A/N: Took me a day longer than I expected it to. My computer crashed last night during a storm. Thankfully I didn't lose anything but my computer was put out of commission for the rest of the night. The next chapter should be out on the fifth. Again, I'm so sorry about the long wait!

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Chapter 13: Puppy Love… Or Not.

Nalian huffed in irritation as he dropped down into his seat for his next class, Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Draco gave him an amused look. "It's your own fault you know."

Nalian considered glaring at his friend before deciding ignoring him would be the better option.

"You just had to sleep instead of getting your lazy arse up for classes." Draco went on, ignoring the fact that Nalian was ignoring him. "Yet you get all pissed off when they talk to you about missing classes and asking where you were."

Nalian gave up on ignoring the annoying blond he called a friend. "I don't mind when one or two teachers ask me where I was. Is it too much to ask for those teachers to pass on the damn news so the other damn teachers won't give me the same grief every class?"

"Language, Mr. Morthen." The tone was stern, with a hint of amusement underneath.

He winced and turned to face the front of the class. "Sorry, Professor."

Lucius shrugged elegantly. Nalian wondered how a person could give an elegant shrug as Lucius said, "just don't let me hear you speak about your elders that way again, Mr. Morthen."

"Yes, sir."

"Good." Lucius moved to the front of the classroom, immediately starting the lesson while students scrambled for quills and parchment to take notes. Nalian wasn't really paying attention.

Draco poked him in the back, and when Nalian glanced his way he was smirking. He knew exactly what the blond was thinking, and shot him a look that clearly said, 'don't even think about it, Draco. Not one joke. Or I'll fry you for dinner.'

Draco's smirk broadened. He whispered, "I do have to wonder, did that encounter with him make you all-"

Nalian stomped on his foot. Draco winced.

"Is something the matter, boys?" Lucius inquired.

"No, Professor." They chorused.

"Then perhaps you can answer my question instead of staring at each other," Professor Malfoy smirked, "like lovesick puppies."

"We weren't-" Draco scowled.

"We weren't paying attention, sir." Nalian faked a contrite look, fighting back the urge to snap at the man that they weren't boys, but men, despite what he may think, and they most certainly weren't in love! Nalian did not do 'lovesick puppy'.

"Both of you see me after class." The teacher frowned at him, knowing Nalian didn't feel remorse in the slightest. "Ten points from Slytherin," he added, seemingly as an afterthought.

The rest of the class passed slowly as Nalian divided his attention between the professor's lecture, the professor's body, and plotting on how to get that smirk off of Draco's face.

The bright spot of his day came right before class ended. Lucius was facing away from the seated students, writing something on the board. Nalian leaned over to Draco and whispered in his ear. "It's nice to know how content you are with me wanting to screw your father." Nalian sat back with a satisfied smile as the smirk vanished from his friend's face. In fact, Draco had gone rather pale...

The class ended, finally jolting Draco out of his stupor as students filed past him and out of the room. Nalian and Draco remained seated.

Lucius glanced up from his desk, "you may go, Draco. I only need to speak with Mr. Morthen."

"Feel free to torture him, father." Draco muttered under his breath, glowering at Nalian.

Nalian only smiled cheerfully at his departing friend before turning his attention to his professor. "Is this about class today, professor?"

"No, Mr. Morthen, though in the future I'd appreciate it if the two of you interrupted other teachers' classes and not mine." He studied the young man before him. "Draco asked me to tutor you," he said bluntly. "Since you're having no problem with the curriculum, I'm assuming he means advanced classes. What I want to know is why you didn't ask me directly if you wanted extra material to learn."

Nalian would've bet anything the professor already knew it was all Draco's idea. "Actually, sir, Draco said it was your idea. He also knows I find the work pretty easy, and he's been pushing me to study more difficult defense material."

"Do you want to learn more, Mr. Morthen?" Lucius asked mildly.

"Of course, sir." Nalian affected a surprised look. "I just didn't know how to go about it. My old teachers would never offer private tutoring, so that idea never occurred to me. The only real challenge I would find within the library on Defense is in the really old texts or the slightly more dubious ones, all of which are in the restricted section which I've no access to." He gave a smile to the older man, "I am taking some informal classes, which have been quite informative."

