Heh, I figured I wouldn't get this up until today. Remember that party
I said I was going to on Sunday? Me and the Hostess were the only ones
not to get completely pissed. Why? Because the two of us had evil plans
to explain to the others what they did when drunk out of their minds.
One of the girls always said "SpongeBob" before a sentence, for some
reason. That was just plain weird.
koashura - Yeah, the friendship of Tom and Wolfos is a fun thing to
write. I'll probably do a oneshot of how they met at some point.
guess - That's the second time my characters have been compared to
characters from Gundam Wing. *pauses* Hmmm, never really thought of
Wolfos acting like J, probably because Harry is more like Duo on crack,
than Hiiro.
Temptress - Mwahahahahahahahaha, there are reasons Tom and Harry are so
similiar.
Harry Potter is still property of JK Rowling.
Bastardly Daemon Wolfos is The Itch's toy.
---
Blackened Sunrise
Chapter Thirty: Clarification
The Itch
---
Three days had passed. Three long, tiring days, and Draco still hadn't
awoken. Harry had not found the solution to the problem, and had
skipped out on his classes in order to try and figure out the puzzle of
the mysterious ailment. Hermione had come and gone, twice a day, in
order to retrace the counter runes, and while Harry knew she was
humming-and-hawing about his plans and what she could do to counter-act
them, he didn't really care.
He'd worry about that, following the Slytherin that was laid up in
their Secret Room coming too. At that point he'd start weaving truth
and half-truths about her to pull her firmly into his bases' camp. He
wasn't about to let the teenaged genius fall into their Albus or Tom's
hands. That would be far to dangerous-- she knew far to much about him,
Weapon, and everything that went on after hours.
She didn't have the potential to become a Living Weapon-- her life had
been comfortable excluding the adventures she'd gone on with him during
their first four years. What was needed to be able to truly become a
Living Weapon was years of hardship; Sirius had spent twelve years in
Azkaban. Draco had grown up in a loveless family, the heir to a
fortune, and utterly alone. Ginny was raised in the shadows of all six
of her brothers, and had problems making friends after that "incident"
in her first year. It didn't matter that no one knew she'd been the
Heir; what mattered was that she knew.
That knowledge had made her terrified of others, prevented her from
truly reaching out to them. A self-imposed exile, at eleven years of
age.
And Harry... he had become a Weapon in that instant that his parents
had been executed for standing against the Dark Lord. The moment that
he had been hit with the Killing Curse, and automatically reached for
the Power of the Living Weapon in order to save his own life. He had
been to young to be able to call upon the strife and harshness of life
needed to create the rift that gave access to the Power-- but he had
been, for a moment, connected to Voldemort.
And Tom Marvolo Riddle was a Living Weapon.
Almost a decade and a half later, he'd been approached, and this time,
he had his own, personal link to the Power. Yet still, he had a
connection to Voldemort's. That connection had been forgotten since his
own training in the use of the Power-- or, at least, Harry had
forgotten it. Weapon was still carefully monitoring it.
Weapon monitored everything. And in that instant, at four in the
morning of the fifth day of Malfoy's illness, Weapon felt a stirring
along the link. He turned his full attention to the link, trying to
discover what exactly it was that Riddle was attempting to do, while
Harry perused the Dark Arts books he'd duplicated. The spell he'd used
was hardly impossible to use-- most people just didn't know about it
because it was highly illegal.
Not to mention being in the books he'd swiped from the library that
second night of Draco's comatose state.
Curious about what could possibly catch Weapon's full attention, Harry
withdrew from his books, long enough to realize that he wasn't alone in
the room anymore. Oh, he'd subconsciously noticed the company, however,
his subconscious had labeled it as an ally, and bothered no further.
Sirius was back.
A joyful look crossed those insanity wrought features, and the dark
haired Weapon bounced over to his godfather, and wrapping him in a
tight hug, "Padfoot!"
"Hey Harry," Sirius looped one arm around Harry, wincing slightly as
his arm brushed his side. It had been broken during his mission to
Russia, and only a low-level healing spell had been used to set it and
speed healing. As it was, the bone was still fractured, but it was
hardly enough to worry about. It would heal fast enough.
