October 19, 2007: Spelling and grammar and all that fun stuff.

original note: I think I'd be in worse shape if I'd gotten drunk last night.

Thankfully, there wasn't any alcohol at Silent Dragon's place, so we were perfectly fine. And now I'm really tired, because I had five hours worth of sleep.

The question of Split Personality versus two souls... will be answered in another chapter. I'll let you guys guess. As for Harry and Wolfos creeping me out... not really. Then again, I am writing it, so I already know why they both act that way :P

Norse Ancient Celtic language. It's mostly written in runes. I can read a bit of it without my handy-dandy translation book, but not a whole lot. Norse is also a religion, which makes sense since more of the runes are named for gods (Odin, Tyr, Frei, Loki, etc). Actually, that's how I got into Norse; the old legends and mythologies. I'm a HUGE mythology buff.

Blackened Sunrise
Chapter Five: Connections
The Itch

The sun had risen over an hour earlier by the time that Weapon finally sheathed the foot long dagger at his hip. His face was blank of all emotion, his cold steel eyes staring off into space as he considered life. Things, people, himself... everything had changed over the year that they had spent apart.

He didn't seem quite as... in sync with Ron and Hermione as he had before, and he pondered on the difference. It was rational, and more than feasible, that should friends spend twelve months apart that things would change between them. That was life; the only constant in the universe was change. Everything and everyone changed over time. A year ago, he would have felt at home, at ease with his two longtime friends.

Now, though... now he felt as though they were but children while he had grown into an adult. Had the training brought about this change? He didn't know for certain.

The warrior slipped off his left gauntlet, carefully ensuring that the blades that were tucked between metal and skin did not draw blood by accident. His arm felt strange without it's comforting presence; at one time, when he had first begun to wear it, it had felt strange. It had been heavy and uncomfortable, a weight that threw him off when he lifted his arms. Over time, however, it had become something of a second skin, and without the extra weight, or the rigidity of the metal, his arm felt flimsy and loose. He only ever took the gauntlets off to bathe.

Now, however, he had removed it in order to stare down at the simple tattoo nestled on the side of his wrist. There was a matching tattoo on his other hand, identical in all ways. Five triangles sat neatly together, barely an in diameter; all were a faded blue with a black line around them, and the patterned they formed marked him as a Living Weapon. One triangle was tipped on it's corner so that it's base lay adjacent to his fingers. The other four were arrayed around it as though they were claws extending from a paw.

He was not the only one to bare the marking, he knew. He had met one of the others before, but he couldn't her... them. Naginata, with her ice colored emotionless gaze, pale of skin and hair could send shivers down the spines of even the most vicious of men. She had once been a muggle, taken into the fold and changed beyond all belief. In fact, all of the others had once been muggles, taken in by an older class of the Living Weapons; an older, flawed version. Ones that were finally dying away. These older Weapons had experimented on the newest generation; after all, the process needed to be... perfected, did it not?

Naginata had been the perfect weapon. Not only had she been unable to express emotions, she had been unable to feel physical pain. There was nothing short of death that would stop her from pushing onwards with completing her goal. Unfortunately for her, death had been her end; she had died of blood loss from an unfelt wound not long after Weapon had met her. The gauntlets he wore had once been hers.

It was a way to honor the dead, he supposed, although he didn't truly feel anything of the sort. Honor, after all, was the way to be trapped into eternity.

Insanity was the way to freedom.

Therein lay the real reason behind why Weapon disliked his fellow Living Weapons so much. They were nothing but empty shells; no longer human they were simple creatures without thought. Somewhat like golems that way, only capable of doing what their masters had commanded them to do.

Weapon cracked a rueful grin as he swept his cloak up and around his shoulders, and his eyes began to brighten into Harry's familiar green. He had been well on the way to that himself, Harry thought with some amusement as he tugged the heavy gauntlet back into place, and once more hiding the marking that both damned and freed him. He began a quick jog to put some distance between himself and where Weapon had been practicing.

He would have been just like those shells, were his thoughts, had there not been one tiny little complication with his transformation into being one of the Livign Weapons. He had called out to the power of the weapons as a child, or so Daemen and he had assumed from their research; called out to it the night that his parents had died. He had used that tremendous power to defeat Voldemort, and then left Weapon dormant within himself for fourteen and a half years. It had taken Wolfos to pry the steel-eyed youth out of Potter's mind.

Daemen Wolfos was not a Living Weapon, though he had been friends with one since his own school days. At the insistence of his friend,Wolfos had taken the boy into his Workshop and coaxed Weapon out of the shadows. The price for the Living Weapon had been high, however; the host mind, Harry's mind, had been locked away in the back of Weapon's head for eight months. It had been a boring existence.

"Oh look, if it isn't Potty."

For a moment, Harry wondered if Malfoy thought up his insults on his own. If he didn't, he really needed to get a new writer.

Draco had never thought of his own gray gaze as unnerving until he had seen that oh-so-blank stare of Potter's the other day. It had sent shivers down his spine when it had been directed at him, however he had decided that he wasn't going to let some stupid little thing like Potter's color-changing eyes bother him. No sir. Still, he found himself breathing a small sigh of relief that he wasn't being faced with that strangely emotionless Harry James Potter.

