Harry Potter: Divergent Paths
Chapter 21 – Brief Respite
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. ;-;
"Draco!"
The blonde boy looked up, snapping out of his thoughts.
"Theo, Pansy. What're you two doing here?" he asked.
A brown-eyed, black-haired girl and a brown-eyed, brown-haired boy were waiting ahead of him, leaning against the walls. While the two weren't particularly unique in their appearances compared to people like, well, Adrian's group, he wouldn't mistake them with anybody.
He watched his approaching childhood friends. Draco had known the two since he was a child, having frequently been brought over to their homes to socialize while his...father was off at work. Or whenever their parents went out Muggle-hunting…
He was fully aware that Pansy had been in consideration as one of the daughters of the families that he might be arranged to marry, though he had no doubt his father would have preferred he marry one of the Greengrass sisters if they had managed to conquer them. Theo, on the other hand, was introduced to him purely because the boy's father was a close compatriot of his own father.
Either way, he was surprised the two had been waiting for him. He'd departed from the Common Room relatively late in comparison to the others, having separated from Blaise and Daphne as he felt somewhat out of place with the two. He also needed more time to think about what had recently occurred in the Common Room.
"Are you having second thoughts about what we decided earlier?" Theo asked with a nervous look on his face.
"It feels…kind of bad, doesn't it? Turning on our parents?" Pansy asked.
Draco shrugged and started to walk alongside them, heading towards their next class. No point in making them late, not that Professor Binns would notice.
"I don't know, really. It's hard to feel anything for my father, at the very least," Draco admitted. "He's never really treated me like…a son, you know? Any time I had with him was purebloods this, Mudbloods that, or lessons on proper etiquette and upholding the Malfoy name. Your parents weren't always as bad, but…doesn't it feel like they treat us more like things than people? Even now, when my mission is supposed to be 'getting acquainted' with Harry Potter. It's never been about me, or about us. Only about what benefits that we can bring to them. More like objects than their children? And that's not even talking about how they treat other people."
"Isn't that how it's supposed to be though?" Pansy asked without much conviction. It was simply hard to immediately change your mindset.
"According to who, though?" Draco asked with a nervous laugh. "Our parents always said that was the Slytherin ideology, which gave it validity beyond anything else. But we know Adrian is the true Lord Slytherin and he's obviously not on the same side as our parents. If he vouches for the…first generation magicals and half-bloods, and executed the people who tried their best to follow the ideology our parents have been spouting, who are we supposed to follow? Shouldn't we make our own choice at that point, instead of just following what our 'parents' have always told us?"
"So, we're going with this then?" Pansy asked. "We're going to follow Adrian Vulpis?"
Draco nodded. "I don't know about you guys, but when he sets off on the war path for real, I don't want to be in his way. He's the same age as us, and he's already done this much. I've seen enough of what my father does and how he thinks to know that isn't the path I want to walk. Besides, I doubt Adrian wants us to blindly follow him. If anything, he probably expects some of us to hold out on our judgment until we see definitive proof that his side is the one to be on. Watch him and find out for ourselves what we want and what we can gain. For now, Lord Slytherin has my support."
Pansy and Theo nodded in agreement and they walked in silence for a few moments. Eventually, Theo was the one to speak up.
"Ironic, isn't it?" Theo asked with a smirk. "Our parents took so much time putting us together, but so little time making their 'lessons' stick. Gave us plenty of opportunities to just talk and actually think about what they told us."
Draco chuckled. "I guess that's one thing we can thank them for. Giving us enough knowledge and raising us well enough to think for ourselves. They just never expected that we'd find any path to walk but theirs."
"Well, I'm glad for that," Pansy said honestly. "I don't think I'd ever want to treat my kids in such a cold way. Our house-elves took care of me more than they did. That's not the kind of life I want to lead."
With that, they all fell into more permanent silence, agreeing with each other's thoughts. They mulled over their statements for the rest of their walk, chipping away the last links to the pureblood supremacist mentality that their parents had tried to instill within them. It was a strange feeling, more than anything they could put into words. So, they just continued in silence until they finally made it to History of Magic.
…..
However, they didn't have much time to continue thinking once they did.
