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Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me except for parts of the story line and my little twists. Things you recognize are probably from the books or TV show.
BOOK ONE
Chapter X
Harry pulled himself together as well as he could and hoped he hadn't given himself away too badly.
"Are you okay?" he asked, anxious for a different reason than he hoped she would draw from it. "Come on, I'll help you clean up. I'm sorry."
Ginny shifted her hand to cover the cut completely.
"No," she said curtly. "I'm fine. Why are you waving a knife around anyway? This is a main hallway. You'll end up poking someone's eyes out."
He shoved the knife into his pocket, his mind spinning frantically for a plausible story.
"It's from... a friend," he explained. Victor was sort of a friend. "He was a soldier," fighting a supernatural war, right? "and he gave it to me," that was true, "before he... um... died."
Somehow his little tale didn't sound too convincing. Fake Ginny seemed rather suspicious but twisted her face into a sympathetic smile that looked too painful to be genuine.
"Oh, I'm sorry." He highly doubted that. "How?"
His mind blanked out.
"How?"
"Did he die?" she added patiently.
Right. How had Victor not-died?
"Cancer!" he exclaimed, with far too much enthusiasm. He coughed. "It was a few years ago. Anyway, what did you come down for? Are you sure you don't need help with that cut? I'm most awfully sorry."
"I'm down here because I live here," said Ginny flatly. "In case you forgot. And no, I don't need help. It doesn't even really hurt."
"Okay," Harry agreed quickly, nodding. "Okay. Well, I've got to go. Homework... and stuff."
Homework was a good excuse for anything.
He made a vague hand motion before remembering the earlier mishap. He stuffed both hands in his pockets and hurried down the chilly corridor in the opposite direction from Ginny, inwardly cringing at his horrible acting abilities. It was impossible for her not to have seen his reaction and clumsy backpedaling.
How was he supposed to tell Ron that his baby sister wasn't his baby sister, but a monster who for all he knew had eaten Ginny alive? Or sucked her blood (no, that was vampires)? What did shapeshifters do to their victims? Why hadn't he asked Victor?
His mind whirled.
And of course the number one question was how was he supposed to get rid of it?
His silver knife could probably kill the beastly thing, but he balked at the thought of killing something, even a monster. Demons he could exorcise. Ghosts were already dead. But shapeshifters were real, living, breathing creatures that looked exactly like humans... who might indeed be mutated humans. He didn't think he could stab one in cold blood, especially if it had the form of Ron's sister.
Ginny was a shapeshifter. How was he supposed to tell Ron?
The answer was fairly simple. He wouldn't.
Lockhart's sparring club was absolutely awful. Harry flicked his wand at Hermione, who was standing across from him and tapping her foot impatiently.
"Expelliarmus."
Her wand gave a minuscule twitch. Harry huffed.
"You have to say it with more vigor," Hermione encouraged. "Like this... Expelliarmus!"
His wand flew out of his hand and spun wildly, landing on the floor several yards away. With a sigh, he retrieved it and jogged back to attempt the spell again.
"Expelliarmus!"
Hermione's wand gave a feeble jump and landed at her feet. Swiping it up, she smiled with disparaging condescension at his lack of skill.
"That's better."
"Oh, don't feed me that," said Harry crossly. "I know I'm absolutely awful. There's no need to sugarcoat it."
Hermione grimaced wryly.
"You are pretty bad," she admitted. "But if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So go on. Try again."
"Expelliarmus!"
Hermione's wand didn't move an inch. Her smile faded.
"Oh. Well, this is only the first meeting."
Harry pursed his lips and glared at the disobedient bit of carved wood in his hand, daring it to cause him more trouble. As he'd established before, Lockhart's club was simply awful.
It wasn't just Defense, either. In Transfiguration, the rest of the class was starting to change blocks of wood into mice, and he was still stuck on that insufferable matchstick from last year. It was most embarrassing. Hermione didn't even have that little triumphant gleam in her eyes for besting him anymore. But if anything, it was his ego that suffered and nothing more, although he wondered what he would do in the magical world if he was completely inept at spells.
Maybe he could be like Hagrid. Despite his affection for the huge man, the notion was not particularly stimulating.
He reached the top of the stairs and hurried down, only just able to bound over the gradually widening crevice between it and the next flight. Unfortunately, as he landed, something snagged at his foot (what it was he had no idea... the area had been completely clear) and he stumbled.
"Damnation!"
