A/N: I've noticed that a few of my reviewers thought Harry was being unnecessarily harsh with Alex, or Alex was too scared of Harry. I maintain that Harry himself was scared and therefore bitchy, and that Alex had just been confronted with magic for the first time ever, and if that made him panic a little – it was a perfectly natural reaction, even from him. You will probably be just as unhappy with this chapter, but the only thing I can tell you is: Stay tuned for the epilogue!
Brynn
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Chapter Five: Cubs Partingx
On Sunday, the ninth of August 1998, Alex Rider woke up wiser. Not by much, mind you, but he for once understood what Socrates meant when he had said that he knew that he knew nothing. Having one's perception of the world shattered was quite humbling, and Alex had thought himself well-seen before Harry had waltzed into his life and gave him a taste of the supernatural.
And yes, it did sound insane, but if you eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable, had to be the truth… and all that rot… In light of Alex' most recent brush with death, magic was an explanation that actually made sense.
It was an immensely, indescribably terrifying thought.
An insulated community. Archaic practices. Out of his league. A child dying to prevent a madman from returning to life. Put into perspective, all of those little pieces fit together into the most fantastic puzzle Alex had ever solved. No wonder they were self-governing: Alex wouldn't want to face Harry in a fight, even with all of his training and reflexes and experience pitched against nothing but the magic.
He still couldn't get over the magic part, but he supposed that was to be expected.
"Muggle guest is to be going to the living room promptly," a hoarse voice proclaimed suddenly.
Alex jumped and reached for the gun he didn't have, scanning the previously empty room to spot what produced the sound.
There was what looked like a Roswell Grey standing next to a floating tray of full English breakfast, except that it was kind of greenish, had floppy, bitten-on ears and wore a towel in stead of a loincloth.
…Alex was prone to walking nightmares, but this one was unusually determined to prove itself real.
"Is the muggle deaf?" the little alien questioned, adjusting its loincloth.
Alex bit down on a fit of hysterical laughter and shook his head. "Who are you?"
"Kreacher is Kreacher," the alien replied. "Kreacher is Master Harry Potter's elf. The stupid muggle is asking no more stupid questions, and is going to the living room now."
Static cracked as the 'elf' got angrier, and it was all Alex could do to file Harry's surname for later before he was forcibly ushered (and how did a two-foot bones-and-skin creature manage that?) out of his bedroom. He snagged his shirt as he passed the chair, and pulled it on and buttoned it up along the way.
In daylight, the house looked a little less sinister, as if there was a thin veneer of normalcy the sun cast on everything. Unfortunately, it only lasted until Alex reached the first landing.
He was fairly certain that the picture hadn't been moving last night. Right. Magic. Still looked like a wild hallucination to him: even Cray's sick real-life game had been perfectly mundane compared to an oil painting of man in a robe coming to life and quite creatively cussing Alex out.
Harry was in the living room, sitting at a table, writing with a quill, which he periodically dipped in an ink bottle, on a sheet of parchment. An eagle owl was perched on top of a celestial globe. Harry finished, blew on the writing, folded the parchment, stood and extended his hand.
The owl obediently swooped down and landed on his forearm, and Harry deftly, one-handedly, attached the parchment to its leg. It took off through the window, which Harry closed afterwards.
"Good morning?" Alex offered when Harry turned to him.
"Nothing good about it," Harry replied darkly. Obviously, he wasn't in a good mood – not that Alex had expected him to be. He looked tired, more tired than yesterday, pale and with bags under his eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt way too large for him, which only accentuated the slump of his shoulders.
"Harry," Alex spoke as Kreacher the elf set the tray with food on the recently freed table and disappeared, "for what it's worth, I'm sorry about last night. I didn't mean to put you into danger." He was being earnest, too.
Harry didn't seem to appreciate it. He flopped back down onto the sofa, poured himself a mug of coffee and drank deeply, not adding sugar or milk or anything to make it palatable. When he was finished savouring the horrible concoction, he opened his eyes and glared at Alex. "Just as, if I hadn't rescued you, you wouldn't have meant for the werewolf to be executed when the Ministry found he had killed someone. Just as you wouldn't have wanted for his child to become a complete orphan." He took another sip and continued, now staring into the depths of the mug. "I've seen things done in the name of Greater Good that make me sick just thinking about them, but doing such things in the name of your own curiosity? Even we didn't do that."
