Tori Springfield

Summary: Harry gets raised by Negi Springfield as a little brother. Unknowing of his true name, Harry still gets called to Hogwarts.

Genre: Humor, Adventure

XXX

He should've been left at the doorstep to the home of his aunt. Instead, something nobody could've expected happened to Harry Potter. He got lucky.

Have you ever tried to drive a motorcycle whilst carrying a baby? It's a lot harder than one might originally assume.

This isn't because they're heavy, or extremely unwieldy, as much as it is the fact that driving a motorcycle demands a grip with both hands on the handlebar. Combine that with the need to cradle the small sentient creature in your arms, and you will most likely crash into a wall.

Now, even if its true that air-born magical motorcycles don't work in quite the same manner as their more mundane ground-bound cousins, they're still certainly not an ideal way of traveling with an infant.

An infant that for some insane reason decided that he wanted to struggle at right that moment.

Harry Potter would never develop a fear of heights. This wasn't because he was immensely brave, or completely in control as he fell like a rock through the air, but rather in large part related to him being an absolute idiot with little to no self-preservation instinct.

As his aunt Asuna would later claim, intelligence will only really get in the way of what idiocy can solve easily. Everyone called her bias when she said it, but nobody who'd met Rakan would even dream of arguing the point. Except Chisame, and that was mostly due to habit.

And so it was that in the middle of the night, a child fell from the heavens – and a half-giant sunk into depression as he would not be able to find the boy even after spending the next three days seeking for where he landed – only to be snapped up by a rather confused magician.

Negi Springfield had been having a rather normal day, he'd spent most of it running away from the girls who kept insisting that nobody ever bothered to check if the boy was legal, and that sex was perfectly okay for a fifteen year old.

He might be willing to admit their point, having read enough studies to say that it was hardly unheard of, but that didn't make him any more accepting of it. He'd managed to keep his virginity intact from his enthusiastic students for over five years already, and it had become somewhat ingrained in him to just leg it whenever one of them tried to strip him.

It was bad enough that he'd ended up kissing each and every one of them, and quite a few of them repeatedly, because he was damn well not going to get into trouble for going any further than that. He was a gentleman! Gentlemen weren't supposed to lose their virginity to more than a dozen girls throwing themselves at him on the day he turned thirteen – there'd been some insistence that it wasn't illegal if they'd hit their teens.

Still, though he might really not approve of being stripped at random times, he could admit that he'd accidentally done it to them enough times that they were probably even by now, and he loved them all dearly. Thus, his nightly flight on his staff wasn't due to one of the girls trying to sneak into his bed – this time – but rather because it felt like a nice night to enjoy the stars on.

Then a baby dropped into his lap.

Negi was understandably confused.

Still, he couldn't see anyone flying above him, and he couldn't imagine why anyone would be flying around with a baby in the first place, so Negi did the sensible thing and aimed his trusty staff homewards, hoping to get an opinion on this new and horribly confusing matter from one of his reliably idiotic advisors.

It would take him an hour to convince them it wasn't his kid and that he was still a virgin, it would take him another two to get the girls from cooing over the kid and actually give him some damn advice already.

After four hours, it was decided unanimously – Negi didn't get a vote, since the situation was too amusing to his former class for them to listen to his boring sensibility, which they felt they got enough of from Chisame, who they never bothered to listen to either – that they were going to raise him as their own, and teach him everything he needed to know.

Chisame felt a distinct shiver run down her back at the gleam in a few of the girls' eyes.

XXX

Five days later, the Ala Alba finally had a name for the child in their midst.

Tori Springfield was named after the one who'd brought him home, and the bird that he'd apparently been pretending to fly like. His many, many aunts would never let him live that down.

Thankfully for the child, he was young enough that he was tickling the girls' maternal instincts in a distinctly platonic way, as they'd gotten very good at stripping cute young boys from all their practice on Negi.

XXX

Negi sometimes wondered if he was extremely lucky, or if he was the most unlucky person on the face of both worlds. He loved his wives dearly, yes; he loved his adoptive little brother a lot too, yes; and they all loved him back in much the same way, yes.

