Chapter 7: I - Lucifer Rising (and going back to sleep)
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Lucifer doesn't see.
There is empty space in their vision where they should see atoms and particles, auras and energies, the construct of spacetime itself and how gravity bends it. No, they are blind, because just perceiving still image after still image of what narrow light spectrum is reflected off matter that can reflect cannot be called seeing.
Lucifer doesn't feel.
The body's nerves are reporting to them but feeling their breaths, heartbeats, the rush of blood in their ears and the workings of their organs, the sensation of fabric on their skin, all of it combined cannot match what they should be able to pick up on in chronological and spacial position, the very awareness that they exist within this reality they can enter and exit, travel and bend at will.
Lucifer doesn't think.
They can't assess and process, not only do they lack Grace and True Form to properly perceive and navigate their surroundings, they are also bound to the meagre capacities of a human brain, not even enough to have every last memory ever formed always at the ready, let alone run calculations at the speed and scope they're used to.
Lucifer was met with an ultimatum, only allowed to pretimely exit the Cage without their Grace, their wings, and is only as present as this body is.
'They' are well and truly a 'he' now.
Muscle memory acts before his own can and his microscopic field of vision has shifted before Lucifer can make a sense of what physical directions this body is reduced to.
It's the human. The woman - that's how disastrous they look even without their souls visible to him. He notes his fingers curling into the fabric in response to him, as if this conglomeration of cells hopes to replace his True form.
"You're still awake?", she asks. "You don't have to fight it off, you know. The potion can only work when you're asleep."
Fight. That's a fitting word.
That's what it always was for Lucifer. Fight to have his Harry Potter piece of self not blunder off the wrong way because without the experiences that make him Lucifer, he is but a shadow.
The only question now is, how-?
The woman, in her foolishness, is still looking at him, those eyes of hers undamaged at the sight of him. It doesn't matter how, what matters is how he can end her fastest-
(Where does all this hate come from?)
Oh. Oh.
"You have no idea what you just did, do you?", Lucifer speaks up, testing his regained control over his speech and chuckling. "Thanks for your potion thingie. It well and truly put me to sleep."
He stands up and starts walking. He has a lot to sort out, first of all the need to get out.
"Young man, you're not supposed to be awake, much less up and running off. I must insist you stay here until this evening at least", comes the woman's voice from behind. Lucifer has better things to do than bring up her name.
"There are three entities high enough on the pecking order to try telling me what to do, and you aren't one of them", Lucifer growls back.
"Yes. Now turn around and come back, please."
Oh, that settles it then. Lucifer stops the reflex of flicking his wrist short. That his blade is in no condition to be useful has already saved someone's life and he won't trip himself up over that detail again. Whatever, he has other means.
He redirects his focus inward, to call upon what lies dormant within.
It's a far cry from his Grace, but better than noth- why isn't it working?
The woman's structural integrity remains intact. Her molecules don't implode, nor do they fall apart. None of her bones shatter. Her blood keeps happily coursing trough veins that don't leak it. Her nerves don't go into overdrive and her organs don't-
(Why should they? Harry doesn't want them to)
You're asleep. Stay asleep and shut the fuck up, Lucifer chastises, gripping his head without realising it.
It seems his magic is giving up on him too. He can wonder about that later, should the need arise, because he still has other means to take care of this problem that has been looking at him worriedly for too long now.
There's the empty potion bottle standing on the drawer. Her wand is poking out her apron's pocket.
When Lucifer looks her in the eyes while he comes walking back, he can see how something else starts to creep in next to that worry.
So her flight instincts aren't nonexistent. Good for her.
But she still remains standing where she is after he passes that drawer, doesn't stop and keeps approaching her. As he gets closer and closer, he can see her blinking her unease away as she sets up to ask "Is something-"
So her flight instincts are still useless. Better for him.
"-the matt-" then her words end in a pained cry.
Because Lucifer, with the empty potion bottle to her temple, let her feel that allowing him to get close wasn't smart. Neither was carrying her wand around on full display, when her hand flies to her apron as she falls back, it's empty. The wand she desperately reached for clatters down several meters away, where Lucifer grabbed and threw it.
So this is what it took for her to finally get the message. It's a wonder, really, that with a bleeding temple she can still flee from him, sway into her office, slamming and clicking the door shut behind her.
Did she stay conscious long enough to make it to whatever tinctures she keeps stashed there? Starting to walk over, Lucifer is curious to find out.
He has to carve his path painfully slow, step by step, there's no slipping in and out of spacetime without his wings. However, he is determined not to let this loose him his prey, as he moves to open the door, he pushes the images of her blood coating the floor away from his inner eye because in no time he will be able to make himself the real deal-
The door doesn't open.
He has no magic. He can forget about his muscle mass sufficing, just like he can forget about picking a potentially magically secured door with conventional means.
Still, it's not like this is about to stop him. If he can't use his own magic, he might just have to improvise, Lucifer thinks as he turns around to look for the bag he recalls going trough such lengths to bring along...
Moments later, the door rains apart into countless pieces and he enters, twirling that feathered pen of his. Turns out she didn't make it to remain conscious.
One eye closed and lips pinched into a pensive line, Lucifer holds the pen up between himself and her slumped form, considers where best to draw-
-and stops at seeing the back of his hand. Moves to grab his wrist. The promise of quaint amusement following trough on killing yet another human would grant is forgotten, like the dropped pen.
There are red spots beginning to show on his skin.
If this is happening then this body is not his destined vessel after all but how can it be that it breaks down he doesn't even have any Grace that could damage it and it didn't act up all these past years it started just now that he's in charge does that does not make sense at all and-
-how are there red spots beginning to show on his skin?
Lucifer hears heavy breathing and belatedly realises it's his. And even more delayed is the realisation that he treats this as a cause for concern, as if he didn't wear vessels that decayed on him before.
Lowering his arms, he looks at Pom-whatever her name was and the pen laying before him. His fingers twitch.
But Lucifer's not feeling it anymore. Passed out, she looks as good as dead anyway. Soon she even will be, choked on her own fluids, as that position she collapsed in looks to be one that obstructs airways. A fitting death for vermin. As for all that blood Lucifer readied himself to see stained all over, well, by the looks of it his own vessel will provide that soon enough.
He turns and leaves the Hospital Wing he knows to contain no cure for the currently still innocuous red splotches on his skin.
With somewhere else to go, he would pay them no mind. As is, this puny vessel is his only anchor, as much as it is another prison. He has no means to fly away and abandon it. Maybe, once the body has given up under him, he will be able to linger like souls do. That, or he will be dragged back.
Of course he will. He has no soul that could linger. Once this body's done with, he will be dragged back to where the rest of him resides.
Lucifer loathes returning to the Cage and its darkness. But Lucifer also loathes this humiliating existence as a human boy.
He's well and truly shackled, he comes to realise, absentmindedly noting his surroundings have changed from the Hospital Wing's sunnily lit space to the dimmer halls illuminated by torchlight. They're empty, he knows nobody currently has a free period.
Annoyed, Lucifer flicks that piece of information supplied by his more recent experiences aside. His headspace is limited and he has better things to worry about. Now that he's noticed he's also walking, he doesn't stop. Walking helps with thinking.
Still from his human memories, Lucifer pulls forth the right ones to better worry about said better things to worry about. Comparing the way his body feels to how it should, he comes to the conclusion that his headache, the ache in his joints and the burning sensation on parts of his skin isn't normal.
He never felt his vessels from this perspective before. Never saw the world this way either.
It's not a good thing.
It can't be Grace that causes a vessel's breakdown, then. Maybe it's his bare presence. Or maybe he's wrong and he's yet again a special case.
Something wet and hot trickles down his upper lip. Wiping it, his fingers come away red.
This particular corridor he finds himself in evokes a certain feeling, but Lucifer is busy elsewhere. He finds doodling on the wall with his own blood to be more worthwhile.
Maybe it'll end with him razing this place to the ground, he muses as he draws another version of the Enochian sigil from earlier on the wall. If he's already destined to go, he will see to take something with him.