He only had the presence of mind to curl himself into a tight ball as he rolled wildly down the stairs, hoping they wouldn't move and leave him to be smashed to bits on the ground below. His arm cracked loudly as it landed on a sharp edge and he landed on it, and he stifled a yelp of pain.
With a loud, spectacular thump, he slammed into a barrier, still doubled over as white-hot pain stabbed up his arm. He clutched it tightly and almost screamed as his fingers touched the most sensitive portion of jagged bone under his rapidly swelling flesh.
"Harry! Harry, are you all right?"
He didn't answer as he was occupied trying to bear the nearly unbearable pain.
It'll stop in a bit. It'll stop in a bit. Just hang in there.
He was probably going to faint. What an intrepid, heroic Boy-Who-Lived he was.
He fainted.
"Harry..."
"Shh," he mumbled, turning into the soft thing that was drawn up to his chin.
"Harry!"
He opened one eye.
"What? Who is it?"
Ron's freckled face peered down at him.
"You've been out for the past two hours," he observed. "How do you feel?"
"Feel?" His head gradually cleared. "Oh, you mean my arm."
"Yes, I mean your arm," said Ron briskly. "You must have smashed your bloody head against the wall as well if you don't remember."
Harry gingerly lifted his arm and was surprised to find that, despite the lingering soreness, it was all right. He twisted it back and forth and stared.
"Why isn't it broken?"
"Madam Pomfrey fixed you up," Ron explained. "Lockhart was trying to caste some healing spell but he was totally clueless, so she told him off. You had a narrow squeak."
It was obvious from the muted admiration in his voice that the aforementioned nurse had risen rather high in his favor. Harry poked his arm, still marveling at the bones that were neatly set in place, and winced. Evidently it hadn't completely healed yet.
"Why'd you fall, anyway?"
"I tripped."
"That's it?" asked Ron incredulously. "You just tripped, like that? That's a whole new level of clumsy, Harry."
"I wasn't being clumsy," said Harry indignantly. "I could have sworn something grabbed my foot."
"Right."
Ron sounded doubtful.
"Honestly. But I didn't see anyone afterward."
"Mm. Yeah. Well, I'm going to get Hermione. She'll want to know that you're awake."
So Ron seemed to think he was the biggest klutz on earth. But Harry could still feel the fingers latching onto his legs and yanking, and it was ringing a bell in the far recesses of his mind...
Crack...
He winced, remembering the similar crack as his arm snapped beneath him.
"Harry Potter!"
It dawned on him quite suddenly. Why, the little swine.
"Dobby," he said, fiercely. "What are you doing here?"
"Dobby heard Harry Potter was hurt," Dobby squeaked. "He wanted to see how he was."
"I didn't know word got around that quickly," Harry replied, very dryly.
The elf looked guilt-ridden.
"Dobby is..."
"Dobby is an ass!" Harry exploded.
He had been willing to overlook the letter issue, but this had gone too far. It had hurt, damn it, and he'd be damned if he let this terror of a house elf get away with it (psychological perturbation seemed to induce bouts of foul language). Dobby cowered guiltily, looking not unlike a dog with its tail between its legs and clearly having realized that his deed had been found out.
"Dobby wanted Harry Potter to be safe," he whimpered.
"Yes, well, at this point the most dangerous thing that's happened to me is you, so I don't quite see the logic there! Just... just..." Harry spluttered, at a loss for words. "That's just not cool. I'd rather face the danger and be done with it than deal with you! You're a menace!"
Dobby vanished with an ashamed crack as Hermione burst in, followed closely by Ron.
"Harry, you've got to stop doing this," she said severely. "You've ended up in here two years in a row, and I really don't think..."
"It was Dobby again," Harry interrupted, thumping his uninjured arm against the mattress to get their attention. "He's taking extreme measures to make me go home. He left when you came in."
There was dead silence.
"You're joking, right?" asked Ron slowly.
Harry shot him a scathing look.
"I most certainly am not."
Ron shrugged.
"I don't know. That's your excuse for everything now."
Harry ignored that.
"I have to figure out some way to make him stop," he said despairingly. "I don't want to spend the whole year in the infirmary. What if he tries to break my neck next?"
"That might be uncomfortable," Ron agreed. "Sorry, mate, we don't have house elves. I don't have any advice for you."
"If only he would just tell you why," said Hermione thoughtfully. "I assume he hasn't yet?"
Harry sighed and leaned back against his pillow.
"No. He started hitting himself on the head because apparently he was 'disobeying his master' or something."