The problem was that his wives were... well... not in singular. This was a problem, not because of any grammatical incorrectness, as much as it was because Negi had spent the last week catching what little sleep he could get in his office. Away from the bed at home. Far away from the bed at home. The bed that never allowed him to sleep. Ever.

He might be capable of going several days without sleep due to his transformation at the hands of the Magia Erebea, but that didn't mean that he could handle being physically... active, for a month straight, with thirteen different girls who all wanted a piece of him at the same time.

He prayed that Tori would never have to experience the madness that came from accidentally acquiring a harem, but unfortunately for his peace of mind the green-eyed boy had been sort of raised to mimic him.

Tori had managed to worm his way into the hearts of twelve different girls at his daycare center – including the matron – by the time he was five. And he hadn't gotten any better at avoiding it with time, despite how Negi had gone to rather extreme lengths to keep him out of the corrupting influence of Chamo.

Chisame claimed that Negi himself and his gentlemanly ways had been the corrupting influence, but she'd been smirking at him whilst she said it, so Negi wasn't sure if she'd been serious or not.

Regardless, Tori Springfield was growing up to be a charmer worthy of his family name, and Negi hoped that the boy would at the very least not inherit the Springfield-trouble-gene. Though, considering how the boy had been found angelically playing and hissing with poisonous snakes, Negi wasn't going to hold his breath.

Negi paused, sorting through the mail to find something rather peculiar.

A letter addressed to one 'Mr T Potter-Springfield'.

Negi frowned thoughtfully, trying to remember if he'd ever heard of anyone named 'Potter' and how they might be related to Tori.

It was also addressed straight to Tori's room.

That settled it. "Ala Alba! Tori inherited the trouble-gene!" He shouted for the assistance of his wives.

Both Tori and his snake friend were amused, chuckling together in a hissing sort of way.

XXX

It took them a day and a call to Headmaster Konoe to get an idea of what the letter actually meant, and to learn of the society slightly-to-the-right-of-normalcy hidden away with magic in Britain.

Negi was surprised at not having heard of them before, but was somewhat placated when he realized that they were considered to be so backwards that nobody really bothered with them anymore. Though, apparently they'd had quite a bit of bad things happening to their society in later years, even if Konoe couldn't find out exactly how or why.

Grumbling about lack of information, the Ala Alba had nonetheless set out on their search for the reclusive magicals, deciding that they'd managed to find the Thousand Master, and this couldn't possibly be that much harder, since at least now they knew where to look. They'd even found a rumor of how the Leaking Cauldron in London was an entryway somehow.

Of course, Tori came with them, since Negi wasn't a hypocrite – he'd faced more obvious dangers himself at the same age, and Tori had managed to survive for almost a minute against Eva, even if he did spend most of that time running away and hiding – and they wanted to find out exactly what this hideaway-wizards wanted with their youngest member.

XXX

Tori stared warily at the rundown pub named the Leaky Cauldron.

He'd managed to sneak off into rather dicey establishments previously – he got along rather well with both Rakan and Chamo, as long as girls weren't involved, because then those two would always start acting weird – but he'd really been expecting something a bit more... magical.

It wasn't hard to guess that Tori had originally belonged to the recluse society, which would answer both why they contacted him for 'magical schooling' and why they called him by a name that he'd never heard of before. The question really came down to whether or not Tori cared at all about where he came from.

He'd lived a happy life; chaotic though his aunts, his big brother, his super-idiot of a father – Nagi didn't visit regularly by a long shot, but he still dropped by from time to time – and his own odd brand of luck had seen to make it.

He was loved and he loved in return, and he never had to worry about becoming bored. Truly, he had the best of two worlds, and now this weird letter had shown up and he might be risking that happiness for something else.

Tori wasn't really looking forward to it, but Negi had spent so many years actively seeking for his own father, that he would feel... 'unworthy' of calling him a brother if he didn't at least see the place his biological parents had lived in for himself.

Asuna thought he was being an idiot. Then she grinned and patted him on the head, saying that at least he bathed regularly. Negi had proceeded to glare petulantly at her.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Tori nodded to the rest of those accompanying him, and made his way through the pub's door.

