A/N: An explanation of Spike Black. The Black boys have magical names of Hades and Pluto, as given to them by their father Regulus Black. Their muggle names are Hayden and Paul. As a sick collective soul they have connected for the sake of survival. They are in essence, one soul with two bodies which is so scrambled as to be essentially non-functional until the bloodrites stabilised them. They are still one soul with two bodies, but the bloodrites have given them control by repressing the anomaly which is identified as the collective soul. No extra points for those who conclude correctly why, for the most part, both are referred to as Spike when speaking, but by name when a body is acting.

Boing is the game.
'Boing' is the noise made involuntarily when playing the game.
'Boi-oing' is the noise which means you missed it.

Chapter 12:

The Sorting Hat had a very low opinion of wizarding taste in annual celebrations. Of late, namely the past thirty years, the Sorting Hat's opinion of wizarding taste had in essence been flushed down the toilet along with the results of Snape's first year potions disasters. Food, true gifts and a few tasteful cuttings were tolerable in the Sorting Hat's opinions, but when it came to tinsel, glitter balls and the festive robes of Albus Dumbledore he drew the line and usually requested time in the Potions Dungeon to save his sanity. This year though, Snape was not protecting his dungeons from decoration, and Dumbledore had undoubtedly gone to town with the intention of setting a new record for god-awful robes in even worse taste.

"Sorting Hat?" Dumbledore swirled in his robes before folding his arms. "Would you like to join us for this year's feast?"

"No." The Sorting Hat shuffled around, pointedly turning it's back to Dumbledore.

"But..." Dumbledore stopped as he heard the Gryphon at the foot of his stairs move. "This is a surprise, Severus." Dumbledore swung the door open as the dour man reached the top of the stairs.

"Mr Potter has requested to consult the Sorting Hat."

"Severus..."

"It was the Sorting Hat which demanded the weekly meetings."

"Very well." Dumbledore practically threw the hat at Severus, before scowling after the man as he departed. Dumbledore had his suspicions about Severus Snape, but to date there was no proof, merely confusing contradictions. The man was rigid in his observance and defence of the unwritten rules he enforeced concerning Slytherin House. By no whisper of a hint was there evidence that outside of his duty to Slytherin House Severus had anything but utter repulsion for the Potter boy. Minerva would undoubtedly celebrate with vigour if there was even the faintest whisper of proof that Severus acted in regards to the Potter boy with anything beyond extremely reluctant tolerance. Minerva had been petitioning for almost as long as Severus had been a Head of House to cramp his freedom for deducting points from other houses...in particular Gryffindor.

"Headmaster Dumbledore?" Minerva McGonagall was surprised to find a pensive Dumbledore frowning absently out the window. Normally, at this time of year, Dumbledore was to be found in the Great Hall encouraging Christmas Spirit among the students. Today though, he was simply frowning out a window, and not even frowning at what his eyes saw.

"Minerva?"

"You're usually in the Great Hall by now."

"It's also usual that Severus would be down in his dungeons...but he's not." Dumbledore's frown deepened. "Should I be worried that Severus just came to retrieve the hat for Mr Potter's weekly consultation?"

"Black's meant to be in that house as well." Minerva's mouth tightened. "I would be very worried."

"Mm-yes." Dumbledore had forgotten that Sirius Black was spending Christmas at the Malfoys, the responsibility of Lucius Malfoy, supposedly to straighten out the tangled affairs of the Black twins. It was easy to forget since Black had finished the work within days of his temporary release for legal reasons and had been completely invisible ever since. It was with dark suspicion that Dumbledore viewed the fact that Lucius Malfoy had persuaded the Ministry that Black would require until two days after term resumed to complete the work, particularly when one considered that he had also abducted Harry Potter for duration of said leave. One didn't have to be Merlin or Ravenclaw to smell a rat in that little setup. Regrettably there was nothing to be done though, for Black was Potter's Godfather, and therefore legal guardian...even gaol time couldn't change that little, inconvenient fact.

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'Boing'

The little noise was the only warning Severus Snape required to know that he did not want to enter the room whose door he'd been on the verge of opening. His original intent on braving the second floor where the four boys had been banished until eight o'clock tomorrow morning, had been to deliver the Sorting Hat into Potter's care. Now his intention changed, for Black was a short distance behind him, and if the boys were as hyperactive as they were earlier, the only difficulty lay in getting Black through the door without alerting him to the potential peril on the other side.

