The Knights of the Founders
By: J.C. Vascardi

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Disclaimer: All characters and places featured in this story that relate to Harry Potter are the property of J.K. Rowling, various publishers, and Warner Brothers. I'm not profiting on this story and it is not my intent to infringe on anyone's copyright or trademark. The only things about this story that I own are the characters and storylines not featured in the books.

Established Pairings: Past Harry/Cedric, Charlie/OMC

Eventual Pairings: Harry/OMC, plus others I choose not to reveal at this time.

Entire Series Warnings: Alternate Universe, Slash, Original Characters, Language, Violence, Pseudo-Incest, Incest, Torture, M/M Sex, M/M/M Sex, and Mpreg

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Chapter Eleven

The Unexpected Day Off

Part One

-o-0-o-

Since classes had been cancelled for the day, Ryan slept a bit later than he normally would have on a school day, not waking up until seven in the morning. Of course, he wasn't the only one because as he sat up in his bed, after applying his glamours and opening his bed curtains, he took a moment to look around the sixth-year Ravenclaw boy's dorm. He'd had a chance to get to know a few of his new housemates the previous night, but, everyone had been pretty tired from the long train ride and after the longer than normal start-of-term notices, many of the students had just wanted to go to bed.

Looking over to his right, he spotted Terry Boot, lying with his back turned to Ryan, still fast asleep. To his left were the beds belonging to Anthony Goldstein and Michael Corner, while on the wall opposite Ryan's and Terry's beds were the two beds that had been pushed together the previous night by their owners: boyfriends Kevin Entwhistle and Stephen Cornfoot.

Ryan assumed they were still asleep, because from his vantage point it appeared that all the bed curtains were closed. Of course, that had been a request on Michael's and Anthony's parts when the beds had been pushed together. Basically they were fine with Kevin and Stephen doing it, so long as they remembered to close the curtains and put up Silencing Charms if they were going to be doing any couple-like activities.

Pushing back his covers and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Ryan stretched a bit before he stood up. Walking over to Terry's bed, he gently shook his new housemate's shoulder to get his attention. Terry rolled over and opened his eyes, at which point Ryan said, "It's seven, so, you should probably get up since we only have about thirty minutes to shower and get down to the Great Hall to eat before breakfast ends at 7:50."

Terry nodded and said, "Yeah, thanks, Ryan."

Ryan smiled. "No, problem," as he headed towards the bathroom. Michael was already in the process of getting up himself, while Anthony had his pillow over his face and as he was passing the bed Ryan heard him groan and ask, "What time is it?"

Pulling out his wand, Ryan said, "Tempus!" He then said, "It's 7:02 Anthony."

"Thanks," came the muffled reply.

Ryan did pause outside the bathroom door, unsure if he should attempt to wake Kevin and Stephen or not. In the end, however, he opted to leave them be for the moment, as he went into the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later Ryan, Terry, Michael and Anthony were all emerging from the bathroom, with towels around their waists as they headed over to the wardrobes next to their beds to get dressed for the day. It was after they were dressed and moving towards the door to leave their dorm room when they noticed that Kevin's and Stephen's curtains were still closed.

"Somebody should probably wake them," Michael commented.

"I'm not doing it," Terry said as he put his hands up in a negative gesture. "I don't mind them being a couple or putting their beds together, but I don't need to see anything that they might be doing in there."

Michael and Anthony expressed similar feelings on the matter, prompting Ryan to grin as he shook his head and said, "Okay, well, I guess I'll do it then. I am gay, so, I can't imagine they're doing anything in there that will leave me scarred for life."

"Cool," Anthony said, as the three of them backed away from the bed so that they couldn't possibly see anything when Ryan moved the bed curtains.

Taking a deep breath, Ryan stuck his head inside and felt an immediate twitch in his trousers as he saw a completely naked Kevin laying on the bed, his eyes closed, though obviously awake, while an equally naked Stephen moved up and down on Kevin's morning wood. Their pajamas and underwear were scattered over the two beds, obviously having been taken off at some point after their curtains had been closed the previous night.

