Chapter Five: Terror on the Hogwarts Express
The Valerians are reunited with a lost member of the family, but a search of the Hogwarts Express ruins the good vibes.
The following morning, Ron threw himself into the room the others were occupying, pulling a sweatshirt on over his head, a disgruntled Arcana pausing in the doorway.
"The sooner we get on the train the better," the redhead grumbled.
Tarana raised her head to blink at him and the three heirs stopped packing.
"What?"
"I'm sharing a room with Percy," Ron informed them, which didn't surprise anyone, given that the Weasleys still couldn't have afforded a room for each of their children and themselves, even if there had been space. "Last night, he accused me of stealing his Head Boy badge and wouldn't let me go down to get Scabbers' medicine and blamed me for friggin hours while Arcana went to get it."
Harry tilted his head, frowning past his friend to the tiger. That must have been when Arcana was arguing with the Weasleys.
"Then this morning, he accused me of dripping tea on his photo of Penelope Clearwater, you know, his girlfriend?" Ron grimaced, but Draco snickered.
The idea of the stick-in-the-mud Percy Weasley somehow managing to get a girlfriend was both confusing and amusing to him.
"She's hidden her face under the frame because her nose has gone all blotchy," Ron sneered.
The twins appeared in the doorway, grinning brightly as they wrapped their arms around their younger brother. "Nicely done, baby brother," Fred grinned.
"Infuriating Percy again!" George weaved a little, swaying the trio before turning Ron toward the door.
"We could hear him down the hall," Fred added, voice trailing down the hall as they dragged Ron down to breakfast, leaving everyone else to stare at the doorway and wonder, as was usual when the twins were around, what the hell had just happened.
XX
The room was mostly full when the three Heirs and their guardians came down to join the Weasleys and Hermione.
Molly had Ginny and Hermione at one end of the table, heads pressed together, and were whispering, something about love potions.
"I forgot to ask last night," Draco said as he sat down. "How do we all plan to get to the train station?"
This would be the first time that Draco and Blaise were coming from the muggle world, having usually been dropped off by their far more magical parents.
"The Ministry is providing a couple of cars for us," Arthur told them.
Draco paused in spooning eggs onto his dish. "The Ministry?"
"Well, as we haven't got one anymore," Arthur said, ears turning red in a familiar enough way that Draco's eyes were drawn to Ron almost immediately. "And as I work there, they're doing me a favor."
"Favor," Draco snorted quietly, glancing down at Fallen, who was staring at the Weasley patriarch. "I didn't think he was in much of a position to call on favors. I mean, he's still under investigation or whatever, isn't he? For the car last year."
Fallen didn't immediately answer, because Draco hadn't been nearly as quiet as he had hoped to be, and the family was alternately glaring at Draco for bringing it up or flushing in embarrassment for having enchanted/flew the Ford Angelia.
'I don't know.' Fallen said slowly. 'It would make more sense if your father had sent cars, given that you are present. I imagine this has less to do with the Ministry owing Weasley a favor, and more to do with, ah-'
The wolf paused and eyed his charge who smirked down at him.
Fallen rolled his eyes. 'Nice try, dragonling,' he murmured, only half-amused.
Draco, meanwhile, was less amused.
He hated that nickname.
Severus, at least, called him 'dragon', but Fallen's nickname still implied him to be a child.
Still, it was the first nickname that Fallen had ever given to him, as only rarely did he adopt the one that Severus used, so Draco had never mentioned how much the name bothered him.
Fallen, for his part, was very aware of Draco's dislike of the younger version of the nickname he so adored from his godfather, but he didn't believe that Draco had quite earned such a powerful nickname and thus chose not to use it yet.
'Also, I would like to point out that your whisper is not quite a whisper.'
Draco looked up from his dish and saw the reaction of his words for the first time, shrugged, and apologized.
He didn't sound much like he meant it.
XX
The ride to King's Cross station was made with little issue, bar Arthur Weasley apparently forgetting that Tarana was always at her charge's side, whether the man could see her or not, and came very close to stepping on her paw and knocking her sideways into said teen's side.
'Watch yourself,' the Queen snapped warningly from where she was hidden beneath her 'Notice-Me-Not' spell, though she waited until they were well past the barrier that protected the wizarding platform, nine-and-three-quarters, where the man could see her, before truly letting him have it.
'While I appreciate the fact that you and Molly were watching over my charge while I was unable, Arthur Weasley, it is not your place to safeguard him,' Tarana said sharply.
Arthur glanced over his shoulder, where Arcana was shaking himself free of the feeling of Fallen's Disillusionment Charm, which generally left an oily feeling on the recipient. It had taken him almost a week to get used to Arcana's presence around his youngest son and would likely take much longer for him to get used to having one of the famed Valerians so tied to his family.
Still, he knew, now, how seriously the Valerians took the protection of their charges, though he can't say he was best pleased with Tarana given the state she had left hers in last summer.
"Apologies," the wizard murmured lowly, so his words wouldn't travel and the minor displeasure he felt for the panther wouldn't be as easy to pick up. "This…business with Sirius Black has put Molly and I on edge, given the ah, history we have with him."
Tarana couldn't much fault him.
The Order of the Phoenix had been, for the most part, the most effective counter to Voldemort and his Death Eaters during the last war, but it had forced those within it to form quick bonds of trust with one another in the process.
Regardless.
'I assure you,' Tarana said seriously. 'If Sirius does come looking for Harry, our history will not prevent me from tearing his throat out.'
Arthur looked down into the burning blue eyes of the Queen, before the violence of her retort apparently appeased him, at least somewhat.
He's distracted by getting the children onto the train before he can speak any more at that moment but prevents her from getting onto the train after them several minutes later, after the emotional goodbyes were taken care of.
"I need to warn you, Your Highness," he murmured, kneeling before her to be more at her level and glancing toward the train and then toward the crowd on their other side. "Harry overheard part of an argument, an ongoing one, between His Majesty, Molly, and myself. I don't know how much he heard before Arcana became aware of him, but he may know that Si-Black is hunting him."
Tarana frowned. "I have already informed you of my intentions for Sirius, Arthur."
Arthur nodded. "I know, but there's something else. Dumbledore isn't happy about it, but the Ministry overruled him on the matter. Dementors are going to be posted at Hogwarts to try and keep both Black and his guardian off the grounds. I didn't spend much time with Ebony, he was never around the Order much, but I can't say for sure that I believe the Dementors will contain him."
Tarana, however, was rather stuck on the first part of that revelation.
Dementors.
At Hogwarts.
Where children lived and slept.
There was a low, dangerous rumble building in her chest.
"How dare that despicable little rodent," she hissed, turning on her tail, leaving Arthur to stare after her in shock.
The Queen paused in the open doorway of the train, turning to look back at Arthur as she drew herself to her fullest height.
Arthur blinked.
"Thank you for the warning, Arthur. I will not let it go to waste."
Arthur was left to stare after the panther as she went in search of the others, wondering just how such a warning would help her.
XX
Tarana found her companions toward the end of the train, which was to be expected given that it had the first place that they'd met Yoko and was one of the more easily defended train cars because there was only a single entrance to it, even though it was considered by muggles to be unsafe to not have a second exit for the children.
The train cars after this one were used to transport supplies up to both Hogsmeade, and the Hogwarts castle beyond it, that couldn't be transported by magic, and thus was protected against both deliberate and accidental wandering by the students, by simply not making it accessible from the rest of the train.
This knowledge wasn't the reason she picked up her pace a full car and a half before reaching her destination.
It was the laughter.
Laughter she hadn't heard in well over a decade, despite the later years that they had spent together.
Laughter that felt more like coming home than her mating to Arcana ever had.
She'd barely cleared the doors before she was bowled over and rolled into a tangled mess of black and white, two low rumbling purrs echoing in the corridor amidst bright laughter that none of them had heard from Tarana in years.
