Story: [Great-aunt Eva]
Summary: Some people should probably never be allowed to raise a baby. But blood is blood, and magic is finicky. Thankfully, in this case "some people" has a very responsible maid.
Crossover: (Negima) / (Harry Potter)
Genre: Humor
XXX
Albus had set up the blood-wards around Privet Drive on a number of assumptions. Mainly that Harry Potter would be present in the same house as the blood-relatives of his mother.
Unfortunately, he'd missed out on two things.
Thing number one was that he didn't really have a clue how blood-magic worked. He had a lot of theory, but no experience. He could predict what it could do just about as well as the average two-year old could predict the infinite weather patterns of a decade's worth of seasons.
Thing number two was that he'd never really bothered to dig especially deep into the family history of Lily Potter nee Evans.
Combined, these two things turned his many schemes on their head.
Lily and Petunia had never been blood-related. And the blood-wards were designed to 'give Harry Potter to his nearest blood-relative on his mother's side'. Had Petunia been that relation, she would've opened the door to find a healthy child on her doorstep, no matter her actual inclination towards opening said door on that particular day.
As it was, when Petunia Dursley just so happened to open the door, there wasn't hide nor hair of a tiny baby boy that should've been there. Not that she particularly noticed, as she hadn't expected to find one there.
No, Harry Potter ended up somewhere quite different as the blood-wards strained themselves to their utmost limit in order to find someone who was a blood-relative on Harry's mother's side.
You see, there weren't any. Lily Evans had no living relatives. At all.
But the blood-wards had a mission, and they wouldn't be stopped just because of such minor trivialities.
No, they reached further and further back amongst Lily's ancestry, thinning themselves out more and more as they desperately searched for anyone who fit the criteria of having a smidgeon of Lily Evans' blood in their veins.
Halfway across the world, a girl who was definitely not a morning person, did something extremely out of character – since she generally had a servant to do it for her – and opened the door to her house.
Harry Potter woke up to the voice of his closest blood-relative yelping in shock at the sight of him.
Things got even worse for Albus's plans from there.
XXX
Of course she'd tried to figure out how he'd ended up on her doorstep, but beyond the lingering traces of blood-magic and a letter that clearly wasn't addressed to her, there weren't any clues at all.
Sure, she supposed she could try and trace the letter back to whoever should've received it, except it wasn't actually addressed to anyone other than someone's sister. And it was signed with what looked like a whole bunch of initials. In fact, the only clue in the letter was that it was in English, and that it named the child 'Harry Potter'.
So, basically, what she was saying was that the clue was completely goddamn worthless.
Grumbling to herself, Eva left the infant with Chachamaru, not really wanting to even consider dealing with it.
In hindsight, she should've just stepped on the bundle of baby really hard when it was still on her doorstep and saved herself the trouble.
Then again, Chachamaru would've probably figured out what she'd done and been upset about it.
Eva made a disgusted face. It was so difficult to find proper help these days.
XXX
Eva pinched her eyes closed and did her very best to force the smell out of her mind from behind her sleeve.
She hated that brat. She didn't want blood-relatives. She didn't want to deal with a baby. She didn't want to be forced to avoid killing the source of her recent annoyance simply due to the potential reactions of those surrounding her.
In fact, she really really wanted to kill it. She couldn't even classify 'it' as belonging to a gender. It was too mindbogglingly revolting. Not just the smell – though that was horrifically bad, especially as someone had apparently decided that the damn thing should be inside of her house – but also the way which people acted around it.
Speaking softly, speaking nicely, and turning their already orally retarded vocabulary into something even further down the ladder of incomprehensibly stupid gibberish.
Then there was the way that people around her reacted to Eva herself in response to the infant's sudden appearance.
If she head another one of those mentally deficient brats comment on her being a 'mother', she'd slit someone's throat. No, she'd rip it out. With her teeth. Or her fingers, she wasn't picky. She just wanted to make sure whoever commented on it would be far too dead for there to be even the remotest of risks that they might at some point further contaminate the – already moronic humanity's – gene-pool.
But then there were all of those continued arguments of how she should be 'more loving' to the infant that had ended upon her doorstep on a ridiculous fluke of pure chance.
She didn't even like children, so why the hell should she have to somehow play a part in raising the damn thing? Couldn't she just drown it in a river somewhere? People still did that, right?
Besides that, she was an Evil Mage, why would anyone with even the smallest smidgeon of sense consider her to be in any way a good person to take care of a child? Sure, she could just foist it off entirely on Chachamaru – who actually seemed to like the annoying thing for some bizarre reason – but that still meant that she had to share her house with the thing.