Leaning forward, Ryan felt the wave of magic as he passed through the area protected by the Silencing Charm. Reaching out a hand, he tapped Kevin on the nose, prompting him to jump, startled, as he opened his eyes. Ryan just grinned and said, "While I'm enjoying the show guys, I thought you should know that it's 7:18 in the morning, so, you might want to finish up soon so that you can grab showers and get down to the Great Hall before breakfast is over in thirty-two minutes."

A blushing Kevin nodded and said, "Um, yeah, thanks, uh, Ryan wasn't it?"

"Yeah, it's Ryan."

Before Ryan could withdraw, however, Kevin asked, "Wait a minute, enjoying the show? Are you?"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah, I'm gay, which is why I'm the one talking to you instead of our straight roommates." With a grin he added, "They were afraid you two might be doing something that would scar them for life."

Kevin grinned at that, as Stephen moved off of Kevin's cock and said, "Well, in that case, if you'd ever like to join us, feel free."

"Get your mouth back on my dick, Ste," Kevin said, as he pushed Stephen's head down. Looking over at Ryan, however, Kevin gave him a once over and said, "But, yeah, like Ste said, if you ever want to join us, you'd be more than welcome. You're quite hot."

"Thanks, you two aren't so bad yourselves, so I'll keep the offer in mind," Ryan said. "For now though, I'll let you guys be."

Stepping back and away from the bed, Ryan saw that the others hadn't left yet and were instead just waiting by the door out to the landing. It was Michael who asked, "Are they, um, waking up?"

Ryan grinned and said, "Yeah, you could say that. Kevin is really enjoying his wake up call, compliments of Stephen's mouth."

"Okay, okay!" Terry exclaimed. "Sheesh, Ryan, we don't need details, thanks."

Ryan just laughed, as the four of them left the dorm room and headed downstairs.

-o-0-o-

Down in the dungeons, Nick woke up and shivered ever so slightly. This was not only because the heat from the fireplace in the 6th-year Slytherin boy's dorm didn't quite reach the side of the room he was on as much as he may have liked, but also because it was a rather eerie sight to look out the window near your bed and see water outside - not to mention a particularly vicious looking merperson swimming past it. Add the fact that the colder Scottish waters made the local breed of merpeople, Selkies, quite ugly didn't help matters either.

Apparently, the look on his face prompted comment, because in the bed directly across from him, a voice said, "You get used to that eventually."

Nick nodded and said, "Yeah, I think it's just going to take a little time. At Beauxbatons, my dorm room was on the fifth floor of the palace, so, going from that to being in the dungeons and seeing lake water outside the windows is a bit jarring."

The boy across from him nodded. "Yes, I can see how that might be true. I'm Theodore Nott, by the way." After a moment, he asked, "What was your name again?"

"Nicolas Lavoisier-Delaney."

"Lavoisier like the vineyard?"

"Yeah, that Lavoisier," Nick answered. "I actually own the vineyard."

This drew the attention of another boy further down the room, in the bed closest to the fireplace. "You own Lavoisier Vineyards?"

Nick nodded. "Yeah, I do. After my grandfather passed away in July I'm the last living member of the family."

"Interesting," the blond-haired boy said. "My family is from France originally, so, we have a fondness for French wines and Lavoisier is one of the best there is. I'm Draco Malfoy, by the way." After a moment, he added, seemingly almost as an afterthought, "My condolences on your grandfather."

"Thank you," Nick said, as he swung his legs off his bed and stood up. He shivered as his bare feet touched the cold floor.

As he sat up in the bed across from Draco's, a black boy asked, "You have a double-barreled surname, what was the other one again?"

"That's Blaise Zabini," Theo said, before Nick could answer. "And the two lumps who haven't woken up yet are Vincent Crabbe," as he pointed at the bed between his and Draco's, "and Gregory Goyle."

Nick nodded, before he said, "The second name is Delaney."

"Delaney?" Blaise asked. "As in the Delaney family that hasn't voted in the Lordsmeet in almost a decade?"