"So whoever who owns him knows?" Hermione questioned, with a calculating glint in her eyes.
"I expect so."
"How perfectly fascinating," she breathed, plopping down at the foot of his bed, and then she frowned. "And rather concerning as well. Do you think Dobby is trying to warn you about the thing that petrified Mrs. Norris?"
"Well, whatever it was, I'd like to shake its hand," said Ron. "That creature had eyes on the back of her bloody head. Good riddance, I say."
"Maybe..." Harry could practically see the gears turning in Hermione's mind. "Maybe Dobby belongs to the heir of Slytherin."
"According to Ron, I'm the heir of Slytherin," said Harry bitterly.
"I never said that," Ron protested, adding kindly, "besides, Slytherin's heir would probably be a powerful wizard. You're absolutely rotten at spells."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
According to Ron, the Gryffindor girls' dormitories were protected by some magical sliding staircase. Harry took a deep breath and bounded up the steps.
Nothing happened. He exhaled. The Slytherins' were not, apparently.
There were good points to getting your arm broken, such as frequent, gratuitous breaks while the rest of the class was listening to humdrum lectures about goblin wars. He had escaped after explaining that he couldn't concentrate because his arm hurt too much (it had, a little).
Unfortunately, he didn't know where Ginny's room was, and there was only the slightest chance that she had left the notebook in it. But he wasn't one to let the opportunity slide away without doing something about it.
The faint scent of overly fragrant perfume was in the air and he tried his best not to breathe through his nose. There were too many doors. There was no way he would be able to ransack every room before the end of the period. He made a wild guess and assumed that the first years would be situated nearer the stairs.
It was pure, unadulterated luck that his conjecture turned out to be true. But no less than thirty-five students had been sorted into Slytherin this year, and about three-quarters of those had been girls, which meant he had to comb through more than twenty-five drawers that overflowed with stuff. Most of it he couldn't even identify, like weird little bottles filled with oddly colored liquid, and creams and beauty potions.
There it was.
In the twenty-fifth dresser, he saw the thin black booklet, carefully hidden beneath a mound of black robes. He dug it out eagerly – the search had lasted too long already – and pulled it open.
It was blank.
He stared at it, feeling his stomach drop. Had she expected him to look for it? Was this a decoy? Was it simply not hers?
There wasn't a single letter on the clean white pages. He shoved it onto the dresser rather viciously, and knocked over her small bottle of ink.
"Dash it all!"
Spinning around, Harry grabbed for something to mop up the stain that was spreading over the parchment. Or rather... the stain thatwasn't spreading over the parchment. The pages soaked up the ink rapidly, swallowing it until they were once more white and blank.
How curious.
After a split second of indecision, he picked up the quill that had tipped along with the bottle and dipped it in the remaining ink.
My name is John.
John was a nice, modest, unassuming name. If Ginny ever discovered someone had been playing with her book, she wouldn't be able to trace it back to him. The words stood out for a long moment before dissipating. He waited for something to happen.
Hello, John. My name is Tom.
His eyebrows flew up and he quickly scribbled out another sentence.
You're a book.
The words vanished and another took their place.
Magic.
That was rather obvious. He eyed the sentient paper thoughtfully.
Do you talk to Ginny at all?
Not Ginny.
So... the book knew about the shapeshifter. This whole affair was getting curiouser by the minute.
Or perhaps Harry was just being paranoid and the book was simply saying that it did not speak to Ginny. Which meant sort of the same thing. He pushed the vague string of thoughts out of his mind.
Shapeshifter?
Yes.
Harry wondered how a book would know something that wizards apparently didn't, especially if it itself had been created by one. It was probably bluffing. And it was ridiculous to be playing some screwed-up game of cat and mouse with a book.
Tell me what a shapeshifter is and maybe I'll believe you.
True to its name, it is able to imitate the appearance of other creatures, primarily humans.
All right, then. So it knew what a shapeshifter was. Still, that didn't make sense.
How are you able to talk to me?
It didn't answer. Harry tried again.
What's a shapeshifter doing at Hogwarts?
I cannot reveal secrets under confidence.
He doubted that a book had moral scruples. Of course, it wouldn't have occurred to him before that a book could make conversation either, so that didn't mean anything. Maybe it had a hidden agenda. Maybe it was planning something with Ginny.
Is the real Ginny still alive?
There was a short pause, as if Tom was pondering whether or not he (Harry assumed the book was male... which was, again, ridiculous, because books were genderless) could answer without betraying the shapeshifter's "confidence."
