Chapter 13
He barely noticed the tears that gathered in his eyes or the slight quiver in his lip, but even if he had he wouldn't have cared. This was Olivia. It was okay to let things out in front of her, it was okay not to be in control of himself. He wanted to hug her, to curl into her chest as he had when he was a child, but he knew he couldn't. She wasn't really here. More tears came, but these were of sadness instead of joy. He could see how the second brother could be driven to suicide by it, by being able to speak to the person you loved most in the world but never able to hold them.
"You're all grown up, but I prefer your old eyes." She said, the smile she had always reserved for him on her face. He came undone at that, even as his eyes flickered to become emerald green; he hated those eyes, but if she liked them he would use them.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," he croaked, "If I was there I could have stopped it. I could have used magic and you would have been okay, I could have saved you, I would have-"
"Harry, I didn't even see it coming. There was nothing you could have done if you were there, nothing at all. All that would have happened is that you have gotten hurt or even killed as well." She chided gently, her own eyes filling with silver tears. He looked so broken, just as he had the first time she saw him. A child who didn't know what it was he felt and who had no one that loved him, completely alone in the world.
She saw his throat constrict as if about to speak before he stopped himself, but she knew from his eyes what it was he was going to say: 'So?'
The fact that he could even think that caused a physical pain in her chest that she should not be able to feel in this form even as more tears formed in her eyes. He was still the same confused child who had fallen asleep crying in her arms.
"Are you disappointed in me?" he asked in as childlike a voice as she had ever heard him use, eyes darting downwards in case she was.
She had watched him since the moment she left the world of the living for the next one, and she wasn't sure what she felt about what she had seen him do. She didn't like what he did, he was still a child, her little boy, and yet he was fighting and he was killing. But even then she knew he could have been so much worse; he could have blamed the world for every pain that he had suffered and burned it to the ground with no regard for who he hurt, but he hadn't. He took targets that profited from pain and took pleasure in doing so, never harmed women and went out of his way to protect children. He still had occasional nightmares about what he did. He had a conscience, even if it was a loose and muted one.
He was not what she had hoped he would become by any stretch of the imagination, but with everything that had happened to him she knew she couldn't hope for much better – he was never going to turn into the happy, normal boy she had wanted him to be. But she had known that when she was alive, even if it never stopped her hoping.
Even if she was disappointed she didn't think she could tell him that though, it would break him and she couldn't bring herself to do something that hurt him so badly.
"I love you, I'm not disappointed. I don't like it, but I'm not disappointed. You're still my little boy."
The smile that blossomed on his face was bright enough to replace the sun with no one the wiser, the same smile he had given her before she died. Since then there had not even been a pale imitation of it; he had been content, but never truly happy.
"I can't stay long little guy, and you can't call me all that often," she said as she silenced his protest with a gentle look, "I don't belong here anymore, I'm not supposed to be here. But I want you to promise me something, okay? Don't hold on to your anger and your hate. Let it go, let someone in, be happy. That's all I ever wanted for you."
Tearfully he nodded as her spectral form became less and less corporeal, smudged like ink on parchment before with a final loving smile she dissipated entirely and he was left alone again with tears running down his face. None of the portraits dared speak as he walked mechanically out of the basement and up the stairs towards his bedroom, their whisperings only beginning once he was out of earshot.
As soon as he got to his room he flopped onto his bed and sobbed for the first since Olivia had died. All the hurt and the aguish that he had buried for years seemed to bubble to the surface and he couldn't control it. In that moment he felt more alone than he had ever felt, as if it was crushing his lungs and squeezing his heart until he could feel it pounding against his chest. That night he fell into a fitful sleep, his knees clutched tightly to his chest.
~Scene Change~
A few months later Ares was walking through a particularly disreputable district in Serbia on his way to attempt to gather information on the various criminal operations running in the region, be it for blackmail or a personal project. He liked to be busy and didn't have a lot to do except work, so he spent a lot of time in dirty bars. It stopped him thinking about other things.
There had been times where he struggled not to turn the stone in his hand and speak to her again, more times than he could count. But he had told her he wouldn't call her often, and he knew that if he did it would slowly break him. In the end he had put it in the deepest corner of his vault and told the elves that under no circumstances where they to touch it or bring it to him; if he wanted it he was going to have to go and get it himself. Having it out of easy reach had made it easier to resist the urge.