The Lordsmeet was the popular nickname given to the body that was known as the Concilium Magnas Domos or The Council of the Great Houses, which was the highest legislative body in Magical Britain and Ireland. Also sometimes called the Wizard's Council, it was a body made up of heads of the thirty Great Houses of Albion and Iwernia, oftentimes referred to as the Most Ancient and Noble Houses. Of course, none of the houses had an actual title of nobility like Duke, Marquis, Earl, or the like. Although, the family head, which was usually but not always, the oldest living member of the family, put Lord before their surname, or Lady if a woman.

Anyway, it was this body that created the Ministry of Magic and it was through the Lordsmeet that the Ministry had any power whatsoever, as without it, the Ministry would have no authority to do anything. It had actually been a vote of the Lordsmeet that had resulted not that long ago in Cornelius Fudge being fired as Minister and bringing Rufus Scrimgeour in as his replacement. Of course, it had been a very close vote of 11 for and 10 against. Now, of course, that was only 21 votes, but seven of the families who had seats on the Lordsmeet were believed to be extinct and thus there were no votes cast for those families.

There were additionally two more houses that were not extinct, the Delaney family being one of them, that hadn't cast a vote in a number of years. With a nod of his head, Nick said, "Yes. After my parents, Stefan Delaney and Jean-Luc Lavoisier, died in 1981, my uncle, Christian Delaney, voted the family's seat until his own death in 1987. I've never voted the family seat because I was only 7 when my uncle died and because I was until recently living in France."

"Parlez-vous français?" Draco asked.

"Bien sûr que je fais," Nick answered. "Vivre en France presque toute ma vie, il serait étrange que je n'ai pas."

"Quelle partie de la France viviez-vous?" Draco asked.

"Château Lavoisier est dans la région de Versailles," Nick answered. "Bien que Beauxbatons est à Cannes, j'ai donc passé une bonne quantité de temps dans le sud de la France ainsi."

"Could you please speak in English or not at all?" Theo asked in a somewhat annoyed tone, as he got tired of listening to a conversation that he couldn't understand.

Blaise shook his head and said, "And it never occurred to you to use the translation app on your PDA? You can use the recording function along with it to translate the conversation."

Giving Blaise a withering look, Theo said, "No, it didn't occur to me to use that piece of muggle trash. Unlike some people, I'm a proper pureblood who isn't going to sully themselves by using a muggle device that has no business being in this school. It's bad enough that the professors are basically forcing us to carry the bloody things around with us, since they're charmed to appear in our pockets if we get too far away from them."

"Weren't you listening when they described them, Nott?" Draco asked. "They may be based on muggle tech, but are vastly improved with magic, so using it doesn't make you less of a proper pureblood. Besides that, you already use at least two things based upon muggle technology."

"I do not!" Theo exclaimed.

Blaise shook his head and said, "Yes, actually, you do, Theo. Or are you going to deny the fact that you came here aboard the Hogwarts Express? I hate to break this to you, but the train is a muggle invention. It was improved with magic, yes, but it's still inherently muggle."

"I've also seen you listening to the Wizarding Wireless," Draco added, before Theo could comment. "The radio is another muggle invention that has been improved with magic, so don't sit there and say that you don't use any muggle tech when you clearly do. Now, as for the PDAs, I'll admit, I was quite leery about using them at first, but as a TA, I've been here since the twenty-seventh of August and gotten used to using it. I've found that they're actually quite useful—observe."

Tapping the screen of his PDA, a recording of Draco's and Nick's conversation began playing, except that it was in English instead of French, since the device was capable of recording audio in one language, translating it into another for playback, and magically remaining in the voices of the speakers even though the language was different.

"Do you speakFrench?"

"Of courseI do.Living inFrancemostof my life,itwould be strange ifI did not."

"What part ofFrancedidyou live in?"

"Lavoisier Castleis in theVersailles area. ThoughBeauxbatonsisin Cannes,so I spenta goodamount of time inthe south ofFranceas well."

As the playback ended, Nick grinned and said, "Well that's certainly useful."

