Severus hears something he should not have. Right: that.

Warnings: bit of regional stereotyping. And I'll just refer you back to the Canon Compliance note at the beginning here, in case you're wondering about discrepancies with things Harry thinks he knows because totally trustworthy and unfailingly honest / completely with-it, sober, unbiased people told him stuff hahahahahahahahahaha— oh, er, sorry (snrgk), right, chapter!

Still The Hog's Head

There'd been the supper press at the bar, so Abe hadn't personally escorted the nervous and frizzy-haired sparrow of a witch up to his brother. When things cleared up, he still hadn't seen the lanky kid from before her come down or leave.

Not just a lanky but a Lanky lad, he judged, from the way he'd been chatting at the bar before Al had gathered him up and he'd tightened up his posture and vowels. Wherever the boy was from, he had no business hanging about after his own appointment was over, but Abe would have expected a Northern kid to have stuck to his own business, kept himself to himself. Especially with a nose like that; he would have gotten hit with every joke under the sun, growing up.

Something not right there. Had his fingers been stained? ...Yes, but not with ink. Abe headed upstairs.

The kid was still in the hallway, sitting splayed against the wall like a string-slashed puppet made of forest shadows. Aberforth stood in front of him for a good few seconds before he gave up and cleared his throat. Black hair that wasn't even trying slid away from a skinny, beaky, cheese-colored face as it rose to look up at him. The wheyish cast was new since he'd gone upstairs. That long-cuffed, willow-colored shirt and stark pine-needle waistcoat hadn't really been doing him any favors even before he went all shocky for whatever reason, and the grey, unseasonably chilled light from the windows wasn't helping.

"Looking to rent a room, were you?" he asked. "Register's at the bar."

The kid stared through him for a minute, then blinked and focused, although he still looked rather blank. He took a long breath, pushed it out shakily, and informed Abe, "Your brother is bloody petrifying."

"Full marks," he agreed sourly. He noted (with, just at the back of his mind, a bit of a smirk), that the lad wasn't putting on any high-flown public-school airs for him. Yet he'd been impeccable for Albus, and Abe had seen him about the village as cool-eyed as any velvet-robed pureblood, mussing the Black heir's hair, turning him bodily away from Honeydukes and towards the bookshop with an air of poorly-concealed amusement and getting sulking compliance instead of hexed for his trouble. And he knew Al was Aberforth's brother, even through Abe's dull robes, carefully grimy specs, and the growl his Godric's Hollow accent had subsided into? It was a choice, then, not unthinking contempt for the surely low-class barkeep?

He should bring that to Al's attention. He even might, if Al didn't get on his wick too much this evening. That kind of decision was different from letting someone maybe hear what was going on in a room he'd rented, though. You had to be reliable, the kind of establishment he ran. "Now, unless you were planning to polish the floor with your—"

Abe had been stampeded by goats once, and this was very like that. There was the scrambling, scalded-cat vertical leap as the kid (appropriately startled but inappropriately badly, in Abe's view) very nearly clawed through him to get behind him. And there was the impression of thunder, too, as a voice that didn't belong to anything human rocked the hall.

He grabbed the unresisting wizard by the arm and back and hustled him away as soon as he realized what was happening. The both of them were shocked silent by the booming onslaught, apart from the grunt that moving a full-grown wizard, however skinny, pulled out of Aberforth. But the voice didn't roll over them for long, and by the time he got them out of earshot, it had finished. Had tolled out far, far more than he would have preferred either of them to hear.

He also wasn't best pleased with the way the kid, a scant handful of seconds after quiet fell again, unfroze in the middle of the stairs and started wrenching away and snarling for Aberforth to let him go.

Naturally Aberforth did no such thing. They were both going to need obliviating. It wouldn't be long; the door upstairs had already slammed open, probably due to the unholy bruising thuds they were making, falling all over each other down the stairs.

Standing, horizontal, or sideways, the spindleshanked young wizard had no chance of pulling out of the barman's rottweiler grip. Certainly none of getting away before the running footsteps arrived. When he realized it, Aberforth's arms had barely been wrenched open for a split second by what felt like an expelliarmus before the brat had vanished not only out of Abe's hands but out of his pub. He was gone before Albus had made it to the top of the stairs, trailed by the frizzy-haired and now deeply confused-looking witch, and Al was not dawdling.

The ringing the crack! of apparition left in Abe's ears was nothing to the heart-slamming realization of how close he had just come to being side-along splinched by an unhinged (if perceptive) infant. And even that wasn't the main thing here, not nearly. Albus was not going to like this.

Abe didn't much care, as a rule, whether his flash, glib, careless, arrogant, over-powered, color-blind sod of a brother liked things or not. For once in his self-centered, self-certain life, though, Al would have the right of it.

If he tried to be understanding, or act like this made them even, Aberforth would break his nose for him again.

End Book I: May 1980

Next:Lord Voldemort is given a great deal to consider.

Notes: This is the last chapter of the first part—which I know has been a slow roller, and I'm sorry about that. I didn't realize what the pace would be like, when I was looking at it all on one page, and I guess my beta didn't, either. Not that I really do actionplottygaspthrillers anyway, but now we've got the Dun Dun Catalyst out of the way I think it should pick up? Most chapters from now on should have Plot Advancement, anyway, whether or not it's immediately obvious. I know, I know... 21 chapters in... n,n;

End-of-Section Snugs: I'm not going to do a specific long roll-out of thanks and love because that's for the end of a thing and this isn't that. If you've been positive at me even ONCE, whether it was a review or a favorite or a follow, this is me hugging you now. Big squishes for more than that, and special recognition for Ebony, who has been o.O levels of faithful in reviewing. And in case you doubt, Reader, whether your particular review could make a difference, I would not have been half as willing to do all the double-posts (or as motivated to stick to the schedule) if I hadn't had confidence that someone was definitely always reading and would acknowledge both chapters each time. Posting into a void is sickening and discouraging and no one wants to do it, guys. I don't, and, honestly, wouldn't. So, again, love to everyone who's kept that from being an issue, including by reading along.

Yeah, I totally check the hit counts. Slash version's twice what it is for the gen version at time of posting, btw. (g)