The children had, due to the sheer number of them, taken two compartments over, but it wasn't simply those under the care of the Valerians that were drawn out of their compartments to see the strange ball of muscle and fur rolling around in the space between them all.
The black panther, for most of them, was familiar.
She had been around during the school year two years previously and had returned in time to assist Dumbledore-or so the rumor went-in protecting Ginny Weasley the year before.
The other large cat, a massive white cat, easily the same size as Tarana, possibly a little larger, though it was hard to tell when they were so tangled together, with massive dark spots, was unfamiliar to all of them.
The Valerians lounged in their chosen spaces, watching the reunion with clear contentedness and happiness, regardless of the tension that had grown over the last few days between them.
"Who is he?" Draco murmured to Fallen.
Fallen's grin widened, but it was Arcana, a smile in his voice, from the floor of the compartment across from them, that answered.
"This is Ivory. He and Tarana are Bloodkin."
The teens, as though a switch had been flicked, could suddenly feel the joy and pleasure in the two cats on the floor. Like knowing their connection had opened them up to the same waves of pleasure, relief, and happiness that were flowing over the other Valerians.
Harry was grinning, tears welling in his eyes before Arcana had even finished needlessly clarifying.
"Siblings."
XX
Though he hadn't properly seen her in months, Arcana was finding it very difficult to be jealous of the attention his Queen was laying on Ivory, given the amount of time that it had been, not only since the last time the two saw one another, but the odds of them ever seeing one another again after that last time.
"Tell me, Ivory," the panther said, looking at the leopard that was sprawled over her back. "What brings you back to England? Last I knew, you and Remus were somewhere on the west coast of America."
It didn't surprise Arcana, or Ivory for that matter, at all, that Tarana had managed to hunt out rumors of her brothers since returning to the wizarding world two years ago.
(This made it all the more confusing for him, that she didn't appear aware that he had met and dealt with one of them some months earlier, but that was a particular bout of good fortune that he didn't intend to question yet.)
For a moment, all eyes turned to the rather shabbily dressed young man in the compartment to the right, where he shared a compartment with Blaise, Neville, Yoko, and Arcana.
He had been there when they arrived on the train, and they had debated whether it was worth it to try and find a different area of the train where they could get two compartments close enough together to all sit together, or to just put up with his sleeping form.
Yoko didn't want to give up the ease of defense of this car, however, and thus they'd chosen to hope that he kept sleeping through the ride and simply resolved to keep their noise level to a minimum.
"America?" Neville asked curiously, glancing between the leopard and the man beside him.
"After certain events forced us out of England for a while, Remus and I traveled around and did, eventually," the leopard shot a sharp glance at his sister beneath him, "find ourselves in America. There's a town, almost entirely supernatural, around the northern area of California where we've been able to carve out a niche of sorts. Was peaceful. Calming."
Tarana twitched.
It was probably the nicest phrase anyone had used yet, to describe the deaths of the Potters and her subsequent drop from the radar to protect and further hide Harry thirteen years earlier.
'Sorry,' she apologized.
Ivory scoffed quietly in her ear, tilting his head with enough force to jostle her own.
She didn't mean it and he knew it.
Her apology was meaningless.
"Why a supernatural community?" Draco asked, leaning forward to look out the door propped open with Fallen's weight against it in the doorway, a mirror to Arcana in the compartment across from them. "I mean, there have to be more protected wizarding communities in America than California, right?"
"We didn't need a wizarding community," Ivory told him. "In fact, I was outwardly looking to avoid them. I'd lost most of my family that night, between my twin disappearing into the shadows, my sister supposedly dead, and the rest scattered the winds. I wasn't in a good place to control myself and it certainly wasn't safe for something of my power to be around fragile humans."
Yoko snorted, ear twitching when Blaise's fingers came too close on one of his rather absent pets. "You always did feel more than your brother."
Fallen's lip curled in more amusement than disdain. "A touchy-feely type."
Tarana tilted her head to catch Arcana's eye.
Yoko's comment was true, but Fallen's was simply teasing.
The Valerians knew that while between Ebony and Ivory, Ivory was the more emotional of the two, 'touchy-feely' was never something one would have used to describe the most brutal of the Crown's enforcers.
"What's it like in America?" Harry asked.
Ivory's entire body seemed to shift, the tension that none of the children had realized was there simply evaporating.
The following few hours were some of the most entertaining, and informative, of any trip to Hogwarts yet, because Ivory didn't just have knowledge, he had anecdotes.
XX
Ivory managed to talk for hours.
He had stories of America, stories of his travels (both with and before Remus), stories from his multiple stays at Hogwarts, stories of the Valerians (to mixed reactions from said Valerians), and, most importantly to Harry, stories of the Marauders.
Stories of his father.
The time passes quickly and with little negativity.
Even the apparently angry reactions from the Valerians painted in a less than regal light by Ivory's stories weren't really angry and were simply aiding in the narrative as he spun it around them.
Even Yoko and Blaise, who's horrible summer had been a rather fixed point in their minds no matter what else they were doing, were so drawn in by the light banter and amusing stories of the leopard that they didn't appear to be much bothered by that trauma now.
"-and then, by the time we got to Hogsmeade-"
"Oh!"
Ivory paused, looking at Harry, who flushed at having unintentionally interrupted the story.
"Sorry, I just…I realized that I'd never…with everything else that happened that night…Aunt Petunia never…signed the slip…."
Ron frowned. "So, what, you're not going to Hogsmeade?"
Harry shrugged. "Aunt Marge came to visit, and I guess between one thing and another we forgot about it. I don't have permission, so-"
Draco looked at Tarana. "You can give him permission, can't you?"
The tension that had dissipated in the wake of Ivory's well-spun distractions returned with a vengeance as all eyes turned to Tarana, some more judging than others.
Tarana didn't shift uncomfortably.
She didn't duck her head to avoid the eyes of her people.
She was too well versed in being the center of attention to do any of those things, despite wanting to do those things.
Instead, she tilted her head to meet Harry's hopeful gaze with her own and said, rather noncommittally, "We'll see how things go between now and that first weekend. I need to get a feel for a few things from a few sources and speak with the Headmaster about a matter or two."
The comment is, despite how well-phrased, so clearly a no to the teen that he sagged hopelessly back into his seat.
Fallen lay his head back down, apparently appeased by her answer; and Yoko sagged further into Blaise's lap.
The conversation quickly picks back up again, and the moment between panther and charge is lost.
It takes a long time for anyone to realize how silent Ivory had become after the brief conversation and the reactions from half his family to Tarana's answer.
Rather embarrassing considering he'd been the center of attention for several hours.
Embarrassing and tellingly dangerous.
XX
The next bit of excitement came nearly an hour after the Valerians, more or less, dropped out of the conversation.
It was rather difficult to have a chess match in the close confines of a train compartment, but Draco and Ron were determined and somehow managed it, much to Fallen and Ivory's amusement, though it had necessitated Harry moving to the opposite compartment and further tightening already tight quarters there.
Yoko was now stretched across the laps of both teens, though he wasn't much bothered by it, as it gave him a less obstructed view of the chessboard through two panes of glass.
The board, which had managed to survive the bumps and jostles of the moving train, was sent scattering amidst angry shouts from both pieces and players, when Crookshanks, who had managed to go mostly unnoticed in the luggage rack above them, abruptly dove off it to try and get at the rat in Ron's chest pocket.
Instinctively, Draco had reached out to steady the board before it fell, and it was simply swift reflexes that kept his hand from being torn to shreds by the cat's claws when it, deciding his hands were too close, turned on him.
Ron, angry at the attack on his person, upended the board and threw the cat to the floor of the compartment where it was rescued by Hermione and clutched close to her chest.
"Control your bloody animal, Granger," Draco hissed dangerously, ice blue eyes flashing in his rage as he inspected the damage. His hand wasn't bleeding but the cat had definitely split skin.
Hermione flushed. "He's just doing what cats do, Draco," she hissed back. "They hunt rodents!"