The instant they'd walked into the classroom, they heard, ""There you are!"
Startled, they looked to the side. Daphne and Blaise were standing there, just as confused as they were. The source of the voice, however, was with her brother and the Longbottom heir nearby.
"Potter?" Draco said unsurely. "Did you need us for something?"
"Adrian told us about a room that he wanted us to check out during this period," Harry answered, "and suggested that we bring you guys along. Who are those two?"
"Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott," Daphne said, answering for the two in question. "Friends of Draco's."
"Planning on skipping class then?" Blaise asked with a smile. "I hadn't taken the two of you for the rule-breaking sort."
Harry shrugged. "The professor for History of Magic is a ghost. He won't even notice we're gone and he only lectures about the Goblin Rebellions. We're better off studying the textbooks than staying in class."
"So, we might as well do something productive. Come on," Iris gestured, leading the way out of the class.
The Slytherins looked between one another before deciding to follow along.
"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Neville asked nervously. "What if we get caught?"
"We'll be fine," Iris replied. "Adrian told us about a secret passage we can take. Going up to the seventh floor would take way too long otherwise."
"What are we heading up to the seventh floor for?" Daphne asked with a raised brow.
"Well, since Adrian had his meeting with you guys about his goal with the families, he said it would be a good time to get you started on learning how to use wandless magic," Harry answered. "The earlier you start, the better off you are."
"How did you know about what happened in the dungeons?" Draco asked in confusion.
"He has his ways," Iris giggled. "But those ways aren't for us to disclose, so you'll have to ask him yourself."
They thought about protesting, but realized it would be of no use. It was easily apparent that the Potter siblings had an astounding amount of faith and trust in Adrian, and would never do anything they thought might be bad for him. So instead, they changed their focus to the other thing Harry had said.
"Wandless magic? You can teach us how to do it?" Daphne asked.
"Well, that'll depend on you," Iris admitted. "We talked about it on the train, but essentially, it boils down to mentality, then talent. The first hurdle is believing that you can do magic without a wand. It sounds simple, but it's harder than you might expect. Magic is all about intent. If you can't focus on what you're trying to do with your magic, then it won't respond, obviously enough."
"And then, it'll just come down to whether or not you have a knack for it. It's more along the lines of whether or not you have enough raw magical power to do so or have enough control to focus your magic without a wand as a medium. Since we're just first years," Harry continued, "success right now is mostly based on talent. You can practice more on the more technical aspect as you grow older, but the most important thing is breaking the first hurdle before we get it locked into our minds that we can't do magic without a wand."
"But we're here now, so you can try it for yourself!" Iris said excitedly.
The group looked around in confusion, not seeing much. While the siblings had been speaking, they had been led through an out of the way corridor and up a staircase that led from one room and up into another, rather than the usual great staircases. Now, they were simply staring at a blank wall, on the opposite side of a tapestry that portrayed a strange wizard trying to teach trolls how to dance ballet.
Before they could speak up, Harry continued walking, before turning around. His eyes were closed in thought and he repeated his loop two more times. Just as they were thinking he had gone insane, a door suddenly popped up on the wall. Their eyes bugged out in shock, even Daphne's, as Iris laughed and walked up to it.
The two siblings opened up the door and gestured for them to head inside.
"Welcome to the Room of Requirement!"
…..
An hour or two later, a strange phenomenon began to occur within a certain boy's room. As Adrian had been sprawled across his bed, thrown there unceremoniously by his more mischievous familiar, his core had been acting rather strangely.
How was it that wizards and witches recovered their magic when they expended their magical energy through spells, rituals, charms, and other acts of magic?
Within every witch and wizard was the magical core, an anomaly formed within their bodies for a reason yet to be fully explained. It was not physically located within their anatomy, unlike the chakra coils of the shinobi world, but it was there nonetheless. The core dictated the capacity for magic that an individual could store and use. How well an individual could then use their magic, wandless or not, was then dependent on other factors, but those were matters for another time.
When said magical cores were depleted from their full capacity, they would then begin to regenerate, a usually imperceptible process.