After he had called Olivia from the realm of the dead he had barely emerged from his room for the next few days, spending hours at a time staring at the ceiling. She had said she wasn't disappointed, but there was always the tick in the back of his mind that she only said that so she didn't upset him. He had tried to let go of all the hate and anger that had taken root in his soul over the years as she had asked him to, but he struggled to do so. He didn't even know how to navigate his own emotions, but even if he did he wasn't sure if he would really want to let go. The anger and the hate were what motivated him, what drove him and what pushed him to become better and better, the only constant in his life since he was five years old. Without them, he would be empty.
If he lost that, what was he? Would he revert to become a normal wizard? Would he become a husk of what he was now? Would the Ferryman finally die?
He forced those thoughts from his mind as he pushed open the door to the pub, the warm air inside an almost painful contrast to the December chill. This time he was in the form of a tall, thin man with bushy eyebrows and short brown hair – nobody who would attract more than a passing glance. Taking a seat at the bar he ordered a firewhiskey and then wandlessly cast an extrasensory charm on his ears to improve his hearing. Instantly he could hear even the whispered conversations from across the room as he settled in to wait and listen, wandlessly vanishing the firewhiskey as it touched his lips.
For the next few hours he sat there and listened, hearing little of any importance. A black market dealer had got his hands on a rare book that he already had a copy of in the Nightshade library, the German Minister for Magic was being bribed to get a law to pass, a vampire coven in Italy had become restless. Nothing he was really interested in. Just as he was about to leave he felt the tingle of privacy wards being raised around one of the tables in the corner, weak and hastily cast. With a few discreet flicks of his fingers the ward dropped and he quickly raised his own, the men never realising their ward had dropped and leaving Ares free to listen.
"-girls." One of the men said.
"What need do I have for that? It is not difficult to take a muggle off the street and obliviate her afterwards, and that doesn't cost me anything."
"Not the same thing, trust me. These people cater to the more… exotic tastes. I'm telling you you've never had anything like it!"
Ares had trouble listening to the rest of their conversation, all he could hear was his blood roaring in his ears. Distractedly he noticed the two men rise and clumsily make for the exit and he followed a few steps behind, letting loose a body bind from one hand and a piercing hex from his wand as soon as they were out the door. One of the men was dead before he hit the floor with a knut sized hole in his chest, the other better informed man unable to move as his friend bled into the pavement.
Ares grabbed his arm and apparated the man to the same cell where he had cursed the Dursleys, slamming into the man's occlumency shields almost instantly. His shields shattered quickly under the strain and Ares grabbed onto the first thing he could find and burrowed through the man's mind until he found what he was looking for.
Prostitution was rare in the wizarding world, it being far too easy for a witch or wizard to abduct a muggle off the street and obliviate them afterwards. There was almost no way to stop it from happening, and even if there was the world's ministries didn't care enough to actually do it. But this was quite different.
This was a trafficking ring where girls were abducted and sold to wealthy wizards to be used as they saw fit. He saw what the man meant by exotic, there were no ordinary witches; it was veela, sirens and vampires with their fangs torn from their mouths. Vampires possessed a similar entrancing ability to the veela allure, used to stop their prey fighting as they drank their blood, and it made them almost as desired as veela were. The next 'auction' was in two days according to the man's mind. That didn't give him much time, not that he had any intention of waiting. He was far too consumed by his anger to even think about planning or of scouting the area. At least the man knew where they were kept, having been one of the men who kidnapped girls from their homes and killed their families if they got in the way.
When he withdrew from the man's mind he slumped lifelessly with blood running from his eyes and ears, dripping from the point of his nose. Ares looked down at him in distaste. It was a pity he had died already; he had planned to cause the main indescribable pain and bring him to brink of death, only to heal him enough to do it again. Harming women and children was not something that Ares gave even the slightest mercy for, and many of the girls he had seen in the man's mind were both.
By then it was late and he called a house elf to deal with the body and then apparated back home and went straight to bed, knowing he would need to be well rested for what he was going to do the next day. His dreams were filled with blood and gore just as they had been in the beginning, but this time instead of waking wide eyed with sweat dripping from his chest, he smiled maliciously in his sleep.
~Scene Change~
As the sun rose over the Latvian hills Ares was crouched outside the compound, analysing the wards quickly with his face set in stone. The birds were chirping softly in the leafless trees as the sun cast a soft glow across the valley, gently swaying trees casting long shadows across the grass as dew sparkled. It was a beautiful sight, and there was a strange dichotomy between the pale innocence of the sunrise and the black rage that swirled in his chest and pounded against his skin, a prisoner desperately begging to be set free.
