Ever wonder how Cedric's death made Harry OOC for a whole year, yet he was over Sirius after a couple weeks?
More examples of TWT and OOC. Unbetaed. God I love Snape (before Rowling turned him into a Mudblood-lover). I shall be having fun with him later.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us
Hades' Phoenix
2.
Harry was depressed. This wasn't anything new, though at least he'd managed to refrain from dragging razors across his wrists to alleviate the pain of dreaming about his godfather's death. There was angst, a ruse employed by attention-seekers, and then there was ANGST, which only the most traumatized of victims could do properly.
Everyone knew a hero had to be a Real Trauma Victim, although seeing Dumbledore terrorize the Dursleys threatened to make Harry break his longest record yet of Scowling Vindictively. However, by the time the headmaster had taken him from the Dursleys, tracked down Slughorn, threatened the corpulent coward with thinly-veiled blackmail, and finally arrived at Grimmauld Place, Harry had managed to sink back into his ANGST with whole-hearted fervor.
Harry wondered why his friends didn't seem to understand that he wasn't angry at them. Sure, making Hermione cry and Ron consider ritual suicide was slightly soothing to his irrational fury and grief, but the only thing Harry was really lashing out at was the injustices of the world and his own overwhelming sense of guilt. Obviously.
The morning that he nearly incited Ginny into stabbing him with a butter-knife was the morning that Dumbledore strolled into Grimmauld Place, followed by a grand entourage of two people. The shade of his orange cloak made the mounted house-elf heads scream for mercy.
"Good morning," the old man smiled pleasantly, earning a sullen 'hullo' from Ginny and blank looks from everyone else. Harry sneered in response. "We have guests!"
He gestured grandly to the two men. Unimpressed looks were shared all around.
"Albus, who are they?" Mrs. Weasley asked, standing in the entrance to the kitchen with a dishrag in her soapy hands.
"I have no idea," Dumbledore informed the room at large, with perhaps more blunt honesty than was strictly comfortable. He turned to the strangers and asked, "Would you two care to introduce yourselves?"
The men looked at the headmaster as though he'd just asked them to strip.
"…Leon," the brunet said flatly.
"…Cloud," the blond followed, just as deadpan. Harry could almost hear the barbed wire dragging the sounds from their throats. Then again, with names like ' Leon' and 'Cloud,' Harry would probably be socially retarded too.
The rest of the Weasley family, some Aurors, and Hermione, sitting around the dining room table, appeared at a loss of what to say. Remus (looking haggard and, well, homeless) cleared his throat.
"Where did you find them?" he asked Dumbledore politely, as though Leon and Cloud were stray mangy animals that the old man had dragged in fighting tooth and nail.
"This morning I received a fire-call from Dedalus—he was quite senseless, really, rambling on and on without any relevance to the matter at hand, like the fact that I had been enjoying a rather lovely cup of tea Minerva had specially Conjured for me and I was only halfway through Miss Skeeter's article on Celestina Warbeck's latest scandal—"
Remus cleared his throat again pointedly.
"—and he told me that two interesting people had appeared in the Hog's Head," Dumbledore finished, looking pleased with himself. Whether his pleasure came from finding two such apparently fascinating people, or he was just trying to preserve his reputation as the Omniscient Sanctimonious Teacher of the story, no one was really sure. (There were very few people who could understand anything that Dumbledore did; of those people, most were convicted, committed, or dead.)
"You got them from the Hog's Head?" Mr. Weasley repeated weakly.
"But Aberforth—" Mrs. Weasley started.
"Was very accommodating once I explained my purpose," Dumbledore interrupted politely. Harry remembered, in the dim recesses of memory, hearing somewhere of Dumbledore's brother accused of casting inappropriate charms on farmyard animals. This led to creative mental images of Hagrid and his various monstrous pets, and then Harry's brain went on emergency shut-down to prevent permanent damage.
xxx
The space between Cloud's shoulders was itching, as though someone were staring at him and contemplating Very Bad Things. Normally this meant something along the lines of OMGSEPHIROTH, but this sensation came from the room in general and not any one person. Though he managed to maintain his well-practiced impression of a rock, Cloud was, inwardly, feeling quite twitchy. The absolute weirdness of the house—worse even than Merlin's pack-rat hole of a cottage—wasn't helping, even if its occupants looked normal enough.
There was an awkward silence in the room after Dumbledore's words that didn't bother Leon and Cloud in the least. Awkward silences tended to follow whatever they said on any world, so they were used to it.
Somewhere, a door opened and closed, and then a horrible shrieking mercilessly beat the poor silence to death.
"BLOOD TRAITORS, DIRTYING THE NOBLE HOUSE OF BLACK! TRAITORS AND THIEVES AND LIARS—"
Cloud and Leon had their hands on their weapons when the howling turned to screaming and then to a strange gurgling that slowly died away. A tall man with a hooked nose stalked into the room, wearing a bitchier expression than Tifa on the rag.
"Ah, Severus," Dumbledore greeted him smilingly. "I trust you did not hurt Mrs. Black irreparably? I doubt Sirius would have appreciated it."