The thing that smelled like a ripe dung-heap, slept as consistently as an insomniac, and cried like a train-whistle.
She was sincerely considering tossing the thing through a window and just dealing with the fallout that she was sure to incur from the rest of Mahora for attacking something that couldn't defend itself at all.
The only reason that she hadn't already done so was related to the potential for her maid to get upset with her about it. Though how the gynoid would manage that without having a proper emotional spectrum installed on her hard-drive, Eva wasn't entirely sure.
Growling softly, Eva turned on her heel and slammed the door to the rest of the house shut.
The thing started crying. Loudly.
"Chachamaru, get it to shut up!" Eva roared at the closed door, before turning back to her bedroom in hopes of finding something to distract herself with. All the while fuming at being imprisoned in her own home in this way.
Damn them all. She'd find some way to get them all back for this.
She swore it.
XXX
Harry Potter was talented with magic.
He wasn't a genius, but his caretaker – which was Chachamaru, because Eva had never really warmed up to him, even after he'd grown old enough to not wake her by crying, or stink up her cottage with the contents of his diaper – was unable to keep a close enough eye on him to stop him from reading through Eva's library of magic. And Eva had been unable to bring enough violent force against him to stop him from continuing to do it.
Had he been Negi, he would've become actually capable of giving Rakan a hard time in a fight, but as it was he could be classified as 'barely competent'.
But as he wasn't the resident child-genius, and instead was indeed himself, his entire repertoire of spells was entirely designed around the concept of 'I'm pretty sure this would piss off Eva if I learned it'.
The little bastard could be spiteful like that.
So – instead of reaching Negi's level of ability, or standing even the remotest of chances against the Ala Alba and their friendly spars – Harry could pretty much return fire, hurt-for-hurt, for just about anything that Eva threw at him.
She had responded to this indignity by doing her very best to make his life a living hell. But that didn't really change their original relationship at all, so nobody actually noticed that.
In fact, the only reason that the cottage hadn't been completely destroyed within the first week of Harry learning magic, was that Chachamaru would've been upset about it. And both combatants had at least one good reason for avoiding upsetting the softhearted gynoid.
Eva's reason had been that one should always avoid pissing off the help, if only because they could easily make your life a living hell should they simply have a desire to do so, and Chachamaru was – despite Eva's reoccurring annoyance at her – her maid. And Harry's reason was that she was quite possibly the closest thing he had to a mother, and he didn't want to make her upset.
Chachamaru had wielded that influence to its utmost in order to keep both of the two extremely incompatibly spiteful people from causing too much collateral damage whenever they decided to cause trouble for each other.
Most of Eva's classmates had long since given up trying to figure out the two blood-relatives' relationship. They'd done so in no small part simply because Harry was nearly as sadistically inclined as Eva when it came to holding a grudge, and that neither of the two ever enjoyed their relationship being a source of conversation.
They were blood-relatives, but that seemed to just add to the general disdain that they held for each other. Their personalities were similar on many things, but that just made them fiercely incompatible. And they would gleefully go out of their way to make each other's lives difficult, but there was absolutely none of the sexual tension that Eva's relationships usually displayed when she found someone she enjoyed making miserable.
Eva's classmates had after careful deliberation – and the slowly dawning realization that Harry had been perfectly honest when he'd told them that he'd "rather fuck a cactus" than form a pactio with the girl – that this unfortunately meant that Eva was still technically in the running for trying to become 'Mrs Springfield'.
The realization had led to Ala Alba holding a ceremony of mourning. They had way too many romantic rivals as was, without being forced to accept that they weren't able to foist off some of their more dangerous ones on anyone else available.
XXX
"Didn't you already graduate?" Chachamaru queried as she confirmed that yes she had indeed recorded such a moment in her memory-banks.
Harry made a noise of confused agreement, still staring at the strange letter. "I think this is parchment. Who uses parchment?"
Eva was halfway into saying something insulting – just to make sure she filled her quota of insults before returning to some of her newly released games – when something rang a tiny little bell in her own memory.
"What was the name of the school again?" Eva turned her full attention towards the one she usually ignored at the breakfast table – since his disgusting ability to not already be dead, kept putting her off her appetite.
"... Hogwarts." Harry read again after locating the name on the letter, though he looked quite distasteful of the mental capabilities of whoever would've come up with such a name.
Eva felt her lips curl into an absolutely gleefully sadistic grin. "Oh. I get it now. You're a wizard."
