Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoat Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Basically: It's her sandbox, I'm just playing in it for a little bit.
VV
o-0-O-0-o
CHAPTER TEN - Next time
That next night Sirius came into his office ready to make out to see him with each wrist in a bowl of Murtlap Essence and a few rolls of new gauze nearby.
"Plans off?" he said.
Gryffin nodded, "When Poppy tells you to do something, you do out of fear for your life."
Sirius smiled, "Then what can I do to help?" he said as he went over to his desks.
"I've got first year essays to grade."
"Essays? You mean that you can't take it easy on them?"
He shook his head, "No, but if you were to help grade them it might make things easier on me."
"How long until you can take your wrists out?"
Gryffin looked at the clock. "I just put them in not even five minutes ago. I've got an hour."
"Which means that you probably had to skive off dinner."
"Yeah, and? I can always go to the kitchens later." he said as he stared at the ceiling. "I'm just so bloody bored."
"You don't sit still well, do you?"
"Not when I don't even have a portrait to curse at."
"Who?"
"Phineus Black? Worst Head-"
"Master Hogwarts has ever had!" they finished together.
"You know, Professor, maybe we could talk." Sirius said as he began to read over the essays.
"Okay, what about?" he asked.
"Tell me about your family."
"Alright. My mum and dad married just out of Hogwarts and I was born when they were twenty."
"Cool, oh wait.."
"They died a year later and I was sent to live with my mother's family. I believe you already have some idea as to what they were like."
"Yeah, Lily couldn't stop talking about it during lunch. When's your birthday, anyway?"
Gryffin looked at him, Gryffin Michaels's birthday was the first of April in honor of his family's pranking history, "April first. Why?"
"No reason." Sirius said as he made a mark on the parchment.
o-O-o
"Geeze, I forget how bad first years handwritings were." Sirius said, about five minutes later after he finished reading through one of the essays and turned to see the Professor asleep in his chair.
He smiled as he realized that he could actually see how young the Prof was. It was weird how much older the Prof seemed when he was awake. It was as though he had seen far too much to successfully look to be in his youth. It was as though he had aged too quickly, as though he had never known what it was to truly be a carefree teenager.
He contemplated his Professor for a few minutes before he was tempted to kiss him, but figured that he'd let him sleep while he continued to grade papers.
o-O-o
Gryffin awoke a half an hour later, he looked over at Sirius who was still grading papers. "Sirius? Did I…?"
Sirius looked up, "Oh, hey Professor. Yes, you did. But you looked pretty knackered so I thought you needed the kip."
He nodded as he rolled his shoulders, "How long have I been out?"
"A half an hour," he said as he looked at his watch, "but I've still got over an hour for this detention."
He nodded, "Thank you Sirius." he said.
"You're welcome Professor Michaels."
"When we're in private, you don't have to say Professor. I keep looking around for someone twice my age." he said smiling.
"Alright Gryffin." he said. "So, do you like Quidditch?" Sirius asked.
Gryffin nodded, "Yeah, love it."
"What's your team?"
"Uh, don't really have one, never got that enthusiastic. I've got too much respect for the players."
"You play?"
"Played, past tense. I was a pretty good Seeker." he said modestly.
"You ever loose?"
"Once."
"What happened?"
"Got side-tracked when Dementors came onto the field. I was all but thrown off my broom. The other seeker tried to call for a re-match, but he wasn't allowed."
"Sounds like a decent bloke."
"Yes, he was."
"Was?" Sirius asked, confused as he forgot about the papers and turned to look at Gryffin.
"Yeah, he was murdered the next year."
"What happened?"
"Two teenagers who wander into the path of Lord Voldemort don't stand much of a chance. I got away with the scar on my right wrist."
"You mean the long one?"
"Yes." he said as he closed his eyes as the thoughts of the graveyard returned to his mind.
Sirius noticed his discomfort as he looked at the Prof. "Gryffin?"
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry." he said. "I'm almost seventeen and I can't imagine being able to do that."
"Yes, well, I didn't exactly have a choice. If I would've given up every time things had gotten difficult, I don't think I would have lived to see my twelfth birthday." he said sadly and sent them into an uncomfortable silence before Sirius returned to grading the papers and Gryffin fell back asleep.
He awoke a half an hour later, mentally being shaken awake by Hogwarts. 'What?' he demanded as he opened his eyes to see Sirius still grading papers, although they looked like the second year stack that he had yet to even begin to grade.
WAKE UP. The venerable castle called into his mind.
"Sirius, are those my second year papers?"
Sirius nodded, "Yeah. You don't mind, do you?"
"No." he said before he realized that he needed to get his wrists out of the bandages and that last time Madam Pomphrey had done it. "Say, Sirius, could you go get Poppy for me?"
Sirius nodded as he put a paper down. "Yeah, sure. But why?"
"Need help with my bandages." he said as he lifted his wrists out of the essence.
"I can help. You wouldn't believe how many times we banged ourselves up trying to set up a prank." Sirius said as he walked over and rolled his sleeves up.
Gryffin, who knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, offered him his left wrist first.