The inside was just as dirty as the outside, and it was all lit by candles for some idiotic reason, but it looked like they'd hit the jackpot, because everyone inside were dressed in robes, and a few of those present were rather obviously not human.

Evangeline started to chuckle darkly.

Everyone else wondered briefly why in the world they hadn't argued against letting her come, then Tori pulled on her sleeve with a pleading expression, and the fourth wife of his brother merely grumbled something about 'adorable idiots' and settled for pouting in place as the others moved forward to get information.

Tori smirked victoriously, knowing that whilst Negi was the one they all loved, he was the one they all let get away with things, and he was pretty sure that was way better.

"Excuse me," Negi asked the bartender who was staring curiously at their group. "might I ask where one might find some information about 'Hogwarts'?"

The bartender blinked, obviously startled. "You're a bit old to be a muggleborn." He stated bluntly, confusing all those present.

"Ah, well." Negi looked a bit thoughtful. "Actually, my little brother got a letter, recently..." He waved his hand towards Tori meaningfully.

"Oh?" The bartender craned his neck to get a look on the polite young man's brother, and found something he really hadn't expected to see.

Black, unruly hair, green emerald eyes, and casual-looking muggle clothes. The boy met his eyes with the assessing gaze of someone who's a lot more used to dealing with thugs than a child ought to be, before he tilted his head and his hair parted to reveal an unscathed forehead.

No scar at all, and yet he looked just like James, except for Lily's eyes.

It'd been a combination of Evangeline getting annoyed at it and Konoka getting determined about it, that had finally forced the scar into oozing black tar and disappearing. It'd taken them almost an entire day, Tori had been four at the time, and the scar had long since healed.

Of course, Tom the barman didn't know that, and simply wondered just how closely related this kid was to the Boy-Who-Lived if he managed to look that much like the boy's parents.

"Right, well, I'll show you through to Diagon Alley. It's just around the back." He motioned with his hand, before leading them away.

XXX

Tori wasn't sure what he felt about Diagon Alley. On the one hand, it seemed to be filled with crazy people in robes; on the other hand, it was definitely an experience.

Tori met a goblin for the first time, and wondered if they had family in Mundus Magicus, or if they'd all hidden away along with the rest of the crazies. It was a disturbing thought, that an entire species would hide themselves away from pretty much all contact, to the point where even people who were used to the bizarre thought of them as nothing but myth.

Still, it turned out that his biological parents had left him quite the sum of gold, meaning that they wouldn't have to exchange all that money to crazy-currency, which Tori thought was a good thing.

The robes were easy enough to get, as were most other things, even if the bottomless bags were somewhat startling. But then came the wand-maker and Tori began to honestly wonder if these people weren't actually insane cultists that had been sealed off by the rest of the world, rather than hiding themselves voluntarily.

Wands didn't choose squat. They were magical, they were used to channel magic, they could be cursed, and Tori was pretty sure that even if they were sentient by some obscure twist of fate, measuring the space between his nostrils wouldn't in any way aid the insane person's attempts at finding a wand that 'chose him'. It was all enough to make Tori start twitching a little, much to Chisame's vindictive amusement.

XXX

"Platform 9 ¾?" Tori stared at his ticket in disbelief.

Chisame was too busy gloating at not being the only one pissed off at the abnormality that was actually the world to particularly care anymore, Evangeline was vaguely amused, Negi was confused, Asuna was wondering why they would name it so stupidly, and Yue was frowning at not being able to find anything on it with her artifact.

Yue was very proud of her horribly-unfair-to-any-classified-information artifact, and being unable to pull information out of nowhere was almost enough to make her go on a crusade against the 'Wizarding World' in order to fix that.

Tori was just upset in general. Not only was he supposed to be going to a school out in the middle of nowhere for several years, he was supposed to spend it with people who must be fantastically crazy. And whilst Tori might not mind idiocy and insanity, there were limits to what he could accept before he began pondering on how to drown people and make it look like an accident.