Neville's hand drifted toward his own pocket, where his pet toad, Trevor, was settled for once.
Cats didn't just hunt rodents, after all, they hunted vermin.
"Granger," Fallen murmured, silencing Draco and Hermione alike before the argument could escalate. "I will warn you this once. You can tell me that cats hunt mice and rats all you like, but the next time that cat splits the skin of my charge, regardless of its reason, I will have it for lunch. Are we clear on this matter?"
Hermione paled and, clutching the cat more firmly on her lap, settled back into her seat, the book she'd been reading abandoned beside her to keep a closer eye on her pet.
Fallen nodded as though she'd verbally answered and went back to his apparent nap.
XX
There hadn't yet, unfortunately, been a trip to Hogwarts where Draco's cousin, Katelyn, hadn't made an appearance and the unwanted tradition wasn't broken this year.
Katelyn, like her cousin, had grown taller over the summer, though not quite as tall as Draco, and now stood taller than Harry by an inch or two, much to the teen's displeasure. Her hair had likewise grown out and she had the blond tresses, not nearly so blonde as her cousin and uncle, pinned artfully to the back of her head with several Asian-looking pins or needles, the handles of which matched her brown eyes exactly and added an additional highlight to her blond hair.
She was, abstractly, as beautiful as her cousin was handsome.
Pity, then, that she was so rotten on the inside.
She was alone, which was unusual.
She usually accompanied herself with several of the Slytherin girls, both in and around her own year.
She couldn't quite get to either of the compartments, what with Tarana and Ivory sprawled across the walkway, having not moved for anything short of the snack trolley that had come back a half hour or so ago, and Arcana and Fallen in the doorways of the compartments themselves, but it didn't really stop her from needling the occupants anyway.
"Zabini!" she called, leaning forward to peer through the glass as though he was a particularly interesting specimen in a zoo. "I heard the most interesting news while I was visiting Uncle Lucius this summer. Apparently, our solicitors are facing the Wizengamot for you. Did you finally get fed up with being beaten on and kill Lord Zabini?" she smirked, tilting her head thoughtfully. "No, you don't have the guts to do it yourself. You had Yoko do it, didn't you?"
Neville got rather sharply to his feet; fists clenched.
Katelyn laughed. "Gonna fight, Longbottom? You'll trip over your own feet first!"
"You know," Ivory drawled quietly, drawing her attention down to him as he disentangled himself from Tarana and languidly stretched. "I hear it's never too early to start losing House Points." He grinned ferally, fangs parting slowly enough that saliva still connected the loosening teeth. "Or fingers."
Katelyn paled and took a step back, before reminding herself that the Valerians couldn't do serious harm to her without her having done the same to their charges.
Still, this Valerian wasn't familiar to her.
"Katelyn," Draco said, coming to lean against the compartment doorway over Fallen's still sprawled and careless form. "Father already told us that Blaise's legal situation wasn't our business and we were to stop asking questions about it." He gestured to Ivory. "This is Ivory. He's Bonded to our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor," he gestured to the sleeping man across the compartment. "Professor Lupin."
Katelyn looked at the leopard critically. "He is going to be an assistant teacher? Him?"
Though it wasn't common for those Bonded to the Valerians to return to any profession that taught another, the Valerians, in turn, generally were given the title of 'assistant' to whatever occupation their Bonded held, if they choose to accompany them to that job at all.
To the surprise of the Slytherin, however, the question caused many of the Valerians to laugh, which in turn caused her flush with embarrassment and irritation.
For once, she hadn't meant it as an insult, she had been honestly curious as to how the Valerian could possibly be considered a teacher of any kind when he'd threatened to take off fingers right after House Points that weren't even being counted yet.
"It's going to be a long year, Ivory, if even the students can tell that you're not fit to be a teacher," Yoko said, managing to calm his laughter down to snickers.
Ivory glared at him, though there was a good-natured grin on his face. "What can I say? It's always been easier to get into trouble than to teach others to stay out of it."
Tarana abruptly had a case of hacking, as though she was trying to bring up a hairball.
Confused by the change in the Valerians, Katelyn took the opportunity, while no one was watching, to beat a swift retreat.
Though Katelyn left, the others exchanged confused glances.
It was unusual, this good-natured fun from their Valerians.
It was as though the simple addition of Ivory and his humor and stories, had transformed them from simply the Crown to the actual family that they often claimed to be, complete with the teasing and ribbing that came with such a connection.
It was both confusing and wonderful.
The good vibes could only last so long, unfortunately, before the luck of the Valerians-or their charges, the verdict as to which of them had the worse luck was still coming-kicked in with a strange chill.
Literally.
XX
The train was still twenty or thirty minutes from Hogsmeade train station when the Hogwarts Express, for the first time in decades, came to a complete stop before having arrived.
The sheer rarity and surprise of the event itself immediately put the Valerians on edge and brought them to full alert.
"Fallen. Ivory."
Despite the decades between their last meeting and now, it said a great deal about the bond between them all that the General and Ivory simply got to their paws and disappeared up the train to check for threats.
"Stay on guard," Arcana told Tarana and Yoko, who immediately took the places that Fallen and Arcana had occupied, pausing at the door between the cars. "We'll report back as soon as we know something."
Tarana waited until Arcana was gone before glancing at her assassin. 'Are you up to this, Yoko?' she asked him.
Yoko snarled, low and angry. 'I'm not an invalid,' he snapped. 'I'm perfectly capable of looking after my charge, thank you very much.'
Tarana blinked slowly, reigning in the instinctive snap of her own, and pushing the stab of pain at his assumption aside.
She hadn't meant to imply otherwise and had honestly been asking about his magical and elemental recovery.
She couldn't have asked after his sharp retort to the simple question anyway, as the lights immediately flickered and died.
The whispers, begun when the train had stopped, got worse.
Tarana and Yoko raised their heads to the ceiling.
Harry quickly scrambled back to the compartment he'd come from, just as Hermione decided that she didn't want to be stuck where she was and slipped out to move to the one holding Blaise and Neville, each seeking the familiar comfort of their best friends (so to speak in Hermione's case), they all remained tense as they waited for the lights to come back on.
They didn't.
A full two minutes went by before the Valerians moved, stepping out of the compartments and allowing the doors to close behind them.
Two sets of eyes flared black and their Elements flared.
Light returned, dimly to the car as fire flared like torches between the compartments.
"Everyone back inside," Tarana ordered, and the few students that had stepped out to investigate quickly stepped back, just in time for Yoko's Element to lash the doors closed.
It was a flimsy defense as he quickly retracted his power and the vines' ability to keep them that way was only based on the power behind the attempt to open them.
He had more important things to worry about, however, quickly moving to the doors and rubbed his body entirely along the edges, seeding the doorway on either side with a pod that quickly grew to the size of a tennis ball and pulsed with the blue-black of his Element.
As soon as the trap was planted, he retreated behind Tarana's larger bulk and literal firepower, the Queen now their second line of defense.
Tarana's tail swayed slowly, a metronome that kept time as the compartment held their breath and waited for whatever threat dared to stop the Express with the Valerians and their charges on it.
XX
Tarana pressed herself lower as the door began to creak open, but she took two steps forward rather than attacking.
Her push forward nearly caused her to miss the flutter of power and Yoko abruptly pressed down on his triggering of the trap he'd laid.
It was premature even if the person on the other side of the doors wasn't Ginny Weasley because the trap would have lashed the door shut and not trapped whatever idiot would have walked into it, warning the attackers that there was resistance on the other side.
"Quickly child," Tarana murmured, ignoring it for the moment. "You should have stayed put. It's riskier to try and move when we don't know where or what the threat might be."
Ron broke the vine keeping him and the others in his compartment inside, urgently tugging his sister inside, hissing at her about being foolish.
"Shouldn't we wake Professor Lupin?" Hermione asked, glancing at the professor in the compartment across from them.
The tension, the sudden stop, the lights going out.
The man had slept through all of it.