Sirius carefully unwrapped it, even as Gryffin hissed as he pulled at the gauze. He knew that it was better to get it done and over with than wait.
Once it was unwrapped he noticed that instead of just two wounds as he had originally thought, it looked as though the wounds were made by something going through his arm. Although he didn't want to think about that and risk puking all over Gryffin's office.
"The gauze?"
"Already pre-soaked in a blood clotting potion as well as a minor healing potion." he said as Sirius got one of the two rolls of gauze which had just the right amount of gauze to correctly wrap his wrists.
He carefully wrapped his wrist up before using his wand and meshing the end of the roll with the layer of gauze underneath it.
His right arm proved a little trickier and Sirius got a first hand look at the scar that cut into his forearm, it was slightly pink and he would have guessed that it was somewhere around five years old, which wasn't that far off. The wound began bleeding almost as soon as the bandage was being taken off.
"Sirius! Go get Madam Pomphrey!" he yelled, throwing some Floo Powder into the fire.
Sirius nodded and an instant later he was in the infirmary.
"It's bleeding?" she asked as she began grabbing the necessary potions without even waiting for Sirius to reply. She shoved them into a basket and gave him the basket before almost throwing him into the flames.
They appeared in Gryffin's office and he was doing his best to remain calm, including having his eyes closed and slowly breathing meditation-style. He heard them enter and looked at them, relieved. "Thank you, Sirius." he said.
"You're welcome." Sirius shrugged as though he were a mere student and not someone who had a serious (no pun intended) mass of feelings for him.
Gryffin leaned back and gave Madam Pomphrey his arm, "LEO!" he called to the ceiling.
"What are you doing?" Sirius asked.
"Calling my whitelighter." he said before he yelled to the ceiling. "Leo, get your sorry arse down here!"
Instantly, Leo Wyatt appeared, "Gryffin."
"Help, now." he said as Madam Pomphrey showed him his wrist.
Leo nodded, "I won't be able to heal it."
"I'm not asking you to." he said before Leo took over and had his wrist wrapped in less than ten seconds, allowing Madam Pomphrey to merge the end with the layer underneath it.
Madam Pomphrey clearly knew about Wiccans as she left, via the Floo, a moment later.
"Who's the kid?" Leo asked.
"A student of mine, foolish enough to get himself into detention." he said as he pointed his wand at the Murtlap Essence. "Deletrius!" he said before the spell destroyed the Murtlap Essence. He then pointed his wand at the blood. "Scourgify!" he said before turning back to Leo. "Thank you for coming. I know I'm not your charge, but I didn't know who else to call for."
Leo nodded, "No problem, although I would like to ask you as soon as you're able how you got that."
He nodded in return, "Fair enough." he said before turning to Sirius. "I think you can be excused. If you hurry, you might be able to make it in time for desert."
Sirius nodded, "Thank you Professor." he said before leaving.
Leo sat down, "So, who are you really?"
He checked the wards that Hogwarts had around his room, perfect. "My name is Harry Potter and I won't be born for about five years yet."
"You're Wiccan?"
"Half. Half-Wiccan, Half-Wizard." he said.
"Is that how you came back?" Leo asked as he looked around the office.
"Yes."
"And you're what, here?"
"I'm the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." he said.
"What happened to your wrists, and why can't I heal them?"
"For me it was less than six months ago, when it originally happened." he said as he cleaned up the remainder of the blood with a wandless Scourgify.
"Go on." Leo said as he sensed his empath powers and so sent reassurance his way.
Harry smiled gratefully, "I had finally killed him." he said, his eyes clouded over as he remembered that day. "He'd killed my parents with Avada Kedavra, so I thought it only appropriate that their son return the favor to him. I'd been dueling him for hours, neither of us willing to give in as neither of us were willing to surrender. Tom never did understand the power of love." he said ruefully. "We ended it where it all began for me. The heirs of Gryffindor and Slytherin tied in an epic battle where only one would walk away.
"I killed him and I sort of just stood there. I didn't know to act. He was finally dead, gone forever. He would never again try to break my mind, or my heart.
"I walked for about two hundred meters before I was suddenly thrown onto what felt like a wooden cross." he said as he struggled with that night.
Leo realized what he was saying with sickening clarity. "You were crucified, weren't you?"
Harry nodded, "Close enough. She had me hanging there, having staked my arms to the cross with poison-coated stakes. She whipped me until my chest and back was a bloody mess. Towards the end she cut me down to the bone. I passed out next, and when I awoke a week later every mark of that night was gone, except these. They had healed and were scars before a student with a crush on me repressed my coping process and as a result I was forced to relive every bad experience I ever had. Including that night. Everything else was able to have been healed, except for my wrists." he said as he rubbed his hands together.
"How did you know to call me?" Leo asked. "How did you know that I could get through the wards?"
"I had already asked Lady Hogwarts to let you through. She knew that as a whitelighter, you could not harm. As for how I knew to call you, my own whitelighter talks about you often enough."
"What's his name?"
"Chris." he said as he suddenly felt drained. "I think we both need to leave." he said as he disappeared just as Leo orbed out.
NOTE FROM VV - I'm Baaack!