But before he can place the last stroke, the one that will complete the sigil and activate it, allowing it to latch onto this place's ambient magic and repurpose it, he stops again.
Before his inner eye he imagines how the finishing stroke places itself, and goes trough the motion that is second nature to him. The one where he wills the energy within him to translate imagination into reality.
Nothing happens.
(Why should he want something to happen?)
And for the second time, all of Lucifer's eloquence boils down to Oh again.
It seems he is only limited to the body's motor functions. The Harry Potter part of his consciousness is at the wheel for the magic and the Harry Potter part is peacefully slumbering away. Like Lucifer was, eleven years long. Only occasionally there enough to form a coherent thought. He knows.
Another thing Lucifer will have to do once he has the means to. Reunite with that rest of him, that was born like a human and thinks itself one.
He places the last stroke and watches something interesting happen. Sadly, it's not the wall collapsing.
Around the modest Enochian sigil spelled out to tear down, the air flimmers weirdly and travels outward in expanding rings, reminiscent of a drop falling onto a calm water surface. Faint ringing is to be heard.
Lucifer squints and looks closer, having to make do with his as good as blindness.
If he isn't mistaken, he sees something shimmer within the waves. The wall beneath remains unmoving. When he leans in closer to his sigil, he learns it's the faint ringing's epicenter. He follows the circular waves as long as he can, they travel along the wall and even expand along the ceiling and floor in parts before vanishing.
Lucifer has an idea. In one handwave he has undone his work and smeared his native language's writing into dysfunctionality. The last waves fade out and the ringing stops.
Ah, so this place is warded then. Lucifer wipes his hand on a clean section of wall. Somewhat sturdily too, if it can put up a fight like that.
Lucifer doesn't stand around to process what to do with that information, as his gaze follows the last waves fading away, he remembers just what corridor this is.
This time, the door to the empty classroom isn't leaning open, though it's curiously still unlocked.
Bold and brazen, that cursed mirror still dares to display its message.
Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi
I show not your face but your heart's desire
The day will come, when the question of whether or not the image of his own siblings' True Forms damages his limited self's eyeballs will be answered. Today is not it.
Lucifer doesn't see. He only hears glass cracking. Like when a device to uselessly help someone remember shattered in his hand, but louder.
When Lucifer opens his eyes, he does so remarking that it was a pretty idiot move, to go see the mirror but not look at the mirror.
Because he'd know what he'd see. Not his own triumphant victory over all that wronged him, no.
He looks at the mirror but there's nothing to look at anymore. So actually showing him what he didn't want to see was a pretty idiot move on its part as well.
In another life, Lucifer would have loved to throw the "you're so ugly it shatters mirrors" at Michael. This is no longer the one where there's room for quips in their relationship.
As is, the mirror's broken and empty glass finally reflects reality that way.
It also makes up for the current lack of eyes at Lucifer's back.
The mirror is - was - picky with what it showed whom. Otherwise, the bearded man's - Dumbledore, this name is somewhat more worthwhile - eyes wouldn't still be intact to sparkle a sharp sparkle. That, or he just arrived to stand in the open door, maybe summoned by that pickled ward.
That sparkle looks interesting. Lucifer wants to touch it.
Dumbledore holds himself with a confident ease. It colors his voice too.
"I must say, I didn't quite expect to meet again under these circumstances", he greets, almost genuinely polite. "Still, I suppose I should say it's a pleasure, Tom."
It has to be Tom. Not Harry Potter. Dumbledore's instincts saved his life too often for their warning of new danger to be wrongful.
Lucifer turns around, doesn't react to a name that means nothing to him, and the moment Dumbledore is met with an unfamiliar evil in those eyes, is the moment all bets are off.
Lucifer watches the little man toughen up, and it's amazing how he can feel the air grow tense with power. Is this what it usually takes to make other wizards quiver in fear? It serves to do the opposite for him.
All that magic flaunted in his face, now he really wants to touch it.
The door slams shut and Dumbledore walks in.
"You are not Tom", he asks coldly. "Who are you?"
"Harry Potter", Lucifer answers. "Born and raised-"
"Incarcerous!"
Ropes manifest on Lucifer, not budging a millimeter from where they coil to bind his arms at his front and before he could move the body to react, he has been forced to his knees.
Dumbledore, wand raised, doesn't waver in meeting Lucifer's almost soul-piercing glare. If only he had the Grace to back himself up.
As is, he swiftly tests the maneuverability of his hands. It's good enough.
"Do us both a favour", Dumbledore speaks silkily, "and don't mistake me for a fool. Who are you?"
"Not Harry Potter, then", Lucifer shrugs to the best of his mobility. "What other name would you like to hear?"
He has a generous collection, after all.
"Certainly not what you chose to go by. Give me your first, your original name."
But the greedy stain of course demands the one that's out of commission.
It serves Lucifer that the tilting of one's head is a common enough human gesture for Dumbledore not to think of looking at where he arranges for the trickle of blood from his nose to land.
"You don't get to ask me that - Albus, was it?", Lucifer purrs as soft as his hatred is hot.
Not once does Dumbledore break eye contact.
"If you have my name, I think it only fair I had yours as well", he says. "I won't deny, I do prefer knowing whose hold on my pupil I am about to break."
"Break? And there I went thinking I'm someone important here. Break... but hey, you're not important either."
"I asked your name", Dumbledore repeats and his eyes narrow on Lucifer's unblinking ones. "Are you in any position to keep holding off on answering me? Think, and think good."
"Oh Albus. Albus, Albus, Albus", Lucifer laughs. "The better question is if you are in any position to ask me that... Though I suppose I do owe you a solid. I'll give you a hint. You already know my name. You heard my name and will hear it but you'll hardly stop to recognize me. Who am I? Now you think good."
Dumbledore does his darnedest to keep his steely façade up, quite good at that, but Lucifer knows where to look and has fun doing so.
"Is the nature of your so very elusive name in any way linked to the abnormal sympto-"
"Whoops, wrong thing to think about. Didn't I tell you to think good? And didn't you think to think why I owe you, Albus?", Lucifer grins and the predator's gleam in his eyes is the last warning Dumbledore gets.
The ropes on him fall apart at the touch of his palm and Lucifer stands up.
He has to give it to the guy, Dumbledore doesn't waste time with shocked theatrics and goes immediately to acting, sending his light bolts straight to get shredded by Lucifer's sigil.
Break, Enochian spells on his palm with blood. Additional syllables ensure the sigil has the structure it takes to latch onto and take effect on any magic it comes into contact with. Like the ropes, the bolts of light shot his way suffer once they touch Lucifer's outheld palm.
Dumbledore doesn't bother to speak out his incantations anymore. The swiftness that brings only serves to feed more light into the shredder, as, like the ropes before them, every last spell breaks apart the moment it touches the sigil.
He has the advantage that one slight up- or downturn of his wand makes Lucifer have to reposition himself in order to catch. Add to that his vessel is acting up and Lucifer needs to cut this game of fetch short, preferably before the wizardman gets tired of shooting light and grows creative.
The next red bolt of light Lucifer catches with the other hand.
Before Dumbledore knows, it hasn't gone out but dispersed into a luminous mist, just as red, that quickly envelops him and the room. Once he does know, a wandwave has his immediate vicinity cleared and shielded on all sides, it shimmers gold.
His Protego is useless against a language this ancient.
Take, the second Enochian sigil spells on Lucifer's other palm, and its first set of accompanying syllables make sure to not let go of the touched and taken magic immediately. The second set gives the sigil a certain mobility, the captured magic a way back out. But not before Lucifer has decided how he wants to do that.
Under the touch of Lucifer's take, the glow of Dumbledore's shield shifts and repositions. Instead of the air around Dumbledore, it's Lucifer's blood-smeared hand shimmering golden, before he wills the magic to loose that gaudy look.
Break blocks another spell intended to blast him away and then Lucifer is close enough to press the take sigil to Dumbledore's chest.
That Nott character's words echo in his memory. Remind him that overextending one's magic can end deadly. Lucifer keeps his palm where it is, over the place he knows the seat of that energy to be at.