As his wand twisted sharply through the air he had to maintain rigid control lest his anger overpower his mind and render the logic that stopped him from charging in now unimportant. The wards were not difficult to break through, disabling the alert charms as he did so. They would have been difficult for some, but wards had become his specialty. There were surveillance charms all linked in to a single ward that fed the information directly into a single system, much like a muggle CCTV circuit. Carefully he looped the feeds so that they wouldn't have any warning, but it would not do much. He had no intention of doing this quietly.
The first man to see him freezes in terror, unable to make a sound before the asphyxiation curse hits him and he clutches to his throat in a fruitless attempt to breathe. The second dies just as quickly, but his comrade has just enough time to signal before he too takes his last breath. And then men poured from the building, too many for him to count before curses sailed his way. He smiled maliciously at the fear in their eyes when they recognised him. It was agonisingly beautiful.
Sergei Golovkin had heard the stories, of course. Stories of the Ferryman, tales that were too unbelievable to be true. Some said he wasn't even human but something else; a demon escaped from the depths of hell to wreak havoc upon the world; the souls of slaughtered warriors possessing a single body to sate their bloodlust; Death given physical form. He had thought them fake or exaggerated, there was no way a single man could do what they said. He had become the bogeyman, and Sergei had dismissed every one of those stories as fiction. But as he watched with wide eyes even as he duelled with another guard, he now knew that if anything those stories did not do him justice.
He was a blur of motion as his wand slashed and weaved, leaving nothing but death in its wake. Skin melted to expose human anatomy at its most bare, the vocal cords visible as the man screamed in agony. Grass coiled around the legs of others and slithered around them quickly, binding their wands uselessly at their sides. It wrapped around every inch of their bodies, terrified pleas and panicked eyes cut off as they were encased completely in green. And then the grass constricted, their bodies remaining upright even as the sound of ribs cracking echoed across the cries.
He twisted slightly as a purple curse sailed over his shoulder and fired two cutting curses quicker than his opponent could blink, and then one man became three. A whip of fire wrapped around the arm of a guard and the Ferryman pulled, an arc of crimson blood spurting from where his arm used to be. The arm was transfigured into an axe which was banished into the chest of another, the man slumping over only for his weight to push the axe deeper. A flash of green was blocked by conjured marble, the pieces immediately transfigured into stone wolves that ripped the guards to pieces. He ducked a bludgeoning curse and slashed his wand towards the caster and black flames erupted, and then three men became ash. One man screamed in agony, clawing at his eyes as they melted, green acid dripping from the sockets of his lifeless body. Sergei cast every spell he knew in a desperate attempt to halt the devil in his tracks, yet nothing could stop him.
Chests were shattered and heads became mist as death danced across the lawn, a golden sunrise at his back. Just then a cutting curse sliced towards Charon's head, too fast and too close for him to possibly dodge. But his body disappeared and become black smoke before it coalesced back into a man, the curse passing straight through and carving a groove into the dirt.
That was when he and the few remaining guards knew they were going to die. None of their spells could hit him; his movements were too quick and too random. What came close was returned at twice the speed with a flick of his wand, swatted away as if their most lethal spells were nothing more than an annoyance, their shields shattered like glass with a single spell. They could not attack, and they could not defend. All there was to do was die.
The once pristine lawn was now scarred with deep craters and slashes that formed bloody streams trickling into bloody lakes. Bodies were strewn across the grounds, some in pieces that made Sergei retch. The stench of death still clung to the Ferryman in a desperate embrace, a woman grasping to their departing lover. He had never seen such slaughter.
Their eyes met, and the look in the Ferryman's eyes sent a shiver down his spine; there was a biting anger that seemed to freeze his very soul, the slightest hint of pity for the men he had butchered but there was no remorse for doing so, as if he pitied them for having the misfortune of facing him and nothing more.
He and the three remaining men all cast their most lethal spells towards the monster, but they sailed through thin air. The two men to his left collapsed with holes in their foreheads, their bodies bouncing limply against the dirt. The man to his right screamed as his blood boiled and his blood vessels melted from the heat. The last thing Sergei Golovkin felt was the unnatural sensation of wind caressing his neck as his head fell to the floor.
With quick strides Ares walked through the empty corridors of the compound, his wand spinning in his palm as it directed him towards the main office. Operations like this always had one, and he would need to have a talk with the leader. The girls that had been kidnapped would be kept under charms to stop the authorities finding them if ever there was a raid and only the man in charge would know how to get in there, and he would know where the records were. The men who bought people would not get away unscathed.
