He Was Just A Boy
Capricious Purple Clarity
Chapter One
"You feel guilty about leaving Drake to fend off the lawyers all by his lonesome?"
Will snorted into his ice cream cone. "Dude, to feel guilty I'd have to be capable of the emotion in the first place." Will was capable of many things -he'd always had a firm understanding in all depths of human emotions. 'Guilty' was the one word that wasn't in his vocabulary at all. Even if he did realize he was at fault, he shrugged it off with ease. It was his popular philosophy that agonizing over some accident or some slight of word that he'd meant was complete bullshit, and if someone got hurt, than they needed a reality check. The world was a dark, cruel, unforgiving place.
"Yeah, me neither," Sin said cheerfully, sprawling out on the park bench with a cone dangling carelessly from his fingers, the lump of ice cream threatening to tilt over and slide off. "Does this make me a sociopath like you?"
Will made a show of actually thinking about that before slowly replying, "I wouldn't call myself a sociopath... but sometimes that appears to be the case."
"You're maniacal and you know it."
"I am that," Will said with a smarmy grin.
Sin considered his dripping chocolate ice cream cone for a moment before he said, "Huh. Maybe we should have brought the bratlings instead of leaving them at the tender mercies of Dad. Think he's trying to make them do something productive and entirely irrational -like learn?"
Will snickered. "Teaching is his way of showing he cares. Really. Just ask any of his students, former and current."
"What strange dimension did you come from?" Sin demanded. "Learning under Dad's tutelage was like taking a vacation to the seventh layer of hell, where there are no weekends. Half the time I was convinced he hated all sentient life forms on this planet, if only because they didn't match up to his exact standards."
"I always kind of figured Uncle Aedri liked me in the classroom," Will said casually.
"Which time? The time you two got into that screaming debate over the best way to repel a vampire? Or how about that one time when you started off on your 'werewolves are people too' campaign, when Dad made it explicitly clear that he didn't care either way? You let his Acrumentulas loose, Will -his whopping six feet tall big freaking spiders! You were lucky those uglies didn't make meals out of the rest of us, or you would have been expelled faster than Britney Spears became a step-mom."
"I kept him on his toes," Will replied lightly, the smirk never leaving his face. "Sometimes it's questioning a teacher's methods that earns that teacher's respect, my friend. Prevents people like me from being darling little 'yes-boys' and 'yes-girls' like the rest of you poor, pathetic norms."
"I'm nobody's yes-boy," Sin muttered rebelliously, licking his sticky fingers clean of melted ice cream.
"I'd love to live in your fantasy world. Too bad I'm grafted in reality... where the pizza man comes from," Will murmured cunningly. Sin narrowed his eyes at his friend critically.
"Why do I still talk to you?"
"My sparkling wit and charming personality?" Will decided it would be prudent to ignore Sin's snort of derisive disbelief.
"Who's living in a fantasy world now?"
"I'm allowed to visit every once in awhile. How else would I debase myself to your level?" Insert shit-eating grin here.
Sin laughed despite the insult, but his attention was drawn by movement out of the corner of his eye. Being that it was just around six on a weekday, most children and adults alike had fled the park Will and Sin were visiting due to the threat of a storm. There, near the small lake with the slightly murky, choppy water, stood a figure in the distance that seemed to be simply staring at the horizon, inspecting the dark clouds that were fast rolling in. Sin almost brushed it off, just about to turn back to Will for another rejoinder, another counter, when the man turned slightly, and Sin saw what had originally caught his attention.
Green eyes.
Sin knew those green eyes. Such a distinguishing, bright green that seemed fathoms deep. Those were the same green eyes of a little girl who stared up at him, silently begging for please, just one more chocolate frog. Those were the same green eyes of a little boy who peered up at him through a blond fringe in hopes of another story before bedtime. The same green eyes that Drake used to address his one-time lover by... the first and last lover Drake ever had.
With the green eyes came the rest of him. The man had Journey's nose and Valorie's mouth... or would it be that Valorie had his mouth and Journey had his nose? In any case, the more he looked at this dark-haired man with the heavy green eyes shadowed by dark thoughts, the more he saw his honorary niece and nephew in his face. And Sin couldn't stop himself from thinking, quite maniacally, All right! Looks like there's going to be a little ass kicking before the night ends after all!
