Warnings: future SLASH (boy x boy), MAJOR NO-MAGIC!AU (Alternate Universe), FAMILY SITUATIONS in future chapters, AGE-GAP RELATIONSHIP(S)

Pairings: TMR/HP, pre-established HG/RW and LL/NL and LE/JP, open to suggestions for other characters

Standard disclaimer applies: I do not own Harry Potter or any brand you recognize in this story. J.K. Rowling is credited with the creation of these characters (I'm not fond of using OCs in my own fanfiction)


Harry had been putting it off. He realized that. Severus realized that. Tom realized that. But it was as if the whole situation was a taboo subject—if no one spoke of it, maybe it would just... disappear. Obviously that wasn't the case, but he couldn't help human nature. Or at least, that was his excuse. The LED lights of his monitor glowed in the dimmed room, and he knew if his mother popped in he'd get a lecture about how bad it was for his eyes, but he didn't get up to flick on the extra lamp. Harry was still staring blankly at the screen, at the e-mail opened in his inbox. Because he was a minor, he needed at least a guardian signature to allow for his participation in the tournament.

And all of his "guardians" were under the assumption that he never had even touched an MMORPG. How the hell was he going to dispel that lie?

Guilt and something that felt like shame welled inside of him. Lie. Such a dirty word. Harry didn't like lying, especially not to his parents and uncles. In fact, he'd rather call it something else—after all, he never really lied to their face, right? They had never asked if he had played!—but in the end, what it was, was what it was. There was no point in sugarcoating the truth with fancy terms or technicalities. He had withheld information, and gone through means to keep that information withheld. Harry felt dirty.

Because it would be his fault if DH couldn't participate. It would be his fault if his parents didn't sign the slip, because who knew if they'd be spitting flames once he'd told them. True, it wasn't like his lie had hurt anyone. It was harmless. But just by the fact that it had gone on for so long, that he had purposely done it, and that he had never tried to use it to bond with his three "fathers"... That was why it was bad. Harry understood. If every situation was accepted as an exception to something, there would be no point in rules or morals.

And he was afraid. He was afraid that everything would spin out of control. It had never occurred to him before to be so secretive—really, he didn't have a stash of drugs somewhere in his room and he had never snuck out before save for that one time with Tom, which of course his mother had found out about—and he was afraid that would hurt them. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been more rebellious, been more like one of those arrogant teenagers he had to be around on a daily basis. Maybe if he was, something like this wouldn't be too much of a surprise, or shock.

Maybe if he was, he wouldn't be confined inside a metaphorical cage, locked in not because of his parents but because of himself. All of his decisions unconsciously took into consideration this cage, and it was a shame that he didn't know how to get out. He had long forgotten where the key was, or how to open the lock from the inside even.

Harry closed his eyes for a brief moment in hope that the whole situation would magically solve itself. If Tom was there to read his thoughts, he'd probably scoff and give him a good slap on the head. "Such a child," he'd sneer, "learn how to deal with the consequences of your actions, won't you?"

Harry bit his lip. Tom was infinitely wiser than he, and usually right about anything pertaining to the mind, the world, and...

In fact, the only thing Tom would ever be wrong about was cooking. At least that was all he could think of off the top of his head.

But never mind that. He was distracting himself—purposely, he supposed—and it needed to stop. Because he couldn't procrastinate any longer. If DH couldn't participate, rather find out now than later and let down his two friends less than more.

God, was he over-thinking things? Maybe everyone would smile, and laugh, and they'd all take a good jab at him before merrily signing the papers like it was nothing. Optimistic thoughts, Harry, optimistic thoughts. He couldn't afford hesitation. Besides, his family deserved to know his hobbies—deserved to know him. CoS was, admittedly, one of his few passions, and he felt as if it had become part of his identity with the amount of work and care he put into it. It wasn't a casual interest, wasn't a passing fancy...

Harry's train of thought stopped abruptly. It wasn't just CoS though, he amended. It was the people he met through CoS. The people he interacted with. Slytherin, Serpentine, DH... Tom and Sev. If CoS were to shut down, he would be disappointed, yes, perhaps even angry, but as long as he had those two... as long as he had his friends...

It wasn't that he didn't care about anything else; rather, it was simply that his friends took precedence in his list of importance.

Harry sighed. He was stuck. He didn't want to tell himself that it was all going to be okay, because God knew how much that was just asking for Murphy's Law... but he didn't want to be so pessimistic either. That'd just make him screw things up. And he definitely, definitely didn't want to do that.