"Given the weekend he's had," Tarana replied evenly, "on top of planning the return to England, we'll wake him only if we don't think we can hold the line."
Yoko's lip peeled back. "Only an idiot attacks the Hogwarts Express."
'An idiot,' a voice in his head whispered evenly. 'Or someone who knows the value of what's on it.'
Yoko shook his head to dislodge it.
Shu hadn't spoken to him since Delia's death and it wasn't likely the fox was going to start now.
XX
The first clue as to what was on the Express with them was the frosting of the windows and doors.
"Fucking shit," Yoko hissed viciously. "What idiot at the Ministry signed off on a dementor search of the Hogwarts Express while there are still fucking children on it?!"
Tarana grimaced and it wasn't because of the power she was forcing to fight back the chill of the dementors on the train with them.
'I won't be able to hold this,' she warned Yoko, causing the fox to blink at her, startled.
'What?'
The feedback of a Bond between Valerian and human generally meant that a dementor's effect on them was seriously lessened because they didn't fear the same things and were able to use it to counter the dread and unpleasantness that came with the memories they invoked.
Tarana glanced over her shoulder at him and there was enough guilt in her black eyes that Yoko got the gist immediately.
She hadn't finished it.
She and Harry weren't Bonded.
"Shit," he swore again, just as the first of two dementors came through the not quite closed doors of the car.
Cloaked in black, the two floating creatures of terror brought a wave of chill and fear so powerful that the flames flickered and went out before Tarana boosted their power and brought them back.
In the darkness, the seed on the left erupted like an overripe fruit as soon as the dementor touched it, further powered by the timing of Yoko springing it.
The plant inside it was like a living octopus, the 'body' colliding with the right side of the dementor and its flailing vines wrapping around it and preventing the creature from raising its frail arms, binding it from chest to where, on a human, its knees would have been.
Given that the dementors floated, however, it wasn't hobbled by the move, which had been the intent of the move, and it simply continued to advance.
The second dementor, who floated in barely a millisecond behind the first, was caught much the same way, though it was caught higher and the body had caught it where its shoulder would have been, allowing the vines to wrap around its head and shoulders.
Both creatures shrieked, causing the children in the car to cry out in pain, hands clapping over their ears.
Tarana answered the angry shriek from the dementors with a power-backed roar of her own, slamming the two creatures out of the air and, because they had separated as soon as they'd come through the door, slammed them to the space on either side of the narrow door.
She shook her head sharply, trying to dislodge the shades brought on by the power of the dementors.
When there was no follow up assault, the dementors took advantage and advanced, regardless of the octopus-plants' hindrance.
Only one of them, after all, was prevented from performing the Kiss.
Tarana growled low and warning, bracing herself to spring, but the world suddenly spun, and her paw slid out from beneath her, throwing her off balance and sending her crashing to the floor.
There was screaming in her head, but she couldn't be sure if it was hers or someone else's before the world darkened.
XX
The battle wasn't simply physical however, as soon as the dementors had stepped foot into a defended car, their natural power had doubled, making it even more unpleasant to be inside the car as various fears came calling on the children within it.
For Harry, who had a history with traumatic flashbacks, particularly those surrounding his parents' murder, and Blaise, who had just stepped out of his most traumatic summer yet, these fears had a greater hold than on most children their age.
PTSD, after all, wasn't limited to age, and they were certainly among the worst off in their group of friends.
XX
Harry was always able to hear his mother screaming, usually for him.
He'd come across Voldemort frequently during his First Year at Hogwarts, and, Fallen had later theorized, that Harry's subconscious recognized Voldemort's magical presence which triggered the flashbacks surrounding the death of his mother.
This time, however, he felt like he was right there with her, so clear was her voice, as she screamed not for him, but for his father.
\/\/\/
"James!"
"Go, Lily! Run!"
There was a dark cackle.
"Foolishness," someone hissed, more amused than angered. "Avada Kedavra."
"James!"
/\/\/\
Lost in the maelstrom of pain and fear, Harry reached out uselessly to a bond that wasn't there to try and anchor himself.
Then everything went blessedly silent as unconsciousness finally took him.
XX
Blaise clawed at his bare arms, struggling to orient himself in a flash of memory that he knew couldn't be real because he could still, sort of, hear Yoko swearing as vulgarly as any sailor.
\/\/\/
Blaise hadn't been quite sure how he'd managed to avoid alerting Dark to the fact that he'd-his mind shied away from what he'd done, even in the depths of his flashback-Desmond, but he wasn't planning to look a gift horse in the mouth as he clawed at the doorknob to the prison his mother's study had become.
Slipping inside, his thoughts were so centered on the next step in his, rather threadbare, escape plan-which was to get Yoko's chains off before Dark figured it out-that he didn't really register the overwhelming scent of copper and iron as he turned to latch the door with shaking hands, a feeble resistance, but he'd take any extra time he could while he figured out how to get rid of the vile contraption that contained his guardian.
Clasping the bracelet his stepfather had tried, and failed repeatedly, to remove from his wrist, he took a deep breath. "Yoko, I-"
Any thoughts on keeping silent abruptly fled.
There was no need to try and remove Yoko from his chains.
Though the muzzle remained on his snout, Yoko had been released.
There wasn't a threat in the fox.
He'd been cut from midway up his stomach to his throat.
Blood and viscera spilled out across the hardwood floor.
Blaise was oblivious to the mess he was making of himself as he dragged himself through it, snot and tears clogging his airway and coating his tongue as his hands hovered uselessly over the body of the Valerian Assassin.
Foolishly, all he could think was that he'd finally stood up to his stepfather and Yoko hadn't survived to hear about it.
/\/\/\
XX
Draco, as through a closed door, could hear his mother hissing hatefully at him, mixed with the echoes of a nameless voice growling things in a language he vaguely knew to be Valerian.
His mother's hateful voice wasn't necessarily an unusual thing and was thus easily able to be blocked out.
It wasn't exactly helpful in keeping Harry on the bloody seat as he thrashed and screamed but being able to ignore the hate if he had to was a good thing to know, he absently supposed.
For all that Harry was small and weighed about as much as Fallen did, he was the youngest Seeker of the century and his body was compact enough from two years of practice and those muggle chores he'd needed to do, that his flailing, uncoordinated blows had power behind them.
It didn't help that Draco wasn't used to trying to keep people still like this and was afraid he was going to hurt his friend more than the fall to the floor would.
Across from Draco, Neville was in much the same situation, though Blaise was shaking his head back and forth screaming and it was all Neville could do, not to keep Blaise on the seat, but to keep him from bashing his head against the glass more than once and hurting himself.
The two teens met one another's gaze for the briefest of moments, terrified and unsure, before their respective friends finally broke free of their own terror and moved to help.
A hand clamped down firmly on Neville's shoulder, too big to be Ron, Hermione, or Ginny even if they were in the compartment with him.
He looked up and met warm, guarded amber eyes.
The teen swallowed nervously.
XX
Outside help had also arrived for the Valerians.
Yoko was ducking and weaving over and around the Queen behind him and the two floating, hindered but not tapped-out, dementors.
There was a vicious snarl as Fallen lunged into the car, his weight bringing the first dementor to the ground, the creature giving a rattled hiss as it hit the ground.
It was instinct for Fallen to sink fangs where the shoulder met the throat but there was nothing to the dementor for the wolf to tear into except cloth and dead flesh.
Without it as a distraction, Yoko spun on the second, his Element flaring, and the plant attached to its head promptly constricted.
The dementor cried out, slimy and rotted hands stretched up to try and pry the plant off its head.
"Ivory!" Yoko cried, turning on his tail to dart into the compartment holding his charge, pausing as Lupin stepped into the doorway, wand lit.
"Everyone close your eyes!" Ivory screamed, stepped into the doorway, now so battered that it wouldn't likely close properly until someone took a serious look at it.
The leopard was glowing so brightly that the entire car was lit with it even before he was in the doorway.
