vial from the waistcoat—the man had clearly switched over clothes, good course of action.
'Now, open wide.' He clasped the white jaw tight enough to cause him to open his mouth but not enough to bruise; he wasn't that cruel. 'What is your name?' He was going to get answers and he was going to get them now. The jaw clenched so Harry's eyes narrowed, 'What is your full name?' he growled, adrenaline having taken over.
'Au…' It clenched again, as the hands did on the armrests.
'The sooner you tell the absolute truth the quicker it will be for me to decide what to with you and your disrespect.'
The small body jerked as it hiccoughed. '…Au..ra…O…siris…Potter…' He sighed, emerald orbs closing as Harry fell to the floor with a pained groan. 'I'm…I'm sor-'
'Your age?' He interrupted eyes downcast to the bloodstain on his clothes and hands.
'…Seven…'
'Your birthday?' He whispered.
'May 3rd, 2002; it's the same date as your wedding anniversary.' He whispered.
Harry swore quietly, hand coming back to cover the wound behind his ripped shirt. He ignored any whispered words that were coming from behind him, or gasps.
'Your Mother's name?'
'Luna Potter, though I only know that from the times you spoke each other's names and…' The jaw clenched once more and the hands clawed at the material of the chair.
'And…?'
'…And the men that mocked what they did, to my face…' He choked.
'Do you remember?'
'Yes'
'How?'
'I'm not stupid'
Harry laughed at this, 'there a very many different forms of "stupid", Aura, it does not mean you are not stupid for what you have done recently. So tell me, as your Father, why have you done all this? Why have you killed innocent people? Why did you try to kill me and my friends, my family? Your family.' His voice took on an edge as he straightened himself back up, though he remained kneeling on the floorboards.
The green came up, staring through strands of hair, directly into Harry's equally green eyes. 'Because I haven't had a choice, I'm scared, I'm afraid, I was taken from here when I was two, from my parents, my mother was slaughtered in front of me, my Father was nowhere to be seen as this happened, and I was taken by the men that did it; they aren't nice people, shouldn't you know this already? They were men you let escape.' His own voice held an edge and he came forward in his seat an inch, peering down as Harry's mouth opened and his eyes narrowed in astonishment. 'They wanted this, they wanted all this, and you've been entrapped by them for seven years without realising; they followed everything you did, bidding their time, it's amazing how much one can say to someone they've claimed as their own, isn't it?' He hissed, green eyes sparking. 'I was trapped in a small room, with nothing but a bed, a cold floor, a wall sconce, a side toilet and wash basin, and a constant chill seeping into my bones until I was five, then I got a bedroom, I got books, I got clothes, I got a light, but I didn't get love and I certainly didn't have a childhood, I got those things because they wanted to train me, they used me as their own tool, their own weapon.' He took a shaky breath. 'I slaughtered hundreds in that orphanage because they asked me too, because I couldn't think of any way to stop it from happening, except to draw a protective rune in the common room, that's the only reason those 9 survived my accidental anger.
You were right, I did lash out, but I would have had to do it anyway. I killed those people in Green Park because I had too or I would be punished, I don't like being punished; it hurts.' His pale face was closer now; it was hard for Harry to focus on the angered face.
'I murdered those people at the markets because I was told too, I slaughtered those people at the Pagan Festival because I was told too, and I slaughtered all those others because I—'
'Because you had too.' Harry whispered, 'Severus, he still under?'
'He is.'
'Alright then, you said you got punished, is that what those are?' His voice came out wispy, his breathing shallow and his eyesight deteriorating by the minute; before that happened, he would find out the absolute truth.
'Yes'
'Why did you try…' He had to pause to take a heaving breath, '…try…to kill us?' There was a tilt of the white head before the eyes closed in his blurry vision. 'Because they wanted me too, it was my main objective after the orphanage, it was to draw you out; it worked. And didn't my dagger?' He whispered, a shaky laugh escaping his throat as a tear fell from his left eye.
'You haven't stopped the bleeding.'
'What?! Potter you imbecile!' A large hand threw his shoulder back as the colour finally drained from his face and his body slid backwards, eyes flickering closed and his hands falling limply by his sides, as he was lowered to the ground the full impact of the dagger was revealed, Harry's entire shirt was saturated in fresh red blood, as his hands were stained with the colour.
