Disclaimer: I do not own.
//This is Parseltongue.//
Warning for some gore.
Paraselenic
Sanguinary // full of or characterized by bloodshed; bloody
Sybill Trelawney blinked in her owlish way at the boy who had appeared before her, using a bony finger to push up her glasses. "What are you doing here, my dear?"
Harry pulled out his secondary wand and flicked it at the opening that lead into her classroom, sealing it off at least temporarily and silencing the room. Trelawney began fidgeting in the silence as he pulled off his school robes.
"Are you perhaps considering taking my class again? You just don't have the talent, my dear boy, it would be a fruitless endeavor! Of course, I Saw you coming to me, begging to be taught… but I am afraid I must refuse you, dear, dear boy! Without the Sight, one cannot learn!"
Harry raised an eyebrow and leveled his wand at the hollow of her throat. "You're annoying," he drawled, intoning a spell Harry affectionately referred to as the Mannequin curse, as it left the body poseable from the neck down. It didn't stop the victim from screaming though; it was that feature that made Harry like it all the more. He tilted his head at the morbidly widened eyes of the witch, smirking at her. "Did you foresee this, Professor?"
Trelawney jerked her head, and Harry could see the panic setting in. Surely the reality of her situation would be hitting her now, no matter how air-headed she was. "Y-Your aura speaks of darkness, my dear boy. What have you done? Evil emanates from your v-very soul! Repent now, my dear, r-repent so that it does not consume you!"
Harry stared at the woman blankly, eyebrows slowly climbing upward. "You're totally nutters, you know that don't you?"
Magnified eyes blinked rapidly as the woman fought to stay in control. "The recent full moon has affected your mind, my dear boy! Reconsider your path, await the turning of the moon and you shall have a clear path laid before you!"
Harry ignored the woman's ranting, pulling her arms out in a downward slope as if she was reaching for a child. From his thigh he pulled one of his curved daggers, relishing in the audible speeding of the witch's heart. He deftly cut through the gaudy sleeves of her robes, the material parting to expose her arms and falling against her frozen torso. He grinned widely. "My path is already clear, my dear."
"B-but the darkness is contaminating you! You are not in your right mind! You've seen the Grim haven't you?!"
Harry merely chuckled and pressed the blade into her skin at the base of her thumb on her right hand, ignoring her screeches. He avoided the major veins as he trailed the blade up her arm, licking his lips as the scent of blood reached his nose. "I wish I had more time to play with you, Professor, but unfortunately my time here is severely limited. So as fun as it would be to spend hours stripping the skin from your body, I'm afraid I have to make the most of the time I have…" he reached the shoulder and pushed the blade in hard, shoving it through clean to the back.
Harry couldn't resist the urge to lean forward, running his tongue across the red rivulets that now nearly covered his former Professor's arm. Blood borne of pain was always much more sweet, somehow. He wished he could hold her under the Cruciatus as he carved her up, but the wards would log his magical signature. He couldn't have the game ruined so quickly, after all.
"Y-you're psychotic! Oh, how could I have not read the signs correctly? You have been tainted so long that it has finally corrupted your very mind, my boy! Oh woe…"
Harry snorted and trailed his fingers over hers, lingering on the tip of her pinkie before snapping it cleanly. She gibbered out nonsense, begging him to stop. Harry was pleased to ignore her. "I'm not a psychopath, I'm a sociopath, Professor. I am not at all insane, I merely don't have many of your petty morals. Psychopaths don't know the difference between right and wrong, sociopaths do and just don't care. Understand, my dear?"
He again took a long swipe of the blood that welled in the deep gash of her arm with his tongue, not needing it at the moment but enjoying his personal ambrosia nonetheless. He might as well not waste the blood, even if he couldn't bite her. He didn't want it known that the Lord Mylläkkä was a vampire just yet. It would only serve to further the prejudice and fear, and it would likely make life harder for Dante as well.
He cut a path over her collarbones, letting the blade push a bit deeper into the hollow of the witch's throat, ignoring her screams and frowning a bit as he realized that anything further would be difficult. After all, he didn't want her to end up nude, so he couldn't cut overmuch… that would make him rather ill. He also didn't want her dying yet, so it limited his choices. He sighed and lifted the blade from her neck, again moving his hand to rapidly snap two more of her fingers.
"Merlin, stop, please! Why are you doing this?!"
"You're an example, Professor, and I apologize that it must be you… but honestly, maybe you should have thought better of predicting a student's death at every turn, hmm?" he twisted her thumb harshly and squeezed, feeling the bone shatter. The mangled fingers hung limply, unable to move out of the positions they fell in.