Was the situation delicate? Not really. Was he finally spazzing out like a normal teenager? Completely. He didn't really know how to deal with it—how did Ronald do this on a daily basis?—had never had to deal with it. Oh, the curse of an immature maturity...

Well, sooner was better than later, or never. Rather get it over with now. But then rose the infernal question of how to go about it. Again, the situation wasn't delicate, but Harry would be damned if he didn't have some sort of finesse in his going-ons. That would look particularly bad on his two friends. He'd be scolded for being brash and crude and some other sort kids called brave while Tom and Severus called stupid.

Maybe a mix would be best, Harry mused.

Dinner passed harmlessly. Harry knew his best bet was right after anyway—the time when his whole family was gathered if their jobs could allow, and everyone was bloated and happy and the conversation flowed mindlessly and utterly easy. This was his opportunity. Or at least, he hoped it was. Who knew if something would distract everyone. For all he knew, an earthquake could happen and destroy their house in the next five seconds—

Bad thoughts, Harry. Don't think bad thoughts.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, but Harry really didn't want to think about the latter—the conversation between the three men in his house already was about CoS, and his mother was surprisingly participating.

"So this Tournament is going to be in America?" she asked, "World tournament? It's going to be that big?"

"Oh, definitely," Sirius grinned. "It'll be taking place over Harry's break. I was thinking we'd all go see it; I mean, I know you two don't play, but it'll be an interesting experience nonetheless, and Harry needs more of those, right, pup? Plus, it's a perfect chance to vacation in the U.S. anyway."

It was like the Fates wanted this to happen. A perfect opportunity, wrapped with a ribbon tied on top, plopped right into his lap...

"I play," he blurted out.

Everyone stared at him.

His father blinked. "Didn't you say you didn't?"

"Err... no. I only really got into it a few months ago though... my friends convinced me to play more often." Which wasn't necessarily a lie... months should be year, but, well… He had been a semi-casual gamer before meeting Voldemort, playing only for an hour or two before logging off for some shut eye. That hadn't stopped him from getting rich, of course, if only purely through his luck. But beside that, once he and Voldemort had formed a team, it had been easier to pass time by without glancing at the real-time clock once, naturally messing with his mental schedule and thus increasing his time online.

"Oh! Even better then!" Sirius declared. "So, what d'ya say, Lily?"

"I'm not against heading to the States," his mother mused, "and finally finding out what all of you are so excited about is a plus for my curiosity, I suppose."

Harry grimaced. He had to change the subject before he lost his chance—damn. "Uh, about that—"they all turned to look at him,"—before the tournament, there's another competition that we call the Regionals," he explained to his mother, "and, uh, basically it's an elimination round to find out who's participating in Worlds from each... country, or, well, region, I guess—"

"We're so watching those!" Sirius exclaimed. "It'll be great. Walpurgisnacht versus Deathly Hollows versus Reflect—"

"Does that have a live showing too, then?" Lily asked.

"It'll be shown on stream," Remus explained, "but it won't have a live venue, no. The players will all go to one location though. Would you like to watch with us, Harry?"

"Actually, I was hoping to participate."

Evidently that might've not been the best thing to say so casually, as, much to Harry's sick enjoyment, the next few minutes were plentifully awkward. Their first reaction was (no surprise there) no reaction at all—he wasn't sure if they actually heard what he had said, or if it took a bit to actually register—and then that morphed into a look of confusion spanning several seconds, which gradually grew to disbelief, and then stuck at an in between sort of mix where they tried to say something, but no sound came out.

Or was it instead that they didn't know what to say? Either or, Harry shrugged.

"Uh, Harry… did you just say you wanted to participate?" Remus asked, his eyebrows scrunched up in a way that made Harry think he was trying to figure out some profound question of the universe.

"Oh, well, yeah. I have the form right here." He grabbed the two sheets of paper from behind his back—where he had been hiding them; thankfully they weren't wrinkled—and held them out to the four bemused adults, giving them an encouraging nod afterwards when they made no move to take the pages from his hand.

His father was the one to take them. Harry watched as they read the first sheet, flipped over to the next, read that, and cycled through it again several times over, as if in disbelief to what they were reading.

"…Is this some type of elaborate joke…?" Sirius asked incredulously. "If so, I seriously need to congratulate you, pup. Sometime in between your birth and now you've managed to become an excellent prankster! I always knew it was in your blood!"