When Will saw the almost giddy glint of violence in his friend's glittering silver eyes, saw just what unfortunate soul was the receiver of such a look, (Could that be Drake's Green Eyes?) he couldn't help but to, for once in his life, be the reasonable one. "Now, Sin... Now, Sin, let's not jump to conclusions here..." And when the look didn't let up, he found himself pitying the poor bastard just a little.
No good ever came from that look in Sin's eyes.
"Oh, I think I've already jumped to several conclusions, cousin," Sin purred before pulling himself from the bench, tossing his forgotten cone into a nearby trash receptacle. "That man can be none other than Mr. Green Eyes himself."
"Could be just an innocent lookalike," Will said casually. When Sin shot him a disbelieving glare, he shrugged offhandedly. "Yeah, that sounded weak to me, too." Then Sin was moving with a renewed purpose, moving toward that poor unsuspecting guy who was about to get hurt for reasons not obvious to him, and Will was jogging to catch up, saying, "Sin, wait. Sin! Dragon is not going to like you going to jail for beating up his six-year crush. Sin!"
Will stopped in his tracks, for once completely clueless as to stop this oncoming disaster (and he wasn't too sure he wanted to get in the way of it, either -sowing the seeds of chaos was one of his favorite pastimes). Luckily he didn't have to.
"HARRY JAMES POTTER!"
The black-haired man bowed his head and groaned. Loudly. Sin slowed to a stop, tilting his head to the side as he watched with narrowed eyes, spotting the owner of that voice. A smartly-dressed woman in practical heels and a pantsuit was stomping her way toward Green Eyes, wild hair whipping in the strong winds. Will had enough sense to move forward and pull his volatile friend behind a tree, and he leaned against the side of the trunk facing the lake as he feigned interest in the rumbling rain clouds. Luckily they were close enough to hear and far enough away to not be overly apparent about it.
"Mione," Will heard the man say evenly, tossing a rock he'd been flipping over and over in his palm into the lake, breaking the surface with a small plop. "How was the fifth year anniversary celebration?"
"You would know," the woman snapped waspishly, "if you had bothered to show up! Honestly, Harry -so many people were worried when you didn't show up! Molly thought something terrible had happened to you -Snape is convinced you crawled into a bottle somewhere and refused to come out! Ron mentioned that you were probably in that pub in the middle-of-nowhere, Surrey -he said you always went there around this time of year. If you went pub crawling on the most important date in British wizarding history, I'll be hard-pressed to forgive you, Harry Potter!"
"Wizarding?" Sin questioned from the corner of his mouth.
"What was yesterday's date?" Will hissed.
"Er, 27 of June, I think," Sin whispered. "What happened-?"
"That's the day he met Drake six years ago," Will pointed out. "Um... five years ago... Oh! Yesterday was the day the Dark Lord whatshisface was killed five years old. There was some big shindig lionizing the momentous occasion."
"How do you know? You suck at remembering holidays and the like!"
"It struck me sort of funny, that some Dark Lord guy fell on the first year anniversary of Drake's meeting Green Eyes and conceiving the twins," Will shrugged. "I read it in the paper yesterday."
"I just wanted to be alone, Hermione," the man said pointedly. "I wasn't in the celebrating mood."
"What, and sending an owl is too difficult for you to handle when you're getting pissed?"
"I wasn't getting pissed," the man said irately, a flash of anger in his eyes. "I was just at a pub. It was nothing, Hermione."
"Why always that pub, Harry?" the woman demanded. "You know, alcoholics tend to stick to familiar places-"
"Merlin's beard, Hermione," the man snapped, "I'm not an alcoholic! Have you ever seen me so much as touch anything stronger than butterbeer?"
"Then why weren't you there? Why did you skip out -again?"
"Stupidity?" the man shot back. "Look, Hermione -I met this amazing person, once -someone who didn't give a flip about the whole Boy Who Lived aspect, someone who didn't even know about it -and for some stupid reason, I always think 'maybe this is the year I'll find that someone again, in that nameless little pub like I did six years ago'. Forgive me if I'd rather take my ritual in that then celebrating the fact that, oh, gosh-gee-wow, I'm not dead. Okay?"
Silence. Will smirked at Sin. Sin scowled at Will.
"Shut up," he groused lowly, crossing his arms.
"Congratulations," Will whispered. "You almost beat the snot out of a guy who's just as much a love-struck idiot over Drake as Drake is over him."
"Shut up, Will."