"Yes, he would've," said the bespectacled kid and the homeless-looking guy at the same time, pained.
"Of course not, Headmaster," the man sneered, as though planning to vivisect the next moron that opened his mouth. Leon bet he was the type to kick Dalmatian puppies. "I simply gave the woman a taste of her own potion."
Cloud's right eye developed a tic. Sallow skin and greasy dark hair were giving him unpleasant flashbacks. Beetle-black eyes narrowed calculatingly at the two men, nearly inducing Cloud to start screaming about scientists and reunions and not wanting to go back to the mako tank, thank you very much.
"Severus, this is Cloud and Leon." Dumbledore waved at them condescendingly, making Leon tense, while Cloud was too busy having a small existential crisis beside him to notice. "Boys, this is Severus Snape, our resident Potions Master."
"Jack the Ripper in a robe," someone at the dining table stage-whispered.
"The terror of children everywhere," chimed in another.
If Snape heard the mutters—and Leon was sure he had—he ignored them and gave the newcomers a final, dismissive look-over.
"Are they trustworthy, or simply the means for another of your pet projects?"
"Severus, please," said Dumbledore. "Do not make me treat you like a particularly nagging wife." He smiled beatifically. "They are going to be our new Defense professors."
"What?" cried the room.
"What?" Leon demanded, with a vague sense of déjà vu. The tic in Cloud's eye had migrated to his hand, making it look like he was either reaching for a weapon or trying to suppress a sudden case of Tourette's Syndrome.
Dumbledore's smile was patient. It was the kind of smile that kindergarten teachers wore when their students were yelling like monkeys and throwing paint on the walls. "With your Gummi ship grounded and no convenient mechanic in the region, I felt that I would offer you room, board, and occupation while my contacts sought an answer to your dilemma."
When had this been decided? Leon didn't remember having this kind of conversation, and he didn't bother asking Cloud, because Cloud routinely forgot that he wasn't an inanimate object. There was a reason Leon had been made a mercenary commander while still a minor; he was more than capable of finding his own answers, damn it, and no amount of twinkling or grandfatherly benevolence would convince him otherwise.
"When was this decided?" he said aloud, inadvertently releasing some of Shiva's power. The temperature in the room dropped slightly, and if it were possible the brunet's words would've pierced the old man with razor-edged icicles.
Intrigue flickered through the headmaster's eyes before they were wise and twinkly once more.
"I thought I would save you the time and effort it would take for two such as yourselves to procure the essentials, and besides, I have favors owed to me that greatly increase your chance of success. Gummi blocks are, after all, something entirely unknown to us."
Leon had already resolved that the man's appeal to pride wouldn't work on him.
"How do you know it's Gummi blocks we need?" he challenged. He didn't remember that conversation, either.
"Head poking," Cloud muttered distractedly. Leon waited with forced patience for him to elaborate, and received, "He's…telepathic. Or something. Zack wasn't too happy."
Which translated to Dumbledore having tried to read Cloud's mind but failing miserably, probably because the voices in Cloud's head hadn't appreciated the intrusion on their exclusive office party. Leon, not having the same experience in being consistently mind-fucked, probably wouldn't have noticed if the old man had tried to read his.
"…Really." His voice was flat. Shiva hummed with bloodthirsty happiness and, through their Junction link, provided him with lovely images of all the terrible things ice could do to human flesh. Especially wrinkly old-man flesh, and no one would miss a self-righteous old bastard that called grown men his 'boys,' right?
Snape was looking at Cloud like he would dog shit on the bottom of his shoe; disgusted and slightly confused, waiting for it to come alive and bite him before he managed to scrape it off. Without turning away, he said, "Headmaster, I assure you that my presence here is not due to a sudden need to mingle with the witless proletariat. I need to speak with you on a matter that cannot wait."
His eyes flicked to his own left forearm, then to Dumbledore. The old man didn't seem to hear the dripping edge of sarcasm in the voice of his Potions Master.
"Of course, Severus, my dear," he agreed. "Boys, you simply have not lived until you have tried Molly's exquisite coffee cake."
He was drifting out of the room as he spoke, followed by an obviously suspicious Snape. Everyone in the kitchen was left feeling rather bewildered at the morning's unexpected surprises, and secretly questioning if the stress had finally snapped their beloved leader.
"Well then," said Molly, ever the peacemaker, "sit down, you two, and help yourselves." She bustled into the kitchen all a-fluster.
Leon and Cloud blinked and stared at the silent table. Judging from the light coming in through a window, it was barely late morning, but Leon was having issues trying to figure out how they went from crash-landing their Gummi ship to being contracted as professors so quickly, without any input of their own.
"Is it just me," Cloud muttered, "or does this world feel…"
"Contrived?" Leon supplied dryly. "No, it's just you."
xxx
The itchiness between Cloud's shoulders abated slightly as time went on, just enough to make him feel that he wouldn't shimmy right out of his own skin. He had to resist the urge to scratch his wing under the cloak against the chair he sat in, other people's sense of what wasn't human be damned.