Harry turned towards her with the most deadpan expression he could muster, visibly not walking into the conversational trap of insulting her intelligence for only figuring that out nearly half-a-decade after he'd learned his first spell.
"Master?" Chachamaru however was much kinder to Eva's desire to be properly gleeful, in all likelihood because she was also curious about what had prompted her words.
Harry had however long since stopped putting any weight whatsoever on Eva's opinion of anything. He was much too comfortable in his safely ensconced bubble of general hatred of all that she stood for, to risk that in order to satisfy his curiosity in a single conversation.
Why, some days, he managed to not even register her as anything but an unusually disgusting bit of furniture.
Eva however, was too far gone in her glee to properly respond to the maid's question. In fact, she might not even have registered the question through all of the very loud cackling that was filling the room.
Harry responded to this assault on his ears by punching her in the throat.
She totally had it coming.
XXX
"Potter, Harry."
Murmurs scattered across the Great Hall as the other students craned their neck in the hopes of getting a better glimpse of the Boy-Who-Lived.
He had a black eye, a split lip, bandages peeking out underneath the collar of his robe, and a wad of paper in his nose. He also walked with a limp.
Minerva kept a very careful eye on the black-haired boy. She knew that Albus had left him with his muggle relatives all those years ago, but when there had been no complications in him responding to his letter, she'd put his home-situation out of her mind as her simply overreacting.
So why in the world did the boy look as if he'd just recently been in a street-fight? Especially since his clothes looked immaculate enough in comparison to ensure that he most certainly hadn't been fighting anyone on the train-ride there.
Still, this was neither the time or place to wonder about that, so she placed the Sorting Hat on his head, and waited for the Hat to finish.
"GRYFFINDOR!" Came almost immediately, and with a slightly pleased feeling, Minerva lifted the Hat from the boy's head.
As he wandered off to join his new housemates, Minerva pretended to not notice the celebrations of her cubs. The boy was famous, let them take a bit of extra happiness from that.
XXX
Harry Potter had no ambition, he wasn't exactly fond of hard work, and saw no need to learn things that weren't useful. He just enjoyed making Eva miserable. And would gleefully strive to do so by any means possible.
His greatest trait was his determined defiance of a very specific 'authority figure' in his life, who just so happened to be his oldest living relative. And was capable of wiping out small armies with a flick of her hand.
There had never really been any doubt for the Hat over where the young Potter would end up.
XXX
Albus frowned heavily.
Everything had been going fine, even if young Mr Potter wasn't nearly as cowed as he really ought to have been by his earlier childhood, and then there had been that encounter with Peeves.
Yes, that had been where it had started.
Peeves the poltergeist had attempted to play a prank on the young Potter, and the boy had responded with-... Actually, Albus wasn't entirely sure what the boy had done in response to the prank, but Peeves was being impossibly well-mannered for a manifestation of chaos, and even most of the castle ghosts seemed extremely wary of Mr Potter as a result of whatever he'd done.
The theory however, was that the boy had responded with violence. Violence that had somehow managed to actually hurt the poltergeist. Which really ought to have been impossible. But, then again, magic was magic, and Albus had after some investigation decided to not try and force any answer from the boy.
It'd be detrimental to his plans if Albus was seen in anything but a positive light this early on.
But yes, it was with Peeves that it had started.
The boy's classmates had been a lot more capable of pressing for information on how exactly he'd accomplished his feat, and that was how the rumors had started.
Harry Potter's great-aunt was a violent old hag, Harry Potter's great-aunt could survive having her head cut off, Harry Potter's great-aunt was a sadist, Harry Potter's great-aunt was a Dark Lady, and Harry Potter had been trying to kill his own great-aunt for years.
Albus wasn't sure how the boy could've encountered a 'great-aunt' when he'd been dropped off on the doorstep to his aunt's house, but that wasn't nearly as important as the idea that the Boy-Who-Lived had grown up in a magical household.
Then there was this continued insistence in the rumors that Harry Potter had actually confirmed that his great-aunt was a Dark Lady, and that they'd get into magical duels all the time.
That couldn't possibly be right. The only Dark Lord in existence today was Voldemort, and even he was merely a specter. And really, as if he wouldn't have been informed if there'd ever been reoccurring moments of underage-magic in the muggle world. He was generally informed of every case of underage-magic in the muggle world, regardless of if it was reoccurring, or insignificant.
No, apparently young Mr Potter was a braggart and a liar. That was probably a bad thing, especially since it made it all the more difficult to figure out exactly how he'd managed to scare Peeves into proper behavior.