"Indeed," Blaise said as he looked at the screen of his own and said, "Well, it's 7:10, so we should all probably get out of bed so that we can shower and get dressed, as with the new schedule breakfast ends in forty minutes."

The mention of food woke up both Vincent and Gregory, which didn't really surprise Draco, Theo, or Blaise, since they'd known for awhile now that the mention of food was pretty much all you had to do to get their attention.

-o-0-o-

Meanwhile, in an unknown location, a teenage boy with black hair stood with his back against the slimy, stone wall of his prison. The boy was deathly pale and so thin that you could see every bone in his body. His clothes were all ripped and damp. There were also a large number of bruises and scratches, not to mention a thick coating of dirt covering all of his exposed skin. His feet ached from standing too long and he wished desperately that he could sit down, but the cold iron manacles encircling his wrists held him in a standing position.

He had no idea how long he'd been in this prison and it was impossible to keep track of time, as there were no windows. His chin lay limply against his chest as he wished that he could just die and leave this torture. The sound of his cell door opening soon broke the silence of the room and he realized that his captor was coming for his daily visit. For a while, the boy tried to get a handle on how long he'd been here by counting the number of times his captor came to visit him. He lost track quite a while ago though and was never sure if it was really a very accurate measure of time, because while he thought his captor only visited once a day, he couldn't be sure.

"And how are you doing today?" the smooth voice asked.

The boy didn't bother to raise his head or even reply, which only made his captor angry.

"Look at me when I talk to you, boy!" the man shouted. "I am Lord Voldemort and you will show me the proper respect!"

The boy still didn't respond to his captor. He knew he would get punished, but he long since stopped caring because he figured out that his captor, this Lord Voldemort as he called himself, enjoyed causing him pain and would still do it even if he did show him the respect that he demanded. So, really, what was the point of doing what the man wanted him to do, if he'd still get treated exactly the same way regardless?

"Idiot boy, now you will feel my wrath! Crucio!" Voldemort shouted as he raised his wand at the boy, who shivered as the immense and oh too familiar pain coursed through his body. It honestly felt as if every single nerve in his body had been lit on fire and all of his bones were simultaneously breaking, but despite the pain, the boy remained silent, enduring it quietly, as he knew that screaming would only please his captor. A part of him did worry that it must be very bad that he'd apparently been a prisoner long enough to become inured to the pain, but he tried to think of that as little as possible.

Voldemort held the spell for a couple of seconds before he stopped, glared at the boy and said, "You'd better start showing me the proper respect or I may just kill you next time."

Once Voldemort left and the door slammed shut behind him, the boy muttered, in a broken and barely audible tone, "I wish you would kill me and put an end to my suffering, but then that would be being too kind," he paused as his body was racked with a loud, hacking cough. Ignoring the small traces of blood that splattered on the floor as he did so, he finished with, "and you don't have a kind bone in your body."

-o-0-o-

At 7:35, Harry sat down at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall with a big grin on his face, prompting Noah to ask, "What are you grinning about?"

"Ron."

"What about him?" Hermione asked, as she looked up from her plate to Harry.

"Well, as usual waking him was a challenge," Harry explained. "So, I used my PDA and sent off a message to Charlie asking for advice."

"I take it he responded?" Noah asked.

"Oh yeah, he responded all right," Harry said, his grin widening. "It was a simple message that just said, 'Try this.' Honestly, I was a little confused until I realized that he'd attached an audio file to his message."

"What was on the file?" Hermione asked, clearly interested.

Taking out his PDA, Harry slid his finger over the volume indicator to turn it down low enough for Hermione and Noah to hear, without everyone in the hall hearing it, before he brought up the file and pressed play.

"RONALD WEASLEY!" came the clearly irate voice of Molly Weasley. "If you don't get out of bed right now, there'll be no second helpings for you for the rest of the week."

Both Noah and Hermione grinned at that and soon all three of them were giggling. After a minute, Noah asked, "Did it work?"

Nodding his head, the amusement clear on his face, Harry said, "Oh yeah - honestly, I can't say that I've ever seen Ron get out of bed that fast."