He might be an elven years old, rather average student, but he was on good terms with Part-time Detective Yue, and he was pretty sure he could figure out how to circumvent her many ways of tracking people down. And if he could dodge Yue then he could dodge any law enforcement anywhere. The woman was terrifyingly good at what she did.

"Maybe it's hidden, like Diagon Alley was?" Nodoka guessed.

"Makes sense." Tori admitted with a sigh. "Damn, if this keeps up, I might snap and start killing people before the end of the first school year."

"I'm sure you'll be fine." Konoka patted him on the head, smiling comfortingly down at him.

"Oh, don't worry, they'd never find enough evidence to convict me." Tori smiled back at her.

Setsuna groaned. "Tori, please don't kill anyone at all." She pleaded. "And stop corrupting ojou-sama."

"It's 'Kono-chan' Set-chan." Konoka pouted at her lover. "And he isn't corrupting me at all." She sniffed haughtily.

"Yeah, she is much better at corrupting people than I am, Setsuna-sensei." Tori grinned at the woman who'd taught him to fight – everyone else were either too insane or too bad at holding back to really teach him anything when he was a kid.

Setsuna sighed and muttered something along the lines of "Don't I know it." before shooting him a fond smile and stepping into a halfway hug with Konoka.

They'd just made it to the platforms 9 and 10, and were considering the area for anything that might be related to ¾. Which didn't take long, as Evangeline pointed at a pillar and told them that Asuna wouldn't be able to enter it.

Thus, it was decided that Konoka, Setsuna, Asuna, Chachamaru, and Chisame would be staying back, whilst Evangeline, Yue, Nodoka, and Negi joined Tori on the other side in order to say goodbye.

Chachamaru and Chisame stayed back in large part due to electronics behaving erratically in the presence of the crazy people's peculiar brand of magic.

Not everyone were there, but then, Ayaka would most likely have tried to stalk him onto the train, and Tori had a serious suspicion that Chamo had hidden away inside of his trunk. He loved them all dearly, but they had other things to do, and he'd gotten fairly adjusted to not being swarmed by thirty girls who were all trying to hug the stuffing out of him. Marshmallow Hell indeed.

Wandering casually into what looked a lot like a solid wall, Tori found himself staring at the old steam engine painted in bright red, wondering briefly if everything in their culture was so far behind the times. Chisame would've been scandalized.

"Huh, nostalgic." Evangeline commented as she emerged to stand next to him. "Didn't think I'd see a train like that again."

Yue was paging through her artifact, trying to find anything on the train, and finally cried out in triumph.

"Hogwarts, a History." She exclaimed with a grin that reminded those present a lot more of Haruna then the bookworm's usual expression.

Nodoka smiled at her friend, patting her on the shoulder in acknowledgment of her abilities at finding things, as everyone ignored her. Not because they didn't care what she had to say, but rather because everyone knew that she'd get their attention very easily the moment she found something worth commenting on.

It didn't take them long to find Tori a compartment and stuff his trunk away, and soon he was leaning out of the window, saying his goodbyes to the rest of his family.

By the time the train finally sped away, Tori again found himself wondering at what would await him once he arrived.

XXX

A redheaded boy had passed by his apartment, but noticed his book and recoiled back into the corridor in a display of book-phobia that Tori honestly found rather impressive. Not even Asuna would react quite that violently to the presence of a book.

Then, sometime later, a boy came around asking for his toad. Tori tilted his head at the nervous-looking boy and decided that he should probably help him.

Scrying wasn't something he was good at, being more in aunt Anya's territory, but it shouldn't be that hard to locate a toad on a train, should it? All they had to do was follow the corridor in the general direction of where the scrying told him that Trevor the Toad was.

Neville, as he introduced himself, was impressed.

"My aunt works a lot with scrying." Tori explained with a shrug. "I'm not very good at it, but it should work for a general direction."

"Your aunt is magical?" Neville asked, obviously curious as to why he was wearing 'muggle-clothing' in that case.

"Yeah, most of them are." He admitted casually, before pausing. "Though they use a somewhat different kind of magic, I believe."

"Different how?" Neville continued their small-talk as they made their way down the train.

