The Disturbing and the Disturbed

Harry came down for breakfast the next morning to find Ron staring into space. He sat down across from his friend and waved his hand in front of the red head's face, no reaction. Harry frowned. Why would Ron be acting like this? It wouldn't be the rumors of Harry and Draco flying around the school. Harry had explained the whole incident as a fight, which wasn't far from what had really happened. Harry shrugged and began to fill up his plate. He could wait Ron out and then ask him what was going on.

A few minutes later Hermione came in and sat down next to Ron. She waved her hand in front of the red-head's face. "Any ideas?" Harry asked her. Hermione bit her lip and shook her head.

As she did so, Harry's head started tingling. It felt as if insects were crawling around in the back of his head. He sat fork poised in mid air, and he blinked a couple of times trying to get rid of the uncomfortable sensation.

"Are you alright, Harry Hermione asked him.

"I think so. I just feel weird."

"Maybe you should go see Madam Pomphry."

"No." Hermione opened her mouth again. "I said no. Just give me a minute; it is already fading." Harry massaged his temples. He glanced up at Ron to see the other boy looking at him worriedly. "Oh, you are alive."

"Hey no need to be rude. I was just remembering… Oww" Hermione cut him short with a swift kick in the shin. "That hurt, 'Mione." He bent down to rub his abused shin.

"Well, you shouldn't go around school blabbing about such things. Look at what it did to Harry."

Now Harry was confused. What about me?

"Huh…" Ron grunted.

Hermione sighed in exasperation. "The whole incident yesterday. I have heard everything from Harry becoming a Death Eater to Draco turning over a new leaf. On first year even concocted a story about personality switches and You-Know Who in a Minnie skirt." Both Harry and Ron turned green at the mention of Voldemort in a Minnie skirt. Harry shuddered as his over active imagination pictured the pallid rail- thin snake in a micro Minnie.

"Hermione, if you insist on torturing us please be tasteful enough to use whips and chains, not Voldemort in a Minnie skirt, please."

"Harry you have faced You-Know –Who how many times now?" Harry began to add them up on his fingers. Hermione continued, "Such a small thing shouldn't scare you."

"But it does."

"It scares me too, 'Mione."

Hermione rolled her eyes at the ceiling, "Boys." She glanced at her watch. "Anyway, I need to get to the library before class. Professor McGonagall is starting animagus theory today and I want to read up on it." She ran off slinging her book bag over her shoulder.

Ron turned towards Harry, "How does she know what we are studying before we study it?" He asked.

"She probably listens to the teacher talk about the next lesson at the end of class." Harry said.

"Really?" Ron frowned. "And how would you know this?" He watched Harry chew his lip. "Because I know that at the end of class you are usually trying to come up with a method to sweep all of the books on your desk into your book bag all at once."

Harry smiled at his friend. "I did used to teach here, Ron, and I'll tell you now that all the things kids try to get away with in class, they really don't. The teacher just doesn't want to deal with it."

Ron started. "Oh, yeah. I forgot." He glanced sheepishly at his friend.

Harry on the other hand practically beamed. "That's great. I was starting to worry that you would treat me differently, but you're not and that's good…"

Ron put his hand on his hyperactive friend's shoulder to stop the babbling. "Calm down. Breath." After a few deep breaths Ron said, "You don't exactly act like Slytherin. I just don't see it." Harry looked at his friend with wonder. Ron continued. "At first I thought you were stuck up, but not anymore. You joke, laugh, pull off pranks that make the Weasely twins green with envy. Believe me I have the picture to prove it."

"So you would expect me to act like Malfoy, or Crabbe maybe?" Harry said in a threatening tone.

"Like Crabbe, no, but all the histories say…" Ron trailed off as Harry turned bright red with anger.

"I am nothing like those books say." Harry grated out.

"Okay, okay, sorry." Ron quickly changed tactics. "So, what about you and the thing with Malfoy?"

Harry sighed. "I'm only using him." Ron spit out his orange juice. "Not like that. Pervert."

Ron grabbed a napkin and brushed the orange juice off his robes. "What do you expect me to think; you've been disappearing with him all week."

Harry huffed. "There is no talking to you is there." He said as he stood up. "I'm going to class. See ya." He waved over his shoulder without looking back.

He checked his watch. There was still thirty minutes before he had to be in transfiguration, so he went out side to sit by the lake.

It was a beautiful day out. The morning sun shown down turning the calm lake into a mirror of gold. Harry found a seat under on of the larger, less dangerous trees over looking the lake and sat down cross-legged, hands hanging limply in his lap. He had to rethink what he was doing. Was it a good idea to use Draco like this? The blonde's only redeeming feature was his hatred of Voldemort. He still believed in everything that the old snake stood for. What Salazar Slytherin supposedly stood for.

