POWER RANKS/KEYNOTE: Just because Harry didn't have the experience of fighting off Death Eaters in Order of the Phoenix, doesn't mean he isn't currently capable. This Harry is canon level strength, only he is bit more focused on his school work than he was in the books so he has better grades. His strengths are Magical Creatures, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Charms. He's also surprisingly good at Herbology -though he doesn't have much passion for that subject. For the rest, he just puts the work in to be a good student, but his transfiguration isn't comparable to James and Sirius.
Sixteen year old Harry versus average Death Eater, Harry would win -just like canon. Power level wise least to greatest, I would rank Ted, Remus, Severus, and Regulus together: next Lucius, James, and Narcissa: then Sirius, and Harry: Minerva, Filius, Bellatrix, and Andromeda: Voldemort, Grindelwald, and Dumbledore. Harry could move up with work and age, and he does have the same raw power as Voldy, but he just isn't there yet.
AN: I am writing faster than the beta can edit and I am writing waaaay more than I should. Thank you to the reviewers who have shared your reactions and thoughts with beyond 'post the next chapter already.' There are some days reviews get me through the day :D Also, to the native French speakers, I am learning and if you want to review in your mother tongue I shan't complain.
P.s. Of the mistakes I've made calling Professor Quirrell Professor Squirrel isn't one of them, it is a purposeful insult ;) In fact, spell check gets mad at me for writing it.
Special shout out to cameron1812, hakon2feb, and saya4haji, I cannot thank you enough for your continued support.
Chapter 14 - Salazar, The Creep
"Padfoot! Have you seen the map and my cloak, I can't find it," James said digging through his trunk where he had locked it.
"Maybe Harry took it," Remus offered, not looking up from his book.
"He couldn't have," James disagreed, "You can't steal something you don't know exists and I never told Harry about them."
Sirius shook out his pack and the James' on the floor, pens, wrappers, and random strips of paper fell scattered across the floor. "Maybe it was Wormtail," he said, squinting at the pile on the floor and reaching for Remus' bag, Remus zapped him with a stinging hex.
Sirius yipped and backed away from the werewolf's book-laden bag.
"It better not have been," James growled.
This was not how she expected the night to go. Perhaps they might have found an empty classroom, or even a broom cupboard, but sneaking into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom under an invisibility cloak hadn't made the list.
She walked behind him, because as she a bit taller, especially in her boots, she could see over his shoulder easily. His hair really was wild, and it smelled floral as if he used some type of hand soap on his hair.
"Why are we here?" she whispered in his ear, delighting in the full body shiver she caused him.
He reached his left hand back to touch her arm and led her to the sinks, he stopped at one and bent forward a bit.
He hissed at the little metal snake. Said little metal snake came alive and things in the wall began to move. He stepped back and she stepped with him. A tunnel appeared and Moaning Myrtle cried out into the room, "Who's there!?"
Harry ducked out from the cloak and slipped down the tunnel, not waiting for her.
Andromeda stared into the dark abyss, her thoughts muddled, and she couldn't place exactly what she had gotten herself into. She stood there for a minute, the invisibility cloak draped over her like a veil, putting it together that this must be the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.
Bella would be so jealous.
She sat down on the lip of the tunnel and pushed forward.
In a rush of air, she sped down the tunnel and was propelled forward into Harry's waiting arms. It would have been perfectly splendid if it wasn't for the crunch of small animal bones beneath her feet or the cloak between them.
Once she caught her balance, he released her and swept the invisibility cloak over her head, folding it into his pack.
"This way," he said, picking a seemingly unmarked tunnel, "Watch out for the ceilings, they aren't all stable."
"What do you mean they aren't stable?"
"I am pretty sure we are beneath the lake, you can touch the cave walls and what not, you could probably withstand you punching or kicking them if you feel the need, but they won't withstand a blast from a spell."
"Noted," she said blandly, becoming less impressed with the 'Chamber of Secrets' by the minute.