"Well, it involves chanting, for example." He started. "And then there's Setsuna-sensei's paper-spells. Which are really cool, but that I never managed to figure out. My big brother can use them though, even if only barely... damn geniuses being unfair." He wasn't bitter, it'd just become a reflex to growl casually over not having been born with a super-powered brain.

"Chanting? Paper?" Neville looked confused, and Tori got the feeling that he was probably rather nervous that there was going to be a test on things he'd never heard of before on their arrival.

"Like I said, different magic. Don't think it's taught at Hogwarts." He tried to placate the nervous boy who didn't at all sound like he was part of the crazy cult that had been locked away in obscurity by the rest of the world.

"I see." Neville looked relieved. "But how does it work?"

Tori blinked, tilting his head in thought as he tried to remember Setsuna's explanation. "You take a bit of paper, and you channel magic into it. Sort of." He finally admitted sheepishly. "I was busy trying to breathe at the time, didn't pay as much attention as I should've..."

"They tried to teach you magic before Hogwarts?" Neville sounded both fascinated and scandalized.

"Sure." He shrugged. "Like I said, it's a different kind of magic. My brother started learning when he was..." He tried to remember what he'd heard. "I think he was five. But he didn't really learn to do a lot until he was nine, when he started teaching."

"He taught when he was nine?" Neville gasped.

"Like I said, genius." Tori found a proud smile slip across his lips. "Still got his ass handed to him by Eva, no matter what he says – that sneeze was obviously a fluke – but she's on Rakan's level, so comparing anyone human to her is unreasonable." Let it not be said that Tori didn't enjoy picking fights with his brother when it was funny.

"Eva? Rakan? Human?" Neville was starting to get a little bit lost.

"Eva is another one of my aunts. Rakan is an idiot who believes that it's normal to come back from the dead as long as you feel like it. Not that he wouldn't be able to do it, the annoying bastard." He commented, absently recalling his meetings with the perverted old man. "And well, they're kind of ridiculously strong. There's no better way to explain it."

"Hahaha! That old man has good taste in women!" Came a perverted cackle from his pocket.

Tori hung his head with a sigh. "Hello uncle Chamo, weren't you forbidden from coming on pain of death?"

"Hah! Nee-chan will never stop me!" The perverted ermine declared as he scurried out of the pocket he'd hidden in and up to perch his shoulder. "I couldn't leave Aniki's little brother alone, could I? Besides, I'm sure there'll be tons of girls around, and I still need to teach you a few tricks!" He pulled out his signature cigar.

"I'm not entering pactios with anyone." Tori glared at the ermine. "I know better than to put myself in Negi's position."

"Pah! He's living the dream, Tori!" Chamo glared right back.

"Then why does he look like death warmed over?" He raised an eyebrow at what might easily be considered the cause for his brother's problems with females.

The ermine paused, considering this for a moment, before shrugging. "He needs to train his stamina more. Or get a lot more efficient with his fingers."

Thankfully for Neville's innocence, the boy didn't seem to understand what the furry little critter was insinuating. Unfortunately, Tori had spent enough time around Haruna to have a very good idea of it, meaning that he buried his reddening face in the palm of his hand and groaned at the image. "I did not need that image."

Perhaps a large part of the reason for Tori being against flirting with girls was that his personal 'the birds and the bees'-speech had been given to him when he was eight, by a drunk Rakan, a completely wasted Konoka, an enthusiastic Haruna, and a giggling Chamo. There'd been diagrams. Tori had spent the next three months with a never-ending blush. He'd also gotten drunk for the first time, which had pissed off quite a few of his aunts.

XXX

They found Neville's toad with a few Seventh Year Hufflepuff girls. They thought Tori being overly polite and apologetic about their interruption to be rather sweet, as Tori unconsciously channeled Negi's charm at them.

It wasn't his fault that he'd been raised as a gentleman. And if he'd actually known where his attitude would get him as far as women went, he would've been quite rude instead. He did not want to follow in his brother's footsteps into an accidental harem.

Neville tried to mimic Tori's polite speech, clearly deciding that Tori was a good role model for being nice to people. Neville was after all, raised to be a kind and gentle boy, politeness was only sensible. The girls thought this was rather cute when combined with his obvious shyness.