"Hello Malfoy," Harry's response was surprisingly cheerful, not only to Draco himself, but to the rest of the students in the hall around him. Harry wasn't exactly sure when he had gotten to deep into the castle, but that was alright. He had just been on his way back to the Gryffindor Tower in order to snag a quick shower, not to mention his robes, when he had been sidetracked by the Malfoy heir. Everyone else around them was already headed down to get their breakfasts.

Harry continued on towards the tower, ignoring Malfoy's suddenly fierce gaze. Over his shoulder he called, "When did you want me to schedule your ass-kicking?"

He had honestly wanted to say 'death', but thought that not really the Gryffindor style. He wasn't about to let anyone find out that he was a Weapon just yet. Hell, of those that even knew of the Living Weapons, six were muggles and three were wizards. There was no one else. And so Harry refrained from using the answers that Wolfos had basically programmed into him, and smiled psychotically at the pale haired teenager.

"Ass-kicking?" scoffed Malfoy, "That's doubtful, Potter. I know more spells than you could ever possi--"

"Who said anything about spells?" the green eyed youth interrupted as he began to pace around Draco. The Slytherin felt himself freeze up, his gray eyes widening as he watched the Gryffindor's unnerving attitude. Harry clucked his tongue, hissing lowly, "I could kill you in a dozen different ways, you know, and not one of them use magic." He f;ashed his teeth in a disarming grin, those avada kedavra green eyes boring into his soul and seeing at that could be seen within. And then... he was gone.

Just... gone.

Malfoy, however, was shivering. A fine tremble, one so fine that only he noticed it, had run down his spine and taken control of his body. He had felt as though a hand had been clenched around his heart: Potter had said nothing about defeating him. No, the Golden Boy had only spoken of killing him, using soft words and body language, he had threatened the Slytherin Prince in an all too real way.

And suddenly, the sixteen year old son of Lucius Malfoy got the impression that he had pissed off the wrong person one too many times. Screw Voldemort, his Death Eaters and everything that came with it, Malfoy decided abruptly.

The thought of seeing those frighteningly bright eyes, glaring down at him, laying his soul bare before the world... it was ten times scarier now than even having to see those soulless gray eyes looking through him with frightening intensity. Draco did not want to have them turned on him in anger even for one more second. There had been a message held in those eyes. A message promising a death most painful.

For the moment that Draco did something to piss the Potter heir off one more time, he would be on the list of people who would die. He currently had a chance to survive this... this... this lethal sociopath that Dumbledore had brought into Hogwarts. He just needed to think about things, arrange things. There was much to be done.

Hermione had watched the confrontation from start to finish.

The sight of one Draco Lucius Malfoy, the generally accepted Head Prat of Hogwarts, staring off into nothingness with terrified eyes had been shocking. More shocking had been the fact that it had been Harry-- Harry!-- who had been the cause of that look. Hermione would have put money down on the thought that the only one who could have possibly cowed the arrogant Malfoy being You-Know-Who himself.

She stood there for a long time, confused and trying to piece together a puzzle that only grew exponentially with every piece.

Harry had vanished for a year.

He had changed, far more than she had estimated he would.

He gets way with calling Daemon Wolfos "Old Man".

He does whatever Wolfos tells him to do, without a single word of complaint.

Harry vanishes into thin air, regularly.

Wolfos vanishes into thing air, regularly.

She was beginning to see the connections. Wolfos must have been the one with whom Harry had been hiding away with for the past year. But why had he gone into hiding? Why did he always tell her that she had been "places" and "training"? How in the world had he managed to frighten Draco so badly?

She had asked a few of the students closer to the confrontation what had happened to Malfoy, but not one of them had been close enough to hear whatever it was that Harry had told the Slytherin. Had Professor Wolfos been teaching Harry intimidation tactics? But why would he? Harry didn't need intimidation for anything! In fact, all he needed to do was ask someone, anyone at all, and more than likely they would do it for him. They would love him for it, too-- imagine, the Great Harry Potter asking them to do something for him!-- so why would he need to learn how to strike fear into people?

What the bloody hell is going on here?!

"Hey, 'Mione, are you going to stand there all day, or do you wanna grab something to eat?"

She gave a rather undignified shriek, leaping into the air. When she had landed, she whirled about to face the target of all her confusing thoughts, panting and clutching at her chest. Once her heart rate went down, she smacked him lightly, "Oh Merlin! You scared me, Harry!"

"Sorry 'Mione," the response was given with a lopsided grin. He made a motion down the fall in front of them, waggling his eyebrows, "C'mon, if we don't hurry, everyone will get to eat, but Ron'll have our portions!"

With that happy thought as his warning, he grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her down the passage towards the Great Hall. His stomach rumbled loudly, and Granger let a bubble of laughter finally push away her thoughts and started going along with Harry. She would get to the bottom of this mystery later. For now, all she wanted to do was sit and talk with her friend.

End Chapter

original note: Draco may have seemed a bit... OOC in this chapter. That'll be explained later, maybe chapter six, maybe not. What can I say, he's my second favorite character (Remus is first).

October 19, 2007: And now that I've finished this chapter, I have some commissioned costumes to finish.