That was until they came to another fancy door with a rather impressive relief of several serpents.
Again, Harry hissed at them, and this time she recognized it for what it was.
The door opened and he went in, only to pop his head back around the entrance to look at her where she had been frozen on the stopped.
She couldn't keep the astonishment on her face.
"Andromeda?" he asked.
"You're a parselmouth," she stated.
He nodded.
"My parents are going to adore you," she breathed.
He raised a brow at her tone, "Is that a problem?"
She shook her head, then laughed, "No, no. I just thought it would be an impossibility. Why weren't you sorted into Slytherin? Every Parselmouth, ever, has been sorted into Slytherin House."
He shook his head, "I'm here to kill Salazar's Basilisk, not make friends with it. I'm all for scary, dangerous, magical monsters, but this thing was made by wizards to kill children."
Her eyes widened, "A Basilisk?"
"What did you think the rooster for?" he asked as if she were the crazy one in this equation.
"Indeed," she said dryly, "naturally, rooster, Basilisk, never one without the other."
"First time I did this was with a sword, this will be far safer," he said, then he bit his lip, and his eyes slid away from hers, as if he had something he shouldn't have.
First time.
She narrowed her eyes at him. Sweet, little, muggle-raised, Hufflepuff her arse. But she wouldn't push, not here, not now. Harry Potter wasn't escaping her, he was hers whether he knew it or not, whether he accepted it or not. She had time to strip him of his secrets.
And she would savour every reveal.
They walked side by side into the antechamber that was both magnificent and egotistical.
Did Salazar have self obsession complex? Who made this many sculptures of themselves?
Men. She nearly rolled her eyes as they walked closer to the statues.
Harry had them hide around a corner and she couldn't help but ask, "Won't it be able to smell us?"
He nodded, "It will, but it won't think to at first. You need to wait until it slithers out onto the floor before making a rooster, I do not want to crawl into that secondary hidey hole."
He pulled out a clean looking kerchief from his bag and doubled it with a charm. He held one out to her, "Just to be safe, I have bezoar if we get a bite but the gaze of it is instantaneous death."
She knew that, but didn't chastise him for the reminder. She took the kerchief, but instead of putting it on herself, she reached forward and gently removed his glasses. His eyes flickered shut, waiting.
He was pretty for a man, more than handsome, his features were graceful, something his glasses had distracted her from noticing. She folded them and hung them on the collar of his robes. She brought the blindfold up and tied it behind his head, running her fingers through his curls.
His mouth parted in a soft escalation, and she couldn't help but lay a kiss those soft lips. He didn't fight her, and he kissed her back as sweetly as she kissed him.
She had kissed boys before, mostly Ravenclaws who she had helped distract as Bella sabotaged their homework. But those boys had been slobbering, breathy idiots, too astounded to being kissed by one of the Black Sisters to think or respond as a partner. They just took what they had thought they wanted.
In the end, none of them had taken anything, and what she and her sisters had given them they found out they hadn't wanted.
But Harry was different, not quite passive, just highly responsive, waiting for her lead and giving as good as he got.
She was never going to let him go. She pulled back and put a hand to the side of his throat, feeling the rapid flutter of his heart beat.
She smiled, who she could learn to like this one.
He pointed his wand to his throat, performing some charm. He offered her the second kerchief, but she didn't take it, wondering what he would do. Blindly, he fumbled as he raised the cloth to her face, once his hand bumped her face, he seemed to steady. Deftly, he tied the blindfold behind her head, returning her gesture by running his hand through her hair. It was her turn to shiver.
When next he spoke, his voice came from the opposite side of the chamber, his hissing filling the darkness.
The sound of stone shifting over stone grated against her senses. She had a moment to wonder how they would know when the snake touched the floor, but after a few minutes, she heard the sound of scales moving across stone. It was as if somewhere were dragging large matt.