Harry positioned the blade to hover near her navel as her voice, hoarse and harsh from screaming, began rambling again. "Oh, what terrible calamities fog your future! They cover you, seeping into your mind until it is twisted and rotten. What will more blood do to your soul? I am truly sorry such an evil has been visited on you, dear child…" Harry shoved the blade into her stomach, holding it in place to prevent her entrails from falling out and killing her.
After that, she only screamed.
Harry transfigured a forgotten pencil from the ground into a wooden bowl, pressing it underneath the wound and twisting the blade. It only took a few slices to fill the bowl nearly to the brim, and he drank the slowly cooling life from it happily, watching Trelawney's twisting face and listening to her screams. They were high-pitched and unpleasant, much less appeasing than, say, Lucius's, but the sounds of pain were always satisfying on a base level that Harry often attributed to his vampirism. He drank enough of the blood to be sated, before in twisting the blade harshly and filling the bowl once more.
His time was growing short, he knew. He couldn't afford to linger much longer if his he was to get away with his plan. With a wave of his Blackthorn wand he sealed the bowl containing her blood, shrinking and pocketing it. He sighed, locking eyes with frantic pale green that were rolling in panic. "And now, dear Professor, our time comes to an end. Pity, really. We might have had much fun together. Alas, time is of the essence. Use your Inner Eye and See this future, hmm?"
Her eyes went glassy and her screams stopped abruptly, and Harry recognized the signs of Trelawney making a prophecy. He swore under his breath, annoyed that be couldn't just kill her already and rid the world of the nuisance.
Even under the Mannequin spell, she swayed slightly in her trance. "The end comes near, shadows stretching and consuming. Darkness will creep over hills and sea, until nothing but despair breeds under its depressive cover. The full moon will watch as its child is thrust to the fore. Not all aims will be realized, nor all plans be for naught. One final confrontation shall decide the victor, the Light and Dark vying for supremacy. Only the binding of the Two can ensure the world's survival, the Power the Dark Lord knows not must be realized. A defied prophecy shall tell the tale. The end comes near…" she screamed as she rid herself of the trance, and Harry plunged his second blade into her chest.
She screamed no more.
Harry burrowed himself into the warm blankets of his bed, letting the comforter cocoon him. His wide grin was hidden by his pillow as he laughed out loud, relishing in the adrenaline that still ran through his system. Now the deed was done, and only the presentation remained. He had been locked within his bed for the last hour hoping that Ron or Hermione would come to wake him, securing his alibi, but since neither seemed inclined to fetch him for dinner, he would just make sure he was seen coming from the dormitories.
With a hissed farewell to Nagini, who would be leaving back to Voldemort in the melee of the next few hours, Harry looked himself over. His hair suitably mussed and his eyes convincingly bleary from the long minutes he had spent in the dark, Harry escaped the bindings of his bedclothes and made his way down to the common room, looking for all the world as if he had just awoken from a pre-dinner nap.
The common room was near-empty when he stepped into it, eyes skimming over a couple of seventh year girls that were crowded around the fireplace and a couple of younger students doing their homework sprawled across a plush rug. However, as always, the arrival of Harry Potter to a room caused heads to turn and eyes to track him, though he pretended not to notice. It was not as many witnesses as he might have wanted, but it would have to do. He made a show of yawning and stretching his arms over his head, looking around the room drowsily before starting for the portrait hole.
He hadn't even made it to the stairs when he was nearly mowed down by Professor McGonagall, hair pulled back tightly enough to look painful. She startled when she pulled back from him, hands up. "Oh, excuse me, Potter."
Harry inclined his head. "No worries Professor, I just wasn't watching where I was going. Where are you hurrying to?"
Stern eyes turned on him, scrutinizing as if she expected an ulterior motive to his question. "Dinner. One of the first year girls managed to set her drapes on fire."
Harry gave a smile to his Professor. She was too decorous for his tastes, but she always put her students before herself. It was refreshing in a world of Lockharts and Umbridges.
He gave a slight bow to the taciturn witch as they reached the Great Hall doors and went to their separate tables, Harry returning a wave from Ron as he pleaded silently to be saved from Hermione's wrath. It seemed Ron had done something to earn her ire again.
"Preposterous, Ronald! You're being as suspicious as a Slytherin right now, and I won't stand for it!"
For a long moment, Harry wondered if he was already that close to being found out. His own paranoia ran through him and he froze in mid-step, eyebrows raising as Ron groaned and buried his face in his hands. "I'm telling you, Hermione, there's something off about him!"
"And what is off? That he is the first intelligent Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we've had since Professor Lupin?"
Harry's breath whooshed out of him, silently berating himself for being so paranoid. Being caught would be dangerous, though. He was surrounded by over half a school full of Light wizards who would like nothing more than to turn into a raving mass of panic at the first sign of 'Dark' activity. Even with his training and Dante at his back he would have a hard time escaping such a situation.