"I guess Weasley has something in common with Crabbe and Goyle then," a familiar drawling voice said as Noah, Hermione, and Harry turned to see Draco Malfoy standing there.

"What do you want Malfoy?" Harry asked. "The Slytherin table is on the other side of the room."

With a smirk, he said, "Yes, Potter, thank you but I already knew that." After a short pause, he gestured to Noah and said, "I just thought that I should come over and say hello to Diggory, seeing as how we're both going to be working with Professor Slughorn."

Noah nodded and while it was true that he didn't really like Draco, after everything the blond had done or said to Harry and his friends over the years, he decided to give the boy the benefit of the doubt, for the moment. He was being civil, so Noah figured he may as well be civil, too, at least until given a reason not to be. "Hello, then, Malfoy."

"I've heard that you're good with potions through the school grapevine," Draco added. "Obviously that must be true if you managed an Outstanding on your Potions OWL, so I look forward to working with you."

"Forgive me if I don't return the sentiment," Noah stated, "but I can't help but be a little leery of you, considering your words and actions in the past."

Much to their surprise, Draco didn't have a biting comment to that and simply nodded. "I understand." After a moment, he said, "Well, I'll let you get on with your meal."

Draco turned to leave at this, but he stopped when Hermione asked, "Malfoy?"

Turning back, Draco asked, "Yes, Granger?"

Hermione was slightly taken aback by Draco calling her Granger instead of the usual Mudblood, but shook it off. "What did you mean when you said that Ron had something in common with Crabbe and Goyle?"

Draco actually grinned at that, his eyes shining with mirth, which left the three Gryffindors quite surprised as they'd never seen that look on the blond Slytherin's face before. "I heard that recording of his mother as I was coming over. I'm guessing you were having trouble waking him until his mother mentioned food?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah, that's about it."

"Crabbe and Goyle are the same way," Draco explained. "I swear that a pack of rampaging hippogriffs could run through the room and they'd sleep through it. But, one mention of food and they're up and alert faster than you would think possible."

Draco nodded and then made his way towards the Slytherin table, as the others sat there quietly for a few minutes. Finally, Hermione said, "Well that was unexpected."

"You can say that again," Harry said. "I think that's probably the most civil conversation I've ever had with Malfoy."

"You think he's up to something?" Noah asked.

"He might be," Harry answered. "But, until I know otherwise, I'm just going to go with him trying to be a better person."

"Stranger things have happened," Hermione said.

Harry nodded and said, "Yeah, like Dudley sending me a leather jacket for my birthday. A week later, I went on another shopping trip with Amelia in Muggle London and I found the jacket Dudley bought for me in the store - it had a price tag of £195 on it."

Having already heard about this over the summer, Noah said, "Obviously Harry was shocked that Dudley would spend that much money on him."

"Before I knew how much it cost, I had already figured that it was the single best gift I'd ever gotten from a Dursley," Harry said. "But, after… yeah, I was definitely shocked because not counting all of the hand-me-down clothes I think if you added up the value of all the gifts they've given to me over the years, you'd have to multiply the resulting number by at least twenty, but probably more than that, to come anywhere close to £195."

Since they had today off, very few people were wearing their school robes and this included Harry, who was currently wearing a pair of black trousers and a long-sleeved red silk shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The first two buttons from the neck were also undone, giving a small peek at his chest and the small golden snitch on a gold chain that Cedric had given him for Christmas during fourth year.

"Speaking of hand-me-down clothes, Harry," Hermione said, "I'm glad to see you not wearing those horrid things anymore. You look so much better in your new clothes."

Harry grinned. "Thanks, Hermione. I must admit, it does feel good to wear clothes that actually fit." After a moment, he added, "Although, the clothes I'm wearing right now are technically hand-me-downs."

"Certainly nothing of Dudley's, because they fit too well," Hermione said.

"True, they do," Harry said. "No, actually, they're some of Noah's old clothes. On my first morning at Diggory House, he gave me some of his old clothes to wear, before his Mum took me to see a healer at St. Mungo's or to buy new clothes."