Harry had known over a thousand years ago that destroying that one village would haunt him for the rest of his life as Slytherin. He hadn't realized that it would be as far reaching as this. One mistake, He had lost his temper one time and was known as a muggle hater ever since. It didn't matter that Salazar had been six at the time or that what happened had been completely out of his control. It didn't even matter that those greedy, hateful bastards had deserved what they got. He remembered so clearly. It had been a fall day much like this one…

Salazar had skipped out on his morning chores again. He was hunting the "dragon" that had been rumored to be in the woods. He knew that it was only a story but still held to the fact that it was a big snake. Salazar wanted to make friends with it. He spent the whole morning searching for the blasted thing. All he did find was the regurgitated remains of small forest animals.

Around lunch time his stomach started to growl at him, so he trudged home in defeat, hungry and in trouble. Mother had a bad habit of smacking him on the back of the head when he misbehaved, and the lecture he would get for running out on her this morning, Salazar winced at the thought.

When the small boy reached the cottage, where he lived with his mother on the edge of the village, he called out hesitantly to announce his arrival. There was no answer. Salazar frowned. He had expected his mother to come storming out the kitchen door waving her stirring spoon and promising to stop feeding him until all of his chores were done. "Mother," he called again. Still no answer.

Swallowing the urge to scream. Salazar walked up to the kitchen door and swung it open. Now he knew something was definitely wrong. The wood stove was cold, and the breakfast dishes were still on the shabby table. He ran through the small cottage, then out to the garden.

"Mommy!" Salazar called out in desperation. It had been years since he had uttered the word 'mommy.'

"Shut up, you little brat," one of the village women yelled at him as she hurried toward the village green. While the comment was normal, most of the villagers ignored his existence when he wasn't in trouble; he was a bastard after all and there for did not exist in their perfect world, the woman seemed to be in too much of a hurry to only be visiting.

Salazar figured that something must be going on and that was where he would find his mother. He made his way to the village green his feeling of foreboding increasing with every step. As he got closer he noticed a sickening, burning smell, and started to her snippets of conversation. The local priest seemed to have caught a witch living in their peaceful village. One of them, a particularly cruel old man, was reassuring his sheep that the danger had passed; there was nothing left to fear now that the devil worshiper had been taken care of.

Salazar, as usual, walked through the crowd unnoticed. He made his way to the center of the green still looking for his mother. The burning smell was stronger here, and seemed to be coming from the blackened pile of burnt wood. Men stood in small groups talking solemnly. "She got what she deserved." Old McLain said to a group of farmers.

It wasn't until Salazar had walked around to the other side of the chard pole that he saw the body tied to the post. He backed away from the charred remains in horror. He looked around in desperation for his mother, but noticed that she was the only one absent from the crowed.

Salazar turned back to the thing. There was nothing left to identify the remains, but for the hunk of semi-melted silver lying in the ashes. It was the hair clip his mother always wore. The bird of paradise that adorned the clip was grossly deformed.

Salazar dropped to his knees hot tears filling his eyes. He reached out and grabbed the clip, hugging it to his chest. The tears that rolled down his face fell to the ground and ignited the grass. He could feel the heat inside him threatening to burn.

People backed away from the boy as his violet eyes began to glow.

Salazar saw red, felt heat. Though the heat never seemed to touch him…

Harry remembered waking up later to find the village in ashes wondering what the hell had happened. His mother certainly hadn't been a witch, and he had had no idea that he was a wizard. Harry sighed. He still didn't know which was worse: knowing your mother then losing her or not knowing her at all.

The splat of a mud ball brought Harry back to the world. He heard Draco and his cronies laughing. His eyes narrowed as he cast a quick cleaning spell on himself. Son of a bitch is going to die. Slowly, painfully.... Harry walked calmly over to his rival turned ally. "I will see you after dinner," with that he turned and headed for class, smiling broadly at the gulping sound behind him. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes till class. "Damn I'm good." He said to himself bounding up the stairs.

He slipped into a seat between Ron and Hermione just as McGonagall entered the room. She walked to the front of the room and turned to address the class. "Now, as you know we have been studying human transformation for the past month." The class let out a low groan. Human transfiguration was decidedly not the easiest subject covered. "Today we will be shifting gears a bit to study animagus transformation." The class perked up at that as it was a common belief that, in the words of Lavender Brown, "being an animagus would be totally cool."

Of course Professor McGonagall had to burst that bubble too. "It should be noted that we will not go over the actual procedure of transforming into an animal only the theory. Anyone caught attempting an animagus transformation will be expelled."

Well, this promises to be another fun month." Ron muttered on Harry's right.

"Yes indeed," Hermione gushed from the other side of him, completely missing the sarcasm. "I find this subject simply fascinating. In the library there are over a hundred books on what can go wrong in a transformation."

"Huh, hopefully we'll spend most of our time on that. Talking about the possibility of growing gills sounds like fun."

Harry's eyes kept bouncing back and forth between his friends. Mother Night, they are just like Godric and Rowena. Always arguing, back and forth, back and forth until either he or Helga snapped.