'Boing'

There was essentially no other noise in the room, which meant there was a fair chance that the players were engaged in the most discreet form of the game and probably in the corner furthest from the door. It really was rather a pity, for Snape would have liked to see what Black's response was to the experience of literally walking into the middle of a game of boing. Snape himself had literally had his hair stand on end and only his old training at the hands of the Marauders had stopped him from randomly hexing the Slytherin Commonroom.

'Boi-oing.'

The noise let Snape know that he had his chance and he hastily inserted his head into the room before jumping into the room and banging the door smartly in Black's face.

"Professor Snape." Potter scrambled to his feet immediately.

"The Sorting Hat, Potter." Snape held out the artefact as he sharply eyed the remaining three boys who had not risen from their seats on the floor. "I trust you are not intending to introduce it to Boing."

"No sir." Potter retreated to a corner as far from the others as possible and pulled the Sorting Hat down over his ears.

"Boing?" Black was looking inquisitively around the door.

"Oh, it's the latest thing, Mr Black, sir." Draco ceased his inquisitive study of Potter in his corner. "We've tried to teach those above fifth year, but no one has managed it yet."

"Why?" Black dropped down to sit next to Draco.

"The reason they can't teach it is that no one above fifth year has a sufficiently childish mind to comprehend what the game entails in terms of magical demand." Snape had settled himself in the corner which gave him a good view of both Potter and the other three boys. With a discussion of boing in place, Snape had no intention of leaving anyone alone in the room.

"Fugh!" Black wrinkled his nose up. "I have it on your good authority that I forgot to continue growing after five. Explain, Little Malfoy."

"It's...'Boing'." Draco had batted his hand gently and made the odd springing noise which had been identified as a boing.

"Wha...'boi-oing'." Black blinked in surprise before a frown began knitting across his forehead. "Hand?"

"Localised wandless shield of some type." Draco held out his hand for inspection. The shield was not what caused a problem since Snape had joined in the odd game. The problem was the little charm which made up the other half of the game.

"The other part is, I presume, an audio charm of some sort."

"'Boing'." Draco had retrieved his hand to make the noise leaving Black to scramble madly for a moment to get a shield up.

"'Boing'." Black seemed delighted no to have made the longer noise which indicated he had worn the charm. Draco though was looking at a red splatch on the ceiling with extreme dissatisfaction.

"You crashed it."

"I didn't get much warning."

"Well try watching for a bit." Draco turned to the Black twins and swiped his hand through the air. "'Boing'."

"'Boing'." Hades served to Pluto before catching it back and sending it on to Draco who sent it back to Pluto.

"Professor!" It was the only warning Draco gave as he served across to the Potions Professor who scrambled a bit before successfully returning somewhat haphazardly to Pluto Black.

"It's the charm isn't it." Black had drifted across to where Snape sat very occasionally fielding a serve from the three boys who seemed for the most part quite content to switch the ball rapidly among themselves. "Shield's no problem, but what is the charm which they use?"

"Not even Flitwick figured that out and he was watching for hours." Snape batted his next serve towards Potter who was still buried in the Sorting Hat.

"Wha..." Black swallowed his complaint as he observed Potter serve the ball directly to Hades without even moving the hat, which reached well past his nose. "How does he do that?"

"We have no idea and unfortunately none of the staff at Hogwarts have the maturity to help."

"Eh?" Black was confused.

"When Harry Potter was sorted into Slytherin Headmaster Dumbledore made a face like his father had just come back from the dead and was holding the school hostage. McGonagal looked like someone had transfigured her desk into a Cerberus during one of her first year transfiguration classes...and quite frankly the rest of us practically fell off our seats in shock because everyone took it for granted that the baby who defeated the Dark Lord would be a nice, light Gryffindor with a taste for pranks and quidditch. Instead they got a Slytherin Saviour who is a little uncanny and has the most unsettling stare you've ever had the misfortune to meet. In the first week alone he was deducted over three hundred house points...which fortunately Hogwarts refused to remove, though she did keep the tally incase I lost the arguement during the staff meeting. In the first two weeks he was given in excess of five hundred detentions...and amazingly high number of which he actually served. Minerva holds the record for detentions issued to him in one class, though Sprout is not far behind her. Sinistra thinks that Poppy Pomphrey has found her brain though and is remembering that he's just an eleven year-old boy who was raised by Muggles...it did take a formal review and reprimand by the Medi-Board though."