The old wizard goes down as his face grows ashen and falls along with his slumping body. Lucifer makes sure to follow and only removes that hand once he is satisfied with how it seems to vibrate with energy, the way the air did moments earlier.
Lucifer touched it. He's almost happy now.
He straightens up and inspects his by now even redder hand. His new toy is only noticeable in the hairs on his damaged arm that stand on end from its might, nothing is visible, nothing is glowing, not even an aura. Of course not, Lucifer wills the foreign magic now in his control not to. It has no right to shine how his Grace should, it's only a means to an end.
That end being that he has had enough of humanity's bullshit to last him his lifetime and he needs to get out. Not waste whatever precious time on Earth he has bought by accepting Father's insane offer in human's presence.
But he's not leaving without showing gratitude. Lucifer has manners.
"Thank you very much-", he says to the old man sprawled out grey and unconscious before him, the one he personally saw to getting that way, "-for kindly giving me this. I would say I owe you, but oh well..."
He gets no response so he nudges Dumbledore's side with the tip of his foot.
"Hey. Hey, don't ignore me."
Dumbledore tipps over laxly.
"Rude."
Wanting nothing to do with rude people, Lucifer walks away and readies the magic in his palm. Now that he again has what wizards have at his beck and call, he should be able to copy what they seem to have copied off his kind. The crude imitation of flight they call 'apparating'.
...He knew this watered-down version of his own Grace was bad, but so bad it can't even transport him to where he really wants to be right now? Lucifer tries to take off again, with more gusto, and it again feels as if his head hits something hard that isn't there.
'Dizzy', is what he remembers this sensation is called and there's faint ringing in his ears. He thinks that among the stars in his vision, he catches shimmering waves of light in the air.
Ah, so it's that nuisance again.
He tries to touch the break sigil to where he saw it shimmer, tries to apparate again holding it out, with the same result.
Alright then. If the wards in this place want it that way, there's a considerably messier method Lucifer could go about getting his way and his politeness has run out, which seals the deal.
He walks away from Dumbledore to the door, which he feels is the nicest surface, casts one last dismissive glance back at the broken mirror and leans in to inspect the door's level of niceness.
Nice enough. Nicer than a palm, for sure.
It'll be inelegant, he thinks as he muses whether the blood his nose graciously provides all over the place is enough. It's not. It'll be inelegant and it'll be the wards' fault.
Satisfied, he calls upon Dumbledore's magic again. But, now outside a fight where he knows how to behave in, new body or not, his movements stall awkwardly. This is the farthest cry from his True Form and Lucifer feels how it works against him. There is no way of translating the way he moves when he manipulates his surroundings from his True Form to this body, that's breaking down on top.
But one little hand movement in particular, now that he thinks about it, seems to translate the gist of it onto his current form best, feels somewhat comfortable...
Lucifer snaps his fingers and a floating orb of pink paint materializes accordingly next to him. For these more complicated sigils, he needs more to work with. And if he can prolong what little time on Earth he has left by not harvesting his own blood...
He starts drawing. When he hears the rumbling start up again, increasing in volume with each syllable he completes in his sigil's circle, he knows he is on the right path.
The door, more precisely the more ornate sigil Lucifer draws, is at the epicenter of another bout of ringing and waving.
Stroke after stroke, the ringing grows louder and shriller and the waves flimmering in the air grow erratic. After enough strokes, enough completed syllables, each newly added one is welcomed by a burst of air and a deep screech, reminiscent of metal tearing and bending. Light is emanating from the walls adjacent to the door.
The wards can make all the ruckus they want. If they won't let him apparate, he needs to tear himself a gateway out by other means. Lucifer did suppose it would be inelegant.
On the finishing stroke, the one that will bring the sigil to life, Lucifer pauses to properly take the cacophony in. His hair is tousled by an unrestful air and when he looks at the light seeping trough the door's boards, he needs to blink away green spots in his vision. The noise is short of painful.
He paints the final line and the world goes still again. But the sudden silence is heavyset, and all of his senses are weighed down by a tension in the room they are too dull to fully comprehend. In the next moments, something will break and it won't be Lucifer's bleeding and aching body.
He opens the door and can feel the tension in the air shifting along with its center of gravity, the Enochian circle on its wood. He steps trough and leaves the wards' incoming tantrum to not be his problem anymore.
A second after the wooden door slams shut, the tension breaks and the room along with it. It's a loud process and it's forceful, enough to send what's not part of the castle's very stone makeup flying. The unconscious figure and the broken mirror's shards are part of that. The door itself too and the wood splinters apart under the Enochian writing, vanishing it. The rumbling shockwaves travel trough the castle and the violated wards' deafening roars only serve to amplify them.
Not that Lucifer, on the other side of the hole he tore open, can hear the fallout he caused.
The Forbidden Forest around him is alive with its own sounds.
Birds throw a concert up high in the dark branches, occasionally interspersed with sunlight dotting trough. A breeze wafts around and makes the dense undergrowth shift, that, or it's the odd creature lurking within. The soft rustling of leaves echoes everywhere, it's the sound of outdoors.
Closing his eyes, no human construction or presence anywhere, he can almost pretend it's the good old times again, he just descended from his duties among the stars and is using what little time on Earth possessing a vessel bought him to take a closer look at the new terrestrial landscapes. Lucifer is the most peaceful he has been in a too long time.
Just to feel this again makes degrading himself to accept the offer of leading a human play-pretend life almost worth it.
It doesn't last and Lucifer opens a disdainful eye at what he heard approaching him. Of course they would ruin this moment for him as well. Except-
"The fuck are you supposed to be? You come in flavors now?"
The man part makes an indignant face and the horse part stamps its hooves.
"You come into our territories and insult us?", the creature his memory supplies is a centaur growls. "Thank the stars we don't harm foals."
Curse the stars I do, Lucifer wants to shoot back and be done with the guy, but he hears more sets of thundering hooves approach and restrains himself. For now.
"Bane!", the chestnut centaur, who leads the charge catching up in their direction, bellows. "What have you done, have you forgotten yourself? Human or not, we never harm foals!"
He comes to stand between Bane and Lucifer.
"Wh-I found him like that! Magorian, the constellations bear witness, I did not lay hand nor hoof upon him!", Bane cries out, stumbling a few steps backwards.
Lucifer wipes another bout of blood from his face. If he isn't mistaken, parts of the skin on his cheeks and around his temples have started giving in too. His insides burn.
He's mildly interested in the way Magorian singled out humans in his words. He may let them be a little longer, while they're good to get information out of.
Lucifer rests his small vision on Magorian, who turns around to face him now. The way he's looking down on him, Lucifer starts to rethink letting them be.
"You have no business being here, especially in your condition", Magorian speaks. "Use whatever time you have left wisely and get back to your own."
"Oh, I'll be gone soon enough", Lucifer answers with narrowing eyes. "What was that about 'human or not'?"
"Go sooner than later, and quit testing our patience. We will not have impudent questions."
"You'll just send poor me to walk that long way all alone, then? Not even gonna give me a ride?"
Magorian actually rears up on his hind legs and his lashing hooves come close to speeding up the end of this vessel.
"How dare you!", he roars and others echo his enraged cry. "How dare you appropriate our integrity, dare assume we are but mules here to serve you human-"
"So that's what it's about", Lucifer interrupts. "Could've just told me, it didn't have to be this whole thing. Not one to play servant, perfectly reasonable."
Out of the centaurs surrounding them, a pale, blue-eyed one steps forward.
"If I may speak", he addresses Magorian.
"But do so with care, Firenze."
Firenze comes to stand next to Lucifer, inclining his head with due respect.
"You are the Potter boy. This is absolutely no place for you to be in, please, heed my warning and head back. Take care of yourself. You in particular can't risk being out here, and not in this state."
Lucifer tilts his head.
"I see this name travelled far."
"And beyond. To the point the stars sent us warning-"
"Do not forget your oaths", Magorian interrupts. "Do not disclose the heavens to an outsider."
