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Snakeskins

I Want To Go Home

The ride back down to London started out very hectic, but by the end of it Feliciano was laughing.

"They missed the train." Arthur and Scorpius never showed up once throughout the entire five hour journey, meaning they'd either been abducted by Gryffindors or simply hadn't made it down to the platform in time to leave the school. "They actually missed the train!"

"It's not funny!" His mirth kept upsetting Ellie but Feliciano didn't think that was fair- it was the best kind of joke! "What if Arthur's brother gets really upset at him? He'll be so worried when the rest of us show up without him!"

"What about Scorpius, you're not worried about him too?" Charles asked, ignoring Feliciano who kicked off his shoes and swung his legs up so he could stretch and lay down across a compartment that was comfortably empty for once. "His mum's a bit scary, really."

"Scorpius says Professor Malfoy always stays behind an extra few days for work reasons, I'm sure he'll be fine."

It was a happy, normal train ride beyond the upset of their friends missing the express. The further away from Hogwarts and a certain professor they went, the better Feliciano started to feel and the easier it was to throw himself back into happy conversation about Chirstmas break. There were no plans in his head for much travel, just the happy hope of settling into Venice or Rome for the entire two weeks and just conference calling anyone who needed him for work matters. A nice, domestic holiday was what he was looking forward to!

"Are you going to show your parents your gauntlet, Ellie?" His question made Gamp flush up a little bit and squirm on her side of the compartment, but then she surprised both him and Charles by shaking her head no.

"I, I left it at school actually."

"Huh?"

"How come? Professor Hagrid gave it to you!" Months ago that had been what was in the hemp sack from Professor Hagrid after Care of Magical Creatures: a hawker's gauntlet made of thick leather scales that laced up under the wrist and was meant to protect her skin and clothes from owl claws. Her robes didn't look any better for it, but at least they weren't worse, and Feliciano hadn't seen anymore unfortunate cuts or scratches on her arms either.

"It's not really mine though, I just borrow it really."

"He gave it to you." Charles pushed, rolling his eyes and turning his head like he was about to say something to Scorpius, who wasn't there.

"And you use it every day!" Just when Feliciano was starting to get worried that, maybe, there was a reason waiting on the platform for why Ellie didn't want to show her parents the gift she'd been given by their professor, the young girl shaking across the compartment from him let the real reason out in a rush:

"You don't need a gauntlet to raise swans!"

"Sw..."

"You train swans?"

"Well…" And then she flushed up her round cheeks and gave the black braid around the side of her head a firm tug, fingers clutching the end of it in one fist. She pulled her legs up where the jeans she was wearing under her winter robe kept her legs warm, crossing them and sitting like that on the seat as she bent over a little. "I just- I just feed them really. It's exactly the same as the owls and sometimes they parade around and form a neat little line. But they haven't got claws so there's no need to risk it getting even more damaged!"

Feliciano and Charles shared a look, and then both asked the same question:

"More damaged?"

And Ellie just squirmed for the rest of the ride.

Feliciano had a good idea of what to do when the Hogwarts Express finally slowed down and pulled into King's Cross station, shrugging off a question about whether or not Lovino would be there to pick him up for Christmas.

"Sometimes he comes, sometimes he doesn't; either way I still get home in the end." And after three years of this Feliciano still knew how to completely misread the atmosphere and give the wrong answer to his young friends. The sorry look Ellie gave him and the glum way Charles muttered something about letters and presents over the holidays made him sorry for not choosing his words more carefully.

To his surprise, not only was Lovino waiting for him on the platform, but so was someone he really hadn't expected to come all the way from home to, of all things, see him.

"You left the little bugger behind!" But before Feliciano could say anything to the woman whose arm was casually looped around his brother's elbow, he was stormed over by the loud, angry wall that was Scotland. England's brother was dressed up in a midnight blue suit that was just muggle enough in design and just magical enough with a gold pocket watch and shimmering star-pattern tie for him to get around just fine in both environments. "Merlin's pants I know he's annoying but Christmas holidays aren't up for debate!"

There was a letter clutched in Scotland's hand and the way he tossed his arms up and shook his head showed he was exasperated, but not angry. He definitely wanted more of an explanation than whatever had beaten the train all the way to London.

"Ve~ We turned around and Arthur and Scorpius were both gone! It's not our fault."

"Well I ain't blamin' them, just you." Scotland corrected, nodding to Ellie and Charles to show they were safe. But England's brother was too light-hearted in this century to really mean what he was saying, because he broke into a grin and let the three of them enter the circle of adults. The number of parents had increased since September.

Mrs. Malfoy had a letter like Scotland's that she'd refolded and was holding in one gloved hand, fingers playing with the crease as she seemed no less poised than normal, but rolled her eyes while saying her husband's name to a stout little witch Feliciano didn't recognize, but the young man next to her was familiar.

"Captain Higgs!" Charles' older brother was much taller than the woman he assumed had to be their mother, especially with the way she looked around at Feliciano's voice and saw Charles, immediately rushing up to him with a happy yell and kisses on his forehead and cheeks that he gasped and tried to get away from to no avail.

Mrs. Higgs had short, copper-red hair with a strawberry-patterned handkerchief tied around her head to keep the uneven locks back, a very pointy nose and full cheeks flushed in the cold December air. Her robe was brown suede and looked soft to the touch despite being worn along the hem and under both arms. Her red leather gloves had gold ribbon over the wrists and she pinched her son's cheeks hard while Feliciano stayed out of the way by immediately taking a position next to Lovino.

"Mister Vargas," Thomas Higgs gave a smile and a nod where he was dressed for the winter weather in a casual black ski-vest and hooded sweatshirt, a knit cap on his head and similar-looking red gloves on his hands that resembled a pair Charles avoided wearing at all costs in favour of his thinner, less effective school set. "Still avoiding quidditch, I hear?"

"Afraid so."

The large circle of Mrs. Higgs, Thomas Higgs, Mrs. Malfoy, Lovino, Scotland and Chiara was rounded off with a scary-looking warlock in a black cloak and long green robe who obediently beckoned Ellie over to him with a hand. Mr. Gamp was a very tall man with a mean face, jaw jutting out and wrinkled lips turned down unpleasantly like Ellie's own permanent pout- just angrier. He had thin, almost oily black hair that matched hers in colour, but not in volume where his seemed almost fake, and even the black moustache painted over his upper lip didn't seem very real. His square face had hollow cheeks that didn't match her rounded ones either. Whatever her mother looked like, Eliza must have taken more after her as she practically vanished under the shadow of Mr. Gamp's cloak.

"Young Scorpius won't be coming home for Christmas then?" When Mr. Gamp spoke Eliza closed her eyes and seemed to lean into him a little bit, a reassuring sign that maybe the severe voice he used was a lot like the stern way Lovino usually spoke in public: just a front, not who he really was.

"Oh yes he will." Mrs. Malfoy answered plainly, but it was a casual kind of bluntness, not like she was trying to be mean. "If Professor Malfoy knows what's good for him he'll be bringing my son home immediately, and with a better excuse than-" Unfolding her letter again, there was a very light snowfall beginning to dust down from the sky as she read: "Urgent business, terribly sorry. Extended apologies to the elder Mister Vargas and sending Scorpius along soon. Happy Christmas. Honestly, I don't know what's got into him."

"It's the apology I want to know about." It was the first thing Lovino said around all the chatter and Feliciano was quietly resigned to that being the topic he opened with. There was a quick flash of apprehension through his gut when it was brought up like that, but he tried to turn around with Lovino's warm hand on his shoulder and quietly tell his brother to wait until they were somewhere private.

Charles beat him.

"I bet it's about Huntington!" Feliciano's mouth was half-open and he had the breath to speak, but then just let it go in a long, slow hiss as he turned his head just enough to look straight at Charles. He didn't say anything, just stared, and he heard a sharper, louder hiss behind him when the name was said.

"No."

"Chichi-"

"I said no."

Chiara of Sicily was not who Feliciano expected Lovino to bring with him to London. He'd been shocked when she'd appeared in Hogwarts on Ministry business, but he really couldn't have guessed that she and Lovino had patched things up enough between them already to willingly announce themselves as married in human company.

She wasn't dressed as extravagantly this time as the gown and robe from Hogwarts, but she also wasn't here to scare anyone either. The pearls from that visit were still in her hair along with a set of studded earings which gave a creamy lustre under the curled bands of free black hair dripping down the sides of her head. A thick brown scarf was tucked into the black collar of a long, A-line winter coat that fell to her ankles where a hem of white lace was in danger of getting muddied in the rain and snow of London winter, but the rest of her decorations were restricted to the mother of pearl buttons running in a straight line down the front of the jacket and the matching white lace on the cuffs of her sleeves.

He didn't want her to touch him, and it wasn't because he shared Charles' aversion to being kissed and cooed over in public: it was because she was Sicily and he was Venice and he didn't want her to touch him, snapping his head back when she reached and tried to get hold of his face with one hand. Absolutely not.

"What did that woman do?" Chiara didn't speak to him in Standard Italian, it would have been like admitting her own dialect wasn't good enough when she tried to confuse his ears with what was almost Lovino's way of speaking, but still distinct to her island. "I have no patience for that American brat now answer me!"

"I cannot speak plainly." So Feliciano reached inside and pulled out his own dialect, the language closest to home and which resonated the most comfortably in his heart. "It will have to wait."

Lovino groaned and said nothing.

"This is no time for your schemes."

"This is not a scheme, it is fact: I cannot speak!"

"Your voice works just fine!"

"It's not my voice it's my to-ochk-!"

He hadn't meant to say that word. Over the last few days of term Feliciano had been trying to figure out which words specifically set off the curse and stopped him from speaking. So far he knew he couldn't think of Chiara and say sister or my brother's wife without setting it off. He wasn't allowed to mention art, paintings, Rome, galleries, curses or Professor Huntington by name. There was complexity in the spell that seemed to let it know the difference between saying the word 'curse' in Defense class versus anything at all referring what she'd done to him, and it was infuriating and painful when he got it wrong.

And it was the worst kind of pain, because it was such a minor affliction but it was in the worst place. The same sensation of a pushpin being forced into his fingertip or the sole of his foot would have made him squeak and continue on with whatever it was, but the undeniable feeling of a thin piece of metal stabbing him under the tongue gagged him every time. It was a sharp, sore piercing sensation like twisting or pulling a muscle in his jaw that grew until heat pooled over the surface of his tongue like blood, and it didn't go away until he took several breaths and gave up speaking all together.

He coughed twice this time and couldn't close his mouth to make them like little hiccups: it was the first time the curse had caught him with his voice raised and a lung full of air. The first thing he heard was Charles spilling the whole story:

"There it is! Just like that!" He looked up slowly and Chiara's face was speechless, red lips parted but brown eyes swinging around to look for Lovino instead of watching Feliciano as they all listened to Charles. "He's been doing that since she came to Hogwarts and had a massive fight with Professor Huntington about something in Italian! As soon as class was over she held Vargas back and did something Scorpius and Arthur said had him howling, but he hasn't said a word about it since!"

Mrs. Higgs had a ghastly look on her face like someone had just tried to serve her cup of live tadpoles for tea, and Tom's eyes were two sizes too big in his skull. Mrs. Malfoy had both palms together and pressed over her lips, eyes jumping frantically around the circle.

Mr. Gamp had something like black lightning charging in his eyes, but before Feliciano could get a better look at Eliza's father, he was left looking at his own brother face-to-face.

"Open your mouth," he said in English.

"I want to go home." Feliciano answered in their language.

"I know you do: now open your mouth." And just get it over with...

He knew what his brother was looking for and there was no more point in arguing. Dropping his jaw, he let his tongue out to show the bright blue and orange 'H' that had been painted across the back portion of his tongue. It carried no sensation on its own, he could eat and taste just fine, but not if he tried saying anything about the curse or why it was there. Because Lovino had no wand he closed his mouth a moment later, fully aware of how tricky it could be to remove a curse mark while standing in the falling snow of a slowly emptying train platform.

North and South shared a long, silent look after that, and Feliciano felt all the questions he was being hit with: was he alright? How long had this been going on? Why hadn't he put an end to it himself under his own power? How the hell had he allowed himself to be cursed in the first place?

It was very hard not to just step forward and take a hug from him instead of trying to wordlessly answer. He wanted the charm around his neck gone first, then he could deal with what was in his mouth later. He just needed to be himself again first, he didn't care about anything else until he had his proper identity back.

"I want to go home." He repeated, and this time he slipped from Standard Italian back into his own local breed of the same root language. He was suddenly so... so tired...

"Signora Malfoy," There was angry, frantic talk behind Lovino but Feliciano couldn't hear it, he just wanted to go to the nearest place where he could rip the ice-cold chain off from around his neck and just settle back into his own skin again. He barely noticed how close Chiara had been standing to him until she suddenly moved and left his side open to the cold wind of the London winter, shivering under his school cloak as Lovino straightened up and pulled him to his side for warmth. "I must take back what was said earlier. My husband and I will be returning to Italy with Feliciano promptly, and we will not be returning for the holidays."

"If at all!" Lovino shouted back over his shoulder, giving Feliciano the hug he wanted with one arm around his shoulders and the other brushing down his hair gently. It felt good to be held and his pride didn't care about classmates lingering in the crowd or curious parents listening to what their circle was hissing and clamouring about. He didn't care, he just wanted warmth.

"Sort out this mess, Kirkland, or you'll be starting the new year off on the wrong foot. Chiara, amore, we're leaving. I've had enough of this damned magic."

And Feliciano just wanted to go home...

Arthur felt like he was drowning when he and Scorpius were led back down to the Slytherin commons that afternoon after confessing to Professor Creevey. He wasn't going home tonight, and the reality was almost enough to make him scream.

Slytherin was not a large house, they didn't have many members and it was understood as of the first month of first year that being outnumbered was a terrifying reality that came with plenty of risks and dangers. When Chirstmas Holidays gave an opportunity to leave the school behind, their house seized it with a vengeance.

And that was why that evening Scorpius and Arthur were alone at the Slytherin table.

Their out-of-house friends were gone too. Baker's parents wanted him home for the holidays, the Finnigan twins had an extended family that they loved to chat and play with. Miss White and Miss Miller from Ravenclaw were both missed despite Arthur not knowing Miller very well and only talking to White at football games. They were marooned at the table and then completely isolated when they crept back down to the dungeons with its one blazing fire and absolute silence in the common room.

An hour later Professor Malfoy briefly ghosted through Slytherin house and asked, almost hesitantly, to speak to Scorpius. Arthur had never felt so piteously alone at Hogwarts as he did the moment he gave up his seat and a quiet game of chess to the professor and crept down to the empty dormitory.

He caught himself buckling and unbuckling the watch around his wrist and forced himself to stop. He needed it off, he had to get it off. He couldn't do this: Arthur couldn't stay at Hogwarts over Christmas. He was going to lose his mind and he was going to let something slip, his composure would break and he'd smash his own cover to smithereens. Italy had given himself a break last month by sneaking into Hogsmeade, but Arthur hadn't taken a single self-aware breath since September.

He needed the charm off and he needed it off now.

The absolute only answer he could come up with was to go around the corner from the boy's dorms to the boy's bathing room and hex the door shut, then lock it with a physical bolt and charm that not to open up for Alohamora.

He didn't need a bath as he shucked every piece of clothing and dropped himself into one of the larger, deeper pools of green water. He needed the watch off and even after he unbuckled it and held it in his hand, he hesitated with it clutched between his fingers. He had to physically get it away from himself before the charm would let go, but he dug his fingertips into the green leather and the bath's edge at the same time, suddenly petrified.