Lucius nodded, apparently satisfied with his answer. "You will report to my office on Thursday immediately after dinner. We will begin this Thursday, Mr. Morthen. If there are any problems with your schedule let me know."

Nalian shook his head, "no, but there is one thing. I'm not sure I can keep up with all my responsibilities if I add another class to my workload." Before Lucius could say anything Nalian rushed on, "since you'll be giving me advanced lessons, perhaps we could talk with Professor Snape about my dropping out of Defense? That way I have the extra time to keep up with everything..."

"I'll speak with Professor Snape. You're dismissed." As Nalian turned to leave Lucius called out, "Mr. Morthen-"

"Immediately after dinner on Thursday, sir." Nalian said. "I won't be late."

Lucius, feeling somewhat surprised that Morthen knew what he was going to say, nodded and waved him toward the door.

Lucius straightened his desk as he thought about the student who had just left his classroom. Morthen was the top of his class in defense. That was interesting in itself; was he just naturally better at defense than most or had Morthen received extra training in the past? If it was the latter, why would Morthen, supposedly an American wizard, need such extensive training?

He admitted to himself that if Nalian Morthen proved to be as capable and intuitive as he had shown in class, Lucius would enjoy teaching him.

-------

Nalian settled in next to Draco with a bad feeling twisting his stomach into knots.

"You look ill." Blaise commented from his right side.

"This is potions class." Nalian remarked. "We all know that Snape would love to chop me into little pieces, even if I am a Slytherin."

Draco snorted, "stop being so melodramatic."

"Yeah," Blaise added, "you're stealing Draco's job." Blaise later maintained that Draco's murderous glare was worth it.

Snape glided into the room, glare firmly in place, as per usual. "Today we will be making a genealogy potion." With a flick of his wand a piece of chalk began writing speedily across the board. "It is called Cognomeninis Genealogia. Who can tell me about it? Weasley."

Everyone was surprised as Ron Weasley actually answered, correctly. "The Cognomeninis Genealogia potion is the Light version of Genuseris Genealogia. In the former the potion only works if the blood is willingly given, and in the latter potion blood can be taken by force; that's why the Cognomeninis has been classified as a Light potion and the Genuseris is classified as a Dark potion." Snape was staring at him, barely containing his disbelief, along with everyone else in the room. Weasley flushed, "what? I- my brother told me about them once."

"Well, that is correct." Snape seemed pained for a minute, "two points to Gryffindor." Before anyone could gape at him in shock Snape moved on, "what else separates these two potions? Zabini."

Blaise straightened up in his seat. "Although the two potions are closely related- in fact Cognomeninis was created based of off Genuseris and is quite similar in the brewing except for a few minor changes- the potions give different forms of results. The Genuseris lists the family members, or, more specifically, the parents, grandparents, and so on, listing one generation for every drop of blood. The Cognomeninis gives only the person's family, or families, insignia."

Snape gave a sharp nod, "five points to Slytherin. We will be making the Light version," he sneered, "the headmaster thinks it unwise to let you loose with the other version of the potion. We will be testing the potion once it is completed. You will be working with your usual partners. Get started."

'That would explain the bad feeling then.' Nalian thought. 'Will the potion show my birth parents or Darian's line? Did my blood alter with the rest of my body when I became more elven? Either way, it's no good news for me.'

"Nalian?" Draco nudged him slightly. His face was completely blank, unless you counted the arched eyebrow, but Nalian could sense the concern hidden in his friend's voice.

"I'm fine." He shook his head to clear his thoughts. "I'll go get the ingredients, you start the cauldron."

Setting the ingredients down, Nalian bent his head as if studying the notes Draco made on his scroll. "How does the potion define 'willingly give blood'?" He asked softly, and knew if anyone overheard they would think he was merely asking a question about the potion. Well, Snape wouldn't think that, but he was all the way in the back of the classroom, torturing Weasley for getting a correct answer.

Draco bent his head down as well, quill in hand, saying, "I'm not sure," as he wrote, 'I'm really not sure. Do you think it will- you know?' Nalian gave a slight shrug and Draco wrote something else. 'We can't mess it up anyway. You know Sev will just have us try a correct version of the potion.'

Draco erased the text as Nalian started grinding beetles with his pestle. Draco was correct, there was no way Nalian could not take the potion. Not without looking very suspicious in any case. Was there anything he could do to avoid a possible disaster short of injuring himself bad enough to need a mediwitch?