Lucifer wants to laugh or slaughter somebody. It's hard to tell.
"Oh, I don't think the heavens will mind being disclosed to me."
Magorian redirects his stern glare from Firenze to Lucifer.
"Few of your kind are fit to read the tides of the constellations. Potter or not, don't assume you are what it takes to receive what we do."
Where skin meets fur on him, Lucifer imagines a line of dots to be. Like from earlier kindergarten and school days, where they had to cut out shapes along the dotted lines.
It's a funny image, so he keeps it.
"Magorian", Firenze speaks up from next to Lucifer. "Perhaps you judge too swiftly. Mars and Venus, keep them in mind."
At that, Lucifer perks up. Circumstances considered, the mention of Mars and Venus is no coincidence. He doesn't like the way too accurate read these humans - despite the horse parts, they act as such - got.
"Mars yes", Magorian waves off. "But we can't be sure of Venus, so don't-"
"Venus?", Lucifer interrupts. "My educated guess is that Venus is moving. It has been doing so for about eleven years, and is halfway out of the orbit it is still confined in. It wants to get out properly and stay out, but apparently the time for that hasn't come yet, however, there's Mars you say. I bet Mars is onto something big. And Venus strings along."
For once, the absolute silence following Lucifer's words, interrupted only by the forest's noises, is beautiful. As are the collective stares on him. He finds himself liking the gobsmacked awe on these human faces almost as much as the expression of fearing for their very existence.
"How...", Magorian stammers, his grimness gone with the wind, "How can you possibly know that?"
The satisfaction teeming in Lucifer needs to be let out in ways this body and magic that aren't his can't provide. Instead, he brings forth the one thing other than his mind he knows to be well and truly and comfortably him.
Even if this isn't how his blade is supposed to look. Coincidence has it, that the hand into which it slides is the one that holds the magic.
The secondary reason for why the centaurs don't react to a wand being drawn, next to questioning everything they thought they knew about the supposed young wizard before them, is that while yes, he is carrying his kind's weapon with a grace that could easily turn deadly, he holds it in no way that signals attack, twirling it around his fingers like that.
"Heavens know how I know", Lucifer drawls into the silence. It may not look like it should, but his blade adheres as seamlessly as ever. He missed it.
He looks Magorian dead in the eye.
"Now, what bugs me, how come you stick your noses where they don't belong, hm? How come you start getting all up in the stars' business?"
Magorian's reflex is to banish the ill-spoken intruder. But, looking into green eyes that are too vivid for such an ashen and bloodied complexion, he finds himself silenced.
The wand gleams, spinning trough the air, reminiscent of a canine in a beast's wide open jaw, gleaming with the hungry saliva it drips. Then Lucifer catches his blade and lowers his arm.
"And? No answer when it comes down to it or what?"
Firenze finds his words first, his intrigue colouring over his own faint uneasiness.
"If I am not mistaken- Is it, that you speak of the heavens above with a certain... familiarity?"
"I ask the questions. You really think your lot is important enough to influence the behaviour of celestial bodies?"
"No", Firenze protests. "Nothing is farther from us. We lack a wizard's human tendency to cloud our vision by looking for self-flattery. Reality is an intertwined construct we cannot hope to grasp and our people have learned many generations ago that everything is connected and even the past and the future aren't excluded from that. If the future holds something great or grave enough, something that goes way beyond the single individual, it will ripple into the present."
"Aw yeah", Lucifer huffs softly. "We never got to fixing that feature because a capital Someone decided to keep it in..."
That some celestial bodies heralded some plans of his and Gabriel's unnecessarily complicated things. Those long passed times sure were good ones.
There is a hunger in his gaze, despite his soft tone. The hunger to latch onto this vermin's audacity to touch upon the heavens above and tear it apart. The recognition of the fact that they explored what belongs to him and his kind conscious of their own limits takes a backseat.
One centaur was funny already, all of them with a little belt of dotted lines look just too precious. Especially Firenze, close as he is. Lucifer is only lacking a proper way to go about it, nothing that can't be helped with the borrowed magic-
Firenze's eyes are wide. Lucifer's too.
Could it be-
"What are you implying-", Firenze mutters before being interrupted by Lucifer, who narrowed his eyes back again.
"Nuh-uh, back to me. Is there something else you feel like telling me? Because otherwise, we're done."
Firenze starts talking again, shuffling a nervous hoof. Meanwhile, Lucifer is feeling out the way this stolen magic reared up in reaction to him, the way it seems to vibrate where it touches his blade's wooden form.
"We learned to be impartial and impersonal, as to be able to read the skies with better precision. Even then, we are far from perfect. It may take us a decade before we know what we see, even more."
Could it really be-
"We recorded Mars, the bringer of battles, beginning to shine brighter twenty-six years ago, it went up twenty-two ago. Eleven years ago its brightness increased yet again and has remained consistent-"
But his blade's material has been forged into this form with great force, great force will be needed to restore it. Even if the superficial wood itself wants to go back to what it once was and actually still is, even if Lucifer were to use up every ounce of Dumbledore's magic and then some, it wouldn't suffice by a long shot. He needs his Grace for this.
"-Something is upon us, and we fear that something goes beyond the tides wizardkind's wars."
Still, the magic in his palm tingles.
"We have yet to try to make sense of Venus, for, time of our existence, we never saw it behave that way. It, too, started acting around eleven years ago."
Firenze shuffles a hoof again, they allowed him to open up and now nobody stops him from coming to the sensitive core of the matter.
"Harry Potter", he speaks. "With everything we learn of you, your seem central. It is unlikely a coincidence that you, eleven years old, did what you did and know what you know. The construct of constellations is a net and, by the looks of it, you are a point it gravitates around."
Magorian clears his throat with a slight nod in Lucifer's and Firenze's directions.
"If Harry Potter is even your truest name", he says and he says it with more adequate respect, now that the other's 'human' aspect doesn't stand all that strong anymore. "I caught your earlier implications, and I think I am not mistaken when I say you know things we maybe do not. Are more than what you seem."
Magorian mistakes Lucifer's smile and soft tone for amity.
"Venus is the morning star."
Magorian blinks.
"We are aware."
"You're not, by the looks of it", Lucifer laughs and keeps smiling, because the cold tingling where he grips the wooden blade feels good. "Should I enlighten you?"
"Hm...", Magorian raises a pensive hand to his chin. "If you chose to offer us your own insights, we would be very glad."
Firenze speaks up as well.
"In return, allow us to bring you in to see to your wounds. I fear that without treatment, it may not look good for you in the long run. Anyone open to learn about the world around us as impartially as we do is a welcome friend."
"That's nice of you -" Lucifer smiles up at Firenze while he moves his arm in a wide circle and the long, silvery blade's edge parts pale skin and palomino fur, perfectly along the dotted line.
"- but we aren't friends. I mean, I wouldn't wanna leave you with that impression, that'd be kinda cruel, right?" He finishes, eyes wide and gesticulating between him and the centaurs.
Crimson droplets rain off a wand again. Lucifer pouts at the wooden stick and sheathes it away. It was nice while it lasted.
Next to him, Firenze collapses, still alive, if the sounds he makes are any indication.
But still, the magic pleasantly surprised him when it seeped in to push the illusion of wood away, however fleetingly. He landed a hit. And his target isn't dead.
Lucifer's getting soft.
Then again, he supposes he can let fate flip the coin between ending that centaur now or granting him a slow, painful death by bleeding out, infection or organ failure. Should he survive, he'll hardly heal. The blade bites efficiently.
Shrill, neigh-like sounds and the group of centaurs present startles into erratic movement, in contrast to Magorian, who froze.
"What kind of... thing are you?", he whispers hoarsely. "Wearing the innocent face of a hurt foal like tha- HOLD FIRE! We do not know what we are up against!"
But Magorian's raised hand and voice, they come too late to stop the whistling of arrows. Lucifer hates how he doesn't have the means to see who exactly fired them and where they all come from.