"Penberthy is Malfoy's pet for magical anomalies in wizards, call him up and we can put all three boys through their paces." Black had somehow managed to swallow all of his emotions in the face of the truth which had been skirted around for several days now.

"Not until after Lucius' gift of Dark Arts training begins, magical scans still show Harry James Potter to be a squib...except in the very early morning."

"Why do you want him to learn the Dark Arts, Snape? It doesn't make sense from what I can see."

"POTTER!" Draco's outcry caused both men to look up sharply at Potter, who had a red splatch indicative of having failed to catch the boing, but he'd made no noise and the splatch was seemingly soaking into his arm.

"That's why. He absorbs magic and emotions and it is seriously compromising his ability to do magic."

"That's freaky."

"You haven't seen half of it yet, but I'll suggest to Lucius that he brings in Penberthy when he gives the okay for control."

"Thanks, Snape." Black grimaced slightly. "Never thought I'd say it to you, but I'm glad Harry came under your control at Hogwarts."

"You're welcome." Snape abruptly rose and departed, the boys were starting yet another game of boing, and Potter was more than competent to protect he hat from harm.

XXXXXX

Severus Snape watched quietly from the corner as Lucius worked with the two boys, he had learnt more in this single morning of observation than he'd learnt in his years of study in the Dark Arts. At this level the Dark Arts were little more than an exercise in emotional control and magical channeling. There was a price to be paid when meddling with the Dark Arts and Lucius Malfoy would guarantee that the price was known long before the first genuine Dark Spell was cast. The Malfoys were Dark Wizards for their entire history and what they didn't know about surviving a lifetime of Dark Arts didn't need to be known. Albus would undoubtedly have a conniption if he knew of this morning's venture, but Severus was no fool and he knew that if Potter was to survive Hogwarts he had to learn faster ways of leeching emotions from his magic. To date the boy was using a rather nasty spell Severus had learnt which quite literally drained all emotion from the body, but in the long term this was a far from adequate solution. The fastest means of consuming emotion ever discovered was the Dark Arts, and only the Ancient Families who still clung to dark roots retained any knowledge of the Art which brought the Dark Arts their name. The Dark Arts demanded emotion, therefore the studies focussed on the need to cultivate the emotions and resultantly the need to control them and dismiss them without causing mental or physical damage. This was the portion that Severus had never learnt, for his mother had never learnt them and no book ever dreamed of discussing the matter.

"Lucius."

"Severus?" Lucius only half turned his head away from watching the two boys as they struggled with the current exercise.

"Why are only the boys taught this?"

"Tradition." Lucius corrected something that Harry was doing wrong and kept his full attention on the two boys for a second. "We probably do lose some very good practitioners through not teaching our daughters...and we certainly lose a lot of people in general since said daughters cannot pass on what they have never learnt. However, it is much like good Estate Management, the knowledge is kept localised and therefore not tainted."

"Not having the faintest knowledge of Estate Management, do expand."

"Our sons are taught the Dark Arts and Estate Management. Our daughters usually learn Dark Arts Healing and Household Management. Between a couple therefore an Estate and Household will be well managed and any unintentional damage can be repaired. An Estate divided into too many fragmentary portions in an effort to be fair becomes financially inviable. The Weasleys decided to be 'fair' some three centuries ago and you can see the result...particularly since none of them arranged for their portion to be reabsorbed into the original whole when their line ended. The land was simply sold off for incredibly little...I think we actually hold over half of what used to be theirs." Lucius gave a small shrug.

"Why the method in the first place?"

"Rights of Death. As the Estate Managers we are duty bound to be responsible for the actions of our people...magical or not. Because we will pay in any formal court for the actions of our people we are also granted the right to punish them ourselves...and there's also the little matter, so beautifully illustrated by our late Dark Lord, that the knowledge of death in the wrong hands is a very bad thing. If one of my people, including the House Elves, commits a murder which is in breach of Ministerial Law...which basically means they murder someone other than a someone who is a part of my Estate, then I will punish them before standing trial for first degree murder in front of the Wizengamot."