Of course, Harry was rather observant of the older man, and pulled back
almost immediately, "What happened?"
"Ambushed," he settled back into a chair, "I don't know who the hell
these people were-- I've never seen anything like them. They weren't
Deatheaters, and they weren't Aurors, and they sure as shit weren't
Weapons."
"So, describe them," Harry commanded, revealing in the distraction the
conversation would provide. It always helped to go back to a problem
with a fresh mind, it was just that Harry hadn't found anything that
sufficiently distracted him. Thank the gods that Sirius had returned.
Sirius used his good arm to rub at the shaggy beard that covered his
chin, "About five, five and a half feet tall, all of them had spiky
white hair, tanned skin. They were like us-- part animal, part human--
but not like us. More animal I guess, instinct wise, I mean. I
recognized some of the more canine ones acting in ways that my
instincts tell me to act like when I'm Padfoot."
Throughout the description, Harry's face darkened, a scowl lighting his
features, and making his eyes seem to glow ominously, "I know what they
were."
"You do?" the older man wondered, a relieved smile crossing his lips,
"So they're some of Voldemort's goons?"
"Hardly."
"But... you said..."
It was about this point that Weapon generally took the reins of a
conversation, but he was still monitoring the link between himself and
the Dark Lord. Harry's emotions swept through him, swirling his school
robes and hair, and Sirius could literally _feel_ the Power flowing off
him. The counter-runes were doing wonders for freeing his power, and
this little demonstration only fueled it. Several weeks worth of work
was shaved off as the stretching of magical "muscles" shoved at the
bonds of rune-magic holding him. He would be free by early December.
"I know what they are," Harry repeated, "And I want to know why the Old
Fool would pull a stunt like this!"
"Professor Wolfos...?"
Harry stomped a foot, the shadows shivering with his actions as he
stormed around the room. Fury marked his features as he fumed,
subconsciously lashing out as he tried to understand the man that had
spent a year raising him.
"They're called the Reu," the teenager explained, "Created by fusing a
muggle and an animal together using dark arts. Daemen loved
experimenting and creating them for fun. They were his personal
servants, although I have seen a few around Riddle in my Dream-Visions.
What I want to know is why he had you ambushed."
"It could have been Voldemort, though, couldn't it?" Sirius didn't
really believe it, but then, he'd never really trusted his former
Potions Master. He was only searching for excuses because Harry seemed
rather shattered by the information he'd been given. Wolfos had meant a
lot to him.
Harry shook his head, eyes flicking to Draco, "To many coincidences."
"Mind explaining?" the dog-animagus questioned, "I haven't been here
for weeks!"
Harry began ticking off his fingers, "First, Draco falls ill. We can't
figure out what's wrong with him. Second, you're ambushed by a group of
Reu. Third, Wolfos has been pestering me to send one of my students to
the Creator of the Second Generation, so that his now dead bonded
Living Weapon can be replaced. Far to many coincidences."
"It could be just coincidence, though," interrupted another voice, and
the two men looked up to see Hermione and Virginia enter the room. It
had been Ginny who had spoken. The bushy-haired witch beside her shook
her head.
"You know as well as I do that coincidence never comes into play when
it's Harry Potter."
"All to true," Ginny murmured, "Welcome back, Sirius. Any luck on
finding out what's wrong with It?"
"Nothing," Harry grumbled, sulking as he sat himself down on top of
Draco's stomach. He was getting rather fed up on trying to wake up his
friend. He needed someone there to help balance out his insanity and
anger. As long as Malfoy was around, he had a relatively safe outlet
for such actions.
After all, they had been fighting for nearly the entire time they'd
known each other.
Hermione crossed her arms, "Did you try Merlin's Runes?"
"His Damned Squiggles were the first thing I checked, 'Mione. No such
luck. All I know is it's a Dark Magic Spell."
"Wonderful," the genius rubbed her forehead, "This was just what we
needed. Professor Wolfos wants to rid himself of some students, Malfoy
is ill, Ron is getting suspicious, Snape is being a right proper git,
and life just _sucks_!"