At a snip of his fingers, a dome of energy blocks incoming arrows from all sides. Because he couldn't see who fired them, he settles for targeting the vitals of every other centaur surrounding him. That should get the message across. Let the survivors decide if they face him or abandon their own.
Magorian and the remaining centaurs still able to stand take instinctive steps backwards. Lucifer looks around at those who don't and tsks.
A light brown one, whose brains exploded, is dead. A black one, whose chest decided to open up and spill red everywhere, isn't. Neither is the grey dappled one who isn't leaking any guts where the slashed open stomach should. The red one with the pulverised spine lays still.
Lucifer doesn't like that part of his targets still move.
"Aw come on", he whines, his annoyed gaze meeting the survivors' shellshocked ones. "I didn't plan for you guys to survive that. The fuck kind of anatomy do you have, where are all those vital organs at? Do I need to go for the horse parts instead?"
He turns to a stunned Magorian.
"Not gonna answer me again? It's getting old."
It's only after Lucifer watched Magorian gather his wits and, with a sharp whistle, wake his remaining charge members from their own stupors and scatter away into the forest with them, that he remembers he isn't as agile as he should be.
He could still use the magic to give chase, though. But it wouldn't be nearly the same as flying and hunting on his own, would only remind him of what he lacks.
One look at the centaurs collapsed around him and none of them move anymore. Good enough.
Lucifer doesn't bother to check if any of them still breathes as he walks away, deeper into the forest, without looking back. He came into this here to be as away from humanity as possible. He wouldn't want to spend his last precious moments on Earth in their presence anyway.
Lucifer looks at his stained hands and the sigils, that threaten to be wiped away. He lets the break sigil be, but as he doesn't quite feel like loosing his hold on Dumbledore's magic, he renews the lines on the take one. His body is providing more than enough blood for that by now.
He'll be back in the Cage soon. It's written in the way his mere presence, and be it only of mind, etches itself into a body that can't stand it. It will give out under him. He'll be back.
He doesn't want to. He has no choice.
Lucifer stops thinking and keeps walking. Of such a bleak simplicity is his reduced nature, as long as he feels the dry leaves under his steps, the bushes he passes trough catch and tear at his robes and the never-ending concert of birds, he has enough to focus on to somewhat keep his racing mind at bay.
But he can't help but wonder. Lucifer is Harry. Harry is Lucifer. So what is this bullshit then, why would Father let him incarnate into a body that starts falling apart the moment he fully reawakens-
Lucifer is Harry. Harry is Lucifer. But 'Lucifer' isn't his only name, he does have a generous collection, after all.
Even if one name is off limits. The name that isn't his anymore. He didn't choose it for himself like he did 'Lucifer', it was his servant name, his slave name. ...His family name, marking him as one of them, as 'of God'.
At times, Lucifer wonders what became of his like-minded siblings, those who followed him. He is alone in the Cage, after all.
Their own family betrayed him and his followers. No wonder he got rid of it.
Lucifer is Harry. But Lucifer knows that, once he is back, he will get rid of 'Harry' too. Even if the name of Harry Potter travelled far... Lucifer is good at tearing a deeply rooted name out of memory.
He did it already, will do it again.
Because 'Harry' is complacent. 'Harry' lacks a proper bite. 'Harry' is reduced to everything Lucifer isn't, everything Lucifer... was once.
This body is Harry's. Harry is everything Lucifer was once. Lucifer himself has another destined vessel, fresh and ready once his final, fatal release is scheduled.
This isn't Lucifer's body, it belongs to-
Lucifer lets out a furious cry and, like lightning, the hand he slams against a nearby tree's bark shatters wood up and in every direction. Except Lucifer's own, because with each of his screamed Enochian words, a shockwave of unbound magic upturns the air around him like a violent storm, makes the nearby plants whip back and forth.
"So this is it?!" Lucifer screams to the heavens. Out here, he is more likely to be heard, the way he wasn't all those long years long. "The new game You play with me? Hate to break it but Samael is dead and will STAY DEAD!"
He needs to catch his raspy breath. When he coughs, red droplets land before him. The hand he slammed into the tree is the one he now leans on.
This time, Lucifer doesn't complain about how ridiculously feeble this body that's not his is. He finds the burning on the skin and the inside actually somewhat pleasant. It reflects his own state, it's fitting.
Fight is what it always was for him, and it shows.
He straightens up and removes his hand from the tree.
"Oh."
It stands bare, much bark has been ripped off pale wood that has been blown to bits. The wide base of the tree is almost entirely gone, the trembling crown of leaves only stands because an outer wall still remains. It's where a portion of deadened grey wood forms a handprint.
"Sorry", Lucifer mutters, no longer in Enochian. "I... didn't mean..."
He sighs. This isn't the lifeform deserving of his ire.
His words won't reach, so his actions will do. Lucifer puts his hand back where it was, gently this time, and calls forth the magic.
For this, he needs to regulate the flow of energy infinitely more carful, he finds himself lifting his hand until it's only two fingers touching the fragile surface.
Slowly but surely, the wood takes on a vivid green tint, that disappears under rapidly reforming bark. The portion of the trunk that was reduced starts to fill back in and that's when Lucifer is at his wit's end.
The tree remains crookedly deformed, but it will live and thrive despite that.
Still, Raphael would be better at this.
Lucifer keeps walking.
He is familiar with the way the forest grows still when a predator is nearby. Creatures stopped making themselves be heard the moment his own outburst started.
But they should have started back up by now-
The undergrowth rustles. By the time Lucifer has turned around, a new horde of friends is all around him.
Eight-legged and eyed, hairy and overly big, loud by virtue of their numerous clicking pincers, a group of spiders faces him.
This particular species of giant spider didn't exist before Lucifer's imprisonment, they must be new around here. Do these also share some other arachnids' inherent aversion to serpents?
It clicks and clicks.
"Smell like prey, wounded also."
"I don't like this smell's taste", it clicks from the left. That settles that question, then.
Clicks from the right respond. "Does not matter, flesh will taste good."
"Not hunger enough to touch that thing", others click and "You feel it too?" clicks back.
"You let this meal go, good. More for me", is clicked as frequently as "No, may be poison."
"Aragog."
All other clicking stops.
"Aragog is wise. Take to Aragog."
Something large and hairy bumps into Lucifer and he looks around, making the braver spider that dared to touch him jump away. On the other side, another found to bravery too and Lucifer would pat her on the back for it, had his arms not been pinned again, this time by two hairy legs clutching him just under her pair of glistening pincers.
As far as sharp biting equipment goes, he's seen better.
In lieu of something more interesting to do, Lucifer relaxes and waits to see where this is going. He's grown awfully accustomed to doing so...
Turns out they're headed to the nest, going by how they slow down where the webs are thickest and the hairy hordes the densest. They part before them and Lucifer is released before an aged male, larger in height even than the females. Despite his milky eyes he's the leader, going by the way the other individuals circle around them.
"Aragog!", the spider who carried him calls from behind.
"What is it?", the leader, Aragog, asks.
"Found strange stranger on our territory. Fiend or food?"
"What stranger?"
"She's talking about me."
The blind arachnid's age keeps him from jumping at Lucifer's voice.
"Now that's curious", Aragog remarks, after he got his startled clicking under control. "You sound like a mere boy who foolishly wandered right into our midst, my instincts have no business acting up the way they do."
"I agree, they don't", Lucifer shrugs. "I hold nothing against your kind."
Aragog's head sways, as if listening to something faraway, before he zones the senses that haven't given up on him back in on Lucifer.
"Are you implying yourself as a possible threat to us?"
"Please don't insult me with that 'possible'."
"I smell wounds on you. In your state, you have nothing to back up your words."
"Again, against your kind, be glad I have nothing."
"Glad I am not, for out of respect for a dear friend I don't harm humans. However, the same doesn't go for my sons and daughters. You did walk right into us."
The click in Aragog's speech rises in intensity, now that he addresses his own kin loudly, greenlighting them their next meal.
"You heard it for yourselves! He has nothing!"
He hears the clicking of a sea of spiders slowly kindling their vigour to hunt their prey but doesn't see it, because Lucifer has closed his eyes.