Noah looked a little sheepish as he said, "Um, actually, Harry, I have a little confession to make." At Harry's curious look, he said, "Those weren't actually old clothes of mine - I magically resized them while you were in the bathroom."

Harry grinned and shook his head. "Tell me something I didn't know, Noah."

"You knew?"

"Yes, I knew," Harry said. "If you didn't want me to know, you should have picked an outfit that I hadn't seen you wearing several times on weekends during last school year. I recognized the outfit and I knew that you must have resized it for it to suddenly be my size instead of yours."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I thought it was cute that you wanted to dress me in your clothes," Harry said. "It's also something that Cedric had attempted to do several times, so yeah, it was just such a Diggory thing to do. I also hated Dudley's old clothes, so I wasn't about to turn down the chance to stop wearing them."

Hermione was one of the few people who knew that Cedric and Harry had been a couple. Of course, this wasn't because either of them had told her, no, she had put it together all on her own and confronted Harry one evening shortly before the First Task of the Triwizard. So finding out that Cedric had attempted to get Harry to stop wearing his overweight cousin's clothes didn't surprise her. What did surprise her, however, was that she couldn't remember Harry ever wearing anything other than the grossly overlarge hand-me-downs, a fact which she voiced.

"When he wasn't wearing his school robes," Harry explained, "Cedric had a pretty distinctive personal style when it came to his clothes. I was afraid that people might figure out that we were together if I started wearing his clothes and somebody recognized them as being Cedric's."

Hermione nodded, satisfied with the answer. Noah, however, grinned and said, "Well, so long as we're being completely honest here, Harry did you realize that the clothes you're wearing actually weren't all mine?"

Harry looked confused at this, as he asked, "They aren't?"

Noah shook his head and said, "No, the trousers are actually one of the pairs that Cedric habitually wore under his school robes. They were among the clothes that were in the school laundry to be washed when he passed away, so they were sent home with all of his other things. Being freshly washed they didn't smell like him anymore, so I couldn't put Preservation Charms on them like I did with a lot of his other clothes, but I knew they were his, which is why I started wearing them during the following school year."

"I saw the tag that said Diggory in the waistband," Harry said, "but I just assumed that they were yours."

"Nope, they weren't."

"Wait, if the tag said Diggory," Hermione said, "however did the school laundry tell your clothes apart from Cedric's, Noah? I would have thought you'd have put a C or N in front of the Diggory on the tags."

"No, Cedric's clothes just said Diggory," Noah said. "The laundry never had any issues knowing whose clothes were whose, because loads from Hufflepuff are done in a different room then the loads from Gryffindor. Plus, the tags in my clothes have Diggory hyphenated with my actual surname."

"Your surname isn't Diggory?" Hermione asked.

"It's the name I use," Noah said, "but, surely you must have figured out that as Cedric's stepbrother that I had a different surname before my Mum married his father." The look of dawning realization on Hermione's face, mixed with chastisement that she hadn't thought of it, made both Harry and Noah grin, as the latter added, "Actually, I don't think my surname has ever been legally changed; I just started using Diggory because it was the name my Mum was using after her marriage to Amos. Anyway, the tags in all of my clothes actually read Hawke-Diggory."

"This shirt was yours right?" Harry asked and Noah nodded. "Then why does the tag just say Diggory?"

"Because I changed the tag when I resized it," Noah answered. "Not really sure why, come to think of it. I just did. And don't ask why I've never mentioned what my surname before my Mum married Amos was, because honestly, I don't know why I never mentioned it. I guess it just didn't seem important."

Nothing further was said, as the three friends turned their attention to eating their breakfasts before they got cold.

-o-0-o-

To be continued.

Well, there's Part One of Chapter Eleven. So, what did you think? Obviously Voldemort made his first appearance, which opens up a new mystery as to just who his prisoner is. Any guesses? Next chapter will detail the signing up for electives and extra-curricular activities, and perhaps the beginnings of a search for information on the identities of the heirs.