Lily scowled. She grabbed the papers, whacking his godfather on the head playfully. "It's not a joke. These are real. I've seen enough different types of minor release forms to recognize one when it's in front of me. But rather…"

Harry suddenly felt very small in front of her searching gaze.

"You're serious about this, Harry?"

He nodded decisively, but then quickly looked down at his feet. "Uh… I'm sorry for not telling you all about this… I honestly don't know why I didn't. It just sort of… happened? I guess."

The four shared looks. "No harm done, Harry," James chuckled after a bit. "Rather, it's good to know you're having fun! It really is a relief to know that you're not just studying in your room all day, and that computer of yours is being used for more than just school work!"

His mother smiled. "And, well, I don't know too much about this game, seeing as all I can go on is from what our Marauders have been talking about, but I don't see any harm in letting you participate. Let's see… small fee, that's fine… location isn't dreadfully far away, thank goodness—"

"Wait," Sirius interrupted having snapped out of his stupor. "The top five teams are participating, as well as five others picked from recent tourneys. Since you haven't entered in any of those, that means you're part of the top five teams. But, uh, who?"

Oh. Well. Harry shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound, or something like that. It couldn't get any worse, right?

"Deathly Hollows," he said, trying to sound as nonchalant about it as he could.

Lily could not for the life of her understand why all three of her supposedly adult boys burst out in frantic exclamation.

"Now I know you're pulling our leg!" Sirius declared after having screamed his head off. "I met DH! We met DH! There's only three members!"

"I have to go with Sirius on this one, Harry—we met Deathly Hollows. In fact, we have Scarred on our friends list! Scarred! Their berserker! Nice try, but your father isn't too shabby at the game himself to believe something like that!"

"What are your IGNs?" Harry asked innocently.

"Sirius is Padfoot, James is Prongs, and I'm Moony," Remus replied before either of them could speak up. "Our Marauder nicknames. Incidentally, our team name is also Marauders. We're in the Gryffindor faction."

"Oh!" he exclaimed in fake surprise, and apparently made a convincing enough show of it. "You're the three warriors, right? I remember you guys!"

"Harry—"

"I'm Scarred!"

The resounding "WHAT?!" could probably be heard by their neighbors… and some, Lily mused.


"Got the slip signed!" Harry said smugly as a greeting to his two teammates. He had been forced to prove that he really was Scarred by signing in and everything under the eager gaze of his father and two uncles, but that had been easy, considering that he hadn't been lying at all. Thankfully, Tom and Severus hadn't been online at the time, so he got to keep them to himself for a little bit longer.

Looking back, he didn't know why he had been so worried. Everything had gone perfectly fine, and though they were mostly dumbfounded, they didn't look offended—or hurt—at all. It was a win-win.

Though how long that could last upon discovering that Severus was HBPrince…

Feeling confident, Harry shrugged. They'd cross that bridge once they got to it.

"Congratulations, imp," Tom smirked, with significantly less of a bite than his usual mockery had.

"Indeed," Severus said, a similar smirk on his face. "Do tell, you did get pictures, right?"

"Nope," he replied, popping the 'p' just to be annoying, "though it was really funny; they had the whole speechless-but-still-making-sounds thing going on and everything. Sadly, didn't have a camera on me, but you can take some of your own once they meet you. Because, y'know, Regionals and all."

"Done," the sage agreed without missing a beat. "Did their jaws drop?"

"For a couple seconds, yeah."

"Then that'll be long enough to take several pictures as sufficient blackmail material," he declared.

"Just don't let my mother find out; she'd probably give you a good lecture."

"Lily can have quite the screech…"


"As amusing as real life can be," Tom interrupted, "there is something new I found out…"

Harry grinned. "Oh, does our resident Dark Lord want to brag about his genius? Feel free to do so, but do remember that some of us have low self-esteem—"

"I can dunk monsters," Tom cut in smugly.

"What!" Harry exclaimed as Severus echoed the word in quiet disbelief.

"I can't tell you any more than that."

"Why not?! What the hell you can't just say that sort of shite and just leave us hanging—"

"Well, I'm afraid those of us who have low self-esteem would have been offended should I have gone on exuding my brilliance," Tom mocked.

"Tom!"