Harry stretched his back out as he took his place at the Gryffindor table, nodding every so often in a parody of the good listener. He honestly didn't hear more than every fifth or sixth word that Hermione was saying as she ranted on about Dante's better virtues; his mind was elsewhere. His mind was on the shock the Great Hall would soon receive and what his own reactions needed to be.
He carefully put food onto his plate and watched as all four House tables filled around him, a glint in his eyes as he waited for the opportune moment to unveil his masterpiece. It was when Dumbledore stood that Harry let his wand drop from his sleeve into his hand beneath the table.
Albus Dumbledore smiled benignly as the Great Hall filled with students, hundreds of young minds that were his responsibility… his to mold, his to nurture.
His life's work was in the room with him: these children that milled around him, their parents before them, their grandparents before that. He had spent the last fifty years as Headmaster shaping the Wizarding world into his perfect image, into the only way they would survive. The Light had grown stronger in his reign than it had ever been before. That was, at least until Tom Riddle had stepped up his games and intensified the quiet war that had been playing out in the background.
But it was alright. Tom's ten year defeat had given the Light time to celebrate, its followers feeling safe enough to reproduce in large numbers again. Those lost were replaced by the new generation, and he was the one in charge of bringing them up right. The Slytherins were a lost cause, of course, but that left the Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and Gryffindors to mold correctly. It would have to be enough.
His favorite student of them all had been worrying him this year, though. Harry had been withdrawn from even his friends, quiet and contemplative. He was reminding Albus far too much of a young Tom Riddle, before the initial Chamber of Secrets fiasco. He worried for his protégé and for the Light side.
But he knew he was only being silly. After all, had he not saved Harry from his life at the Dursleys' home? Had he not been the one to teach him of his parents after a lifetime of lies? Had he not been the one to help him free his Godfather? To believe him despite the circumstances? To save his life time and time again? The boy knew all this, surely, so he knew he had nothing to fear.
He hadn't made the same mistakes with him as he had with Tom. He had taken on an active role this time.
And now he had the perfect tool to take down his biggest failure.
He had not been expecting much that night at the Hog's Head in late 1979, though he had hoped to perhaps find a replacement Divination teacher. Instead he had gotten a boon in the form of a fluke prophecy, forecasting Tom Riddle's downfall at the hands of a yet unborn child. Where he had failed Tom he would again have a chance to succeed, changing the Wizarding world into the dream he had of it.
So what if he had left young Harry with the Dursleys? If the boy had been raised in the easy life of the Wizarding world, he would have been susceptible to the darkness Tom offered. This way, he had grown and persevered and come out stronger for it. Albus still had several decades of life left in him, and he refused to go until he had managed to shape the world properly and banished away the Darkness.
His benevolent smile widened as he stood, an instant hush falling over the hall. He loved the power he commanded over these children, the way their eyes lit up in awe as they looked to him. He was their Lord, their Master. He was all that was good in the world and he would pass on his righteousness to them. But not soon, because he planned to live much longer, yet.
He opened his mouth to speak, his eyes twinkling merrily, when the looks of awe and adoration morphed into fear and revulsion.
Then the screams began.
The students were cowering away now, several had begun vomiting onto their laps and plates. Some were crying, others frozen in shock. All their eyes were focused behind him, and Albus turned with trepidation.
His heart clenched at the sight, his blood pounding rapidly in his ears. The spectacle was above his eye level by a foot or so, leaving the view unobstructed to all the students in the hall. Hanging by wrists that were bound over her head, Sybill Trelawney was attached magically to the wall, glasses skewed across her face and mouth open in a silent scream. Blood stained her skin, her clothes, dripped indolently down the wall even still. Some of her innards hung limply from a long gash in her stomach.
But none of this caught Albus' attention.
Abover her head scrawled in harsh, dripping red lettering was the full prophecy. Every word of it. His hand raised of its own accord to clench his robes above his heart. How? How had they done it? Sybill herself had never even been aware of it, so how had they managed to get it?
A glowing ball that resembled a Prophecy Sphere hung around the corpse's neck, hovering. Albus broke from his daze and made to summon it when it crashed to the ground deafeningly, even over the clamor of the Hall. Everything went still as an unfamiliar voice trickled out of the broken glass.
"Is my lovely ink running? Let me be sure you've gotten the gist of my message. 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… And either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives… The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born as the seventh month dies.' Lovely, isn't it? Legilimency is a beautiful thing… the mind needs not be consciously aware of a fact for information to be stored there. Now the secret is out, Dumbledore. It seems it will be my friend Voldemort versus your Golden Boy. I wonder who will win? The child without any training, or the Dark Lord with decades of knowledge and experience? Children, I suggest you start looking at the war now, because if you are not with the Dark Sect, you are against it. All is never as it seems. Have a good meal now, children. You may call me Mylläkkä."