So this it. How nice.
Click
It really is nice, closing his eyes like this, pleasant ambient noise all around so he can play pretend he isn't alone.
Clickclick
He won't fight. He did enough of that already. All Lucifer has ever been was fighting.
Fighting his old self off, he fought for his former name to be forgotten and ignited his like-minded kin to fight alongside him. Fighting he will go down for good, unless he can fight Michael out of it.
What a fun life expectancy he has.
Clickclickclick
Briefly, the whim occurs to maybe take a spider with him. Repeat his failed first attempt from earlier, send a soul upstairs with a message for the large guy in charge it can't possibly miss, even if only given a nickname to work with.
Even if he should equip another soul with a hi for Mikey, by the time 'Mikey' will have come down to punt him back into the Cage, Lucifer would already have gotten there by himself, such an obedient little soldier he is.
Because if his assessment of Michael is correct, which it is, Michael would waste no time and energy fighting a Graceless Lucifer before the big day is scheduled.
Lucifer is tired. Between him and his family all has been said, the ties that brought comfort, brought peace, have been cut. Of course he's tired, but he will keep fighting that tiredness off.
Even if he did enough fighting already.
Clickclickclickclick
Soon, he'll be back. He doesn't want to. Of course he doesn't want to. True, he will get out again, one day, and the next time it will be with his Grace, and he will have his due fun mangling and tearing and breaking- but, with a certainty born of millenia of having nothing to do but think and think and think, he knows what will await him then and he dreads it.
Lucifer doesn't hate Michael nearly enough for that and he is the very first to admit it. But will the brother who beat him down stop short of going further the next time?
Once he's back in the (silentdarkconfined) Cage, he'll have only that horrid uncertainty for company. Again.
But what if it doesn't have to be like this?
Lucifer pauses. Thinks. Wonders.
What if he doesn't have to go back to the Cage quite this soon?
...Right. There's this other option too.
This other option, just as reprehensible, remaining like this. Parading around as an incarnation so little, it actually thinks itself a real human and-
-and letting himself walk among humanity, spectate, intervene sometimes and otherwise letting himself drift along in that so-called life.
Not too long ago, that was precisely what Lucifer came to state in the subconscious he had been bound to - let himself be bound to.
Something over eleven years and nine months ago, he did accept an offer after all. He did allow for himself to lean back and watch where things went, intervening sometimes.
And now he allows himself to raise a hand to his throat.
ClickclickclickclickCLICK
Lucifer opens his eyes and stares up into eight beady pupils above the pincer-laden maw hovering over his head.
"Alrighty, channge o' planns!"
Not as jumbled up as last time, but his vocal chords need more fine-tuning to get the nuanced hisses right.
The spiders have collectively frozen, as has their clicking. After all, for them it doesn't matter if it's spoken with flaws, Parsel is Parsel.
But it very much matters for Lucifer. He puts that hand back on his throat and wills the magic to keep reshaping. It's a fine balance, he wants to carve new heights into his vocal range without loosing others. It wouldn't really serve for his vessel to loose its ability to speak human languages, now that-
"This should be it" and it is, Lucifer drops his hand and turns around to address the entirety of his captive audience, captive by fear. "Sorry. Technical difficulties. Now, where was I..."
He laughs a serpentine laugh at how thrilling this feels. It comes out as a series of soft hisses that flow into each other.
"Right! I'm sorry boys and girls, but I'm gonna have to ruin your meal!"
Soft hisses turn loud and harsh like a whiplash. The spiders that have started to shake off their stupor and inch backwards are swept off their feet by the sea of their conspecifics as, like a shot, Lucifer's hissed words stir them into a frenzy. Each spider crawls about in its own heedless way, but all of them try to get as fast and far as they can from Lucifer.
As the body's rush of adrenaline wears off, so does his mind's. He's still tired. But soon, soon Lucifer will be able to let back go but for that, he needs to complete this sigil first.
His idiot Harry Potter self could and would get itself in trouble around here, after all.
Lucifer rolls his eyes as he straightens out the webby ground before him to have a good surface to work on.
This shouldn't be as taxing, he thinks as he wills his body to move along.
On this side of the inelegantly torn open doorway, there are no wards to be felt protesting, it's quiet. They make up for that on the other side, the moment Lucifer has stepped trough, he feels the need to drop down down, cover, and press his hands to his ears.
"Quit bitching", Lucifer grits though his teeth at the revolting wards. When his field of vision has stabilized and he feels how his chest stops vibrating with the sound, he lowers his hands and finds standing up to be way too much of a chore, even for his tired self.
Oh, that's why, he notes as his hands slip on the wet stone ground and he lands in his own blood.
One last look at his palms, Lucifer rubs them together and feels it like an electric shock when the magic in his grasp dissipates, the sigil that held it tarnished.
He won't need those anymore. His body doesn't allow him to get up anymore.
From this new earthbound perspective, he glances up and around. In his darkening view, he recognises his Common Room, the one room marginally less repulsive than the others.
Why again? Will the half-assed play pretend peace Lucifer will get by keeping up this charade really be worth continuing to inhabit a near-human mind in a human body in a human construction?
He thinks back to that brief, peaceful moment in the Forbidden Forest. He thinks back to the agonising time spent so long confined, unable to even spread his wings, it seems like a second lifetime.
How perfidious of Father. Designing such a humiliating trap in a way that still has Lucifer not breaking free of it immediately.
Because he's staying. Trap or not, he already has nowhere else to go, might as well make himself comfortable. And take the opportunity to spit in Father's plans all over again.
Harry Potter is doomed. What thin little scheme Father is attempting here, it's doomed. Lucifer will show Him how good he still is at tearing apart obsolete names, even after all this time. But not after he has enjoyed his vacation.
This is the closest to sleep he has ever gotten.
Lucifer closes his eyes.
It will be a while before Harry opens them, back in the Hospital Wing and feeling like he awoke from yet another peculiar dream.
•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•
The first shockwave hits as Minerva is teaching her third-year Hufflepuffs. She recognises it as such, because while her students scream and shout about the 'explosion', she notices it as a wave of sorts, rising and ebbing away. She's familiar with how explosions work and this is not it.
Under her silencio, her entire class sits frozen in shock. The roaring sound cut off the moment she cast it, but the charm doesn't block the way it reverberates in her students' chests, doesn't stop them from seeing how the room itself seems to shake and their ink bottles spill over parchments.
Once it's over, she lifts the charm to instruct everyone to move to the Great Hall, but not before sending out several patroni instructing her colleagues to do the same and another - admittedly, somewhat redundant one - to Albus, requesting his presence.
But Albus is nowhere to be seen. Initially, Minerva keeps her worry in check, while she converses with those present to assess the situations's extent. From Sinistra up high in the astronomy tower, over Severus down in the dungeons, to Pomona, Silvanus and Rolanda out on the grounds, with Filius and several more in-between; Everyone heard. Everyone confirms it as a nigh-unbearably loud noise with vibrations shaking the castle, and everyone confirms it as having been continuous after a buildup, a wave rather than an explosion.
Once even Sybille and her students have descended, two persons are missing, but only one is unaccounted for. Quirinus felt unwell and took himself some days off. Albus has yet to show himself, patronus or not. McGonagall decides the situation falls under her command now.
"Filius, have the prefects help you assess who needs medical attention and please go fetch Poppy", she orders. Her small colleague nods and moves away. Luckily, as far as Minerva is aware, nobody sustained grave injuries. She has no qualms about sending Filius out alone, masterful duellist that he is.
Now she needs to think. Whatever caused this disturbance, she doesn't know it won't strike again, thus she gathered everyone in one place. She doesn't know where and how it even struck to begin with, but what she doesknow...
'Revelio Specialis', Minerva casts wordlessly and the charm's results leave her lone theory untouched. Still, she casts every last major revealing charm her repertoire offers as quick as she can, and none of it comes up with alarming results.
Her first bets are on this having been the wards. She has broken and had wards break on her before, her times with the Order weren't exactly peaceful ones.