Finally he came to a stop in front of a wooden door and blasted it open, petrifying the man and sidestepping his hasty curse; clearly he had been waiting for him. He was far from what the common wizard would imagine if they thought of a leader of a criminal organisation; not a tall, muscled figure who gave off an aura of danger, but instead a short chubby wizard with beady eyes and an expensive suit. He somewhat reminded Ares of Vernon, a comparison that further damaged his already frayed control.
This time when he used legilimency he was far less brutal than he had been with the man from the bar; he didn't want this man to die before he got what he needed. His occlumency was good and it actually took a few moments for him to break through his defences before he started searching for the locations for both the girls and the records.
A few minutes later he withdrew from the man's mind and wandlessly levitated him out of the room and through the corridors, his wand still out in case there were any left. Both the records and the girls were in a hidden basement concealed by voice recognising passwords, and then behind blood locks after that. The records were in code of course, but now he knew what the code was it would take only a few spells to decode them. It really was lucky that Ares hadn't killed him.
When they came to a seemingly normal section of wall Ares stopped and pressed his wand to the man's throat as he altered the body bind to allow him to speak.
"Say the password and I will make your death swift. Don't and I will cause you such indescribable pain that the Devil himself will be unable to match it." He hissed.
Shakily, the coward complied with a waver in his voice as the wall shimmered and slid sideways to expose a narrow unlit staircase. Ares walked swiftly downwards with light glowing in his palm and the leader levitating behind him, the temperature dropping as he did so. When the stairs levelled out twin torches ignited to dimly illuminate the wide room, two doors in front of him. Ares cast a cutting charm and removed the man's hand, thankful for the silencing charm he had put on him before he did so. It looked quite painful. He pressed the bloody stump to both blood locks causing both doors to click open, before calling his house elves to remove all the records and put them in his office at the manor. As soon as the last of the records were gone he cast a blasting charm into the chest of the ring leader, sending him flying lifelessly into the wall of the now empty room with a hole in his chest before he closed the door. He had kept his promise, and the girls would be traumatised enough without seeing a body.
With that he rearranged his face into something less threatening and entered the prison. The room was effectively one big cell with girls of all different ages crammed in together, all of which scurried backwards and pressed themselves against the wall when he entered, the only light coming from the open door.
A flick of his fingers unlocked the door to the cell and he took a step backwards before he spoke.
"Come out, I'm getting you all out of here."
They were all clearly terrified, but he kept his body language as non-threatening as possible and backed out of the room as the first few started to tentatively move. When they emerged their eyes were narrowed slightly even in the dim light and Ares stood back as much as he could to give them as much space as possible. He knew what terror felt like. There were around twenty in all that stumbled from the room, some that couldn't have been any older than ten or eleven years old. Had he been a normal wizard Ares was sure that they would have been able to feel his crushing anger flowing from him in waves. There truly were some sick fucks in the world, and he was eager to get started on those he found in the records.
"Alright, I can make portkeys wherever you want to go – Ministry atriums, homes, covens or colonies. Just say where."
For the next few minutes he made portkey after portkey, sometimes needing a brief legilimency probe so he knew where it was going. As people started disappearing by themselves or in small groups he noticed a small girl huddling in the back away from anyone else. She was one of the youngest ones, twelve years old at most, with long silvery hair and shining blue eyes, clearly a veela. Slowly he approached as he tried to mimic the smile that Olivia had given him the first time she saw him, hoping not to scare her.
"Are you okay?" he asked, and immediately chastised himself for his choice of words. She'd been kidnapped from her home and locked in a dark cell for Merlin knows how long, of course she wasn't okay. He had no idea how to interact with people his own age, never mind a traumatised child.
She jolted violently and looked up with fear in her eyes when he spoke, her fear lessening slightly when she saw it was him. His smile must have been at least passable then.
"My parents-" she said before a sob lodged in her threat, "they killed them! I saw-" she cried before her grief bound her voice.
Ares had no idea what to do. Was he supposed to comfort her? How was he supposed to do that? He couldn't even navigate his own emotions. Hesitantly he attempted to put a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder, only for her to throw herself into his chest as soon as he did so. He just copied what he remembered Olivia doing when he broke down, rubbing small circles on her back as tears rolled down the hide of his jacket. His face was one of poorly concealed confusion; he was further out of his comfort zone than he had been in years.
After a few minutes she calmed down and looked up embarrassed before she scampered backwards and ducked her head down, cheeks slightly flushed. He looked around and saw that everyone else had taken their portkeys and left, so it was just him and the girl.
"What about other family? Grandparents, uncles, cousins or aunts?" He asked, thankful that he had learnt French and several other languages to stop anyone working out where he was from. The girl shook her head despondently in reply.
For a second he contemplated giving her a portkey to the French Ministry and letting them find somewhere for her, but then remembered his promise: let go of his hate, let someone in, be happy. Maybe this was his chance.
"What's your name?"
"Anaïs."
"Well then, Anaïs, would you like to come stay with me until you decide what you want to do?" he offered in as gentle a voice as he had ever used.
She looked unsure, hopping from foot to foot for a few seconds before she nodded. He hoped she said yes because she wanted to and not just because there wasn't really much of an option, but there was no way to tell. An orphanage was hardly a preferable alternative.
"Grab hold of me, then I can use my portkey back home."
Once she had a hold of his arm he looked down at her to make sure she was ready and then disappeared, reappearing on the lawn in front of the manor. Anaïs had crumpled to the floor when they landed and got up with a slight frown on her face. He had to fight the laugh that built in his throat; it was a strange sensation after so many years.
She was looking around madly, her neck twisting to take in every fountain, every slab of grey stone and every bright flower than lined the edges of the house.
"This is your house?" she asked in amazement, her unease seemingly forgotten for the moment.
"It is one of them, I have a few others as well."
Anaïs stared at him slightly when he said that before her expression became curious.
"What am I supposed to call you?"
He opened his mouth to answer only to shut it again for a few seconds before he allowed a small smile to slip onto his face.
"You can call me Harry."
It didn't feel right to have her call him Ares. That was the God of War, the name he had chosen when all he felt was pain, resentment and bottomless anger, when all he had wanted to do was destroy and to burn. But he had promised to let go of all that, and maybe then he could be Harry again. Happy like Olivia had wanted him to be. But he couldn't be that as long as he was Ares. He had picked the name so that it was close enough for people close to him to use Harry instead – maybe this was why he had.
With that he slowly led her into the house and showed her around every room, making sure to add wards to the potions lab as he did so. He didn't want her getting hurt mixing ingredients at random. As it turned out Salazar had learnt French on his travels and spent a few minutes talking to Anaïs about magic, showing a side to the founder that Harry would never have expected. Each of the portraits had thought something similar when Harry had walked in with a little girl.
As it turned out she would be eleven in just over a month, and Harry had promised her that he would take her to get her wand on her birthday. The blinding smile on her face at that made the ice that had wrapped around his soul melt a little more.
As time went on though Anaïs became quieter and more subdued as the wonder wore off and the grief flowed back in like the tides of the sea, a feeling he knew well. That was when he skipped to show her her room, two doors between it and his own – far away enough for her to be comfortable but close enough that he could be there in seconds if he needed to. After telling her to either come find him or to call a house elf if ever she wanted to see him regardless of the time of day he left her to herself and wandered to his office. People often needed to be alone to deal with their emotions, not that he had much experience in actually doing so. Besides, he had records to decode.
For the next few days Anaïs spent most of her time in her room, but when she came out Harry tried his best to act warm and friendly. It was strange after spending so long doing the opposite, but he just tried to copy what Olivia had done with him. It seemed to work quite well and slowly she came out of her shell more and more. She was sweet, energetic and lively when the sadness lifted from her eyes and she acted like a kid. Harry had looked to see if there were any relatives that would be worrying about her, but there was no one. He resolutely ignored the slight relief in his chest when he came up empty.
But try as he might, he could not think of a way to really connect. With him and Olivia it had been so natural, she had been warm and comforting, told him about herself and coaxed him from behind his barriers without him even noticing. He didn't know how to open himself up like she had. Even when he was mimicking Olivia, that was all it was. He wasn't really like she had been.
After over a week of agonising hesitancy he knocked lightly on her door and waited for her call before he pushed the door open and sat on one of the chairs, levitating a silver basin behind him. Anaïs clearly didn't know what it was, she just looked confused.
"I want you to know me, to know what my life has been like, but I don't like to talk about it. I'm not even sure I could. So I'm going to show you. This is a pensieve, it lets you watch other people's memories. It's not pretty, but I've taken the worst bits out. Maybe after you know things will get easier, hopefully."