"Wow," whistled Virginia, "I didn't think you had it in you, Hermione.
You just threw a royal bitch-fit."
"You're to kind," muttered the muggleborn, before she paused, "Wait,
that's a muggle-saying..."
"Yeah, so?"
She snapped her fingers, "What if we've been going about this all
wrong?"
"Care to explain?" Harry learned forwards, planting his elbows on his
knees. This was what he liked. Watching Hermione go through her
'I-am-_such_-a-genius' routine, and figuring out the explanation. It
was almost like a game to figure it out first.
"Well," she smiled smugly, "Muggles had different languages for pretty
much every country, right?"
"Again: Yeah, so?"
The Gryffindor that really should have been a Ravenclaw started pacing
around the room, "So, there's got to be more than one spell-language.
Something that would be easier to pronounce in say... Asian nations?
Considering every time a Japanese wizard tried to say 'Lumos', he'd
instead say 'Rumos', they've got to have another language for their
spells."
She'd manage to lose everyone in the room. Sighing, she back-tracked to
give them the simplified answer.
"Guys, what I'm saying is that maybe, just maybe, the spell used on
Draco isn't in Latin. It could be in... in... Chinese for all I know!"
The Weapons looked between themselves absolutely stunned. They'd never
thought of that. And Sirius nodded slowly.
"I can remember, back in my fifth year, that Professor Wolfos would
often mutter to himself in other languages. It's highly likely that he
knows how to cast spells in them," the In-Training Weapon's lips
quirked, "Looks like we need to learn another language to find out what
spell's been put on Malfoy."
"Yeah," Ginny agreed, "But who's going to be able to do that? I don't
think any of us, except maybe It, has been around enough places and
people to have picked up any other languages."
That's when Hermione smiled, feeling like she had a place in this
ground that she'd never be able to fully understand, "That's where I
come in."
Harry clapped her on the shoulder, "After all, 'Mione's a genius. If
she can't figure it out, it's not worth understanding."
---
End Chapter
Ever notice I seem to end all the chapters on someone talking?
Oh, yeah, Merry Christmas! Happy Yuletide! And other Holiday Greetings!
I said I was going to on Sunday? Me and the Hostess were the only ones
not to get completely pissed. Why? Because the two of us had evil plans
to explain to the others what they did when drunk out of their minds.
One of the girls always said "SpongeBob" before a sentence, for some
reason. That was just plain weird.
koashura - Yeah, the friendship of Tom and Wolfos is a fun thing to
write. I'll probably do a oneshot of how they met at some point.
guess - That's the second time my characters have been compared to
characters from Gundam Wing. *pauses* Hmmm, never really thought of
Wolfos acting like J, probably because Harry is more like Duo on crack,
than Hiiro.
Temptress - Mwahahahahahahahaha, there are reasons Tom and Harry are so
similiar.
Harry Potter is still property of JK Rowling.
Bastardly Daemon Wolfos is The Itch's toy.
---
Blackened Sunrise
Chapter Thirty: Clarification
The Itch
---
Three days had passed. Three long, tiring days, and Draco still hadn't
awoken. Harry had not found the solution to the problem, and had
skipped out on his classes in order to try and figure out the puzzle of
the mysterious ailment. Hermione had come and gone, twice a day, in
order to retrace the counter runes, and while Harry knew she was
humming-and-hawing about his plans and what she could do to counter-act
them, he didn't really care.
He'd worry about that, following the Slytherin that was laid up in
their Secret Room coming too. At that point he'd start weaving truth
and half-truths about her to pull her firmly into his bases' camp. He
wasn't about to let the teenaged genius fall into their Albus or Tom's
hands. That would be far to dangerous-- she knew far to much about him,
Weapon, and everything that went on after hours.
She didn't have the potential to become a Living Weapon-- her life had
been comfortable excluding the adventures she'd gone on with him during
their first four years. What was needed to be able to truly become a
Living Weapon was years of hardship; Sirius had spent twelve years in
Azkaban. Draco had grown up in a loveless family, the heir to a
fortune, and utterly alone. Ginny was raised in the shadows of all six
of her brothers, and had problems making friends after that "incident"
in her first year. It didn't matter that no one knew she'd been the
Heir; what mattered was that she knew.
That knowledge had made her terrified of others, prevented her from
truly reaching out to them. A self-imposed exile, at eleven years of
age.
And Harry... he had become a Weapon in that instant that his parents
had been executed for standing against the Dark Lord. The moment that
he had been hit with the Killing Curse, and automatically reached for
the Power of the Living Weapon in order to save his own life. He had
been to young to be able to call upon the strife and harshness of life
needed to create the rift that gave access to the Power-- but he had
been, for a moment, connected to Voldemort.
And Tom Marvolo Riddle was a Living Weapon.
Almost a decade and a half later, he'd been approached, and this time,
he had his own, personal link to the Power. Yet still, he had a
connection to Voldemort's. That connection had been forgotten since his
own training in the use of the Power-- or, at least, Harry had
forgotten it. Weapon was still carefully monitoring it.
Weapon monitored everything. And in that instant, at four in the
morning of the fifth day of Malfoy's illness, Weapon felt a stirring
along the link. He turned his full attention to the link, trying to
discover what exactly it was that Riddle was attempting to do, while
Harry perused the Dark Arts books he'd duplicated. The spell he'd used
was hardly impossible to use-- most people just didn't know about it
because it was highly illegal.
Not to mention being in the books he'd swiped from the library that
second night of Draco's comatose state.
Curious about what could possibly catch Weapon's full attention, Harry
withdrew from his books, long enough to realize that he wasn't alone in
the room anymore. Oh, he'd subconsciously noticed the company, however,
his subconscious had labeled it as an ally, and bothered no further.
Sirius was back.
A joyful look crossed those insanity wrought features, and the dark
haired Weapon bounced over to his godfather, and wrapping him in a
tight hug, "Padfoot!"
"Hey Harry," Sirius looped one arm around Harry, wincing slightly as
his arm brushed his side. It had been broken during his mission to
Russia, and only a low-level healing spell had been used to set it and
speed healing. As it was, the bone was still fractured, but it was
hardly enough to worry about. It would heal fast enough.
Of course, Harry was rather observant of the older man, and pulled back
almost immediately, "What happened?"
"Ambushed," he settled back into a chair, "I don't know who the hell
these people were-- I've never seen anything like them. They weren't
Deatheaters, and they weren't Aurors, and they sure as shit weren't
Weapons."
"So, describe them," Harry commanded, revealing in the distraction the
conversation would provide. It always helped to go back to a problem
with a fresh mind, it was just that Harry hadn't found anything that
sufficiently distracted him. Thank the gods that Sirius had returned.
Sirius used his good arm to rub at the shaggy beard that covered his
chin, "About five, five and a half feet tall, all of them had spiky
white hair, tanned skin. They were like us-- part animal, part human--
but not like us. More animal I guess, instinct wise, I mean. I
recognized some of the more canine ones acting in ways that my
instincts tell me to act like when I'm Padfoot."
Throughout the description, Harry's face darkened, a scowl lighting his
features, and making his eyes seem to glow ominously, "I know what they
were."
"You do?" the older man wondered, a relieved smile crossing his lips,
"So they're some of Voldemort's goons?"
"Hardly."
"But... you said..."
It was about this point that Weapon generally took the reins of a
conversation, but he was still monitoring the link between himself and
the Dark Lord. Harry's emotions swept through him, swirling his school
robes and hair, and Sirius could literally _feel_ the Power flowing off
him. The counter-runes were doing wonders for freeing his power, and
this little demonstration only fueled it. Several weeks worth of work
was shaved off as the stretching of magical "muscles" shoved at the
bonds of rune-magic holding him. He would be free by early December.
"I know what they are," Harry repeated, "And I want to know why the Old
Fool would pull a stunt like this!"
"Professor Wolfos...?"
Harry stomped a foot, the shadows shivering with his actions as he
stormed around the room. Fury marked his features as he fumed,
subconsciously lashing out as he tried to understand the man that had
spent a year raising him.
"They're called the Reu," the teenager explained, "Created by fusing a
muggle and an animal together using dark arts. Daemen loved
experimenting and creating them for fun. They were his personal
servants, although I have seen a few around Riddle in my Dream-Visions.