He glanced around at the ingredients. No, none of them would cause an explosion without seriously messing up the directions, and considering that he was working with Draco, potions know-it-all, that would never happen. If it did happen Snape would be suspicious. Curses.

Draco made another small note, Nalian glancing down at it out of habit, before scribbling it out beyond any recognition as if annoyed with himself. 'I think you'll have to wait and see what happens. If worse comes to worst, we'll pull a Gryffindork.'

Nalian smiled mentally at Draco's phrasing. A "pulling a Gryffindork" was jumping into a situation with some stupid move without any planning; the sort of thing Slytherins abhorred.

Class seemed to fly by. The end of class was quickly approaching, and Nalian and Draco were just finishing their perfect potion. A few others in the class had already finished, for better or for worse, and tested the potion.

Snape came stalking over. He checked to make sure their potion was correct before nodding at them to try it.

With a last desperate mental glance over his options, Nalian added a small amount of potion to two tiny bowls before pricking his finger with a knife and letting three droplets of blood fall into his own bowl, Draco following suit.

"I'll go first." Draco said, pulling over a fresh scroll and unrolling it. He tipped the walnut sized bowl over on the scroll. It was necessary to use a fair amount of the potion or the results would be dubious at best.

It looked as if the potion had a life of its own. It slowly spread out to cover the entire foot long scroll, becoming paper thin itself. Draco waited a minute before lifting the parchment, watching as the now-dry potion slid off of it like sand.

On the scroll was a perfect replication of the Malfoy family crest.

Draco glanced at Nalian, "your turn." Both of them felt nervous, but Nalian was positive no one felt as sick as he did right at this moment. He pulled over his own blank scroll, performing the same process Draco did.

As the sand slid off Nalian recognized the Potter crest, and realized that wasn't the only thing the paper had drawn. As the sand fell away it was revealing Darian's crest... Nalian did the only thing he could think of.

He threw up.

Draco and Snape caught him as his legs turned to jelly, easing him onto his stool.

"Nalian?" Draco's voice was concerned.

"I knew he wasn't feeling well!" Blaise declared, but he didn't sound all that triumphant.

Snape had been staring holes into the back of his head, Nalian could feel it, but at Blaise's words his attention moved elsewhere. "What do you mean, Zabini?"

Blaise frowned, "he didn't look very well when he arrived for class, Professor."

Pansy nodded, "Blaise commented on it even, but Nalian just sort of shrugged it off."

"Maybe it was something from breakfast? That's when he started acting a bit off, sir." Draco chipped in, deciding a little damage control wouldn't be a bad thing.

"The bacon seemed a bit off." Greg supplied.

Draco added, "I commented on it during break too, but Nalian insisted he was all right. I should've had him at least get some pepper-up potion from Madam Pomfrey."

Snape sighed and rubbed his temple. "Take him to Pomfrey now, Mr. Malfoy." He had been sure that Morthen was trying to hide something, until his snakes had jumped in with this new information. They wouldn't lie about such a thing, at least not to him. It wasn't possible that Morthen could have gotten to all of his Slytherin yearmates.

No one was doing anything in the classroom, watching with interest as Draco led Morthen out of the room. "Does this look like the theatre?" Snape snapped. "Get back to work immediately!" He glanced in disgust at the vomit covered parchment. A perfectly good lead, ruined by an upset stomach? That seemed a little too coincidental for his taste.

-------

Halfway to the infirmary, Nalian said, "I threw up on my paper."

"Yes, you did."

"That was fucking lucky." He muttered, after putting up an eavesdropper-be-gone spell. It would ensure no one would overhear their conversation, including lip-readers.

"Not so much luck." Draco smiled smugly.

Nalian stopped walking and looked at Draco. "You made me sick?"

Draco shrugged slightly, grabbing his arm and leading him onward. "I thought of what Blaise said earlier. It was the perfect cover."

Nalian sighed, "thank you, Draco. I don't know what would've happened if..."

"I know."

"I believe Snape saw the first part."

"Probably."

"Crap."

"We'll deal with the outcome." Draco said mildly. "It's a lot better than what could've been revealed."

Nalian smiled slightly, "how'd you know that?"