"We seriously need to work on your people skills."
"So help me Merlin, Will-"
"Do you mean that boy who wrote you that letter, Harry?" Will heard the woman murmur, and he signaled Sin to be quiet. He heard the man -Harry- inhale sharply.
"How did you...? Oh, for fuck's sake, Hermione Granger, tell me you didn't go through my things!"
"He didn't even know your name, did he?" the woman pointed out. "Harry, that summer -it was a low point in your life. You'd just lost Sirius, you had a lot of things on your mind... you attached yourself to the one good thing that seemed to happen to you, so tightly that you don't even realize that he used you, Harry. It's not healthy to-"
"Stop it, Hermione. Just. Stop." The woman went silent at the frothy ire in the man's voice. "You don't understand at all. You can't understand. It was more than just a stupid one-night stand -it was the point in my life where I could look myself in the mirror again and realize that there were things worth fighting for. Even if I do see him again -and I know how unlikely that is... even if it doesn't pan out, I still need him to know that he helped me on a much deeper level than just carnal need."
"Harry-"
"I'm not explaining this right at all," Harry argued. "Look, just... there's more to it than just that. All right? He gave me a bloody theme song, Hermione -I know that sounds ridiculously stupid, but it helped. It helped me get over the fact that it was kill or be killed, it helped with the idea that I'd lost almost all of the parental figures in my life, it helped when I was on that bloody cliff battling it out with a monster who thought about nothing but killing me since before I was born. It helped, Hermione, and that's all you need to know."
Silence prevailed for several moments before Hermione gave up. Instead, she sighed and glanced toward the sky. "Lucius Malfoy's funeral was this morning. The giving of his estate is tomorrow."
Harry snorted. "So?" He bent forward, picking up another rock and tossing it in the air several times before he reared back and threw it with all of his might. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
"Are you going?"
"Why should I? Malfoy was hardly my biggest fan," Harry said with a sour face. "I could barely stand the prat myself."
"He did a lot for the Order, Harry -a lot that he wasn't publicly recognized for," Hermione argued. Will and Sin exchanged looks. "They're holding a coronation for the Malfoy heir and everything. Narcissa mentioned that she'd hope you would show up at least."
Harry grunted. "Didn't know Lucius had an heir."
"Narcissa mentioned that it wasn't a... a favorable relationship between father and son," Hermione hedged. "The way she described it, Lucius helped the Order of the Phoenix mainly for his son. Dumbledore promised to write a letter of recommendation to the Minister... in hopes that he could regain custody of his son. However..." She trailed off.
"Dumbledore died," Harry finished monotonously. "Guess Malfoy never got his letter of recommendation."
"No," Hermione said quietly. "No, he didn't. But Narcissa still hopes that she could at least have some form of bond with her son, Harry -she's hoping our... our attendance will prove to him that his view of them is outdated."
"So it's a Boy Who Lived, Muggleborn, and Weasley thing, isn't it?" Harry said bitterly. "Like parading us around and going, 'oh, look, we older generation of Malfoys can get along with the poor, the dirty, and the greatest threat to our former master, thank the gods his tyranny is over.'"
"Harry," the woman said in reprimand.
"Will going get you off my case about missing yesterday's celebration?" the man asked wearily.
"Perhaps," the woman said with a tight smile. "It won't save you from the papers. The Daily Prophet had some pretty slanderous things to say about you missing the public appearance on the anniversary of the Dark Lord's defeat -yet again. They alluded that you had aspirations to becoming the next Dark Lord."
Harry snorted. "Welcome to my life."
"So are you going?"
"I guess. If it'll get you to stop nagging me."
Hermione sighed. "Come on, then, Harry. We've been tempting that storm for far too long. Let's go get something to eat -my treat."
Will watched the two walk away, and Sin peered over Will's head. Once the two were out of sight, Will turned around and smirked at his equally amused friend.
"Things are about to get a little interesting around here," Will said casually. "Wouldn't you say?"
"I think I should feel bad that I don't plan to tell Drake about any of this," Sin said, his eyes glittering. "Oh, dear Merlin, I am turning into you."
Will laughed and clapped his friend on the back, leading him in the opposite direction of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. "Chaos, dude. It's a marvelous thing to observe."
END Chapter One
And that concludes the first chapter of He Was Just A Boy. Hope you enjoyed it. Reviews would be much appreciated::pleading look: