The Magic of Family
Chapter Twenty-One: Going Home?
They were just set to open the castle doors when the screech of an eagle pierced the night air, and both boys looked up to see a dark shape winging away from the school.
Harry and Sephiroth stood in silence watching as the shadow slowly disappeared over the horizon. He had to roll his eyes though when the unmistakable outline of a hippogriph with a human passenger on its back passed before the full moon. What was the point of 'rescuing/escaping' if you were not going to be subtle about it, with the full moon being up and everything being illuminated by the pearly light, Sirius and Buckbeak would have been much better off diving quickly towards the Forbidden Forest and then sticking close to the tree tops until they were sure not to be spotted.
'Freedom is an intoxicating drug though' mused Harry as he helped Sephiroth shoulder open the heavy Entrance Hall doors that were miraculously still unlocked. He recalled his behavior on his first trip to Diagon Alley with Hagrid, and his actions over this summer, when he had finally been free of the Dursley's overbearing presence for a time-and before he had realized the expectations that the wizarding world would heap on his shoulders-and had to suppress a cringe. No other child would have willing wandered off with not one but two complete strangers without even a promise of safety, or at least removal from the situation he had grown up in.
Thinking back to his first year of Hogwarts, Harry had to admit that he had been exceedingly naive in his thoughts and actions, even with all that had happened-Quirrelmort, the Basilisk, and the shade of Tom Riddle/Voldemort being only a few of the things to come to mind-Harry had been wary of adults or people who showed too much interest in his life, but he had still been willing to trust anyone and everyone who showed him the least amount of attention. Several late night/early morning talks with Zack, Aerith, and Sephiroth had started to open Harry's eyes and mind to the different aspects that came with every situation.
"Mr. Potter," drawled an exceedingly familiar voice, and slightly unwelcome voice, "once again you are found to be completely disregarding school rules with one of your….followers."
Harry and Sephiroth turned from where they had just begun to climb the Grand Staircase, to see Professor Snape exiting the dungeons, black robes swirling around his form as he stalked to where the two students were standing frozen, each with a single foot raised in the air, ready to begin the long climb to their dormitories (well, actually the Ravenclaw dorms because heart-to-heart conversation or not, Harry was not leaving Sephiroth alone long enough to begin to doubt what Harry had told him-and he was not spending the night in the infirmary after having already made a successful escape).
"Professor…" began Harry as confusion wrinkled his brow, Snape was speaking as though he did not know why he and Sephiroth had been outside, as if he had not been with them.
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to your paltry excuses. Fortunately for you, the Headmaster has need of me to help him deal with a situation; otherwise, we would be going to him with this blatant example of your inability to follow the school rules, just like your father. And while it may not be in my abilities to expel you," an ugly sneer curled his lips in disgust at the word 'expel,' "do not think that you will escape this without punishment, a week's worth of detentions, for both you and Mr. Crescent-Fair."
Those long, potion-stained fingers dug into their shoulders as both boys attempted to protest, or at least talk to the enraged Professor. However, the man refused to allow them to talk as he marched them at a near running pace up to Gryffindor Tower, the glare he gave them as the portrait swung shut convincing them that any attempt to leave the dorm would be known and harshly punished.
"What just…" puzzled Harry as he shared a bewildered look with Sephiroth. The silverette simply shrugged while giving a noise of confusion, before turning and trudging up the steps towards the third year Gryffindor's room. Harry shot one last puzzled look at the closed portrait before deciding that he had dealt with enough strange and insane things for one night, he had a glorious week of detentions to look forward to with Snape in which he could figure out why the man was acting as though he had not just helped them face an escaped 'criminal,' a traitorous animagus, and a rampaging werewolf.
Harry sighed as he settled into an empty compartment on the Hogwarts express. The last week of term had been hectic, and Harry was glad to finally have a chance to truly relax. He had to take several deep breaths in an attempt to keep his anger at bay as he thought back on what had happened during the last week of school.
Harry and Sephiroth had managed to get about four hours of sleep when the curtains around the bed had been unceremoniously ripped open and the loud voices of Hermione and Ron had begun questioning where he had been and why he had not returned to the Infirmary or helped Hermione with getting Buckbeak up to the tower where Sirius was being held waiting for the Minister of Magic to decide his fate. The sleeping the boys had sat up quickly, both too used to nasty surprises being a result of abrupt returns to consciousness, green sparkles of their summoning magic glimmering around Harry's right and Sephiroth's left hands.
Realizing that the cause of his return to consciousness was not, in fact, an attacking monster, but instead two pests, Sephiroth had quickly growled and proceeded to burrow himself back down into the bedding. Upon seeing that the windows were only just beginning to glow with the early morning light of dawn, and that the curtains on all of the other beds were still drawn, Harry had attempted to follow Sephiroth back down into the warmth of unconsciousness.
Unfortunately, Harry's plans for unconsciousness were thwarted when Ron and Hermione grabbed his arms and began to haul him down to the Common Room. He sat through Hermione's lecture about the dangers of time travel-such as not returning to where you were supposed to be-and the importance of helping others-especially when Professor Dumbledore was expecting them to get the job done. He blinked blearily as she broke off from talking about how amazing it was that Dumbledore trusted them enough to allow them to pull off what he himself could not, to begin a rant about how uncomfortable flying was and how 'really, that was his part of the plan, not her own.'
He had to hold himself back from snapping at that, none of the situation yesterday, either before or after the time turner had been his plan, he would have been more than happy to never have gone under the Whomping Willow, been chased by a werewolf, faced down hundreds of dementors-not once but twice, and attempt to complete a task that not only should have been handled by adults, but that Albus Dumbledore, with all his clout in the ministry and influence over the opinions of the masses, should have easily been able to handle not only on his own, but legally.
Harry bit his tongue until it bled when Ron began to whine about not being included in the plan to use the time turner and how it was 'selfish of Harry to leave Hermione with all of the work and to not tell them what he had been doing.
Finally, both of them paused in their complaining long enough for Harry to voice his annoyance at their borrowing of not only the Marauder's Map, but also his father's invisibility cloak.
He saw red when Hermione once again gave him an exasperated look and said that it did not matter if they asked him since he would have said yes if they did.
Ron's dismissal that there was no point in asking since anything that Harry had was theirs as well since they were friends had him marching back up to the dorm and using the levitation charm to shove a heavy wardrobe in front of the door and a sticking charm on the curtains to keep them from disturbing him and Sephiroth again.
A couple more hours of sleep and a relaxing breakfast at the Ravenclaw table were enough to get his anger down to 'prank until you repent' levels instead of the 'curse with lasting bodily harm' levels that it had been at previously. It was actually over breakfast that Sephiroth devised the perfect revenge against Hermione.
During one of his perusals through the Ravenclaw libraries, Sephiroth had come across a spell that, when cast, would return an object to a marked area upon the activation of a key phrase. The spell was mainly used by libraries and mother's who were tired of losing a child's favorite plushie since the object did not have to be in the caster's sight to be returned.
Together they studied the spell, practicing with one of Sephiroth's textbooks and the desk in his room, until both boys could accurately cast the spell and have the book disappear from the Ravenclaw common room and reappear on the desk in the room when they thought the spell and said the activation word of their choice.
They were just in time for them to hurry to Gryffindor Common Room and mark Hermione's main study table as the return point before running to arrive in the Great Hall in time for dinner. At dinner they had been able to tag one of Hermione's books, a quill, and several pieces of parchment before they had to rush down to the dungeon for the first of their week long detentions with Snape.
The next day they were wandering through the Gryffindor Common Room marking anything of Hermione's that they could find with the 'return home' spell and discussing how they could get access to more of her stuff when the Twins cornered them.
"What do we have here, brother dear?" questioned Fred.
"Looks like competition, brother mine." answered George.
"Now why would they be pranking our 'favorite' bookworm?"
Harry traded a look with Sephiroth before explaining to the Twins what Ron and Hermione had said about his things. The explanation was a little difficult because he was trying to avoid any mentions of Sirius Black, but the end the Twins had that manic gleam in their eyes that usually preceded some of their more vicious pranks.
"Worry not, Little Brother," said the Twins as they trapped Harry in a headlock and ruffled his messy hair, "We'll handle reminding Ronnikins the importance of leaving people's belongings alone."
Harry grumbled as he attempted to straighten his hair out as the Twins skipped up the stairs to their dorm room and Sephiroth began to chuckle semi-maliciously and mutter about 'Zack and Reno 2.0.'
It took a day for the Twins to implement their pranks, and Harry had to applaud their ingenuity. Every one of Ron's uniforms and his everyday clothes had been transfigured to be Slytherin green, his chess set had been stuck to the Common Room table with a sticking charm that not even Hermione could undo, his trunk had disappeared, and every time he would put something other than toast or kippers on his plate, it would vanish and appear on someone else's plate.
By the end of the week, Ron was visibly fuming and had managed to obtain two weeks of detention from McGonagall for the beginning of their fourth year because he snapped at a pair of first years and caused them to cry after they were playing with 'his' chess set.
Between them, Harry and Sephiroth had managed to mark at least two-thirds of the books that Hermione used/read on a daily basis and at least ninety-five percent of her quills and parchment. The greatest one though was when Sephiroth managed to charm Hermione's summer homework assignments and the beginnings of her research. Their plan was to wait until they arrived at Platform 9 ¾ to activate the charm so that a) they would be well out of screeching range and b) so that Hermione would not have access to her things over the summer break.