"The Potters don't have any other family interconnected with theirs, at least not for centuries, just like the Malfoys. If mine only had one crest, then yours should have had only one too. So if it started creating something else, it had to be something about your- other- heritage."

"My smartest friend." Nalian chuckled.

"Damn straight."

"I don't know what I'd do without your support."

"Probably fall flat on your arse, figuratively and literally." Draco said, reminding Nalian that he couldn't even make it to the infirmary without help.

"What exactly did you hex me with?"

"A simple stomach flu. It has the unfortunate side effect of making one rather weak physically."

"Joy of joys."

"Yep."

They reached the infirmary and Nalian quickly removed the spell he had put up.

"What's happened?" Poppy Pomfrey asked, bustling over from a bed where a first year lay.

"He was sick in potions class." As Pomfrey started muttering about the dangers of potions Draco added, "he's been feeling a little ill all day. I think he may be coming down with something."

Madam Pomfrey glared at Nalian. "Why didn't you come to see me earlier, young man?"

"I thought I'd be fine, Madam." Nalian looked embarrassed, glancing down at the floor.

Pomfrey huffed before giving him a quick exam. "Mr. Malfoy's right, it's just a seasonal bug. I'll give you something for it and you can be on your way."

Returning five minutes later and handing him some pepper-up potion she added. "Next time if either of you think someone is ill, yourselves included, send them to me!"

"Yes, ma'am."

-------

Nalian knocked on the door. As a voice called for him to enter he slid the door open and walked in, stopping in surprise by how different his teacher looked.

Lucius was without robes. The man was dressed in black trousers and a white button-up with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows.

The picture was entirely too attractive.

"Today I want to see what you know." Lucius told him. "First, tell me everything you've learned where defense is concerned, and then I will test you in the areas you mention."

Nalian forced his gaze onto his professor's face. "Um, what-what I know? Right." He set his bag by the door before settling himself in a chair, using the time to pull himself together and gather his thoughts. "Just magical defense or muggle as well?" At the professor's arched eyebrow he smiled sheepishly, "I've always been interested in muggle defense so back home I took several classes on it. Hand-to-hand combat, staff fighting, a few friends and I got together to learn how to use real swords... Those things are ridiculously heavy," he added just to make himself sound somewhat like a normal teenager.

"I see. Muggle styles of fighting won't be necessary in our lessons. There are separate classes for that. You should take them if you're interested in furthering your education in that area."

Nalian shook his head, "I'm already taking one; 101 Ways to Cause Harm. So about my experience..." That sounded decidedly dirty Nalian thought before pushing it out of his mind. "I've memorized a lot of hexes and curses, I'm pretty good at dueling," using elven magic, Nalian added silently, "one of my old teachers was fascinated by plants and their uses, and she was always teaching us about things like that so I know quite a bit about poisons and how to detect them, and also a lot about healing plants. I can do some parseltongue magic, though it's all very complicated and takes forever to complete." That was true enough. Snake magic was a pain in the ass, even the fastest spells, which always seemed ritual-like, taking hours to complete.

"What about the dark arts?" Lucius inquired mildly.

Nalian looked at him hesitantly. "I know some of the lighter dark arts..." Nalian lied. He knew a lot more than he was willing to admit to. "That isn't a problem, is it?" He asked in concern.

"It isn't. In fact if you're interested I can teach you some more in that area." Lucius gauged Nalian's reaction carefully.

"I would be interested." Nalian said slowly. "Though there's not much use for it these days, what with all the laws banning it. I don't understand that really, since dark doesn't equate to evil." He gave Lucius a curious look, "are you even allowed to teach me the dark arts?"

"I can clear it with the headmaster." At Nalian's surprised look he explained, "the headmaster is surprisingly open about dark and light magic and their use."

"Oh." Nalian recalled the semi-Dark books he'd found in the headmaster's office. He wondered how much of a practitioner Dumbledore was.

Lucius wrote a few things down thoughtfully. "Come sit here, at the desk."

Nalian obeyed, sliding into the seat and peripherally seeing Lucius settle in behind him. "In front of you is a list of defenses or spells. Put a check next to everything you know how to do." The professor offered him a quill, Nalian took it, his fingers grazing Lucius', and Nalian held on a few seconds too long, not wanting to lose the feel of the other man's skin.

A sharp intake of breath, a slight pause. It was the only reaction Nalian received from his teacher at his blunder. "If you'll begin, Mr. Morthen?"

'Ah, so we'll ignore it. I can do that.' Nalian thought, quickly beginning to read down the list, checking what needed to be checked.

The presence of the older man so close was both intoxicating and distracting. Nalian was eager to be done with the list and able to move a few feet away from the man, or a few inches towards the man. As soon as he was done Nalian dropped the quill into the inkwell and shot up out of the chair, slamming straight into Lucius. An arm slid around his waist, to keep both of them from falling over.

"In such a rush, Mr. Morthen?" Professor Malfoy asked from above him.

'Very smooth, Nalian. As if holding his hand wasn't revealing enough.' A little voice muttered in the back of his mind. "Sorry, professor. I, er, forgot you were back there." 'Yeah, right, that's the only thing I could seem to remember. Way to go, Nalian. Wouldn't Darian be impressed?'

"I see." The hand removed itself from his waist. It only occurred to Nalian now that the hand had be there longer than it needed to be. "I'll test you on your curses, and prepare a few other tests for our next lesson. By next Thursday I'll have a written plan worked out, which you can look over."

Nalian nodded silently.

Lucius motioned Nalian to follow him, walking out of the office and into the classroom. With a flick of his wand the desks moved up against the walls, leaving a large empty space in the center of the room.

"Do you know the rules to a proper duel?" He asked.

"Yes, sir. The duelers have to be at least six paces apart. Facing each other, they bow and raise their wands to the correct position. Before the duel the boundaries must be set; what is allowed, what isn't, when will the duel end, and so on. But proper manners for a duel aren't always wise." Nalian added.

"Clarify."

"In a battlefield one can't be expected to hold proper etiquette unless challenged by an opponent. If so, no other wizard on said battlefield can interfere. Also if a duel is started before terms can be laid down, and the rite enacted, then neither opponent is held to the rules of proper dueling.

Lucius nodded, "very good. We'll do an informal duel, but as if the rules applied, understand?"

"Yes, sir."

They bowed to each other and gave a salute with their wands before beginning.

The start was easy. Lucius allowed Nalian to start and they maintained throwing simple, children's hexes at each other before Lucius suddenly began casting stronger ones. Nalian kept the pace.

Nalian couldn't help but wonder how much Lucius knew. His knowledge on curses and hexes was most definitely vast. He felt quite impressed, and he suspected Lucius was using nowhere near the most dangerous curses he knew, or even using all of his strength. 'He's conserving his energy.' Nalian thought. 'Trying to wear me down.' What Lucius didn't know was that Nalian was a powerful wizard in his own right, elves or no elves, and could hold his own in a duel.

The duel finally ended when Lucius threw a curse at Nalian that he'd never even heard of. It was foreign, Nalian knew, possibly Chinese. It brought on a feeling Nalian had experienced only once before, as if he'd been frozen in time. It was much more complicated and powerful than the petrificus curse, though it seemed to have similar effects. The petrificus was easy to break- Nalian couldn't break this other curse at all; at least not without time to think about it and work through the magical strands.

Lucius removed his wand then unfroze him, for lack of a better word.

"Will you teach me that?" Nalian asked.

Lucius nodded, "later. Tonight I think we've had enough."

"Next week, Thursday after dinner?"

"Be on time," Lucius agreed mildly.

"Thank you, sir." Nalian murmured, gathering up his things and exiting the room.

Lucius left for Severus' rooms after locking up his office. Teaching Mr. Morthen was going to be interesting, to say the least. It was something he was looking forward to.

-------

Severus was already settled in an armchair when Lucius arrived.

"If you're less busy than I am, which you obviously are, why can't we meet in my rooms?" Lucius sat in the other armchair, pouring a cup of tea for himself from the table in between the chairs.

"Because I had to deal with exploding cauldrons all day. All you had to deal with were a few miscast curses."

Lucius snorted, "shows what you know."

"Absolutely everything." Severus added.

Rolling his eyes, Lucius told Severus about his first meeting with Morthen. "Oh yes, he wishes to know if he can drop out of class and still get credit through the private lessons."

"I'll have to run it by Dumbledore, but it shouldn't be a problem. However Morthen should attend classes that will cover things you won't be teaching him privately." Snape said. "He really flirted with you?"