Alex was sorry, but he didn't know what he could do other than apologise. "I had to know that you weren't a threat," he tried to explain.
It didn't work. Harry poured himself more black, bitter coffee and pointed out: "I wasn't, and you knew it because Willowcrook told you so. She even warned you to keep your nose out of my business. I accept my part of the responsibility – I shouldn't have invited you."
In hindsight, that would have been a rather senseless idea, although Alex still wasn't sure if he regretted Harry's lapse of judgment.
"Now-" Harry continued, "-I am a threat to you, because you made me angry, and there are a few hundred people that could tell you that when I get angry, I'm dangerous. I might or might not know what you do-" That was as good as an admission. "-because, let's face it, you don't know the limits of magic and I'm not inclined to tell you. You've already proven yourself untrustworthy."
Alex grimaced. That wasn't how he had thought about it. He had just wanted… to know. Of course Harry would deny him more knowledge.
"Since we've established that I can't trust you, and because I really don't want to go to prison over you, you're going to give me your binding word that you will never communicate any information about magic or magical world to anyone, in any way."
"Just out of interest, what are the consequences of breaking this 'binding word'?"
It was the first question of a habitual oath-breaker and Harry knew it, because he glared so hard that his eyes actually flashed. It was an awesome effect, but in the current setting it gave Alex shivers.
"Well, that depends on the severity," Harry mocked. "Unless you come right out and give a detailed description of everything complete with graphs and charts, it shouldn't kill you. It'll just scramble your mind."
Alex shuddered. Harry was an accomplished enough actor that it might have been a bluff, but bluffing was usually the last resort (Alex was intimately familiar with it) and with effing magic on his side, Harry was far from cornered.
"And… what happens if I don't give it?"
"Then I'll erase your memory. I'm no good at the charm, though – in fact, this would be my first time attempting it – so I'd probably turn you into vegetable." Harry took a glance at the look of horror on Alex' face and continued, a little more cheerfully: "Look at the silver lining! At least you won't be having any nightmares about werewolves! Not all of us are so lucky… and I really didn't need a new nightmare."
That reminded Alex rather acutely of the beast he had 'met' last night. He glanced out of the window: there was a deserted dingy square there, no people, and definitely no Full Moon. "If I give you my word, will you let me see the werewolf again?"
"No," Harry refuted, upping the level of animosity yet again. "Remus is sleeping, and he has a lot of healing to do in the next forty-eight hours, so he won't be made into a spectacle for you."
"Remus Lupin?"
"Remus thought you were an idiot," Harry said exasperatedly. "I know how it can make your life easier to act stupid. The expectations are not so high and it strokes people's egos when they think they're smarter."
Alex could have added that the baddies (those who didn't recognise him on sight) never suspected him when he was being an airheaded teenager.
"I know you're not stupid, or you wouldn't have survived this long." Harry set his coffee down and crossed his arms in front of his chest. He had Alex' full attention anyway – with how he was hinting at information he certainly shouldn't have been privy to, Alex literally couldn't ignore him. "However, what you've done last night was downright imbecilic. So be a good guest now and don't give me a reason to transfigure you into a toad and let you loose in a marsh."
Alex closed his mouth. His mind ran in circles, always going back to how valid the threat was. It sounded – legitimate. He gulped.
If he was a toad (though his rational mind kicked and screamed at the mere allusion), no one, not even Blunt and Mrs Jones, not Scorpia, not anybody would ever find him. And Harry wouldn't even have to be nervous about being caught, because, let's face it: magic.
"Your word?" Harry repeated. "And don't try to weasel out of it, Sherlock. This house will only allow you to leave when I tell it to, and even if you somehow escaped, Kreacher could hunt you to the end of the Earth and beyond."
Alex stared at the odd black-and-white crest decorating the empty plate in front of him. It looked like two dogs supporting a shield-
"Your word, Alex Rider?"