Anaïs looked distinctly unsure but got up from her bed and walked to the chair opposite at his slightly pleading look. Harry wasn't much more comfortable, he was showing her his life, but he couldn't think of anything else. Things would stay as they were if he did nothing and he didn't think he could bring himself to speak about what had happened to him. Not that the pensieve would be much better, he would have to watch everything happen, but at least he wouldn't have to control himself enough to speak while he did so.
With that he pressed his wand to his temple and concentrated on pulling out his memories up until he drank the blood adoption potion in Gringotts, not including Vernon's worst beatings. Anaïs didn't need to see those. Because he spoke French each of his memories would be automatically translated so Anaïs could understand them, even if withdrawing them from his mind would take slightly longer because of it.
A few minutes later he pulled a thick tendril of silvery light from his skin and dropped them into the basin, the liquid starting to swirl as soon as he did so.
"Press your finger to the surface and you will be sucked into the memories. It feels strange but doesn't hurt at all." He said, keeping his voice level with some difficulty.
Once her finger touched the swirling silver surface he took a deep breath to prepare himself before he followed her in.
The first scene was one of his earliest memories; the first time he had met Tonks. He had been about three judging by the fact his birth mother had a baby swaddled in a blanket, Jack's distinctive red hair hidden by the cloth. Andromeda had brought Tonks over to the house in Godric's Hollow and it seemed like they had met before, but if they had he didn't remember it. Anaïs knew he was a metamorphmagus but had only seen him in his 'work' form with blonde hair and blue eyes and his base form with dark blue, near black, hair and deep purple eyes flecked with the green he had been born with. He had had to point himself out so she knew which boy he was, but she recognised his birth parents from newspapers. They were the parents of the Boy-Who-Lived after all.
The memories cycled quickly through his childhood at the Potters and showed what little he remembered of the night Riddle attacked, and then the day he was thrown away. Anaïs was the only thing that stopped him from punching the memories of Dumbledore and the Potters in the face, regardless of the fact that his fist would go straight through.
Then started the Dursleys, but he had barely shown any of the actual violence. He only showed the aftermath of waking up bruised and broken in the morning, but from her face that was more than enough. He asked if she wanted to stop then, but she had adamantly shaken her head. She saw his discovery of magic and his experimentation, the way he became more and more mechanical the longer he was there as the hope drained from the cuts in his flesh.
But she also saw Olivia and the others, almost every single time he had gone to see them. He knew Anaïs was intelligent, and he was sure she noticed that he had been trying to copy what Olivia had done years ago. She looked like she wanted to cheer when he left the Dursleys for good and smiled brightly at the expression on his face when Olivia had told him she loved him. Harry didn't notice; he was completely absorbed in his memories, desperately trying to pretend what he knew was going to happen next didn't.
When the scene shifted and smudged to form what was his worst memory Harry zoned out everything but his younger self and watched his childish face. Watched as his anxiety turned to horror and then to nothing, his face blank and robotic even as tears rolled down his cheeks. Watched himself walk unseeingly to the woods and sob painfully, and then he watched as the anger took hold. The toxic, poisonous anger that seeped into his heart and changed him from that boy into the one he now was. The magic that scarred and lashed and shattered that he didn't even consciously remember doing. And then his face was empty again.
He didn't even bother watching his trip to Diagon Alley and his subsequent blood adoption. There was nothing important there. He only realised the memories had finished when they were ejected from the pensieve back into their chairs. Anaïs was staring at him with tears running down her face and he tried to smile reassuringly at her, only for the movement to dislodge a tear of his own that had stuck to his cheek. He hadn't even noticed it was there.
Without warning she was curling up in his lap with her arms squeezing hard enough that he struggled to breathe, her face buried in his chest just as it had been when he rescued her. This time, though, the panic and unease that he had felt then was absent. After a few minutes he tried to pry her from him but she only held on harder, and he resigned himself to staying as still as possible until she fell asleep. It didn't take all that long for her grip to loosen and her breathing to even out, and when it did he gently lifted her up and tucked her into bed before he quietly left with the pensieve floating behind him, careful not to wake her up.
As he had hoped, life became far less awkward overnight. Anaïs knew he was trying his best to connect but had no idea how, so she started becoming more outgoing which in turn brought Harry further out from behind the maze of barriers he had built.