Tori didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, having gotten rather used to pretty older girls smiling at him. Negi's fault, really.

Chamo did his very best not to chuckle ominously as he imagined all of those potential pactios that he could trick the slightly naive young boy into. He also made a mental note to find some manner of recording equipment in order to convince the others back home that Tori had gotten himself wrapped up in a romance between several females, and that Chamo was perfectly innocent.

He was willing to resort to lies and misquotes if he had to, it just needed to look authentic.

XXX

"First Years! First Years over here!" A large man called out as they got off the train.

Following the curiously large man – he looked easily bigger than Rakan, which was a new level of bizarre – Neville and Tori found themselves at the edge of a lake. And above them loomed the mysterious outline of what could only be Hogwarts.

Tori grudgingly admitted to feeling impressed, Neville was awed, and Chamo thought that the effect was a bit too blatantly overdone.

Getting into one of the boats, together with a girl with really messy hair – she actually reminded Tori a little bit of Yue for some reason, despite how their expressions were virtually complete opposites – and another girl with red hair that kind of looked a little bit like aunt Anya. When said woman wasn't pissed off at something Negi had said.

It was rare to find moments where the fiery tsundere wasn't in some way focusing her attention on her former classmate.

Hermione Granger and Susan Bones were the names that the two boys were introduced with, and to which they graciously responded with their own. Neville Longbottom and Tori Springfield, respectively.

His letter might've been written out to some 'Potter-Springfield', but Springfield was the name that he'd always known, and there was no way that he was going to let the crazy people convince him otherwise.

The boat ride was done in nervous, but rather companionable silence.

Then they were left by the large man with a rather stern-looking older woman. Tori had a few peculiar flashbacks to Chisame yelling at him for doing 'impossible things', and 'growing up to becoming an enemy of women', but he shrugged them off.

She couldn't actually yell at him from across the globe without phone-lines... could she?

His eyes darting suspiciously from side-to-side at the thought, Tori finally admitted that he'd probably already be aware of it if the scary woman had found a way to rant at him, and managed to suppress his minor bout of paranoia.

Then people drifted in through the wall.

"Sayo-nee...?" He blinked, before shaking his head, blushing slightly as he realized he'd interrupted the ghosts conversation. "Ah, I'm sorry, it's the first time I've met any ghost that isn't Sayo-nee." He bowed apologetically.

"Oh? Not many have ghosts haunting their homes." A cheerful man-... ghost, said curiously.

"She haunts the school my big brother teaches at. She's really nice." He paused. "Kind of a scaredy-cat though." He admitted with a fond smile.

He might be polite, he might be kind, but he was a young boy with numerous big sisters to play with, and startling Sayo was usually entertaining. Even if he'd been given a stern talking-to by the ghost's unofficial guardian Asakura to make sure he didn't go too far.

"Indeed?" The cheerful ghost smiled at him, before politely excusing himself and disappearing with the other ghosts as McGonagall returned to the room.

Quite a few of the other magicals waiting to be Sorted stared curiously at him, him being one of the very rare few who hadn't been scared by the ghosts' entrance, and the only one who struck up conversation with them.

Then the Sorting Hat was carried out, and the old rag began to sing.

A part of Tori wondered what Eva and her 'daughters' might think of this unusual sentience in a piece of cloth, the rest of him wondered what the hell these 'founders' had been smoking to decide doing the Sorting in this manner. It sounded almost like it was telling them that you couldn't be both Loyal and Brave, or Ambitious and Friendly, or any other combination that should've been obviously present.

Negi was Brave, Intelligent, Loyal, and immensely Ambitious, and this Hat apparently didn't think that was possible which in turn made Tori rather antagonistic towards it. He loved all of his family, but he really only had one big brother.

Then: "Potter-Springfield, Tori."

Tori raised an eyebrow at that, the crazy people's lists might be acceptable if that was how his name came out on all of them. Stepping out amongst the confused whispers of the Great Hall, Tori reluctantly donned the hat.

"That's a very rude way to view us." A voice commented inside of his head.