Alex had not told Harry his full name, but should have expected that Harry would have found out. It made sense. With magic, Harry had to be unparalleled at intelligence gathering. He would have made a damn fine agent, too.
"Why don't you want to tell anyone?" Alex asked, stalling, waiting for his mind to get accustomed to the new matrix of thinking, one that took into account that he could not take things at face value anymore, and he was apparently breakfasting with the magical equivalent of Jesus Christ.
He had never been religious, and wasn't about to start, but that kind of meeting changed your life.
Harry scoffed (it was somehow difficult to imagine Jesus scoffing – and wasn't he supposed to be able to turn water into wine rather than buy it in supermarkets?). "And have your kind do autopsy on me while I'm still alive, to find out how I work? No, thank you."
It might have been a coincidence, but Alex recalled Dr Grief's promise and the brief incarceration at Major Yu's clinic… and the Inquisition mentioned in the few History lessons he had actually attended. He really couldn't begrudge Harry his reticence.
Alex hated having a magical embargo on his thoughts, but it was much better to be prepared (from now on he could expect things to go awry in case there was a magic-user involved) and, more importantly, he really didn't need another enemy, especially not one with Harry's capabilities. Resigned, Alex met Harry's eyes and solemnly said: "I swear I will not inform anyone about your world or your… magic."
Harry made a swirly motion with his stick – wand? – and mumbled something unintelligible. Briefly they were surrounded by a glow, and then everything went back to normal, except Alex felt prickling around his left wrist. A tattoo-like character, presumably a rune, stood out against his skin. He scowled.
"This can get me killed," he pointed out.
Harry waved the stick again, chanted 'hocus pocus' or thereabout and the rune disappeared. Alex could still feel it when he rubbed the spot with his index finger, but it was perfectly invisible. "This is crazy…"
"This is illegal," Harry corrected him. "But it's not as if that would bother you much, is it?"
"How much do you know about me?" Alex asked with some trepidation. He sucked at killing people, but his 'binding word' gave him enough room to discretely point MI6 in Harry's direction.
Harry suddenly chuckled; the sound was horribly hollow. "You've known me for a week, and already you're planning to kill me."
Alex opened his mouth to deny it, but Harry waved his hand and silenced him – literally.
"I have a sixth sense for homicidal intentions," Harry stated. "I've been assassinated so many times that I get nervous if I've not been jumped by someone every couple of days. I also suck at picking out new acquaintances."
Alex didn't think he was quite that bad… then again, he had let a werewolf loose in Harry's house just last night, and was now weighing the pros and cons of premeditated murder… okay, maybe Alex was that bad. It wasn't all his fault, though!
"I'll make your life a bit easier for you," Harry said, standing up. "No one else will be able to see this house, so if you try and send someone after me, it will do nothing but make you look stupid. Which, come to think of it, you might find handy, so go right ahead."
Alex didn't have time to react to the flippancy, because the food and tableware disappeared with a pop, and he was busy jumping to his feet in shock.
He had to get out of this House of Horrors before he'd go completely cuckoo.
"Can I go?" Alex asked, glad that his voice was working again and wishing he had sufficient leverage so that he could have phrased that as a statement.
Harry shrugged. "I'm not your jailer. Kreacher! See Alex to the door, please. And lock up behind him."
The alien – elf – appeared with a quiet crack and glared at Alex, who obediently followed it. He paused in the door and looked back.
Harry was staring out of the window at the rain-wet, sunlit square void of people, hugging his chest, practically huddled onto himself, wrapped in that tent-like shirt. Alex felt a sharp pang of regret: he could almost feel the friendship he had lost through his unquenchable curiosity and lack of regard for others' privacy. He would have liked Harry – hell, he did like him as things stood. He was freaked out by him, too, and could see very well that the rest of Harry's isolated community felt similarly.
It must have been extremely difficult to identify the superhuman persona that Harry had slid into while facing a werewolf with the fragile teenager who lacked for friends. No wonder he had no drinking buddies.
"Please," Alex said quietly, as the last thing before he walked back into normal life, "convey my apologies to Mr Lupin as well. Goodbye, Harry."