"No," Lupin rasped, raising his wand and swirling in in swift, dizzying circles before him. "I'm sure you'll need that strength for later. Expecto Patronum."
The glowing cone of ghostly white light erupted from Lupin's wand, causing the dementor before him to stop trying to pry the plant off its head and to flee with a high pitched shriek, crashing through the narrow window at the back of the compartment, the very same window that Fallen had sent the pollen poisoning Tarana through two years prior.
Once the one dementor was gone, Lupin drew his wand down to the one pinned beneath the General, who struggled to contain it as it tried to get a good grip on his fur, effectively pinning him, likely for a Kiss.
Fallen darted away just as the light of the spell washed over him, and like its kin, the dementor shrieked, cracking the frozen glass, as it too fled, first in the direction of the door, where it was immediately repelled by the glow around Ivory, and then out the window, Lupin's wand following its every move.
"Check on Tarana!" Yoko barked from the compartment, sitting on his charge and flinging the Bond between them wide so he could try and pull Blaise out of his nightmare.
Fallen and Ivory immediately went to the Queen, who was seizing on the floor.
Neither was quite sure how to help her in a way that wouldn't cause any more harm and looked to one another fretfully.
XX
Arcana, having been waylaid by the dementors at the head of the train and again by the angry witch responsible for the snack trolley (who was a former Healer and absolutely livid that someone had allowed dementors onto the train), returned to triage being done by the Valerians and Remus Lupin.
She had handed him a bag full of chocolate to hand out to this end of the train.
Remus was kneeling beside a crying First Year and murmuring reassuringly to her in a compartment closer to the entrance of the car, where the worst damage was done as Yoko had struggled to keep the two creatures contained to that end of the car, where he could more easily force them out.
"The trolley witch is handing out chocolate up and down the train," Arcana told the man, sticking his head into the compartment. "She's aware that the school's Defense Professor is on the train and will seek you out if there are any complications."
Remus smiled wearily up at the tiger and nodded, taking the bag of chocolate from him, before turning his full attention back to the children of the compartment, already reaching in to open and break apart a bar.
'Complications' was an understatement for what was happening in the two compartments taken up by Arcana's charge and their friends.
Tarana had been stretched out on the floor beneath the window (which unknown to Arcana showed no signs of having been broken in the first place) and was watching the others move with half-lidded eyes and drugged expression.
Blaise was upright, Yoko pressed along one side and Neville on the other, while Hermione whispered assurances from across from him. The dark-skinned teen was paler than Arcana had ever seen him, tear tracks still on his face and dripping from his eyes, though the King wasn't sure if it was because he was still crying or if it was simply from the force of him being violently sick into what must have been a conjured bag because it certainly hadn't been-and would certainly never be again-in anyone's luggage.
In the other compartment, Harry was leaning heavily on Draco, shivering with the blonde's arm wrapped tightly around his shoulder. The brunette's expression was blank, but his eyes were red-rimmed, evidence that at some point in the last couple of minutes he'd been crying.
Ron was clearly fine, though angry, as he clutched his teary-eyed sister to his side.
Arcana was rumbling quietly in despair at having not been there when his people and charge needed him, and rage at the attack had happened at all, when Remus stepped out of the compartment.
He bowed low to Arcana.
"Your Majesty," he murmured tiredly.
Arcana gave him a wane smile. "It's good to see you under my own power, Mr. Lupin," he greeted.
Remus tilted his head, clearly confused, before remembering that the last time he and Arcana would have met face-to-face, the tiger would have been brainwashed by his brother.
"Remus, Your Majesty," the man insisted. "I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of one another this year and Mr. Lupin seems entirely too formal for what we'll likely end up doing."
Arcana allowed the words to sink in for a moment, trying to weigh out what side of the fence Remus sat on regarding his former friend.
"Arcana," Tarana wheezed, side heaving as though making the sound cost her a great deal.
Harry flinched in his compartment.
Arcana lowered himself, rubbing his cheek against her own, before turning so he could eye Remus with one eye. "What happened?"
"I'm not entirely sure," he answered, glancing over his shoulder where Ivory was stepping out of another compartment, grim in every line of his being.
"She had some sort of reaction to the dementor. Fallen and I have never seen anything like it." Ivory told him.
Arcana reluctantly pulled away from Tarana to step into the tight compartment occupied by his charge, Ginny, Harry, Draco, and Fallen.
'Are you two alright?' he asked Ron.
Ron was shaking in residual fear and anger.
The redhead was still getting a handle on his telepathy, despite the months between having completed the Bond with Arcana and now, and as such the response was a little static-y in some places.
"Fine," he spat. "What the hell was that?"
Though she couldn't have possibly heard him, Hermione echoed the question in the compartment, looking away from Blaise to stare at Remus as he handed down pieces of chocolate to Neville, Blaise, and Hermione.
"Dementors," he told them. "Dementors of Azkaban."
Ron paled and clutched Ginny closer to him.
"I don't-"
Remus smiled down at the girl. "Part of their, rather dubious, charm, is that they feed on happiness. The absence of that happiness, unfortunately, draws forward horrible memories to replace it, forcing you to relive them."
"They're also nearly impossible to kill," Fallen grumbled hatefully, the very idea that there was something he couldn't kill apparently offensive to him.
He glanced at Ivory as he moved past the compartment to curl up beside Tarana.
Arcana likewise tracked the movement.
'What are the odds that Sirius or Ebony was on this train?' he asked the Valerians.
Fallen's lip curled. 'Nonexistent.'
'There's too great a chance that someone would notice,' Yoko agreed, exhausted.
'And Ebony's too smart to put himself and Sirius in a location with so little opportunity to escape when, not if, they were discovered,' Ivory pointed out. With so many people on the train, there was no way to miss them, regardless of which skin Sirius was wearing at the time. 'Even if Sirius isn't in his right mind, Ebony isn't affected by his own Madness.'
Arcana's lip curled.
It didn't take a genius to figure that out so why did some idiot at the Ministry feel it necessary to put the children of Hogwarts at risk?
XX
Tarana had been ruthlessly questioned by Fallen and Ivory, with Yoko a disapproving presence in the compartment, still pressed up against Blaise.
They'd wanted to know whether she'd ever had such a severe reaction to the dementors in the past, but Tarana, still weary after her body had apparently tried to turn against itself, couldn't give them any information.
'I've never reacted like that in the face of dementors in the past, regardless of whether I was bound to a human or not,' she told them, closing her eyes.
'Perhaps it's because she died,' Ivory theorized thoughtfully. 'Who knows what any of us saw when we died the first time, we certainly didn't see it coming then and we certainly had worse things to fear, having just lost Valeria.'
Fallen tilted his head backward, blinking slowly. 'If the memory of her dying tricked the mind into thinking it was, shutting down several functions, and her healing tried to counter it….' He scowled.
He wasn't a healer and he didn't have the sheer knowledge of either of the two Powers behind the Crown.
He hated that there was no way to prove it one way or the other because if she was going to have this reaction every time she came near a dementor, particularly when they were patrolling the perimeter of the school, it might do serious damage to her brain.
'I suppose we can only wait and see if she recovers,' Ivory sighed, dropping heavily beside his sister.
'Still right here,' Tarana snarled at them, though there wasn't much force behind it.
Yoko waited until Fallen had retreated to the compartment with Draco, before narrowing his eyes on what little of Tarana he could see. 'Explain to me, Your Highness, why you didn't immediately reBond with Harry when you arrived at the Dursleys in June?'
Tarana opened a sleepy blue eye to stare at the compartment holding the fox. 'Because I'm selfish, Yoko,' she sighed. 'I've always had the deepest bond available to us with my charges. I don't want the weaker bond, like the one between Remus and Ivory.'
Yoko hissed quietly, more like air escaping between his fangs than a real hiss.
To create the bonds that the Valerians shared with their charges, they were tied to more than simply the singular human, they were tied to the bloodline.
That required dozens of complex spells woven together and no one of them was easy to weave.