"Punishment includes execution I presume?"

"Usually." Lucius gave a small snort. "Anything not requiring an execution is usually dealt with by the people themselves...I just have to watch them to ensure that they do not do too far. My father had to execute two men for no other reason than because they beat a man who'd been stealing from the Estate to the point of death. They have the power to flog up to twenty times or to incarcerate, with minimal provisions, for the space of a week...they have no right to endanger another's life under any circumstances whatsoever...and that includes endangerment of my own life."

"Over twenty?"

"The situation is brought to me and if just the punishment is cruciatus, scaled up by the length of time maintained depending on the crime. Incarceration of over a week enables inventiveness since the guilty person will need to be reduced to a condition to be confined in the Hospital for the duration of their punishment...suffice to say there is a reason why the people come to the Lady of the House long before they'll go near the Hospital for any injury not inflicted by myself. The hospital is simply there so people can be healed, it is not there to make them happy or comfortable."

"Pomphrey would have a fit."

"I doubt it. No one has died in the hospital, apart from the terminally old, in over eight hundred years now...that's a record held by no other Hospital in the world...assuming any hospital has even been open that long."

"You have a point." Snape's expression was pensive as he ordered the information he had acquired. "The Weasleys quit the Dark Arts because of the property loss?"

"No point studying what the laws of the land forbid you to practice." Lucius gave a shrug. "The Rights of Death cease when you have no dependents under the law of the land."

"Ah." Severus lapsed into watchful silence for the remaining hour and wasn't totally surprised when a rather red Black sidled into the room and started working in a corner.

"You're missing out the second step by three seconds Black." Lucius may have been focussing on the two boys, but he was obviously at least aware of Black's activities.

"Oh." Black's practice changed very slightly and drew an abrupt frown from Severus as he recognised that Black was doing exactly what the boys were doing, but at a significantly faster and smoother pace. This realisation drew Snape's memory back to watching Lucius earlier that morning when he'd swung through what seemed to be a series of dances. Whatever the two boys were learning right now, it was clearly a practice for life.

"Better." The comment came from Lucius as he folded up the teaching of the two boys and his attention was on Black, who had clearly tightened up his method and manner, smoothing it into a flow, but it still had a long way to go to match the flawless grace and speed of what Lucius did.

"Thanks." Black gasped the word out for he was badly winded and dripping with persperation, but there was an element of satisfaction in his air as he dried his face and emptied a couple of mugs of water down his throat from the group which stood to the side of the room.

"They're brought in by Narcissa when she does her exercises at the rising of the sun, no House Elf is permitted to enter a room of this sort." Lucius handed the boys a mug each before helping himself as well.

"Particular reason?" Severus looked around the room in minor confusion.

"Tradition." Black finally spoke in a controlled manner. "Which is the Pureblood reason for anything which has been lost in the mists of time."

"Honestly Black, a little respect."

"I am full of respect, that just happens to be the truth. If you don't know exactly why you do something you assign it to tradition and ignore the matter."

"I'd forgotten how much I hated you and your honesty thing." Lucius looked vaguely annoyed.

"That's just because my honesty dents your dignity and is usually quite sensible...hence my advice that you teach Severus this stuff as well. Potter can't simply stop practicing because he's in school and there's no question but that it's giving him some control over this Malice Magic problem...he managed a Cheering Charm yesterday...and Draco even laughed."

"You did?" Snape swung to look at the boy, who was currently trying to hide behind Draco.

"I cast something, but I doubt that's why Draco laughed." Harry sounded slightly disgruntled.

"Half and half." Draco put his nose in the air and sniffed. "Because you charmed me I started to laugh, and then your wretched expression made it impossible for me to stop."

"This is not the first time you've had this lesson?" Snape's eyes narrowed.

"Relax, Severus, I merely had Draco instruct Harry in certain lessons he learnt when he was five and are a precursor to these lessons. It's basic meditation and focussing, so they know when they're actually learning or if they are wasting the time of both of us." Lucius Malfoy seemed amused by the current situation.

"Congratulations, Mr Potter, I'm relieved to hear that this gamble has paid off so successfully." Snape narrowed his eyes further as he considered the options available. Something else was happening, beyond what he'd expected when he'd discussed the possibility with Lucius, and Snape did not like it when he was not certain about immediate events.

XXXXXX