She loved quidditch, so he had went out a bought two firebolts so they could fly together. He hadn't flown a broom since his training broom at the Potters so it took some time to get used to, something that made Anaïs laugh madly when he wobbled uncontrollably. It didn't take long for him to get used to it again, and he was the one laughing when he was pulling dives and barrel rolls. Her father had been a muggleborn and had introduced her to the muggle world, so he had taken her to a movie or a theme park at least once a week from then on, and taken her shopping. That was the single longest day of his life.
Getting her wand had been intensely entertaining if nothing else. He had taken her to the same man who had made his wand, and he only had to show his wand for Anatoly to agree. Once he knew who he was the wandcrafter had greeted him as if an old friend and asked about his wand while shooting curious looks towards Anaïs. He knew she wasn't his daughter, but didn't push for information. Anaïs, on the other hand, had peppered the man with questions about anything and everything that Harry had amusedly translated, ignoring Anatoly's slight glare.
The wand itself was 11 inches, made of pear and dogwood with a unicorn hair at its core. She didn't need a gemstone, a fact which had earned a childish pout that brought a fond smile to his face – an expression which was becoming more and more common. Once she had her wand he would spend a few hours every couple of days teaching her magic, something which she took to quicker than most would but nowhere near as fast as he had. She was annoyed that she wouldn't start school until September even though she was had turned eleven in February, but she couldn't complain too much when he was already starting to teach her.
Life was not perfect however; Harry still had times where something would set a surge of anger coursing through his veins, even if it was something as small as dropping an inkpot. Now that he had lifted the lid he had kept on his emotions so he could let go of the anger, all the things he hadn't dealt with were drifting to the surface. When it happened he would have to spend a few hours alone attempting to deal with whatever he was feeling, and slowly he was figuring out how to.
Anaïs still had periods of depression where she would detach from the world as she grieved for her parents and relived the trauma that she had been forced through, but her reaction to it was the opposite of Harry; she would find him and either curl up in his lap or lean against his side, and he would wrack his brains for something that would cheer her up. He had found that silence worked best.
It was now August, over seven months since Harry had attacked the compound of the trafficking ring and got her. He had copied the records and sent them to all the relevant ministries, but he had gone after several of them himself first. There were a few who would enslave another girl a few times a year, clearly having gotten bored of the last one and killed them. Each of those men were still alive and locked in the basement cells he had kept the Dursleys, each bound in ropes with an Egyptian curse that made them live out their worst nightmares as if they were real. Killing them would have been too soft a punishment in his opinion, and he was quite curious how long it would take for them to slip from their ropes and what they would do afterwards.
He had taken few contracts in that time, only enough to remind people he was still there and that certain things were still not tolerated. He had much better things to do now; he and Anaïs were both slowly healing from their respective traumas and becoming happier with each passing day.
Harry wondered if this was how Olivia had thought about him. Was her happiness dependant on his own? Would she have been totally willing to do absolutely anything to put a smile on his face for even a brief second? Did the mere thought of him push through whatever sadness she felt?
The day before he had surprised her with tickets to the Quidditch World Cup that was being held in Britain in which Viktor Krum would be playing, one of her personal heroes. She had squealed and hugged him hard enough to force the air from his lungs. The tickets were for one of the executive boxes dotted around the stadium so that they had the best view and they would be getting there early and then camping there for the night after so they could really experience everything. He had made sure not to get tickets for the same box that the ministers would be sitting; the Boy-Who-Lived and family would surely be invited up there too.
Harry was excited for it as well, it had been his dream as a child to be a professional quidditch player. What he wasn't excited for was the slim possibility of seeing someone he used to know. But with thousands of people there, how likely could it be?
A few days later they were back in Britain and, after setting up their tent, walking through the growing crowds, buying flags and shirts and omnioculars and models of players that dived and twisted as if alive. Anaïs was having the time of her life, excitedly pointing out anything that caught her fancy as she walked beside him. Harry was in his natural form and attracted more than a few admiring looks from women as he walked past, and it was only his high degree of control combined with his metamorphmagus abilities that stopped him from blushing like a teenager. Technically he was still a teenager – he would be 18 in November – but he had never really acted like one. Anaïs could tell he was uncomfortable and teased him mercilessly with deep amusement dancing in her eyes. He was thankful that she only spoke French.
By the time the sun started to dip below the trees and people started making their way to the stadium they were both dressed in quidditch jerseys with flags painted on their cheeks, Harry for Ireland and Anaïs for Bulgaria. They had a long standing argument over who would win, with Anaïs insisting that Krum would catch the snitch. Harry didn't actually want to have flashing Irish flags painted on his face, but Anaïs had him wrapped around her finger and she knew it. The smile on her face as she clutched a flag in one hand while she pulled him insistently towards the stadium with the other quashed any annoyance he felt.