XXX
"Harry!" A young man with red hair waved cheerfully at the Boy-Who-Lived.
"Ah, Negi-sensei?" Harry blinked up at the man from his breakfast, looking a bit surprised to see him. "Why are you-?" He trailed off, not entirely sure how to explain his confusion the best.
The young man blushed slightly, rubbing the back of his head, embarrassed. "Well, when Master told us that she'd 'exiled you forever more so that you may never darken her footstep again', we decided to check in on you. Just to be sure."
Harry's eye twitched. "Really?" He asked, something dark and foreboding in his voice.
Negi looked somewhat apologetic as he nodded. "Chachamaru-san told us that you'd merely been invited to a boarding school in Britain."
Harry raised an eyebrow at him. "So what, you're here to see that I'm still breathing? Didn't I send you guys a letter?"
"You mean this one?" Negi held up a piece of parchment, cleared his throat and then read out loud. "'It was itching powder all along, you wrinkly old hag'."
Harry's expression slipped into a gleeful grin. "Did she scream?"
Negi frowned at him. "She blew down a wall."
Harry cackled with glee, sounding disturbingly similar to a certain vampire as he completely lost control of his joy at Eva's suffering.
XXX
Albus hadn't been pleased to hear that a man of unknown origin had managed to bypass Hogwarts' many defenses in order to talk to the Boy-Who-Lived.
Especially once he'd heard of the content of said conversation.
Apparently, Mr Potter's great-aunt was the young man's master. And whilst that could be referring to an apprentice-master relationship, Albus thought that it sounded awfully consistent with the rumors of said great-aunt being a Dark Lady.
As for the content of the letter that the Boy-Who-Lived had apparently sent them, Albus wasn't entirely sure. It sounded like a prank, and perhaps it was perfectly benign, but there was just something unsettlingly sadistic about the boy's expression as he heard of how she'd reacted to his message.
The more he thought about it, the less Harry Potter seemed to be the hero that Albus needed him to be.
XXX
Harry Potter's presence at Hogwarts was one of many mysteries.
Where had he been? Why did he have such a strange accent? Why did he cackle maniacally sometimes when he got letters? Why did he even cackle manically at all? Why was Peeves scared of him? How had he managed to sneak into the Restricted Section of the library within the first week of classes? How did he manage to sneak back into the Restricted Section seemingly at his own leisure? And why in the world was his magic so weird?
In most classes, the boy was below average. In fact, the only classes where he didn't were the ones where he could make use of his knowledge of insane amounts of peculiar trivia about vampires, undead, ghosts, and sentient machinery.
Why the Boy-Who-Lived was so unconcerned about Dark Magic or Dark Creatures in general-... well, apparently it could all be traced back to the fact that he'd been trying to kill his great-aunt for years.
This wasn't exactly reassuring news to the populace of Hogwarts, which considered the idea of Harry Potter somehow being connected to the Dark Arts in any way or form, to be terribly wrong in all kinds of different ways.
Something which the boy in question seemed wholly oblivious to, as he continued to delve into the Restricted Sections many clues about immortality and the ways with which to counteract them.
In fact, he was so wholly dedicated to his peculiar research that he'd on several occasions forgotten to attend dinner, or classes, or breakfast, or lunch. Which had resulted in him receiving quite a large number of docked points, and detentions, which in turn had served to somewhat isolate him from his peers.
Frustratingly enough for most of the professors paying attention to him however, it didn't seem much as if the boy actually noticed that he didn't have any friends, as he was too caught up in books and cackling gleefully as he read his letters.
XXX
The first time that Harry potter received a howler, the Great Hall held its breath.
It then learnt quite a spectacularly large amount of new words. And at least four students – a First, Third, and Sixth Year – all broke down crying.
Finally, once the howler combusted as its message ended, Harry Potter started to cackle.
He then began making a howler of his own, instead of actually eating his breakfast.
The Great Hall learned even more words during the boy's gleefully articulated insults, and Harry earned himself detentions for the rest of the month.
XXX
XXX (Omakes) XXX
XXX
XXX (Christmas) XXX
"Will you be going home for Christmas?" Hermione asked the strange boy that was even more of an outcast than she was.
Harry paused, thinking this over for a long moment, before shrugging. "Probably not. Christmas in Japan is more related to 'lovers' than 'family'." He then made a slightly thoughtful face. "Then again, Negi-sensei would probably end up really busy anyway so-..." He shrugged again. "It really comes down to what Chachamaru-nee wants."