Magic evidently existed in the natural world. If it did not, then magical creatures, flora, and locations such as the Forbidden Forest would not exist. The concentration of magic in specific locations varied such mysterious alignments known as ley lines, but as a general rule of thumb, the balance was kept at a certain point by the world itself. Magic absorbed from the environment through the use of ritual or rune arrays would be replenished gradually, unless an anomaly occurred and severed the location's innate connection to magic. It was this environmental magic that wizards and witches absorbed to replenish their own cores.
This rate of magic regeneration was generally determined by the development of an individual's core. It could also be enhanced, or similarly stunted, by the concentration of magic present in any given location. For example, within Hogwarts, there was an extremely high concentration of magic, having saturated the ancient building's walls and floors over the years as generations of wizards and witches spent their time within its majestic halls. Due to this, and some of the more complex wards integrated within the ward scheme of the school for the purpose of aiding the students in their recovery, the rate at which people within Hogwarts regenerated their cores was accelerated significantly.
But, those were still external factors. Regardless of those, the internal regeneration of an average witch or wizard would be a relatively gradual and slow suction of the environmental magics. Thus, it would be an understatement to call the absorption speed of Adrian Vulpis an abnormality, to the point of condensing the incoming magic into a very visible magical phenomenon.
Directly over the center of his back, a blue whirlpool of energy was spiraling rapidly and funneling itself into his body. Kyoka and Kurama had been startled awake by the sudden internal change. Within his mindscape, where his core was materialized, a similar whirlpool had formed, taking in the energy from the outside. As Kyoka stayed inside to observe the phenomenon, Kurama moved out to watch the external side of things.
Nothing untowardly occurred in the end, and soon enough, everything reverted to normal. The abnormal air flow in the room settled down and all that was left was Adrian's breathing. Soon enough, however, it was time for dinner.
"Time to wake up," a soft voice murmured into his mind.
His eyes snapped open, but only saw the floor. He realized quickly enough that he was hanging off the side of the bed
"Thank you, Kyoka."
"Be glad your regeneration speed seems to be just as stupidly high as it used to be. Otherwise, you'd probably be out for another day."
"Well, I had to test it out eventually, didn't I?" Adrian asked, rolling over and sitting up in his bed. He yawned and stretched his arms out to his sides. "And it'll be easier when I don't need to have shadow clones out everywhere eating up my capacity."
"So, it'll never be easier," Kurama replied with a laugh. "Well, easy is no fun anyway."
"True enough," Adrian conceded. "Anyway, let's head to dinner. I'm starving…"
…..
It was only a few minutes before Adrian made it to the Great Hall, seeing a decently-sized group of other students funneling inwards. He made his way into the crowd and soon enough, found himself on the other side. He made his way over to the Slytherin Table, drawing the gazes of his House mates.
"Hey," Adrian greeted as he slid in next to Blaise and across from Daphne, "How were classes?"
Blaise simply gave him a suspicious glance. "Well, we skipped History of Magic, while DADA was essentially unintelligible... I spent most of the class trying to levitate my book, honestly."
Adrian nodded as he filled up his plate. "Professor Binns knows his Goblin Rebellions well, but unfortunately, the exams cover more than just the Goblin Rebellions. Headmaster Dumbledore should be working on finding a replacement soon, so the man will be moving on to his well-deserved rest in the near future. How were your results in the Room?
Daphne could only sigh in response, rather disappointed with herself. "I only managed to slightly turn a feather around."
"The rest of us didn't manage much more than a little wiggle," Draco reported depressingly.
"Well, don't be too down on yourselves," Adrian chuckled. "That's actually more than I expected, which is great. Just keep practicing with it and you'll be well off in the future."
The group simply accepted that and tried to get it off their minds. Draco looked over at the other tables, then back at the purple-eyed boy. "Not rounding up your gang like you did for lunch?"
Adrian shrugged. "Need to give them time with their own tables too, you know. Can't hog their awesomeness all to myself," he answered, his tongue slightly stuck out and his eyes scanned over the rest of the tables.
At the moment, Harry and Iris seemed to be having another twin-versation contest with the Weasley twins, while the rest of the table around them laughed along with the spectacle. Minus the freckled, youngest Weasley who was somehow managing to both stuff his face with food and give off an aura of extreme jealousy.