"You say that if it's so hard to believe." Lucius arched an eyebrow at his friend.

"That's not what I meant. Can we not get caught up in trivialities?"

Lucius refrained from rolling his eyes again. Severus was practically bubbling over with some news. "Yes, he flirted with me, rather accidentally might I add."

"This could be used to our advantage, though we do now have part of the puzzle solved." Severus smirked at Lucius' curious look.

"Stop stalling for the sake of suspense, Severus. What did you find out?"

"I know who Nalian Morthen is. Rather, who he used to be." Severus' eyes glittered.

"Severus..." Lucius growled in irritation.

"Morthen is Harry Potter. Looking at their family line, it's the only possibility." Severus said. "I did that genealogy potion in his class today. It revealed the Potter crest."

"He willingly took the potion?"

"Yes. This is the interesting part." Severus said. "The sand was sliding off of another crest, but before it was revealed Morthen vomited all over it."

"Vomited?" Lucius asked in disbelief.

Severus nodded, "it was a little surreal to me as well, but all of our Slytherins said he was a bit off before class. I still suspect foul play, I'm just not sure how he did it."

Lucius smirked, "he threw up, Severus. I thought you were aware of that."

Snape glared at him, "you know what I meant." After a second he continued, "since he's the Potter brat, how is he hiding his appearance? We know what he should look like, but Morthen most definitely has red hair and brown eyes."

They sat in silence before Lucius commented, "you don't suppose he's altered his appearance through Muggle means? They do have some sound ways of altering their looks."

Severus frowned, "I suppose he could have. Certainly there has to be some way to check that."

"Do you think he knew?"

"Knew what?"

"That his parents were the Potters?"

"We know he's been lying." Snape pointed out. "But why lie about his past just to hide who his birth parents are?"

"So it's possible he didn't know. But that can't be what he's hiding, or at least the only thing he's hiding." Lucius added.

"I wonder what the second crest was, before he threw up all over it." Snape murmured.

"It doesn't make any sense that there'd be another crest." Lucius objected. "The Potters are as much intertwined with another family as the Malfoys are, which is nil."

"So there should be no other crest." Snape said. "Which means that Morthen has undergone some sort of blood ritual, tying him to another family."

"Did you see anything of the other crest?" Lucius asked.

"Only a small part of the top left corner had been revealed. It looked to have part of some sort of weapon. A spear or maybe an arrow."

"I suppose we could look into crests."

Severus looked at him as if he'd lost his mind, "there has to be millions of crests, and all we know about this one is the possibility of an arrow or spear in the top left corner."

"Or we could not look into crests." Lucius smiled wryly at Severus. Snape grumbled something. "We'll just have to wait and see for now."

"The question is. What do we do about the Potters? To tell them or not to tell them?"

-------

He didn't really feel like going back to the common room. In fact, tonight felt like a good night to explore a little. The dungeons had to be deeper than they seemed.

Nalian set off at a quick pace, only slowing down after he was sure no one would be around or come around. The hallways were dark and gloomy. It seemed as if everything was shadowed, with the torches only creating small islands of light in the darkness.

Nalian liked it. Everything was quiet. He could feel the castle's magic better, hear a small trickle of water as it slowly slid down a wall. Nalian could almost imagine he was alone in the entire castle.

After walking for ten minutes he noticed an alcove. An alcove that had a staircase leading down. Curiosity piqued, Nalian moved downward. At the bottom he glanced around appreciatively. Who would have thought Hogwarts would have dungeons?

Who would have thought the house elves cleaned the dungeons? As Nalian wandered around, looking into various cells, he noticed there was no odor. No smell of urine or blood, dried or otherwise. No scent of burned or rotted flesh hung in the air. There were no corpses or skeletons. There was dust, however. A lot of dust, as if the house elves hadn't come around for at least a century.

He entered another room. It wasn't like any of the cells he'd passed, nor like the room past guards used while on duty. It was an interrogation room. Medieval torture devices lay on an old wooden table or hung on the walls or were set up on the floor. Even if the smell of blood was gone, the stains on the walls were still there. It all made for an impressive and very horrific image for an unsuspecting person.