There was a small crowd up ahead which Anaïs managed to wriggle herself through, giving him no choice but to push through and ignore the protests of those he passed. Once he managed to stumble out of the crowd he saw them, the Potters stood smiling side by side with Minister Fudge with the stadium at their back as they posed for the photographer, and people had actually stopped to watch. How pathetic.
While he had promised to let go of his anger and his hatred and was doing so slowly, there was no way he would ever be able to let go of the fiery hatred he felt for the Potters. Even then he could feel it writhing in his chest as his magic coiled like a viper waiting to strike, but he could squash the impulse to curse them after a few seconds of struggle. It was not easy, but it was much easier than when he had seen them in Diagon Alley at least.
But it was Anaïs he was more concerned about. Veela didn't come into their heritage until they were about 13 years old, but she looked like she was about to start throwing fireballs. The expression on her face was far from the usually bright look she had, this was snarling and filled with loathing. It was almost as bad as his would have been had he allowed his expression to change beyond the stiffening of his features.
Quickly he led her away and showed their tickets to the wizard at the gate and began to walk up the stairs to their seats, all the while Harry applied a mild calming charm to her skin.
"Calm, calm. Don't let them ruin the day, they don't matter, they're not worth it. I'm fine, calm down." He whispered.
By the time they reached their seats she had calmed down and looked slightly embarrassed by her reaction, and he had to reassure her that it was understandable. Veela were emotional by nature, especially about people they cared about. The fact she was so angry on his behalf brought that warm feeling to his chest that had become increasingly common over the past months.
Anaïs loved the Irish introduction, but she hated the Bulgarian one. Harry hated it too, it was far too similar to what she would have been forced to do had he not rescued her from that cell. He had met a grand total of four veela in his life including Anaïs, and he was sure that not one of them would have felt anything but loating. It was dehumanising, only feeding into the general wizarding belief that veela were nothing more than sexual creatures.
A few minutes later the veela stopped their hypnotic dance to loud jeers of protest from most of the males in the stadium and the match started. It was thrilling and the skill on display by both teams was extraordinary until finally the game ended, and as they walked out of the stadium Anaïs was complaining loudly.
"But he caught the snitch!"
"Doesn't matter, they still lost." He replied with a hint of smugness that earned him a glare.
When they came out there were aurors milling around to stop any of the supporters fighting, a familiar head of pink hair amongst them. Harry's eyes barely left her as they walked past, having to resist the urge to turn his head once they were past her.
"You should talk to her." Anaïs said from beside him.
"Why in Merlin's name would I do that?"
"Because you want to." She said, though animosity was easily heard in her voice.
He knew she disliked everyone from when he was Harry Potter, Tonks included, but that she really hated all the adults. She had said she just didn't like Tonks, considering she had been a child too Anaïs didn't think it was really her fault. That didn't make her much more receptive to her though; she had still left him.
There was no point denying that he wanted to talk to her, if for no other reason than to find out why they left him. He could easily remove the memories from her mind afterwards. But there were still the lingering doubts in the back of his mind; she could say that they left him because they just didn't want him, or all the rage he felt towards her that had become as much a part of him as his magic was could evaporate the moment she opened her mouth. He didn't know which outcome scared him more.
When they got back to their tent they both dropped onto the comfortable sofa and he swiftly changed the subject back to the match, which quickly descended into a small argument over which team was better. Eventually she started yawning and he told her to clean her teeth and go to bed, eliciting the expected protest like she always did. He followed to his own bed shortly after, knowing Anaïs' tendency to sneak back to the kitchen when she thought he wouldn't realise.
A/N: It has taken way longer than I thought it would to get to this point. When I started I figured 30-40k, but clearly that hasn't happened. As I wrote I started fleshing stuff out and adding bits and suddenly it's up to like 85k.
Anaïs is actually a character I planned from the beginning because Harry will need something big and constant for him to actually come out of the hole he's been in and then stay out. Plus it means the story isn't going to be entirely dark and pessimistic, which would be boring and depressing to write as well as read. Obviously Harry isn't suddenly going to turn into a normal loving guy who wouldn't hurt a fly – that would be stupid.
As for the name, it was pretty symbolic from the start. I actually cringed a bit whenever I typed Ares, but I liked the symbolism so I went with it.