What I want to know is why he had you ambushed."
"It could have been Voldemort, though, couldn't it?" Sirius didn't
really believe it, but then, he'd never really trusted his former
Potions Master. He was only searching for excuses because Harry seemed
rather shattered by the information he'd been given. Wolfos had meant a
lot to him.
Harry shook his head, eyes flicking to Draco, "To many coincidences."
"Mind explaining?" the dog-animagus questioned, "I haven't been here
for weeks!"
Harry began ticking off his fingers, "First, Draco falls ill. We can't
figure out what's wrong with him. Second, you're ambushed by a group of
Reu. Third, Wolfos has been pestering me to send one of my students to
the Creator of the Second Generation, so that his now dead bonded
Living Weapon can be replaced. Far to many coincidences."
"It could be just coincidence, though," interrupted another voice, and
the two men looked up to see Hermione and Virginia enter the room. It
had been Ginny who had spoken. The bushy-haired witch beside her shook
her head.
"You know as well as I do that coincidence never comes into play when
it's Harry Potter."
"All to true," Ginny murmured, "Welcome back, Sirius. Any luck on
finding out what's wrong with It?"
"Nothing," Harry grumbled, sulking as he sat himself down on top of
Draco's stomach. He was getting rather fed up on trying to wake up his
friend. He needed someone there to help balance out his insanity and
anger. As long as Malfoy was around, he had a relatively safe outlet
for such actions.
After all, they had been fighting for nearly the entire time they'd
known each other.
Hermione crossed her arms, "Did you try Merlin's Runes?"
"His Damned Squiggles were the first thing I checked, 'Mione. No such
luck. All I know is it's a Dark Magic Spell."
"Wonderful," the genius rubbed her forehead, "This was just what we
needed. Professor Wolfos wants to rid himself of some students, Malfoy
is ill, Ron is getting suspicious, Snape is being a right proper git,
and life just _sucks_!"
"Wow," whistled Virginia, "I didn't think you had it in you, Hermione.
You just threw a royal bitch-fit."
"You're to kind," muttered the muggleborn, before she paused, "Wait,
that's a muggle-saying..."
"Yeah, so?"
She snapped her fingers, "What if we've been going about this all
wrong?"
"Care to explain?" Harry learned forwards, planting his elbows on his
knees. This was what he liked. Watching Hermione go through her
'I-am-_such_-a-genius' routine, and figuring out the explanation. It
was almost like a game to figure it out first.
"Well," she smiled smugly, "Muggles had different languages for pretty
much every country, right?"
"Again: Yeah, so?"
The Gryffindor that really should have been a Ravenclaw started pacing
around the room, "So, there's got to be more than one spell-language.
Something that would be easier to pronounce in say... Asian nations?
Considering every time a Japanese wizard tried to say 'Lumos', he'd
instead say 'Rumos', they've got to have another language for their
spells."
She'd manage to lose everyone in the room. Sighing, she back-tracked to
give them the simplified answer.
"Guys, what I'm saying is that maybe, just maybe, the spell used on
Draco isn't in Latin. It could be in... in... Chinese for all I know!"
The Weapons looked between themselves absolutely stunned. They'd never
thought of that. And Sirius nodded slowly.
"I can remember, back in my fifth year, that Professor Wolfos would
often mutter to himself in other languages. It's highly likely that he
knows how to cast spells in them," the In-Training Weapon's lips
quirked, "Looks like we need to learn another language to find out what
spell's been put on Malfoy."
"Yeah," Ginny agreed, "But who's going to be able to do that? I don't
think any of us, except maybe It, has been around enough places and
people to have picked up any other languages."
That's when Hermione smiled, feeling like she had a place in this
ground that she'd never be able to fully understand, "That's where I
come in."
Harry clapped her on the shoulder, "After all, 'Mione's a genius. If
she can't figure it out, it's not worth understanding."
---
End Chapter
Ever notice I seem to end all the chapters on someone talking?
Oh, yeah, Merry Christmas! Happy Yuletide! And other Holiday Greetings!