Hermione tilted her head. "Umm, this Chachamaru is dating the man who came to visit you?" She guessed.
Harry snorted a laugh. "Negi-sensei is dating everyone." He shook his head, making a slightly disgusted face. "Even the old hag."
Hermione stared at him, her mouth slowly dropping open. "What."
Harry opened his mouth, closed it, made a weird face, then simply shrugged. "Chachamaru-nee's old school-class is kind of really weird."
XXX
XXX (The Forbidden Forest) XXX
Harry blinked up at Hagrid. "Why would something hunt unicorns?"
"Dunno." Hagrid admitted with a slightly disgusted shake of his head. "Unicorn blood can keep a person from dying, but you can't really call that 'living' any more. Nasty stuff. Comes from hurting something so innocent."
Harry felt his eyes grow a little bit wider, but nodded resolutely. "Got it. Don't worry Hagrid, we'll get whatever it is that's doing this."
If Hagrid had caught the almost-gleeful sheen to Harry's eyes upon realizing that he'd finally be able to try out some of his more insanely specialized magical arsenal on something that was both susceptible to it and not a ridiculously overpowered undead mage, he might not have been nearly as inclined to grumble a solemn agreement to the First Year's 'innocent' reassurances.
XXX
Harry grinned manically at the thing-in-robes that was drinking unicorn-blood straight from the unicorn's flesh.
Then he finished the chant that he'd been mumbling to himself for most of the walk through the Forest.
Hagrid – who'd taken a different path upon splitting up – came rushing when what looked like a miniature sun suddenly blossomed amidst the trees. The subsequent screams of pain from something unimaginably foul certainly didn't make him lessen in his haste.
Because, Boy-Who-Lived or no, Harry was still his responsibility, and he'd be damned before he let him get hurt by whatever this newfangled thing in the Forest was.
Which was how he came skidding to a halt in a clearing with a gleefully cackling Harry Potter, a desperately crying Quirinus Quirrell, and the foully pained screaming of whatever-the-hell-it-was that was attached to Quirrell's head.
And an impossibly-healing unicorn.
Turns out, when you used a spell specifically designed to 'return the blood from whence it came' on a possessed human when they were bent over their victim and licking up their cursed blood, said curse was more than happy to use the spell's energy to bring its original host back to full health again. And even if the spell would've barely served to even weaken a true Nosferatu, something as inherently unstable as whatever-Quirrell-classified-as was horrifically outclassed by it.
Because the blood that was being 'returned' – with interest, thanks to the situation – was also the 'glue' that was holding Quirrell's body together. And now it was unraveling.
The whole spectacle was absolutely fantastic from where Harry was standing, but proved more than a bit unsettling from Hagrid's point of view.
Which was why the giant of a man didn't join him in his maniacal cackling.
His loss, really.
XXX
XXX (It runs in the family) XXX
Sirius blinked as Harry's face shifted into an absolutely sadistically gleeful grin.
"No." He breathed in horror as he stared at that all-too-familiar expression.
Hermione glanced over at the rapidly paling man. "Umm, why do you look like you've seen a ghost?"
"James promised me. He promised." Sirius whimpered quietly to himself. "He promised that Lily's personality wouldn't breed true."
Harry, who hadn't been any attention to his godfather's mental breakdown at all, chose that particular moment to begin cackling.
Sirius did his utmost best to shrink through the floor and disappear as far away from his Lily-like godson. And when the floor wouldn't be cooperative and disappear underneath him, he decided to try his luck by clawing his way through the nearest wall with his fingernails.
Hermione, who'd thought that Harry's insanity was simply a result of having been raised in an antagonistic relationship with a Dark Lady since he was in the cradle, was forced to realize the true horror of the situation. If Harry had inherited his personality from his mother, and said personality was something that he also had in common with a great-aunt, then wasn't it suddenly very likely that it was simply something that ran in the family? And wouldn't that mean that any child of his would also inherit that same madness for themselves?
And that was the moment when Hermione Granger swore silently to herself to never allow Harry Potter to get laid. Ever.
XXX
A/n: Because, let's face it, Eva being landed with some kid and deciding to mentor them? What kind of bizarro-world have you been paying attention to? She's the kind of person who will make your life a living hell over the tiniest of grudges, and you're forcing a always-needy child on her?
Motherly instincts in all their glory, but good god people, there are limits. And Eva will do whatever Eva decides to do, because trying to force her into something (especially after she's been subject to the loss of control that is her being trapped in Mahora) is pretty much a guaranteed way to make her do the exact opposite.