He all but cackled. But Tom wasn't the type of person to cackle in the first place, so it came out more like a dark chuckle. "Come outside of Valkyrie Cave—in the plains with the Ancient Golems."

Severus raised a brow. "Why are you there? Those have a ridiculous amount of defense."

"Exactly."

"Hurry, Sev! I need to see this. There is no way a Dark Lord can slam dunk, of all things!"

"You'll see it the second you get over here, imp," Tom said, still utterly smug.

When they got there, the two members of Deathly Hollows greeted their third. The area outside of Valkyrie Cave, a notoriously difficult high level map due to the tank-like nature of the monsters inside, was a vast area of grassland, littered with rocks of various sizes. The larger rocks were actually Ancient Golems, a monster not aggressive at all and usually left alone. They were awoken from their slumber upon being attacked or if one got in a certain range of another as a sort of defensive mechanism.

But Harry didn't think Tom was stupid enough to do that. There was a fair bit of distance between each Ancient Golem—thank the gods—and unless the Dark Lord wanted a death wish via a mob of slow, ridiculously tanky, hard hitting monsters…

"Watch," Tom commanded.

The Dark Lord approached a slumbering Ancient Golem, and when he stood in front of it, cast a rebound barrier right next to it… on the ground. A glitch? Then, standing directly above it, VolDeMort cast a varying combo of Bolts combined with a random Fireball thrown into the mix.

Harry blinked. He watched his teammate quickly teleport several feet away, and how the first Bolt woke the monster, and the next push it off balance at the strange angle. VolDeMort sent another cycle at the rebound barrier still on the ground—though fading fast—and at the strange rebound angle that the Bolts traveled at, it flung the golem into the air.

"What the—"

Quickly the Dark Lord followed up by casting another bolt of dark magic at the airborne creature, but then teleported forward and sent another bolt of magic upward to intercept his first cast. The angle it hit at changed the trajectory, and so instead of flying straight toward the monster, it flew at a downward angle, which then proceeded to slam the Ancient Golem into the ground.

Thus, giving the illusion of a "slam dunk."

After, VolDeMort proceeded to combo his spells to finish off the Golem before it managed to approach one of its kind, and still Harry sat there dumbly staring at the screen in complete confusion as to what he had just seen.

"A glitch," Severus stated, though his eyes told a story of shock.

"Came with the new sever maintenance," Tom confirmed. "I was training when I made a small misclick, and my rebound barrier was cast on the ground."

"…What the hell," Harry burst out laughing. "How long did it take for you to get those Bolts to hit each other like that?!"

"Obviously not too long. It took a bit of math, and trial and error, that's all—"

"You calculated that?"

"I wasn't just going to sit here and test every split second possible to find out how to do it," Tom replied derisively.

"Ancient Golems?" asked the sage.

"They wouldn't die after a couple cycles, so it was good practice," he waved off nonchalantly. "It didn't take too long to master once I figured out the timing and what exactly I needed to do. Ten minutes, maybe?"

"Screw you Tom," Harry shook his head, stuck between chuckling and envy for making it look so easy. "Screw you so much."

Sometimes, CoS was stressful. Sometimes it was rewarding. Sometimes it was headache-inducing. Sometimes it required a considerable amount of concentration and focus. But sometimes, there were these little things too; little pockets of time where the only thing that existed was pure amusement. Because really, games were meant to be fun.


Hi guys! Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to everyone! haha. Sorry for being totally inactive-finals came around, as well as prepping for a 100% hand-made Christmas Fundraiser. It was hard, but we did it!

Tbh, I know a lot of you might think this was sort of anticlimactic-wind us all up for THAT?-but the aftermath isn't complete yet, is all I can say ;). Harry's family have yet to meet Tom and Severus! And... Harry's dating Tom. Secretly. Still. Sort of, because we /did/ get that extra where the Marauders + Lily followed them... hmm...

At the end of the chapter: might feel a bit random for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, but in games the dunk reference is to when the skill looks as if the player is slamming a decisive blow from above, and to consider it a "dunk" usually because the target dies afterwards. Of course, our Ancient Golems didn't die, but it was generally understood that they would've should they have been any other monster xD.

Thanks so much for your reviews, by the way! 400+! I know some of you have asked questions that I haven't answered, and there are those heartfelt PMs from a certain few that I also have not sent any replies to but really touched me and brightened my day, but I do read them all! Each and every one! Don't think I don't! I do! You guys are awesome, really!

Sincerely,

R.R.