It was a process that would take months.
'How much do you have left to Weave?' he asked.
'Honestly? I would have been done and Bonded if that foolishness with Marjorie Dursley hadn't happened in July. It would have been close, only a day or so, but we would have been Bonded.'
'You need to tell the others,' Yoko told her.
Tarana raised her head to glare at him, startling Ivory and revealing their conversation to the rest of the Valerians, though they couldn't hear it.
'I'll tell them when I'm ready, Yoko,' she growled, and because she knew her friend, added, 'and if you tell them before I'm ready, I'll make them equally as aware that you are not combat-ready.'
Yoko tensed.
There was nothing he hated more than being side-lined, and that was exactly what Arcana and Fallen would do if they thought he couldn't handle a battle situation, to avoid injury to both Yoko and anyone around him.
The two friends glared viciously at one another, with the others looking worriedly between the two of them.
For all that Yoko and Tarana were extremely close, they did, occasionally, fight.
Those fights, probably because they were so few and far between, were usually bad, lasting anywhere from months to years, with the longest having been nearly a decade on Valeria, where Tarana's orders to her ak-esh came through Ebony and the two didn't speak to one another or see one another.
Yoko tsked, turning his head away from the Queen, burying it in Blaise's side and Tarana dropped her own heavily back to the ground.
It was clear that neither one wanted to talk about it, thus the others awkwardly moved around them as the train continued its journey toward Hogwarts.
XX
The First Years of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were taken up to the castle by boats, crossing the Black Lake, which dominated much of the southern part of the school grounds.
It was tradition for more than one reason, first giving the rest of the student body to arrive in time for the Sorting Ceremony, where said First Years would be sorted into one of the four school Houses; and second, because there was simply no greater view of the castle than the one from the Lake.
Harry and Ron had only taken this route up to the castle, as the year before, their Second Year, they didn't arrive at Hogwarts via the train with the rest of the students, instead, stealing Arthur's Ford Anglia and flying it to Hogwarts instead.
The rest of their friends led them up the path to where numerous carriages were pulled by what could have been a horse if you used the broadest sense of the word.
They stood about as tall as a horse, with black, glistening skin literally stressed across their bones and muscles and leathery wings sprouting from their shoulders.
Clearly carnivores, they had sharp, curved beaks and dragon-like heads, complete with small horns that tipped backward, toward the long black manes, matching their long tails.
They were completely uniform, except for their sizes, which varied.
They were equal parts beautiful and eerie to look at, carrying a rather spooky air about them.
Harry reached out absently to stroke a finger down the flank as he followed the others toward a carriage.
"Beautiful, aren't they?" Hermione murmured to him.
Harry hummed in agreement.
"Not everyone can see them," she confided quietly. "Fallen was a little preoccupied last year and I couldn't find them in any of the books in the library."
Harry glanced around and, sure enough, Second Years were talking excitedly about the 'horseless' carriages.
Most eyes turned to Fallen, who tilted his head.
"They're thestrals," Ivory said before the wolf could answer, causing the General to turn a baleful eye on him.
The leopard and Lupin had followed the group to the carriages, with the professor appearing to casually have a hand placed on Ivory's back.
Harry thought the professor looked about as exhausted as he felt and wouldn't have been at all surprised if Lupin was actually using the Valerian to stay standing.
"I hope you don't mind if we join you," Lupin said, smiling wearily at them.
Blaise mutely gestured to the carriage.
"Thestrals?" Hermione prompted, climbing into the carriage with Harry, Draco, Blaise, and Neville.
Ron and Ginny had been accosted by the twins and would have to take another carriage.
"They're harmless, for the most part," Lupin explained to her. "They can only be seen by those who have witnessed death at least once, however, and thus the Ministry has classified them as dangerous."
Everyone, bar Neville, had been able to see the thestrals and, while they had been neat to look at it, it didn't seem like such a cool thing now that they knew why they could see it.
The Valerians, after all, for all that they protected their charges, rarely bothered to keep their kills secret from them.
Before the carriages pulled away, the Valerians slipped around the thestrals, causing the creatures to shift uneasily at having them so close.
Their charges watched as they slipped into the Forbidden Forest, the forest that lay on the border of both Hogsmeade and Hogwarts.
Harry clenched a fist in his trousers.
"It's tradition," Lupin said, following his gaze. "I'm sure you're aware that the Valerians don't generally eat as we do. They hunt in the Forest during the students' ride up to the castle."
"Fallen and Yoko came up to the castle with us last year," Draco told him.
"But there were circumstances last year," Hermione pointed out. "They couldn't afford to go hunting when Ron and Harry didn't make the train. And then Professor Snape told them about you two and the car. It didn't exactly give them time for hunting."
Harry grimaced at the memory.
XX
Lupin departed from the others nearly as soon as the carriage pulled up outside the castle, leaving the teens to wait for Ron under the relative protection of the overhang from the rain that had begun to fall at some point between their departure of King's Cross Station and their arrival in Hogsmeade.
Ron grumbled about having been questioned about the dementor attack by Fred and George as he dragged his friends into the castle, but they don't make it past the massive entrance hall, easily large enough to house the entire Dursley home and then some.
Professor Minerva McGonagall, the Gryffindor Head of House, Transfiguration professor, and Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts was waiting for them.
McGonagall was a stern-looking older woman, who typically wore her hair pulled high and tight in a no-nonsense bun and her sharp green-gray eyes missed very little.
"Potter, Granger, Zabini. With me, if you please," she said primly, hands folded before her.
Without waiting for a response, she turned and headed toward the Grand Staircase, a marble staircase that rose through much of Hogwarts.
They didn't make it far before she turned and narrowed her eyes on Draco, Ron, and Neville.
"I don't recall you three being invited," she said sharply.
Draco opened his mouth to protest, but their Head of House simply held up a hand to keep him silent.
"These meetings will be individually private," she said coolly. "If your friends wish to share the contents afterward, that is entirely up to them. Until then, you can wait for them in Great Hall."
The blond glanced at Harry, who shrugged.
Draco gritted his teeth but turned sharply on his heel and stormed into the Great Hall.
Neville and Ron followed, but only after Neville lay a questioning hand on Blaise's arm.
Blaise nodded but took a step closer to Harry as soon as the others left.
Hermione linked all three of their arms together as they followed the professor up to her office.
XX
Madam Pomfrey, the Hogwarts medi-witch, was waiting for them in the office.
She was a portly woman, but like all doctors and healers, terrifying in her own way.
"Oh, it's you three," she said.
Harry felt himself flush and wished he could reach out for his guardian.
"I'm fine," he said. "I don't need-"
"I suppose you were doing something dangerous again," she said, ignoring him.
"It was a dementor, Poppy," Minerva said darkly.
Pomfrey's expression said a great deal without words.
"I'm fine." Harry insisted, getting sharply to his feet just minutes after sitting down and taking a sharp step away from the medi-witch, who looked as though he was being the difficult one. "Professor Lupin already gave me some chocolate and I feel much better, thank you for your concern."
Hermione looked horrified at his tone, but Blaise had a rather queasy looking smile on his face.
"And you two?" Pomfrey asked.
"Fine, Madam Pomfrey," Hermione assured her, though she glanced worriedly at Blaise.
McGonagall waited until Pomfrey had given a sharp, though displeased, nod, before sending Blaise and Harry out into the hallway.
"I'll be with you again in a moment, Mr. Zabini," McGonagall said.
Blaise didn't look too eager.
He had never been comfortable with one-on-one time with any of his professors, through no fault of their own, mostly.
McGonagall had, unintentionally, triggered a serious panic attack that then turned into a zone-out in their First Year, but she had been very conscious of paying much closer attention to his tells since then.
If there was a professor other than Severus that Blaise was sort of alright with being alone with, it was their Head of House.
Still, he reached out for Yoko, hoping the fox was close enough to feel the urgent desire for his guardian to be there.