Harry had to cover a smirk as he watched the passing scenery and thought about Hermione's reaction to the disappearance of her books and homework. It should definitely give her a good taste of how he had felt.
The smirk dropped off his face as he thought about the week of detentions that he and Sephiroth had served with Snape. The man had required them to scrub all of the cauldrons from the end of the year exams, scrub down the tables and chairs, hand wash the floors, and re-organize and clean the supply cupboard. Not once during that week had Snape mentioned the events of the Shrieking Shack and when Harry or Sephiroth had attempted to bring up what had happened to Peter Pettigrew, Snape would snap at them that he did not know why they were interested in a dead man.
After being threatened with two more weeks of detention upon their return to school, the boys gave up on attempting to get answers to their questions. Even now they were unsure if the Professor truly had no recollection of that night or if he was just trying to throw them off of searching for Pettigrew on their own by not giving them any information.
Harry jolted as the train jerked to a stop at Platform 9 ¾. Harry smiled and waved at Mr. and Mrs. Weasley as they were flocked by their miniature horde of red haired children and waved goodbye to Hermione, able to give her a genuine smile as he thought about what was about to happen to all of her precious books. He was busy looking around for the Dursleys, sure that Dumbledore had found out where he spent and the Christmas holidays and managed to convince the Dursleys to take him back, and so was unprepared to be tackle hugged by Kadaj, resulting in both of them tumbling down to the Platform floor.
Laughter preceded the removal of all encompassing silver hair from his sight, which cleared to show Zack once again holding a dangling Kadaj under his arm.
"What were you looking for?" asked Aerith as she helped Harry up and brushed the dirt off his back.
"I was looking for the Dursleys, surely Dumbledore has convinced them to keep me by now."
Harry watched as Aerith and Zack exchanged smiles tainted with a slightly evil look over his head, before Aerith hooked her arm through his and began to tow him gently through the entry column and out into the muggle station.
"There's no need to look for them silly, you're coming home after all."
"Home," whispered Harry as he clambered into the car and listened to the rapid flow of questions, answers, and laughter that quickly filled the car. His verdant green eyes met Sephiroth's poisonous green ones and a brilliant smile stretched across his face, "yeah, I guess I am."
A.N.- Sorry this has taken so long to get out, but we have restarted schooling and these past three weeks have felt like three years….I needed this chapter for my own sanity…..This is the last chapter of The Magic of Family *sniffle* actually I think this is the perfect length for this fic and I think it would be pushing things to go further. The first chapter of The Family of Magic has been written since Chapter four was published, so hopefully I will feel confident in releasing that soon. Also the Excerpts and random ideas chapters should be posted either tomorrow or Monday and will be titled The Magic is in the Differences.
Reviews:
buterflypuss: Hello, liebling(sorry if I've completely butchered this or if it's not even really a word, I'm not sure where I got it from but for some reason in my mind I have Eric Lensherr saying it and it meaning sweetheart or darling or something like that.)
Juxshoa: Yeah the 'resurrection in another dimension' is mainly so I can use materia without having to explain why it works. I think in the entirety of what I have planned out it will be mentioned one more time and that's it. I just don't like trying to intertwine magic systems but I still want summons.
tocasia: I wanted him to remember the majority of his previous life but I also wanted him to have a chance to be a kid so I had him forget then remember.
Jebest4781: I hope this is interesting enough, I didn't want to build things up too much since I was ending the story and about to start the next, but I also wanted to leave a few things to be answered.
Scififan33: I hope you liked my retribution against the two, since they are only 13 I wanted it to be adequate without going too over the top. Also I felt Hermione was more than capable of pulling off the rescue on her own, I mean if you were going to trust 13 year olds to do it to begin with I'm sure she could handle it. I am trying to make him less black and white while still letting him keep some of that innocence he held onto even until he turned 15.
The surgery wasn't too bad (but this one was my second surgery ever and the risk of dying on the table was much, much less this time than it was on my last surgery) I was more just frustrated that it was a waste of time, and yeah, the episodes suck but the meds are helping.
Enjali: Sephiroth always needs a hug, think it would have stopped a lot of problems if he had just gotten a hug.
AshIsHere365: So glad you are enjoying it! Also I've binged fics till 4 or 5 in the morning too so it's really nice that you felt mine was worth that. I think for the fic itself they will probably just stay best friends, but I also want to write the slash(nothing extreme, more like puppy love/first boyfriend kind of stuff) and post it separate for my romance people. Either way they will always stay close.
Guest: Probably won't in the main story.
F-U-M: Glad you are liking it and thanks for the well wishes, they're much appreciated.