What if he was caught?

He dropped the watch, he didn't care.

If overflowing the bath and then dry-heaving against the green stones were Arthur's reward for being a damned good friend to Scorpius and standing by the boy's side, then he took it without complaint because he had to breathe. He couldn't fill tiny, wretched little lungs with stale castle air, he needed to breathe deeply and fill himself up until his ribs cracked. He needed the hair to sprout down his arms and from his chest, his muscles twisting and bones realigning as old scars painted themselves back across his ribs and shoulders, fingers marked by industry and pockmarks on his thighs from nearly-forgotten plagues and still remembered wars.

Arthur needed to be England again, it wasn't a suggestion: it was a necessity. He had to just kneel there in the hot water, head bowed to the sweating stones, and just let his senses realign and his body mesh with the soul it was meant to house. And he just stayed like that.

The frustration of knowing he'd have to put the charm on again before he could leave the chamber brought a few agonized tears to his eyes, an overdramatic reaction to something he reasoned with himself wasn't so bad but that his spirit screamed and rebelled against completely. He didn't want it, he couldn't do it, he wouldn't submit himself to it, not anymore: never again!

'You're barely half way through...' He couldn't do it, he couldn't keep it up- it hurt, it hurt so much...

But if he gave up, then Italy would win.

How pathetic of him to put all of this in the context of a game: winners and losers. Italy wanted the school destroyed for what had happened to two of his children now almost three years ago. Arthur wouldn't let it happen because he knew what Hogwarts still meant to people...

So he had to... keep going...

He knelt there gasping and pounded one fist against the green stones, minor aggression that only gave him the meek slap of wet skin against brick, not the crash or thunder of a nation on the assault.

But at least, for one brief moment as his stomach began to settle and his mind opened up wide for the first time in months, he was England again…

"Ooooh…"

And then with a shock of absolute terror, he snatched the watch up off the floor and nearly vomited with the violence of the charm gripping and tearing through him again. He lost his grip on the side of the pool and sank straight under the bath, legs shrinking so when he kicked down to push himself up his ankle scuffed the floor and he fell further. Arthur panicked, then stood up with head and shoulders barely breaking the surface of the deep water, thirteen years old and coughing and choking on ribbons of steam.

The bath-salts trickled into his eyes and he couldn't see for the stinging, one hand finding the stones and almost losing the watch again in the process. He had to stop and blindly buckle it back on around his wrist, legitimately worried about what would happen if he found himself in the disorienting cycle of finding and losing it over and over again in the cloudy water.

But he'd just heard a voice: where had it come from?

Still trying to clear his throat, with the charm secure and his senses reeling, Arthur dragged one hand back through his hair to clear the water running down his face. He wanted to see clearly and looked around as soon as he was able, heart throbbing in his chest like his organs had failed to shift and shrink properly back into place.

"What a strange bit of magic…" That- that was a girl's voice! Nasally and not quite clear, very young and eerily familiar. "I saw that bit of light, isn't your head a bit too small? I could have sworn it was-"

"Show yourself right now!" He shrieked, the memory of his adult voice scraping against a younger throat and whittling down a lion's roar to a kitten's mew. He didn't have his wand and his stomach was squeezing acid up his throat, but damn him if he didn't try. "Who's there!? Slytherin's empty for Christmas and there are no girls in this bathroom!"

"Silly boy, if that's what you really are." He felt a sudden chill go through the water wrapped around his chest and his sluggish, aching head clued in with horror and relief: it was a ghost. A ghost who loved water and one known for slinking and scurrying her way through the school's pipes just like the snake that had killed her. "Tell me what that magic was."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Myrtle!"

"It's Moaning Myrtle not Stupid Myrtle you ugly little boy!" Hey now that was uncalled for! "Your arms've gone all spindly and small, that's not what I saw at all!"