Tori fought against the instinctive urge to rip the hat off and burn it with extreme prejudice. His mind was his, and anyone who messed around in there was going down hard.

"Whoa, Mr Potter. I don't think that's necessary, I will not reveal anything I might find in your head to anyone else. It's part of what I am." The voice paused. "Though I am admittedly curious to this magical training that you've received. It's quite unlike anything I've ever heard of."

Tori actively tried not to think of how that was just because they were some kind of backwards isolationist cult who didn't even try to understand what the hell the magic they relied on was.

"Yes. Quite rude, indeed. But I really should get onto Sorting you." The hat mused. "Clever, and with an ambition to prove yourself, you could do rather well in Slytherin, I believe. But you're loyal to your family, and not afraid of hard work, so Hufflepuff might not be a bad choice either. Intelligent, but a bit too confrontational for Ravenclaw I think. Much bravery, yes, perhaps Gryffindor is the House for you?"

Tori was feeling a bit annoyed, listening to the Hat, it sounded mostly amused by his general disgust at just about everything the Wizarding World had shown him so far. The mind-digging wasn't making it any better, and he had a distinct urge to stand in a shower for a very long time once this was all done with.

"You want to prove yourself capable of standing next to your family. A high ambition indeed, but more an issue of loyalty and hard work than something to be achieved through cunning. So, Hufflepuff or Gryffindor? The House of the Brave, or the house of the Loyal?" Tori got the feeling that the Hat was actually asking him for his opinion.

Tori's opinion was that there was no point in being Brave if you didn't have anyone to watch your back.

The Hat almost seemed to smile at that, proud for some utterly unfathomable reason. "I see. Then I suppose it ought to be... HUFFLEPUFF!"

Hurriedly removing the hat from his head, Tori fought down a shiver, before turning towards the table decked out in yellow, who was now applauding heartily at their new addition.

Crazy, the lot of them.

XXX

Tori met Susan Bones again at the table, and she introduced him to her childhood friend Hannah Abbot. Tori made sure to greet them both politely, and answered any questions about his name as well as he could.

His name had been Tori Springfield for as long as he could remember, until a letter calling him Mr Potter-Springfield showed up one morning. His family had been surprised, but here he was. No, he'd never heard of a 'Harry Potter', the Boy-Who-Lived, and he figured that 'Potter' was a common enough name that they might not be related at all. Yes, his family was magical, but not local, and used magic that didn't seem to be related to Hogwarts.

If he'd been Sorted into Ravenclaw, this would've either have gotten him lynched, or worshiped. Ravens tended to enjoy researching things, but sometimes they could become rather set in their ways. As it was, Hufflepuff latched onto something else entirely.

He had a ridiculous amount of aunts.

Though, technically, quite a few of those were his sisters-in-law, and the others were just very close friends of the family. Except maybe for Chachamaru, as she could be considered somewhere in between sister-in-law and niece-in-law, due to Evangeline – her sort-of-maybe-mother – being married to the same husband.

Not that Hufflepuff figured any of that out. They just guessed that Tori had a lot of big brothers, all of whom were rather unknowingly charming.

Then Tori introduced his 'uncle' Chamo, explaining that he was his brother's familiar, and that despite his looks he was really just a perverted old man that shouldn't be trusted not matter what. Chamo got upset at that, but his inherent fluffy cuteness proved no match for the suspicious looks that were being leveled at him from the females around the table.

Tori knew that he'd probably take the flak if Chamo ever reverted back into his old habits – that Asuna had managed to drill out of him through vicious use of violence – and so felt little guilt at all about ruining the ermine's plans to peep on girls, or steal their underwear and get away with it.

Then Dumbledore got up and told them about the 'new rule of the year' of not visiting a certain corridor, apparently punishable by death, making Tori again question if this was really a place that he wanted anything to do with.

Especially once some Hufflepuffs commented helpfully that whilst the Headmaster was a great wizard, he was also quite mad.

Tori didn't really mind powerful crazy people. He'd grown up within visiting-distance of Rakan, he knew crazy and powerful could be kind of hilarious to watch. But you didn't put Rakan in charge of anything, unless you were planning on accidentally causing enough collateral damage to wipe a small country off the map.