Hermione looked at Ron in disgust. "I don't believe you Ronald."

"Don't call me Ronald."

"Mr. Weasly, Ms. Granger do I need to separate…" McGonagall turned to see Harry already sitting between them.

"Yes please," He answered for his two friends. Ron and Hermione stared at him in shock.

McGonagall sighed and went back to her lecture. "Today we will talk about the mechanics of casting transformation magic on yourself…" The class groaned once more.

Harry sat taking notes on autopilot. It would be more fun to learn how to be an animagus on the side. Thanks to Salazar he had a virtual library on the subject in the back of his head. Rowena had had a fascination with the subject. But Salazar had never become an animagus himself.

Harry on the other hand had every intention of following in his fathers footsteps. Now if he remembered correctly there was a book on animagus transformation in the restricted section, fourth case from the back third shelf down buried between a couple of scrolls that in Salazar's opinion could double as fire fuel.

Being the Hogwarts assistant librarian had its perks. Even if his job was mostly sifting through Rowena's rooms for books she refused to return. The woman had seemed to think that the students would more likely use the books as toilet paper as opposed to reading them.

Harry made it through the rest of his classes alright and had spent dinner alternately arguing with Ron about raiding the library for the book and shooting death glares at Draco.

Right now he was practicing anger management in the form of throwing fireballs at said blond dragon, for the past two hours. Harry noted that Draco had gotten really good at dodging.

Ron thought it was wrong to steal free books for some reason and that left Harry without a partner in crime. He sent a shock spell at Draco out of pure frustration.

"Owww." Draco screamed. Harry made a point to tone down the amount of energy he put into his spells. It wouldn't do him any good to kill the kid. "What the hell was all that?" Draco screamed at him.

Harry looked at Draco's flushed face and singed robes. He was holding up pretty well; Harry decided. It had only taken him three curses before he found a shield spell that would block the fire. "Basic battle magic."

"You could have warned me that we were going to use magic this time!"

"I'm still mad at you for this morning, on top of which I'm peeved at Ron."

"So, that doesn't make it alright to try to kill me. I don't know any of those spells. It's completely unfair…"

"You giving me a lecture on fairness? That's rich."

Draco deflated at the comment. "Well… uh…," then he snapped out. "Are you going to teach me the spells or not."

Harry sighed. "Okay, the first one is a simple fire spell…"

"Simple? It nearly killed me."

"Any first year could learn it."

"The why don't I know it."

Harry deadpanned. "Any number of reasons. I can think of fifty or so off the top of my head, and before you ask I learned it on accident." Draco shut his mouth from the rant position.

"The spell is attono, it is the first of many fire spells of different degrees. It is used most often in battle because it is easy to use and is less likely to burn down a building than the other fire spells." Harry scratched the back of his head not quite believing that he had just slipped into lecture mode.

"Just point your wand and say attono, or if you can do wandless magic use the palm of your hand."

Draco nodded and pointed his wand at Harry, who gave him a you've-got-to-be-kidding-me look. Harry waved his hand at the target that had appeared in the middle of the room. "Practice on that."

Draco stomped in front of the dummy and pointed his wand at it. "Attono," he yelled. Nothing happened. Draco had turned around to yell at Harry when the dummy exploded into flame. Draco was stunned by the explosion; he thought they were going to die, but the flame just went out.

"And that's why we learn that spell first." Draco looked at Harry who stood with arms crossed staring at the charred dummy. "The spell only burns for a short time no matter what kind of fuel it has. Very convenient if I do say so myself. By the way the amount of force you put in the spell determines how big the fire is."

"Thanks," Draco spat. "What about the delay?"

Harry shrugged. "Fire is a fickle element. Practice."

After practicing attono for an hour, he finally asked Harry, "Do you think I could do this without a wand?"

"Sure." Draco turned back to the new dummy the room had supplied. "Just remember to push the spell away from your body. Draco winced at the words, but held his palm flat facing the dummy. The spell warmed his hand briefly before spiraling out and consuming the dummy in a cloud of fire.

"Cool."

"Thought you would like that."

"Shut up. Since I go that we can move on to the other spell you used."

Harry looked at his watch. "It's getting late. We should continue tomorrow."

"Potter, what was the spell?" Draco growled.

Harry sighed. "It's called deflaratio. I'll teach it to you tomorrow after your workout."

Draco squawked at the indignity. "And if I decide to do it anyway."

Harry strode to the door. "Go ahead, but I'm not going to be here to drag your crispy ass to the hospital wing." He shut the door behind him leaving Draco, in all his singed glory, shaking with impotent anger in the middle of the room.

Finally! Sorry it took me so long to update, but I thought it was worth it in the end. This is one of the better chapters I've written for this story. Thank you all for waiting so long and the amazing lack of death threats. I plan to go back to updating regularly again.

Peace

Oh! I've also reached 100 reviews. 100! I thought it would never happen. (Jumps up and down) Thank you to everyone who has reviewed and keep 'em comin'