Hermione was in the office with McGonagall for several minutes, leaving Harry and Blaise in the hall to talk quietly.
"Are you feeling alright?" Harry asked his friend.
Blaise swallowed. "I don't want Yoko so far," he admitted. "I saw…he wasn't breathing this time. I need-"
Harry deeply regretted asking when Blaise's breathing began to get uneven.
"Blaise," he said sharply, ducking his head to meet Blaise's gaze like he often saw Neville do. "Yoko is fine. He's in the Forbidden Forest with four other Valerians. He's hunting to regain his strength. He's breathing and alive."
Blaise swallowed convulsively, twice, before leaning heavily against the wall and nodding.
"Sorry I asked," Harry said, honestly sorry that he'd accidentally triggered Blaise.
Blaise shrugged. "I didn't know it was there either," he said tiredly.
"We're with you," Harry assured him.
Blaise shrugged.
It wasn't that he didn't believe that his friends liked him and were friends with him because they liked him (except for Draco, who sometimes made it hard to remember that he genuinely liked his friends), but sometimes he wondered which of his many, many triggers was going to be the one that made them realize he was a mess and they didn't actually have to put up with him.
The office door opened, and Hermione slipped out, tucking something under her shirt, with McGonagall.
The professor pointed down the hall. "I'd like a private word, briefly, with Mr. Zabini and I'll escort you down to the Great Hall."
Hermione and Harry watched nervously as she murmured quickly to Blaise, who paled, but obediently ducked into McGonagall's office when she urged him forward with a soft expression that she rarely allowed to grace her features.
When she turned to Harry and Hermione, however, it was wiped away.
"Come along," she said sharply, moving swiftly down the hall.
"But Blaise-" Harry said, hesitating and looking worriedly toward the door Blaise had disappeared through.
"Will be along when they're through," McGonagall said firmly.
Harry grimaced, but obediently followed her down the hall.
Neville was, very likely, going to kill him.
XX
McGonagall led Harry and Hermione back to the Great Hall, then left them to head up to her seat at the table, trusting that they couldn't get into any more trouble under the thousands of watchful eyes.
The Hall was considered by most of the world to be some of the most complex magic in all of Britain, if not most of the world.
Due to the sheer amount of magic that surrounded not only Hogwarts but its neighboring wizarding town, electricity, and the devices powered by it, didn't work at Hogwarts. As such, the school was lit by torches and kept warm by spells and fireplaces.
The Great Hall was one of the largest areas in the entire castle and was kept warm by multiple fireplaces around the edges, as the bulk of the space was taken up by five massive tables that housed the four Houses, spread out lengthwise up the Hall, and the professors, across the width of the farthest wall, under the Hogwarts crest.
Floating above those tables were thousands upon thousands of candles, which served as the light source at night and during dark weather, with the multiple windows pulling in daylight during the rest of the time.
Even higher, however, was the centerpiece, if one would, of the entire castle.
The Enchanted Ceiling.
The ceiling mirrored the sky outside the castle exactly, right down to the weather. On clear nights, it was as though the students and staff were having dinner beneath the stars.
Professor Filius Flitwick, a short wizard, barely meeting Hermione's shoulder, bustled by with a rather tattered looking hat and a three-legged stool, smiling pleasantly at them both as they rushed to move out of his way.
"We missed the Sorting," Hermione said sadly.
The Sorting was performed by what was rumored to be Godric Gryffindor's, one of the Four Founders of Hogwarts, hat, the very same one that Flitwick had just left the Hall with. First Years sat on a stool and wore the hat, which would judge them and shout out the name of one of the four Houses -Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin.
As the two Third Years moved as quietly as they could toward the Gryffindor table, Harry could feel their gazes and their judgment.
It appeared that the fact that he'd collapsed on the train had already begun to circulate through the student body.
It didn't surprise him.
The rumor mill of Hogwarts was one of the most stupid and swift moving that he'd ever seen, though he'd admittedly only been to two schools in his life.
A swift glance in Katelyn's direction, where she sat holding court at the Slytherin table, showed her swooning.
His lip twitched in disgust before he shut down the emotion and his mask slid comfortably on his face, masking all emotion.
Harry sat stiffly beside Draco as Hermione dropped beside Ron on the opposite side of the table.
"Alright?" the blond asked him, his own lip curling as he shot a displeased glance toward the Slytherin table.
Harry wasn't all that surprised to find him displeased.
From what little he'd managed to understand about the way the Malfoys had been raised, such theatrics weren't considered proper in a public setting like the Great Hall.
"Fine," Harry murmured.
"Blaise?" Neville asked, glancing toward the door as though the dark-skinned teen would step through it.
"Kept behind by Madam Pomfrey," Harry explained.
"Why?"
Harry shrugged, but before he could explain that he and Blaise had been singled out because of their reactions to the dementors on the train, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore got to his feet.
Regardless of the feelings of the Valerians for the man, Albus Dumbledore, despite appearing quite old, was a man of great energy and power, though Harry had only felt it once. He had long silver-white hair and a beard of the same color that needed to be tucked into his belt to avoid it getting in the way. His bright blue eyes were nearly always twinkling and were hidden behind half-moon spectacles that did nothing to dim that light.
Though the man gave off a very calming aura, the distrust of the Valerians made it difficult for their charges to truly trust the man, and they avoided being alone with him as often as possible.
Regardless, as he got to his feet, everyone in the Great Hall seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, the remnants of their interactions with the dementors on the train fading away.
"Welcome," he said, smiling brightly and opening his arms in exactly that. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! I have a few things to say to you all, and as two of them are of the utmost importance, I think it best to get them out of the way before you become befuddled by our excellent feast.
"First, as you all must be aware after their search of the Hogwarts Express this evening, our school is presently playing host to some of the dementors of Azkaban, who are here on Ministry of Magic business."
Draco and Harry exchanged a glance, because the Headmaster didn't sound at all pleased about that fact, and they wondered what that would mean for the Valerians, who, though they likewise hated the dementors, didn't much care for Dumbledore either.
"They are stationed at every entrance to the grounds," Dumbledore continued, "and while they are with us, I must make it plain that nobody is to leave the school without permission. Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks or disguises," he glanced toward the Gryffindor table so quickly they weren't sure it had actually happened, "or even Invisibility Cloaks."
The teens exchanged grim looks because that warning was entirely for them.
Harry had received an Invisibility Cloak, that had apparently belonged to his father, in their First Year and it had come in quite handy over the last two of them, though it hadn't seen much use the year before.
Honestly, Harry wasn't sure it would see much use this year either.
The past two years' escapades had put a rather large damper on any of the teens attempting to do anything that would get them into serious trouble.
The near-death experiences, between protecting the Philosopher's Stone in their First Year (and nearly dying) and saving Ginny from the basilisk (and nearly being eaten in Harry's case) really took the excitement out of breaking the rules.
Dumbledore, oblivious to this byplay, continued. "It is not in the nature of a dementor to understand pleading or excuses. I, therefore, warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. I look to our prefects, and our new Head Boy and Girl, to make sure that no student runs afoul of the dementors."
Dumbledore paused and, as though they'd been waiting for it, the doors to the Great Hall cracked open.
In the doorway, the Valerians stood as regally as any visiting delegation, Tarana flanked by Yoko, and Arcana on the opposite side by Fallen, with Ivory following them all inside.
"Equally as dangerous," the Headmaster continued as they made their way up toward the Head Table, "as some of you are undoubtedly aware, our school currently hosts the Crown and Collective of Valeria. They are here as guardians to some of our most noble houses and I ask that you treat them with the utmost respect, for they can, and will, do great harm if you give them cause."
Tarana and Arcana continued up the steps to sit directly before the Head Table, while the three remaining Valerians paced the stairs below it.
"Hail and well met, Headmaster," Arcana said, tilting his head.
Dumbledore put a hand on his beard, as though it would get in the way, and bowed over his arm. "Your Majesty. Your Highness. We welcome you back to Hogwarts."