Yes.
Thank goodness.
Where?
There was no answer. Soft footsteps echoed in the hall outside, and Harry hurriedly replaced the ink bottle, quill, and Tom back to their respective spots, diving under Ginny's bed just as the door opened. He held his breath as shoes clacked against the cold stone floor. The bed creaked as Ginny sat down and opened Tom.
For a long while, there was no sound but the faint scratching of her quill, with brief pauses as Tom replied. Finally, she stood abruptly and pushed the book into her back pocket, striding out and slamming the door behind her. Harry scrambled out from under the bed and hurried after her.
He followed her through a number of corridors, sure to stay far enough behind that she wouldn't notice. She seemed to sniff the air now and then, suspiciously, like a dog, but each time he froze, and she went on.
Then she turned a corner.
When Harry turned the very same corner only a moment later, she was gone. He was left standing rather stupidly in the middle of the passage, at a complete loss as to what had gone wrong, and he circled a few times before heading back to the dorms.
All in all, it turned out to have been a pointless little adventure. At least he'd met Tom.
Christmas holidays were fast approaching, but before anybody left, Hogwarts had one last surprise for them. Colin Creevey, a scrawny Gryffindor whose signature apparatus was a chunky magical camera (it was so large that it seemed to upset his balance), was found petrified. Harry had seen him occasionally, mostly because Colin had a mild obsession with him, but he had never really known him.
Of course that just made everyone want to go home sooner. Harry felt shivers at the thought of Colin staying behind, all alone, in the infirmary for several weeks, and was glad when word went around that he would be transferred to St. Mungo's over Christmas. Mrs. Weasley sent increasingly alarmed owls to Ron, telling him to "be careful" and to "never walk anywhere alone" while not straying from her usual "pay attention in class," which was the most frequent and vehement.
Neither of Harry's investigations-in-progress was going the way he'd hoped. The shapeshifter was going home for Christmas with the rest of the Weasleys (hopefully its purpose wasn't to eliminate them) and he was nowhere near figuring out the identity of the heir of Slytherin, nor the location of the Chamber of Secrets. To tell the truth, he felt like he was swimming through muddy water that was getting muddier every second, and it was very disconcerting.
The public consensus was that Harry either was helping the heir or simply was the heir, which made most students step carefully around him and watch their backs. Draco was the second most popular choice, as Malfoys were apparently eclipsed by Boys Who Lived. That provoked the ire of Draco, who Harry suspected wouldn't have minded actually being the heir (he assumed he wasn't, because if he was he would be walking around with a smug look on his face rather than one of impending wrath).
The heir business didn't affect Harry's daily life much – he was a solitary being, anyway – and Hermione didn't seem to care about it beyond indulging her scholarly curiosity, while Ron was ridiculously self-satisfied for thinking of the Harry option before anyone else had. He gloated over it when they talked in private.
Harry finished packing his things (only enough to fill a small bag) and headed to the Gryffindor dorms to fetch Ron and Hermione. It was a common enough occurrence that none of the frantically-rushing-about Gryffindors spared a second glance for him. He weaved through the mess of people, inwardly thanking his stars that he had ended up in Slytherin, which wasn't half as loud, and knocked on Ron's door.
"Come in!" shouted a muffled but clearly harried voice.
He pushed it open and promptly stepped into a Disaster.
Ron was sitting in the middle of the Disaster with a hopeless look on his face. He turned pleading eyes to Harry as he came in.
"What do I pack?" he demanded.
"Really?"
Ron blinked. "What?"
"This is just Christmas break," Harry explained. He showed him the backpack. "This is all I brought."
Ron looked aghast.
"What? So I've been wasting all this time I could have perfectly spent doing something packing for no reason."
"Basically," Harry agreed.
"Oh, I'm going to kill the twins."
Harry winced sympathetically at that – Common Sense said never to trust the infamous Weasley twins – and kindly helped him put away the clothes and books that littered the room.
"Where's Ginny?" asked Ron presently.
"Ah." Harry floundered. "Riiiight. She... um... she wasn't... done yet... I decided to come up before her."
He hadn't wanted to go for a stroll with Hogwarts' resident shapeshifter.
"Oh. Well, that's okay. She said she'd find us at the station."
Ginny went above and beyond the call of duty. Not only did she find them at the station, she followed them onto the train and sat in the same compartment the whole way. Harry disregarded Common Sense – the poor chap must have been close to giving up – and used the time to dig for information.
"Hello, Ginny."
She shot him a long, unblinking glance.
"Hello, Harry."
If he hadn't been under her scrutiny, he would have squirmed. Although it was really because of her scrutiny that he was squirming. It was a never ending paradox.
"I meant to ask you about that book you're always writing in. Is it your journal?"
"Yes."
The answer was short and blunt.
"What do you..."
"Harry," said Hermione indignantly, digging her finger into his side. He stifled a yelp. "Don't ask questions about someone's diary. How would you like it if people tried to extract your secret thoughts?"
"Thank you, Hermione," said the shapeshifter in a dignified tone.
As a matter of fact, Harry's secret thoughts were rather murderous. Hermione's meddling was bungling his undercover operation.
"Sorry," he mumbled, feeling anything but. "I was thinking of starting one myself – a journal, not a diary," he clarified hastily, "and I wanted tips since I've never done it before. Do you write the date and go right in, or do you pretend you're writing to someone? Like... like John?"
Suspicion flashed through Ginny's eyes.
"I usually write to someone. Secret friend, you know? His name's Tom, though, not John."
The boldness of her reply startled Harry, but she was staring shrewdly at him. He hid his surprise as well as he could.
"Apologies to Tom, then," he said, very meekly.
It seemed to allay her mistrust for the moment.
The car swayed and Harry rubbed the handle of his silver knife anxiously. Would they never arrive? He glanced at the clock above the window. It had only been half an hour since they'd left.
"How about a game of Exploding Snap?" Ron suggested, not at all ruffled by the chorus of groans that followed. "I bet none of you can beat me."
He stared at the phone, his eyes trailing up the long cord that connected to the wall and then falling back to the already worn scrap of paper in his hand. He reached out to pick it up and hesitated.
"Oh, hell."
He grabbed it before he could change his mind for the hundredth time and dialed the number, his fingers trembling. He held his breath as he waited.
It was picked up on the third ring.
"Hello? Who's this?"
He breathed a sigh of relief at the familiar voice (it was kind of horrible to be walking alone in a sea of strangeness) and swallowed the thickness in his throat before answering.
"Hey. Hey, um, it's me."
"John?"
He scratched his neck nervously and started to pace, only to realize that the phone was still attached to the receiver. He halted.
"Yeah. Uh... about that? I... I sort of figured out that I'm not John. I mean, I knew that, of course. I just figured out what my name really is... I think."
"Really?"
He wondered if the kid was as happy for him as he sounded or if he was just acting.
"Yeah. I was looking at those hospital books for patients and I took the Bible because... well, you know, I recognized it, and, uh..." he licked his lips, "first chapter. My name's Adam. Nice to meet you."
Harry laughed, the sound traveling through the speakers as clear as a bell, and Adam found himself actually grinning.
"That's great, Adam. You look a lot more like an Adam than a John."
"Yeah, I kind of thought that, too."
"Any other sudden revelations while I was gone?"
"Nope. No, that was it. I still don't know my last name. But it feels good. Makes me feel like an actual person instead of just nobody. By the way, how was your school? You said it was a boarding school?"
He could almost feel Harry's hesitance.
"It was good," he said, finally. "A little hectic, with all the homework and... other stuff." His voice sounded a little strangled and Adam wondered what the "other stuff" was. "But okay, all around. Do you have any plans for Christmas?"
Adam stared around at the empty flat with a sort of empty feeling in his stomach. Hospitals might help amnesiacs find housing and other necessities, but they didn't exactly hold their hands and go friend-hunting with them.
"It doesn't look like it."
He straightened his tie and stepped back, gruffly clearing his throat.
"You look okay, man."
Sam chuckled nervously.
"Dean, you think..."
"Oh, shut up, squirt. Get going."
"Jerk."
Sam's voice shook. Dean grinned at him encouragingly (he wouldn't admit that he felt a little skittish as well) and slapped him on the back.
"Bitch."
Eheheheheh. Teasers and Winchesters are strong with this chapter. Have fun guessing.
I gave you guys an actual answer for once, instead of just hints! One of you guessed Adam, but I was cracking up before that because it was so freaking typical that everyone would forget him. Anyway. The poor kid had to get out of the Cage sometime. Those of you who guessed Castiel... well, he doesn't have blond hair. Don't worry, though, Cas will show up sooner or later.
Reviews – especially constructive criticism – are always very much appreciated! Thank you!