Cloud wasn't under many illusions about himself anymore. He knew very well that he was bat-fuck crazy—he should know, he had to live himself most of the time, except when he forgot to tell himself where he was going—but he didn't think pointing out the flashing lights that romped around this strange wizarding manor would make Leon very happy.
…Heh.
"The house is shiny," he said under his breath to the scowling, cranky brunet. Leon was poking at the plate that the fussy woman had shoved in front of him in what he would've called an intellectual brood, and what everyone else called a sulk. "The Dark is strong here. But sparkly."
Leon's fork scraped painfully against the plate, making the Zack-voice do a jig of malicious glee. Generally, Cloud couldn't be bothered responding to his fellow species, but there was something satisfying in pissing Leon off. He blamed it on Zack, whose favorite pastime was seeing how far he could push Sephiroth before the general tried to skewer him on the Masamune.
At the angry screech of silverware on porcelain, the other people at the table leaned away from them warily.
"Defense, then?" said the homeless-looking guy in a strained but polite voice, and the slightly amber glow of his eyes made Cloud wonder what kind of materia he must've overdrawn to get that effect. There was something extra-sparkly about him. "What do you two specialize in?"
Cloud had already lost interest in the conversation. After a moment, Leon muttered tightly, "Tactics. Mercenary warfare."
The wariness turned to alarm.
A dark-haired kid with glasses gave a scowl, and it was almost as good as Leon's. There was something extra-sparkly around him, too, only it was a Dark sort of shininess that made Cloud's eyes narrow. "Now Dumbledore's going to take Voldemort seriously?"
"Harry," said the fussy woman sternly.
"Who's Voldemort?" Cloud wondered aloud, thinking it sounded like the sort of crappy villain-name that Zack would've come up with. It sounded as cheesy as 'Prozac' or 'Zoloft,' before he remembered that those were a few names of the myriad pills that Tifa was always trying to slip into his food.
After another silence, which was stunned rather than awkward, he learned that Voldemort was the name of a guy who was, for lack of a better comparison, like a more stupid Sephiroth on a spree for world domination. At least Sephiroth had been defeated the first time around by a teenager, not an infant, which was marginally less lame on the Misunderstood-God-Complex Meter.
Voldemort, thought Cloud, rolling the word around in his hollow head. Guaranteed to eliminate any remaining sense of childhood. Side-effects may include insanity and a horribly agonizing death.
At least the Dark light hovering over the boy was explained.
"Why do your eyes glow?" asked a frizzy-haired young woman, leaning forward in academic interest with her gaze fixed on him.
"Mako."
She looked at him in confusion, but if she didn't know what that was, then Cloud wasn't going to enlighten her.
"A type of magic," Leon explained in the tone of voice that revealed he would say just about anything if it meant the other person would just go away.
"Is it something that anyone can learn?" the bespectacled boy—Harry Potter, if Cloud had heard the story right—demanded.
"No." There wasn't any arguing with Leon when he sounded like that.
Potter sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, muttering, "Then what use is it against Voldemort? No one's been able to do anything to him, except Dumbledore, and things are just getting worse and no one's telling anyone anything. Not even Sirius—"
"Was this Sirius burned to death?" Cloud asked suddenly.
Harry blinked and shook his head.
"Was he shot multiple times?"
"No!"
"Was he run through with a sword? Tortured into madness? Sold his soul to the Dark and reduced to something inhuman? Watched as every person on his world was torn to shreds and lost their hearts to the Darkness?"
"No!"
"Then things aren't bad yet. Shut up."
Ooh, there was another sparkly, emitted by the slender stick of wood that the fussy woman's husband thought he was doing a good job of hiding in his pocket. Cloud couldn't help watching it, faintly reminded of the hearts that floated away from bodies consumed by Darkness and wondering if it was the Darkness in his own body that made it look so irresistible. He didn't realize that Leon was looking at him with something akin to amusement, if the man had been capable of it, or that Harry was gaping like someone had slapped him across the face with a dead fish.
Maybe, Harry thought, looking more closely and seeing the slight vacancy in the strange blond's gaze, that flipping out on everyone wasn't the best way to deal with his grief. And perhaps that it was one thing to be a Real Trauma Victim, and another thing entirely to allow a hero's ANGST to turn from being a reason into being an excuse.
(And if these two really were going to share the Defense post, then there'd be enough arsehole-ness going around without Harry adding to it.)
So it was that barely two weeks after his godfather's death, Harry finally sucked up his OOC-ness and got his act together.
Dear Merlin, everyone silently mused, finally.
xxx
Leon was off arguing with Dumbledore, so Cloud was amusing himself by holding a staring contest with the house-elf heads in the foyer. He was winning when a carrot-headed girl popped out of the woodwork, quite literally, next to him.
"Hi," she said cheerfully, and something about her reminded Cloud of Aerith's mischievousness and Tifa's ferocity. It made a very male part of him shrivel and cry out for mercy. "I don't know who the bloody hell you are, but thanks for making Harry realize what an absolute arse he can be."
Cloud just shrugged and scratched the itch between his shoulders without looking away from the glassy eyes in font of him. The elf didn't stand a chance.