And this guy was in charge of everything? By Nagi's Idiocy, they were all doomed.

XXX

Tori wasn't impressed with his classes.

His teachers were obviously either incompetent or... more incompetent, and every last one of them followed along with the usual behavior for their 'cult'.

McGonagall was capable of a type of magic that Tori had admittedly never heard anything of previously, but that didn't mean she shouldn't be professional about teaching it. She insisted that keeping an 'image' of how an object ought to be was of vital importance, but didn't seem to understand what he'd been talking about when Tori had asked if he was supposed to imagine the composition of whatever he transformed it into, or if he ought to simply demand that it change. He'd even been labeled with extra homework for 'interrupting her class with snark', which led to Tori smiling politely and silently vowing horrible vengeance.

Binns didn't seem to have any idea of anything beyond 'goblin wars' which sounded a lot more like propaganda than anything actually useful, not even including how he managed to put every single student in the class asleep within the first ten minutes. It was horrible, especially as history had always been something of interest to Tori – not in any small part due to his brother and their family's reoccurring presence in it.

Quirrell was teaching them Defense, by telling them through his stutter how to give each other minor inconveniences – which to anyone who'd managed to run away from Eva for an entire minute before getting frozen was insanely useless.

Sinistra showed them the different constellations of stars – which Tori could admit to being of some importance as a basic for the 'muggleborn' students, or anyone else who hadn't spent their childhood stargazing – but then refused to say anything about what uses such knowledge could find in magic.

Flitwick explained that doing a charm wrongly could cause unexpected side-effects, but seemed confused when Tori had questioned him on exactly how these side-effects had been cataloged over the years. Because it's always useful to know what doing something wrong could cause in every particular case. He seemed rather intrigued by the idea though, so perhaps he was simply a victim of the insane cultists, and hadn't gotten around to researching things properly with all of his own teaching.

Sprout's class was in large part acceptable, though his curious question on breeding out the poisonous fangs of certain plants had been met with some scolding. Apparently the magic within them was either in dire need of the plants having poisonous fangs, or the idea of selective breeding was considered somehow taboo amongst the insane cultists.

And then came Snape.

Snape, who insulted him, belittled him, and tried to mock him at every possible opportunity.

The man didn't even teach the class anything. He told them to do exactly what the book told them, and refused to believe that there was either a better way of doing so, or that someone might want to figure out why certain plants reacted differently to a potion than others.

Somewhere during their first lesson, Tori snapped.

"Excuse me Professor." The black-haired boy raised his hand, with a carefully polite face. "But are you incompetent, or just a useless waste of human flesh?" He didn't pause, as Snape's face turned red in anger. "You expect us to perform what is basically, highly risky chemistry, without either safety precautions, or an idea of what could happen should we do things wrongly? No warnings to do 'so' if the potion appears 'so'? You expect us to figure it out ourselves, possibly risking our lives in the process?"

Tori sighed, shaking his head. "No, I believe I will not be 'learning' Potions from you, Professor. Good day." Then he walked out of the classroom.

What did he care about getting a complete education in a place filled with insane cultists? He just wanted to see the world of his parents, not be insulted and ridiculed for being a possible relation to 'Harry Potter'.

Thus, he didn't care that he'd managed to lose Hufflepuff House all of 150 points during the space of ten minutes. Then again, his classmates – and anyone present during his dramatic exit – were willing to swear that it had been worth the House Cup to see the look on Snape's face.

Tori had been willing to agree, but he'd apologized to his Housemates regardless. They weren't all insane cultists yet, so he should make sure to treat them all like normal people.

XXX

A/n: Normally, a Negima X-Over with Harry Potter being raised differently includes Harry growing up to be the second coming of Rakan. This story was aimed to focus more on how Harry would accidentally seduce most of Hogwarts, and maybe doing something a little cool at some point, if there was an absolute need for it, but not otherwise.

I got a bit distracted by having fun with classifying the Wizarding World as a bunch of insane cultists though, so I'm not sure how well I pulled it off.