Hermione seemed to be speaking rather happily with a girl of Asian descent at her table. Su Li, he recalled. It was nice to see the bushy-haired bookworm had found someone she could talk to in her own house and year.
Tracey seemed to be gossiping with Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. Their gazes were not so subtly being drawn between Hermione and Harry. Adrian chuckled slightly. Tracey was no doubt talking about the mind meld that Harry had inadvertently had with Hermione earlier in the day. It was nice to see that the bubbly girl was comfortable where she'd ended up, though it was a tad too early to be gossiping about relationships. A little young gossip never hurt anybody though.
Draco nodded in acceptance. "Fair enough."
"So, what's next in your little plan?" Daphne asked after she finished checking up on her friend as well.
The question was somewhat vague, but he knew what she meant. Didn't mean he wasn't going to take the chance to tease the ice princess a little.
"You'll need to clarify," Adrian replied with a cheeky smile. "That could mean any number of things! What the next step in my overarching plan for seducing you is, how I plan on moving so I can dominate the world with the power of cheese…."
Daphne resisted the urge to punch the irritating boy and settled for kicking him in the shin. It was somewhat childish, but nobody could see so she allowed herself the satisfaction.
Draco spoke up in the meantime. "I assume Greengrass means, what's next in the plan you had for creating a third camp?"
"Well, first, I think it's about time I adopted a dog and got somebody to get rid of my rat problem," Adrian replied while cutting up some food. "I think that'll help move the plan along just fine…"
A silence hung over the table for a good few moments before he looked up at his tablemates, who were all give him disbelieving looks.
His purple eyes rose up and somehow smiled at them. "The letters will accomplish what needs to be accomplished right now. There's nothing else for you guys to do, at the moment. Just keep doing your best in school and you'll be fine. Though, I'll be putting you guys through some more 'extracurricular activity' than just practicing wandless magic."
The group of Slytherins' eyes gleamed at that. Anything that Adrian had to teach them about would no doubt be rather interesting, even in comparison to the new things about magic they were learning in classes.
Adrian was just about to take another bite of his meal, but out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something moving around. "What's that?"
The Slytherin first years all turned as one, only just now noticing what the entirety of the Great Hall was looking at. A single bird was flying through the Great Hall, with a letter attached to it. It was a raven. While it was highly unusual for mail to come at dinner, it wasn't something forbidden, so the staff simply watched the raven with interest.
Soon enough, it came to a stop near the Slytherin table, settling down on Adrian's shoulder. The boy stroked the raven's head gently and detached the letter. "Thank you, Caela," he said with a smile. "Didn't think you'd be coming already."
The raven nodded and set off immediately. She'd been promised treats for delivering the message extra quickly and intended to cash in on the deal.
As the raven flew away, Draco stared after it. "Who was that from?" he asked. "The person you were engaged to?"
Adrian could only give an awkward smile. If only he knew…well, he'd be told the truth soon enough. He had no plans on forcing Draco to live with Lucius over Christmas break or over the summer. But…the revelation could wait for a little while longer.
"Something like that," he mumbled as he opened the letter.
The others were curious as to what the piece of paper might say, but it would be rude to look, so they resisted.
As Adrian's eyes slid across the elegantly-written words scribed on the letter, he couldn't help but smile in both amusement and happiness. Despite whatever concerns she might have had, he fully believed that he had the luckier end of the deal with Narcissa.
…..
A/N: And, that's a wrap! The contents of that letter will be revealed next time. This is essentially more of an interlude into the next segment of the story, in a manner of speaking. Their first day at Hogwarts will be finishing up next chapter, and then we'll be heading into more time hoppy territory.
There won't be many full-fledged fight scenes for quite some time, though there will be some action spread out across the next few chapters. Have a few pretty decent ideas~ Essentially, within school, they'll be at the most doing practice duels with each other, and that will still take a bit since our main crew are still all first years.
Central character-wise, it's more between Adrian and Harry-Iris, with Blaise, Daphne, Neville, Draco, Hermione, and Tracey as main accompanying figures, though they will all undergo cycles of increased relevancy as time progresses. For example, Tracey will become more important/helpful in the next year.
Not much else to talk about though. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Cheers~