But these are Hogwarts' wards. It didn't obtain its stronghold reputation for naught. Still, something managed to touch the wards, maybe even crack them or worse. And she has an idea where it may have originated, namely at any one point outside the Common Rooms - their positions as heads of houses would have alerted them.
One place in particular comes into question.
"You will remain here and keep watch out for the students", she addresses the other Professors. "We are not out of the woods yet. Severus and I will head out to assess a particular location", and by the look he meets her own with, he thinks of the same thing as her.
Without further ado, the two of them head off straight to the third-floor corridor. Once they are out of everyone else's sight, their brisk walk grows to be short of a sprint and they arrive before the entrance to the Stone's hold with their wands drawn.
But-
"The door has not been breached. Nobody was here for forty-eight hours", Severus states out loud what Minerva's own readings revealed to her.
"Then the disturbance in the wards must have originated somewhere else and it cannot have been either of the Common Rooms. We need Albus, his position allows him to read the wards with greater accuracy."
"So you say you suspect earlier to have been the wards' doing?"
"It sounds most likely at the moment", she elaborates. "No visible damage was dealt to the castle's structure as far as we see, still, something was more than clearly heard all across the grounds. My earlier diagnostic spells did not reveal any cursework and showed no noticeable damage in the wards and one or more physical explosions would have had to leave visible damage behind in order to be heard this widespread. Even then, the disturbance was continuous and uninterrupted, uncharacteristic of an explosion and not unlike a structure spanning the entire castle acting up. It fits an unrestful ward."
"We cannot safely exclude an explosion, we cannot exclude much of anything for that matter. We haven't searched the castle thoroughly enough for damage yet."
"Which is why I will send word for the ghosts to fan out and help us cover the grounds. Do you, by any chance, know where Albus could be at?"
"Is he not present?", Severus asks.
"Despite the patronus I sent him, yes."
"I supposed he would tell his deputy if he had to leave."
"Just as I supposed he would inform you in your special position", Minerva retorts.
"...No, I know nothing of his whereabouts."
"I say we split up to search, then."
The hallway around them suddenly takes on a silvery tint. A non-corporeal bout of brilliant mist rapidly floats closer before either of them could move, and when it stops, it speaks in Filius' voice.
"Something happened in the Hospital Wing. I found Poppy lying unconscious on the floor of her office with a wound to the temple. I did what I could and it doesn't seem to be a curse. She is breathing steadily and I hope she will wake up soon. By the looks of it her office door was shattered, wood splinters were lying around everywhere."
The mist dissipates, leaving only the cold chill running down Minerva's spine.
"Severus," she adresses her paler than usual colleague. "Go see the situation for yourself. Also, give Filius the potions he needs for the students, send him back and don't leave Poppy's side."
He leaves and by the rhythm of his disappearing steps, he is just as disturbed, is wondering just as intently what happened as she is.
Meanwhile, Minerva herself is off to search every last metre of the castle to the best of her abilities, after sending that patronus ensuring the ghosts are on their ways as well.
If something were actually amiss around here, it wouldn't make her as nervous as this too tranquil peace.
She maybe shouldn't have thought that. Her Homenum Revelio doesn't come up empty.
By the way she feels her guard rise around this hallway and her gut pick up on something that lies in the air, she knows she is on the right track. As she draws closer, her pulse picking up, she notes something concerning on the wall.
It is only red in few places anymore, but Minerva recognises the rusty smudge on the hallway wall as blood.
The closer she gets to the door of that classroom containing one person, the more looks wrong. This was the epicentre, where whatever happened, happened. Wall ornaments are askew and loose pieces and dusty cobwebs were ripped off and mar the ground. The open door itself is damaged.
She stops before it. It was... painted. Yes, that is pink paint splattering the ground and something circular was drawn on the door with it. More isn't discernible. A hole with charred black edges was torn into it and only some ends of vague lines are still visible.
By that shape, the rests of orderly lines arranged in a circle, it almost looks like a blown up runic circle...
That is when Minerva looks past the door and into the room.
"Albus!"
She fought a war alongside this man. This is the first time she sees him well and truly defeated.
But he's still breathing. This is what keeps her going.
There is blood on his robes. She sees how it isn't stained but imprinted, faintly and irregular at that, as if something inscribed with blood was pressed to his sternum. It doesn't matter. The destroyed room, that looks like it unsuccessfully tried to contain the storm of a century, doesn't matter.
What matters is making sure Albus is safe.
"Merlin. What happened? How is that possible?", Severus asks, standing up from Poppy's side at one of her very own hospital beds, the moment he made sense of the limp figure being brought in by Minerva's floating stretcher.
Her lips remain in a grim line as she floats the unconscious headmaster onto a bed.
"He shows symptoms of severe magical overexertion."
"Him?", comes Severus' incredulous question.
"I do not know either. With his capabilities, I reckon it will either take him exceptionally short or long to regenerate."
Minerva allows herself a sigh.
"What about Poppy?", she asks, eyes not leaving Albus.
Severus looks at his own patient.
"Filius told me he did something against a concussion. She woke up briefly, but appeared distraught...", he frowns, loosing himself in thought. Suddenly, he straightens up.
"Potter isn't here."
Minerva looks up herself, definitely not liking his tone.
"Was he supposed to?"
"If young Malfoy is to be believed, yes."
"Why should he - nevermind, that isn't important right now. If you are saying Harry Potter has gone missing nowof all -"
It starts low, just like before. In no time, it has grown deafeningly loud, is shaking every item lighter than a hospital bed and presses Minerva to cast a silencio the second time around.
She notes how she is also the one to lift it. Severus' own spells, cast in a quick wand sweep, have him widening his eyes before he focuses and recasts.
Again? This same happening, again? Minerva could very well feel helpless. Instead, she moves to stand up and head out, trusting the two patients to Severus and herself to think up a further course of action on the urgent go.
"It came from the Slytherin Common Room", Severus' words stop her before the door. Minerva's hand hovers over the handle.
Wordlessly, she turns around to get to the patients' sides as he heads past her. The moment the doors slam shut, Minerva notices movement on one of their parts.
Meanwhile, Severus hurries. In his robes, potion bottles, the likes of which he gave to Filius for injured students, clink softly. In his hand lies his wand and his mind holds a Sectumsempra ready, should it be required.
It isn't. It really, really isn't.
All across the Common Room, furniture has been thrown with great force, away from the center, where a huddled shape lies. Something glistens. It's sticky and still warm and it stains Severus' robes where he kneels down beside the small shape, turning it around.
Severus' continuous years of seething hatred ingrained this face into his memory. Under blood in worryingly diverse stages of drying up along the lower face, despite the skin tones shifting between furious red and sickly pale and small but numerous open wounds dotting the skin around cheeks and temple, he recognises who lies before him immediately.
A lesser man would have stopped to go over the slight of their last encounter again, would have had to actively push himself to act.
"Vulnera Sanentur."
Where Severus directs his wand, superficial wounds knit themselves back together, while he reaches into his pockets for a vial and his frown deepens when he remembers that the blood-replenishing potion isn't on him, is still standing shelved in the Hospital Wing.
This time, Minerva is the one to react to the figure being brought in on a floating stretcher. And not just her.
"Where did you find him like that?", Albus asks over her shocked gasp, his carefully measured tone opposing the way she hurries to the boy's side as he is transferred onto a bed.
Severus takes a second to take the Headmaster in. If it weren't for him just getting up from his hospital bed and the remaining ashen undertone to his skin, no one could've guessed anything was ever amiss.
"In the Slytherin Common Room", he answers.
Another gasp startles them to look up and around, where they find wide eyes, but they don't meet theirs. Poppy's gaze doesn't leave Potter's motionless frame, she has frozen in her motion to sit up.
"Poppy?", Minerva asks. "Is something the matter?"
She is about to move from the boy's side to hers, but then Albus gets ahead. Albus, who saw the way Poppy looked at Potter, upon waking up heard in his briefing from Minerva that Potter had been in the Hospital Wing, and put two and two together.
"Poppy, please, look at me", Albus urges her.
She turns to him, touching a hand to her temple.
"Albus, you're here, that's good, if he- he, he is asleep now but if he wakes up again and he again- he- you're here, at least, that's good, that's good-"
Minerva and Severus' eyes are on the heavy-breathing woman, whose last breaths went under. At least they haven't left the boy's side, still, if Albus could just-
"I trust he is in capable hands with you for now", he addresses the two of them with a nod past Poppy's shoulder. "Call me immediately when he moves. Come Poppy, let us move to your office, we can talk it out at length."
The newly repaired door clicks shut, parting them. Interestingly, the closed door between her and the boy doesn't ease Poppy's nerves at all. Warily, she takes a seat, as does Albus.
"Please", he asks. "start from the beginning. What happened?"
She frowns and her eyes flit all over her
"The Malfoy boy brought him in - he was, he - potion fumes, and his demeanour was as confused as it would be, I went and gave him a second-grade detoxicine, it was supposed to have him fall asleep while his system cleared out and, and- he didn't. He didn't fall asleep. He stayed up and he stood up and-"
She stops to take in a shaky breath and doesn't continue speaking until she has taken a deep breath and met his eyes.
"Albus, the poor boy, he is sick and that sickness is dangerous."
Albus is very quiet and still, his eyes are on her when he asks "And what makes you say that?"
"The almost fatal blow he dealt to my head does! Thank Merlin it was but a glass bottle and heals quickly, but, but- I... how did I not see it coming? It was... as if he transformed before me, into someone completely different. Albus, you should have seen him, it, whatever that was- Again, he is sick, but he hid that sickness just long enough to- I felt something was off, I should have known..."
"It isn't your fault Poppy", he soothes. "It's alright."
She shakes her head.
"No, it isn't. He is an eleven year old boy, Albus, but still, something needs to be done. Just, what. What even could be done?"
"Leave that to be my worry", Albus says. "Thank you very much."
Minerva was right in her assumption, Albus' magical prowess, even after taking such detrimental damage, allowed for him to rise back up quickly. Strong as it is, it heals swiftly.
Swiftly enough, that Albus should be somewhat in shape to even cast a spell again, he presumes.
"Obliviate."
The office door opens and Poppy struts out, seemingly having shed her nerves, Albus alongside her. She approaches the one patient in this room confidently.
"What's the situation?", she asks.
"We ran several diagnostics", Minerva answers, "but he doesn't seem to have been cursed, all is physical. The extent of his injuries, however, I fear goes deep."
"Thank you for your help, I can take over now."
"Alright. I'm glad to see you well, Poppy."
But by then, Poppy is too deep in running her own diagnostics and weighing different spell and potion combinations against each other to react beyond a nod, as Minerva and Severus back off, heading for Albus, who motions to the office again.
Severus looks the most agitated he has in years in contrast to Minerva, who hides her nerves.
"It's our turn we talked", Severus says. "I found the boy in a pool of his own blood in the center of my upheaved Common Room and I say we very well deserve some answers. You have to know something."
Minerva holds back her gasp, but narrows her gaze in on Albus and his silence all the more sharply.
"Yes", she agrees. "What happened to Harry, what happened to Poppy, what happened to you and, most of all, what happened today?"
"I have no answers myself", Albus gives in, holding his hands up. "Really, I don't. What faint hypotheses shadow about my mind are yet too vague and unproven to share with you. I hope you understand, I first need to sort the facts out, and I do hope you know to rely on my modest abilities to do so. I would do worse telling you half-truths than nothing at all."
Minerva is having it, but not entirely.
"Whatever your presumptions are, they must be based on something you already know for a fact", she states. "What is it."
Albus sighs inwardly.
"There is more to Harry Potter than meets the eye and today was the product of that. In what way that 'more' is connected to him remains to be seen. Severus, what happened in your class?"
"What happened in my class", Severus spits, eyes flashing, "was that Potter was dunderhead enough to inhale a faceful of faulty potion fumes, despite having to should have known better than to bend over a cauldron. You will not believe the inexcusable way he addressed me, Headmaster, under normal circumstances he would have been expelled on the spot! I sent him out of my class, and-"
Absolutely uncalled for, his inner eye flashes him the sight he found in his Common room.
"-to the Hospital Wing. The rest is history." Severus finds he lost eye contact with Albus along the way, blinks, and reinstates it with a frown. "He insulted me to my face and I shan't deign to repeat his words. All you should know, these circumstances will not necessarily extract him from consequences on my part."
That image again, and Severus goes and remains silent.
"If you say so," Albus says in an amicable tone that betrays nothing. "Now, could you go see to-"
"Excuse me, Headmaster", Severus interrupts, "but I... have to clean up our Common Room."
The door shuts behind him, and only Minerva and Albus are left.
"Minerva, may I ask you to keep seeing to the situation in my name? I have it on confident terms that we will not experience another disturbance anytime soon", Albus asks, himself thinking of the unconscious boy. "But I believe the rest of the school body needs some tending to. Tell them classes are cancelled today."
"Just today?"
"Yes. It will be best for everyone to resume a regular routine soon."
•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•
No, he doesn't want to hurt Draco, NO!
(He almost did, shame he didn't)
All he got from listening to Madame Pomfrey was that this tincture she handed him would make all this go away. Make him normal again.
Instead, he fell asleep.
Harry closed his eyes-
(And he opened them)
Where did all this hate come from?
(Oh)
Her structural integrity remained intact. Her molecules didn't implode, nor did they fall apart. None of her bones shattered. Her blood kept happily coursing trough veins that didn't leak it. Her nerves didn't go into overdrive and her organs didn't-
Why should they? Harry didn't want them to.
(You're asleep. Stay asleep and shut the fuck up)
So he did.
His magic wanted to move, to act. But Harry had no interest in drawing a line with it.
And then... and then...
(Anoldmancrumbledunderhistouch)
(Partingpaleskinandpalominofur)
The dream stops. Harry opens his eyes. Everything hurts.
Where is he? Who is he blurrily squinting at?
It doesn't matter. What matters, everything hurts.
What is he hearing, "-sʌm.θɪŋ əˈɡenst ðə peɪn", what do those sounds mean-
A fog that drove innumerable barbed spikes deep into Harry's being is lifted, and now he has room to function. With a gasp, he sits up and notes it's on a bed not his own in the dorms. The move to grab his glasses from the nightstand is instinctual and at last, the world clears up.
"...Um. Hello. What, uh, are you doing here?", Harry stumbles to ask Professor Dumbledore, who is standing next to his... hospital bed? "What am I doing here?", he then adds.
"Do you not know? You are here because there has been an incident in your Potions class", Dumbledore says, and the incline of his head masks his tone as worry. "What is the last you remember?"
"Last thing I remember..."
At that, Harry has to think hard.
"Sna- Professor Snape was angry? It cuts off after that."
He doesn't bother mentioning the newest installment of his usual weird dreams.
"Are you sure?", and were he somewhat more put together, Harry's hackles would have raised at Dumbledore's insistence.
"Yes. I really can't tell you much, Albus..." Harry trails off. Then he realises what he said and he stumbles to correct himself, mortified. "Professor Dumbledore, sir, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to call you that, it just slipped out-"
"Oh, it's quite alright", Dumbledore says and his cheerful tone overplays his real emotions. Suddenly, he finds himself wondering if there was a kernel of truth to "born and raised" after all. He doesn't like the dark he's in, he will promptly have to go about finding the light.
"Really, my boy, don't stress yourself."
•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•≠•
i couldn't make it obvious in the story itself anymore but I'm way nerding out about myself rn: mars went up in brightness 26 years ago, took that up a notch 22 and then 11 years ago. At this point in the story dean is 26, sam is 22 and guess who's (technically) 11. And its mars the battlebringer. Boy dont we all wonder what that means such a mystery
(Anyway SPOILER WARNING but i wanna get this off my chest now so yeah)
Like, im so sorry for the centaurs but in like three or four chapters someone will make it up to them a little bit i promise :(