Nalian wasn't overly bothered. He'd been taken to see dungeons, and their prisoners, of Darian's palace many times over the years. He'd even sat through an interrogation when he was fourteen. It was an image Nalian knew he'd never forget. Nalian was sure Darian felt guilt over letting him see that at such a young age, he still had nightmares about it, but it had been necessary at the time.

What caught his attention the most about the room though, was the ghost sitting in the interrogation chair. The Bloody Baron watched him as he looked around the room.

Finally Nalian said softly, "you died here."

"Very astute, Nalian Morthen." The voice was soft, there was a certain calm note that declared complete control over any situation.

"Do you sit here often?" Nalian inquired.

"Occasionally."

"I'd say that's morbid, but I'm no shining example of the normal either." He was given an amused look for his efforts.

"You do not show your feelings much."

"No, not really."

"Have you made use of our accounts?"

Nalian nearly stopped breathing for a second. "You're Baron Evander Hassforth?"

"I would have thought that obvious."

"Oh, well, when all the puzzle pieces are put together it's quite obvious." Nalian gave the ghost a dirty look. "I don't always have all the piece of the puzzle."

The baron gave a lazy smirk. "You are my descendant? I doubt your parents would approve."

Nalian wondered why that hurt a little. "What's that supposed to mean?" He inquired.

"It means, child, that you are similar to me when I was your age."

Nalian snorted, "I highly doubt that."

"You've been lying about who you are and why you're here. That much I gathered when I heard from Gringotts." The ghost pointed out. "You're scheming, plotting, ambitious without a doubt, and a Slytherin. Not something the Potters prize in their children."

"Not something many of our family have prized, I'd bet." Nalian returned.

"True enough."

"I'm surprised your children weren't more Slytherin inclined." Nalian commented. "I'm your descendant, therefore the Potter line is borne from you, but the Potters are Light loving Gryffindors."

The Bloody Baron shrugged, "I died before my children were grown. In the end they were more influenced by my parents than me."

Nalian studied him, "so Gringotts informed you of my birth name?"

"Harry Potter, yes."

"How annoying."

"It wouldn't have been difficult to piece together after they contacted me for a 'Nalian Morthen's' access to the accounts." The baron reasoned.

Nalian sighed, "at least they haven't told the Potters." He frowned at his dungeon companion. "Will you tell them?"

"Whatever for?" The baron asked. "They don't even know who I am, or that we're related. I have no problems with keeping it that way. If I tell them about you, I suspect who I am will come up with them."

"Thank you."

"Will you tell them?"

"I don't know." Nalian shrugged. "I suspect Dumbledore might if I do not."

"Dumbledore knows? Who else does?"

"Why should I tell any of this to you?"

"I have no intentions of revealing you to anyone, Morthen." The baron reassured him. "In fact, I am quite interested in seeing what you're doing here. It'll be entertaining to watch everything unfold."

"I'm glad I can keep you so amused." Nalian rolled his eyes.

"Will you tell me any of your plans, child?"

"If you tell me how you died."

The baron rose from his seat, drifting towards Nalian. "It will be more satisfying to see things unfold as they come. Good day, Nalian." He drifted through him, and Nalian felt as if his insides had turned to ice.

"Good day, Baron." He murmured, watching the ghost disappear through a wall. He glanced around the room thoughtfully once more before heading back towards the Slytherin common room.

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A/N: Sorry if the Latin I used is incorrect. I Don't speak Latin at all. I hope the wait was worth it! Tell me what you think! And I'm finally making a little headway in the Lucius/Harry department.

Thanks very much to the reviewers: Anne, mazoku, Spacemonkey, kiayea, Shikatanai, A-Brighter-Dawn, Night-Owl123, SheWolfe7, Goldensong, Arassi

Skysha-Tranqui - That should happen pretty soon.

Deritine - Did you get my email?

E.A.V - Yes, Nalian did. I can't believe I forgot to write that, since I know I was thinking it... It's been fixed though, a line about putting up defenses against eavesdropping has been added. Thanks for pointing that out!

Skyler K. Daemon - Remus died. I'm only telling because I'm not sure it will come up in the story.

ShivaniBlue - It's binding, which was Draco's choice.

hermoine21 - You'll have to wait and find out about the first two questions. grin As for Remus and Peter, they're no longer living. There might be a small mention of them at some point, but there might not either... I'm not sure about that yet. (You lucky duck you; you've caught me at a talkative moment. wink)