"Peeping Myrtle is more like it! Where are you hiding-? Get out here!"

Of course he hadn't set a towel out for himself, but Arthur was above the shame of being caught by an eighty year old ghost without his own pants. His arms didn't want to take his weight as he pushed down on the stones and heaved his shaking body from the hot water, heading straight for his clothes where Myrtle's usual damp and water were already saturating his robes. He didn't deal with his shirt or trousers, just grabbed the black Slytherin robe and pulled it harshly around his unrinsed, dripping shoulders.

He immediately crouched down, dragging himself to the wall of sinks and just resting there with panting breaths. He still needed to wait for his strength to come back before moving any further…

"You did something." Arthur lifted his head where it was pounding but forgot to open his eyes, breathing hard and letting his wet hair touch the cold wall again for relief. He had a headache now on top of the nausea, and furthermore he could feel London, Manchester, Bristol and all the rest fading further and further from him. He'd barely held them in his mind and heart for a full ten minutes, and he was already releasing his sense of self again after a break that was barely worth it. "I didn't see what it was, but you did something."

"If I say yes will you just let me breathe?" He panted, fingers grasping at the cloak and pulling it tighter around himself, one knee braced against his chest where he was curled up in a damp ball on the floor. The room was spinning…

"You feel awful now don't you? This is what little liars get." Eyes cracked open he saw her this time, lips parted to tell her to stop moving around him: her voice was disorienting. Instead of speaking, he only managed a sick groan.

Moaning Myrtle was not an ugly girl, but she'd never lived past the awkward stage Arthur and his friends were fast approaching. Had she been given the chance to grow up time might have been kind to her, but fate had not and the ghost of Voldemort's first victim was condemned to spend eternity as a fourteen or fifteen year old girl with stringy brown hair held in two awkward pig-tails, massive round glasses pressed to a squashed nose over a miserable little mouth. She was all shades of grey and blue, the inside of her mouth nothing but a ghastly black void of nothingness. Her Ravenclaw badge was confirmed by Gamp who knew her better but just looking at the scratched off face pinned to her breast you'd never know Myrtle from any house at all. As she hovered there with half her head hidden inside the stone belly of one of the sinks she quirked her neck a little, staring at him like an undead owl and bringing to mind possible reasons why Ellie was so fond of her.

"I'm not lying, I just said yes."

"Then you should tell me what it was."

"And have you go gabbing to the entire school? I'd never dare…"

"What an idiot boy you are then, nothing like what your little friend says." He resented that, thank you, but he still wasn't prepared to move where the walls were only just beginning to straighten up and the floor stop keeling and rocking. "She's the only one who bothers coming talk to me, even your precious professor is too busy for me now." But the look of… Arthur wanted to say pain but it was much closer to loneliness instead, shame his thoughts couldn't settle and his heavy eyes dragged themselves shut again.

"I don't want to tell anyone, Myrtle, I don't want to talk at all right now…" He sounded so selfish to his own ears, but his heart wouldn't calm down where it was pumping hot blood through his veins trying to compete with the winter chill of the dungeons and the hot water he'd nearly drowned in. "I just… want to go home."

"That just goes to show how privileged you are then," the ghost cut back sharply, a weak little cry working its way up her throat that made Arthur look at her again and really see the way her eyes were widening, ugly mouth rippling down with an expression he knew from Gamp: she was getting ready to live up to her name and moan endlessly about something, he just knew it. "You actually have a home to go home too!"

And with a hiccupping cry that rose up into a low, wailing scream, Moaning Myrtle dove head-first into Arthur's abandoned bath. She sprayed green every which way as she tore through the plumbing and took the bathwater with her. She left Arthur alone in the locked bathroom with nothing but wet clothes and the agony of stone walls to keep him company.

I keep forgetting to point out that Chiara's presence in this story is the result of a LOT of background headcanon. If it seems random, that's my fault for doing more talking than writing on the blog…

But! There's a nice explanation coming up in the next chapter or two, so don't give up just yet!