Tarana's lip curled, hidden from most of the student body. "May it be a more peaceful school year than those previous, no?"
"We can only hope," Dumbledore agreed.
With all eyes on the Valerians up at the front of the Great Hall, most students missed Blaise slipping in after them, sagging wearily into the seat beside Neville and subtly leaning on his friend.
Hidden beneath the table, Neville grasped Blaise's wrist and squeezed, grounding him in the here-and-now. "Everything alright?" he asked under his breath.
"In a minute," Blaise murmured back, before pulling away entirely from Neville and, by all appearances, turning his full attention to the Valerians and Dumbledore at the end of the Hall.
Dumbledore straightened and braced his fingertips on the table before him, a pleasant smile still on his face.
"Now, onto a more pleasant note," he said, gesturing with one hand down the table where Lupin sat, appearing rather shabby beside the other professors, though it didn't really have anything to do with the clothes he wore and more how exhausted he appeared.
Like the excitement on the train had siphoned out any energy his long nap had given him.
"I'd like to welcome two new professors to our ranks this year. First, Professor Lupin, who has kindly consented to fill the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher."
The clapping was rather sporadic, given that no one in the Hall really knew anything about the professor. Those that had been in the train car with him, however, were very enthusiastic in their applause and it made up for that rest of the rather lackluster greeting.
Harry, who was rather fond of Severus, and was aware of his desire for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, shot the potions master a glance and frowned.
Severus had pointed that particular expression at him once, in his First Year at this very feast.
It went beyond hate and anger.
Loathing.
"Draco," he murmured, nudging his chin in Severus' direction.
Draco frowned. "I didn't know he knew Lupin."
"They're about the same age," Ron pointed out, "maybe they went to school together."
Draco hummed thoughtfully. "I guess we'll find out," he said.
Harry and Ron exchanged a glance.
Draco thought very highly of his godfather, and if Severus, for any reason, disliked Lupin, it would affect how Draco himself interacted with the new DADA professor.
"Second," he said, "I am sorry to tell you that Professor Kettleburn and Professor Grubbly-Plank of our Care of Magical Creatures Department have both decided to retire at the end of last year. I am delight, however, to say that Professor Kettleburn's classes will be taken over by our own Rubeus Hagrid, who will do so in addition to his gamekeeping duties." He waved in Hagrid's direction.
Hagrid was a massively built man that was almost as wide as he was tall. Though the children didn't know it, the Valerians were aware that Hagrid was a half-breed, specifically the child of a giant mother and a human father, which accounted for his massive stature, though it was nowhere near what was actually considered 'giant-sized'.
For all his bulk, however, Hagrid was a gentle person, often seeing to animals and magical creatures that came, injured, to the school or the Forest beyond it. His love of animals made him a close friend of Yoko and Blaise, who visited him as often as Blaise's class schedule allowed.
Now, as they watched their friend dab his eyes on the tablecloth, Blaise and Neville were among the loudest as they applauded Hagrid's promotion to professor.
Draco glanced at Fallen, who stood at the base of the stairs and was radiating low-key displeasure.
'Of course, he would order that bloody book,' Fallen sneered when Draco wordlessly pressed him through their bond. 'Who else would think it a wise idea to give students a teaching tool that could eat them?'
Draco grimaced.
While Hagrid was, in theory, the perfect person to teach Care of Magical Creatures, as it was something he did in his spare time anyway, his sense of what was considered 'safe' was skewed enough that Draco was rather pleased that he wasn't taking the class.
Still, he was a little nervous. He wasn't taking Care of Magical Creatures this year, but most of his friends were. He'd also seen the violence of the Monster Book of Monsters in Diagon Alley.
"How many students do you think got hurt when they went and bought that book?" he asked.
'More than enough to have Hagrid lose both his jobs if anyone else thinks to look into such a thing,' Fallen said grimly. 'Don't court additional trouble, dragonling.'
Draco scowled.
With the announcements apparently over, Dumbledore waved his hands. "I think that's everything of importance," he said. "Let the feast begin!"
XX
The Valerians left the Head Table and moved toward Gryffindor's, as food appeared on the tables.
It was typical at this point, to leave enough space for Yoko to sit beside Blaise, and the fox clambered onto the space reserved for him easily, much to his relief.
The Trance had healed all his aches and injuries from his time beneath Desmond's blade, but he hadn't really had a chance to stretch out his muscles until the rather confined battle against the dementors on the train.
The hunt in the Forbidden Forest had likewise stretched those muscles and he was happy to find that he wasn't tensing up, at least not yet.
Blaise was whispering to his friends about the visit he'd had, behind closed doors, with Madam Pomfrey and another witch that had been Fire-called after the rest had left.
"Her name is Healer Silva," he tells them. "She's a Mind Healer. Apparently, the Minister called the school, probably as soon as he got back to the office, and asked if they'd heard about the attack on me and Yoko. Apparently, he was under the impression that it had been Black and Ebony. McGonagall and Pomfrey are setting me up with regular appointments with her starting two weeks from now. Time to settle in."
Draco scowled. "Did they even talk to you about it?" he asked the fox.
Yoko shrugged dismissively. 'While I'm not best pleased that I wasn't consulted on it, I am happy that someone in this school is finally taking Blaise's mental and emotional well-being seriously.'
Tarana rumbled quietly where she lay, sprawled behind Harry and Ron.
Yoko rolled his eyes. 'Outside of us,' he snapped. 'Don't be deliberately obtuse, Your Highness.'
Fallen and Arcana winced, though it was subtle.
Draco raised his goblet to his lips and slid a glance to Tarana. "Thoughts on Hagrid's job as a professor?" he asked.
The Queen growled. "I'm dreading the start of them," she said, throwing a scowl in Hagrid's direction.
The half-giant, oblivious to her displeasure, grinned wide behind his tangled black beard, his equally as dark eyes glinting merrily even across the distance, and threw her a cheerful thumbs-up.
"That book is enough like a dangerous creature that I don't doubt that it is a precedent and not out of the norm."
Draco snorted.
XX
'I want to meet with Albus before joining the boys in Gryffindor Tower,' Arcana told the Valerians an hour into the Feast.
Tarana raised her head. 'Would you like me to join you?' she asked.
Arcana tilted his head thoughtfully. 'I'd rather have the rest of you check in with any collaborators you have at the school. Theoretically, it will be a quieter year than those in the past, but I'd like to keep our options open.'
'Then it would be best to take Tarana,' Fallen told him. 'She's been our go-between with Dumbledore, or at least she was while she was here. Her only real contribution thus far has been slowly turning McGonagall.'
Tarana rolled the comment over in her head, trying to find if there was an insult in there somewhere that she should correct.
Arcana's half-lidded amber eyes watched Albus as he ate with one hand and spoke with McGonagall at his side.
'Very well. Tarana will accompany me to speak with Albus and we will find out what he knows about the escape and how it may affect things happening here at the school, if at all. I'm curious as to what Fudge may have shared with him, considering what the dementors apparently heard Black whispering in the week before his escape.'
Fallen slid his eyes in the King's direction. 'You think Dumbledore might hide Black?'
'Given that he's hired Remus Lupin, despite his condition, I won't discount that he may be attempting to catch him before the Ministry, no. I'll have him made aware that this is a Valerian matter, and he will do well to stay very clear of it if he wishes to remain on mostly neutral terms with us,' Arcana said.
Fallen snorted. 'So, you still think he's no threat?'
'Ebony is absolutely a threat,' Arcana said. 'I simply don't believe that he's a threat to us and ours.'
Fallen glanced at Yoko, who had ducked his head beneath the table to watch the conversation.
The thief's eyes glittered with displeasure, but he didn't say a word.
XX
Oblivious to the tension and potential battle plans being made by their Valerians, the teens above them were absorbed in conversation with not only themselves but their Housemates as they slowly relaxed into being back at school where, despite the dangers of the past, they had always felt most comfortable.
Surrounded by their friends.