The thing hissed and Harry hissed back, it touched the ground.
In English, he called, "Now, Andromeda!"
She pointed her wand toward the wall where she had seen a small pile of rocks, and visualized a rooster. She knew she had succeed but the useless creature didn't caw, the snake was moving toward where Harry's voice had been project to, further into the room.
Andromeda transfigured more rooster, none of the buggers made so much as a garble. Furious she tried to think of what made them caw.
"Lumous," she whispered, raising her wand.
The snake seemed swoosh around, if the sound of rain on a metal roof was any indication.
Harry began to hiss rapidly, and she realized how stupid her reaction had been.
Luckily for them both, several roosters cawed.
The Basilisk let an almighty screech, it hit the ground like a tree falling on the forest floor.
She ripped off her blindfold and looked at the monster she had just killed with a cock.
The thing was huge, and Harry approached it like it was just par for the course.
He slipped on a pair of dragonhide gloves one used for potions, an extra strip of leather. Out of his pack, he pulled out the silver locket and the golden cup they had recovered from the other cursed hole in the ground he had taken her to. Then he pulled out a teria placed in an enlarged pickle jar, a journal, a quill, and an ink bottle.
Harry sat beside the head of the slain snake, opened the journal and the ink bottle, dipped his quill into the well, and began to write.
"What are you doing?" she asked, crouching beside him so she could read what he was writing.
It read thus:
I've slain your pet Basilisk. Now, I am going to kill you, you stupid Horcrux and all your friends. Die Tommy Boy, die.
The words faded into the page and the words emerged on the page that Harry did not write.
Who are you?
Harry's response was short: Your worst nightmare.
With that, he closed the journal, laid it on the ground beside the others. He turned, wrenged one of the snake's fangs out of its mouth -explaining the dragonhide gloves, with his full body weight, and brought the fang down in a stabbing motion.
Wailing filled the chamber, as black smoke was released into the room.
He didn't waste time in stabbing the next one, it too, wailed with a release of black smoke.
He hissed at the locked and stabbed it the moment the thing latched open. He hesiated at the jar with the tieria.
"Is that Ravenclaw's Diadem?" she asked suddenly, realizing that locket must have been Salazar's and that the cup had been Helga Hufflepuff's.
"Yep. On my count could you vanish the jar and the water in it, this thing has a mind of its own and it figured out had to move on its own. It nearly got me, but I am an old hand at avoiding spider-like creatures."
"You so weren't muggle raised," she muttered as she pointed her wand at the jar.
He cocked a smile at her, "Sure, I was. My bedroom was the cupboard under the stairs. My old best friend used to be terrified of spiders, but I had to sleep with them, as long as I didn't try to squish them, they didn't bite me. Not even in my sleep."
She stared down at him where he rested on his knees prepared to kill a peice of a dark wizard's soul.
He was a conundrum.
"Ready?" he asked.
She gave a short nod.
He counted down and after the last beat, she vanished the jar and water, careful to focus her spell around but not at the diadem. Like Harry had described, it had legs and tried to pounce at her, but he stabbed it before it got an inch off the ground. Wail, black smoke.
"Well," he said, "that wasn't so bad."
She let that pass. "At least that is the last of them."
"Nope, Voldemort collected his ring Horcrux and there's another one that I don't know how to get rid of without getting myself killed."
"So, two more, plus the dark lord himself. How do you know all this?"
He shrugged, stood, and brushed the dust off himself. "Thank you for your help," he said.
She frowned at him, "You will have to tell me what's going on at some point."
He smiled at her, "Do I?"
"Yes."
He stepped toward her, and for the first time, initiated a kiss, a kiss bold and as lovely as his smirk.
When he pulled back, it was her who was at a loss for words.
"I'm not the only one with secrets, Ms. Black."
He wasn't wrong.
Albus Dumbledore received a very odd, a very worrying package one day.
Inside the small package was a bezoar, a Basilisk fang, Hufflepuff's Cup, Ravenclaw's Diadem, Slytherin's Locket, an old journal with the name Tom Marvolo Riddle on it, and oddest of all, set inside a protected smaller box, was a pair of socks with phoenix's on them.
Albus rather liked the socks.
All of the objects had been presumably stabbed by the Basilisk fang -aside from the bezoar and delightful magenta socks, with red and orange phoenixes on them.
A note that had been spelled to be untraceable, the letters were written with a self writing quill so not even the handwriting could be traced.
Dear Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,
One might suggest you research a book by the title 'Secrets of the Darkest Arts' and one might also suggest you look into the doings, whereabouts, and associates of one Tom Marvolo Riddle.
The bezoar is just in case you cut yourself on the fang -one would suggest you don't cut yourself on said fang, seeing as Salazar's Monster's poison is, in fact, quite poisonous. Although, your familiar could save you with a bit of sorrow.
Anyway, please enjoy the socks, the only thing magical about them is their fantastic design. They seemed very you, thus why they were included.
Stay Safe,
DA
P.S. Give Fawkes a treat, he's a good a bird.
Albus felt profoundly confused, and for the life of him, he could not begin to guess who DA might be, or how they might know his favorite present was socks.
Sirius cornered his favorite cousin two weeks after Harry's incident in Transfiguration.
"What's going on with you two?" he asked, holding her behind a pillar. The five of them manhandled each other a lot, mostly because once they start flinging spells at each other things and people around them started to getting damaged.
Andromeda didn't fight him, mostly because he was holder her right wrist and they both knew that it was her left hook that could lay him out on his arse.
"Nothing, Siri."
"Nothing," he repeated sardonically. "You have him wrapped around your finger, Drom."
"No, not yet."
He pressed her a little harder to the wall, "Harry is a good person."
"And I'm not?"
"You are the best out of the five us, you know that, but that isn't a very high bar. Harry is the highest damn bar I've ever encountered."
"I don't think you know much about him."
His blue-grey eyes narrowed on her, and he asked again, "What do you want with him?"
"He's mine."
His eyebrows shot up and he stepped back from her, "A Potter? A Hufflepuff? You know our parents won't be happy with him. They will think he's Fleamont Potter's bastard son."
She smirked, which made him suspicious, "Perhaps, but they won't forbid it. They would forbid Bella from him, but not me. He's powerful and he's a half-blood, that's good enough."
"Since when is a half-blood good enough?"
"Since mother tried to drown me in a well when I was ten, they don't care what I do so long as I don't run off with a half-breed or mudblood."
"Do you have to use that word?" he asked with a sigh. "I know you don't believe any of that nonsense."
"I can have him if I want him. Don't ruin this for me."
Sirius ran a hand through his long curls. "He's a good person, Drom. Don't hurt him."
She met his gaze with dark eyes and said, "I'm a good person, too. Slytherin or no, Black or no. I am not evil."
He let out a long breath and pulled her into a hug. "I know," he said into her hair, "I know that."
Harry wasn't really sure if he was dating Andromeda or not, though he supposed they might as well have been, seeing as he couldn't imagine trying to pursue anyone else while being pursued by one of the Black Sisters. Who -by Harry's estimation, was just as dangerous as Bellatrix Black, only Andromeda, as hard edged as she was, had a kindness in her that her sisters seemed to lack.
Of course, he hadn't met Bellatrix in person, but he'd looked into her dark gaze and had not seen the warmth there that burned in Andromeda's gaze.
But they hadn't really talked about dating, or much about each other, or anything else really, between her watching him in the halls between classes and kissing the daylights out of him in secluded corners.
A couple people had spotted them, but oddly the rumour mill had not caught on yet. It seemed they people who tried to blab got laughed out of the room at the mere idea that Andromeda Black -Bellatrix Black's sister would ever date James Potter's Potterpuff of a bastard sibling.
The whole thing seemed to amuse Ted greatly, who picked on Harry constantly for his 'forbidden' affair. Which didn't make Harry feel any better about possibly preventing Nymphadora from existing. But it truly seemed like neither Ted nor Andromeda had the slightest interest in each other beyond friendship, something that became more apparent when they began studying in the library together and they both started poking fun at his shyness.
He didn't mean to be shy. Some moments he felt like he was top of the world, and then there were moments when he couldn't conceive how someone as beautiful and incredibly as Andromeda could be interested him. The most interesting thing about him was his secrets and his flying.
He sighed, tonight was all Hallows Eve, historically not a great night for him. Nothing had happened at the feast, though he still found himself unable to eat, sick with worry that something might happen to them. And by them, he meant everyone, especially his young parents, Sirius, and Andromeda.
Though, in all honesty, it would be kind of funny to have seen something come after her, after all, Black Sister versus troll was an easy equation.
Still, he worried.
Ted had turned in already, he'd put himself into a food coma, leaving Harry to try hopelessly to read a book. Not even Scamander could ease his mind tonight.
Unable to sit here a moment longer he grabbed his father cloak and crept out of the dorm.
Unsurprisingly, Harry wasn't the only one out of curfew, and he needed to wait only five minutes outside the entrance of the Slytherin dorm before a Slytherin came in. It was Snape and Harry smirked at the boy's outrage if he learned it was he who had let a Potter into their dorm.
The common room was empty, the lake water dark outside the windows. Figuring he didn't have much to loose, he went towards the opposite corridor Snape had disappeared into.
Andromeda was in the midst of the odious task of brushing through her wet hair.
"I can do that for you," a voice said.
She whipped around to see the speaker who sounded far too masculine to be here.
"Harry?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"
He raised a brow, "Do you not want me to be here? I can leave if you like."
"No," she said hastily.
He held out his hand, "Then give me the brush."
She smiled, he could be done right bashful sometime, but there times like now were he was almost jarringly direct. She handed him the brush and turned her back on him. She watched him the mirror as he worked through her damp tangles.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
He was quiet for a long moment, and didn't interrupt the building silence between them which was occupied only by the sound of the bristles through her hair.
Harry seemed to decide on the truth because he said, "No, I'm not."
She waited and a few minutes later, he said, "I hate Halloween."
"Why?" she asked, holding back a shiver as he brushed her hair back from her face, the feeling on her skelp made her want to purr.
"It was the night I became an orphan."
She didn't say anything, didn't pity him or give him some empty comfort. She just sat still and listened. He didn't say anything else as he finished brushing through her hair. He leaned over her to put the brush on the counter, his hand coming up to comb through her now smooth hair. She shut her eyes and leaned back into his touch. When next they opened, his face was very close, and she accepted the kiss he offered.
They parted and he took a seat on her bed. "I don't know much about you," he remarked.
She stood, and put a hand on his chest, she pushed, and he laid back. She sat beside, and he looked up at her, his body relaxed, passive.
He was probably the only person on the planet who wasn't even the slightest bit afraid of her. "What do you want to know?"
"What do you think of your family?"
She laid down beside him, "What do you think of your family?"
"Which one? The foster family or the Potters?"
"Both."
He sighed, "My foster family were -are lowly pieces of owl droppings. My cousin was a brainless bully, my uncle was a tempermental hippo, and my aunt was a horse faced crazy person. She had me cooking them breakfast by the time I could stand and I did more chores than most homeowners. Summers were the worst, no school to break up the time, and it seemed the garden always needed to be weeded in the hottest part of the day. I hated my life there, I hated them."
"And the Potters?"
He turned his head to look her, and smiled, "I love them. They are too good for me. James is a bit spoiled, but he has a good heart."
"My family…" Andromeda began, "We have issues. My mother is evil, my father is deaf to anything that doesn't fit his picture of the way things should be, much like his brother. My aunt is a cow. Sirius is erratic but very dear to me. Reggie is too meek for his own good, and my sisters -they are a part of me."
"What is Bellatrix like?" he asked curiously.
Andromeda looked up at the ceiling, "Bella is extremely powerful, a little broken, and very lost. She has a disconnect between her thoughts and her emotions, she doesn't deal with intense emotions well."
"What is she doing now?"
"Traveling. She's in France right now with our Uncle Orion."
"Is she alright?" Harry asked, "I mean from being apart from you and Narcissa?"
Andromeda turned on her side to face him, pleased at his insight. "I would not say she is flourishing, but like many people on vacation, she isn't trying to build a life for herself, just exploring. She's going to America after winter break. It's a big country so she won't be back until the end of the school year. This summer we are going to Uganda for an exchange program."
"They have summer school?"
"Sort of, the students who are coming here will be doing internships with the Ministry, not the staff at Hogwarts."
"Any particular reason for choosing Africa?"
Her smile felt wicked, "Wandless magic, Uagadou has mastered it. They hardly ever use wands."
"That sounds amazing," he said, eyes alight with interest.
"I'm just happy not to be going home," she said, "Cissa and Reggie are coming with us. Siri has been sentenced to house arrest for not being a proper heir to House Black. He's going to miserable."
"He's always welcome with the Potters."
"I wouldn't be surprised if Siri ran away, the only reason he hasn't already is to keep his brother safe."
"Who are you talking to?" a voice interrupted them.
Andromeda bolted up, Harry sitting up with her.
"Potter?" Cissa asked, her grey-blue eyes wide, "How did you get in here?"
"Why are there only two beds in this room?" Harry asked in return.
"We kicked the other girls into their own room, this is the Head Girl room, technically," Andromeda supplied.
"How did you get in here? No boy has ever managed it before, much less a Hufflepuff. You should have been attacked by a thousand paper and metal snakes," Narcissa said as she approached them, hands on hips.
Harry shrugged, "I told them I didn't mean any harm and to stop moving. Which I meant, but can I just say how creepy it is that that's all it took? And if I could do it then that means that Salazar or his any of his descendants could have gotten through. I have nothing against Slytherin House, but Salazar Slytherin was a creep."
"Salazar Slytherin was a great wizard," Cissa said peevishly.
"A great wizard, but not a great person. Winston Churchill did great things for Britain, but he wasn't a great guy either."
"Who's Winston Churchill?" Andromeda and Narcissa asked in unison.
Harry rolled his eyes, "You're British and you don't know- you know what, never mind, it isn't important."
"You still haven't explained how you got past the defenses, surely the curse didn't just listen to your kind and earnest words, Potterpuff," Narcissa sneered.
"He's a Parselmouth," Andromeda answered for him.
Narcissa did a double take, "He's a what?"
"Like I said, Salazar was a creep, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise. Spawning Basilisks is a no-no."
"What?"
"Did you get the cards?" Andromeda asked.
Narcissa flipped her beautiful blonde hair and said, "Of course." She sat on the foot of the bed across from them and asked, "How are you at wizarding poker, Potter?"
"Um," he answered smoothly.
"You truly are a Parselmouth?" she asked again.
He hissed at her in a long stream of sibilant sounds.
"What was that?" Andromeda asked.
"Yes, and no, I'm not good at poker. Also, I didn't bring any money to play with."
"That's alright," Andromeda said, bending to reach beneath her bed.
"Money is boring," Narcissa said with a sly smirk as she dealt out cards.
"We play with liquor," Andromeda said, placing a bottle of fire whiskey in the center of the bed.
Harry's expression made them both laugh.
"Relax Potter," Cissa purred, "it's a holiday."
His dark blue eyes narrowed on her, "Game on, Black."
AN: Yes, the last section was a bit whiplashy -verbal sparring is supposed to be, especially when no one in the room is completely sane. Please review?