Albus Dumbledore, for the first time in many, many years, was speechless and frozen. So much so that he stood staring up at the wall, at the now not-so-secret prophecy, at a loss.
It took Minerva's hand tugging on his sleeve to bring him from his daze.
He was getting too old for this.
Severus Snape gripped the table with pale hands, teeth clacking together. He had not been informed at all of this. He had been totally left out of the loop. He growled under his breath, tearing his eyes away from the gruesome display of blood and gaudy jewelry.
His black eyes sought Potter; the entire school was staring in various degrees of shock and disgust at the suspended corpse, shaking in fear after the message had played. It was positively disgusting, using such tactics, and Severus sneered harshly towards the boy.
Perhaps he was not his father after all. James Potter was likely rolling in his red and gold grave after such a violent display by his progeny. James Potter would have pleaded Gryffindor righteousness and would never have murdered in any form, let alone so viciously. The boy was truly Dark then… which, of course, was another thing James Potter never would have done.
But the boy had his father's arrogance, that was for sure. Even with his enlightenment of Potter's upbringing, he saw the arrogance. It was in the way he walked, the tilt of his jaw, in his disregard for the rules. The boy hardly tried in half of his classes, messing about with Weasley instead of actually applying himself, yet he still managed passing marks and the praise of hundreds. It was sickening to watch the rules seem to bend of their own accord for a mere boy, hardly aware of the power he held. Potter had no regard for others, like his father. He ran about late at night, had the Headmaster under his thumb like a proper little Golden Boy. He was everything James Potter was in an even more influential package, and Severus hated him for it.
But he was also a vampire. He was a Dark wizard and a vampire who held the position of partner to the Dark Lord. The mere thought of the child of James Potter being in such a position was mind boggling. It nearly gave him a headache when he considered it. Despite the similarities between the two Potters, he could see some of himself in the boy, in the calculating cast his face sometimes took to the subtle ways he was able to put people off of him, especially in the recent months. It was laughable, and he wished he could see the bastard one more time so he could rub it in his face.
But he still loathed the boy. No one should mistake that. He was mildly impressed at the job he had done on Trelawney, and perhaps his respect for him had gone up, but that was merely one wizard to another. From one man to another, he still saw nothing but a brat when he looked at the boy.
Said boy turned in that moment, locking mesmerizing green eyes with his. His heart clenched as it did every time those eyes met his. No matter how much the boy looked like James Potter in hair and jaw, his eyes, nose, and mouth were purely Lily Evans. He didn't understand how people didn't see her in him, choosing to look at the hair and coloring and dub him a clone of James Potter. He had so much of Lily in his appearance. Especially those eyes.
He hated those eyes.
It was like a physical blow every time Potter had looked at him for the last six years to see those eyes on a person who looked so like James Potter. To see those bewitching, beautiful eyes on a boy who was the epitome of a mixture between both Lily and James. To have proof before him every day reminding him of the girl he could never have had.
He had loved those eyes, once.
But he hated them now, no longer seeing a fiery girl with long auburn hair, defiance written in her very stance as she drew the attention of everyone around her. Headstrong and always virtuous, Lily was. She was beautiful not just in body, but in her fire and spirit as well. No woman Severus had ever seen could compare to her. One glare from her had always stripped away his defenses, instantly driving him on the defensive if only to salvage his pride. Because she could never turn those eyes on him when the blasted Marauders were not present, he had never been so lucky. Once the Marauders had been brought into the picture, Lily had drifted away from him, the beautiful girl he had met all those years ago drifting farther and farther away. But now those eyes were no longer singularly belonging to Lily. Now those eyes personified his losses, showed yet another thing James Potter had taken away from him.
Those eyes were on him now, piercing into his soul. Could this Potter read him as easily as his father could? Oh, James had known. He had known since their fourth year. It was when the torture had started, the endless stream of pranks. Could this boy see into his very soul with those eyes so like Lily's? They were not perfectly alike at all, he knew. Potter's eyes were darker, not in hue, but in the shadows they held. Harry Potter had seen a hard life until this point, from abusive relatives to near-death experiences every year since being rescued from them. The shadows that swept through Potter's eyes was all Severus could focus on at moments like this, needing a tangible hold on reality, reminding him that this was not Lily.
Lily was gone. Lily was dead. And it was his own damned fault.
He had given over the first lines of the prophecy, after all. He hadn't realized she was pregnant when he had given the information over, hadn't considered that those words could possibly mean her child, that she could get caught up in the mess. It was this that had sent him running to Dumbledore, realizing that he had put her into jeopardy. And it was this that had ultimately killed her.
And people wondered why he was so cynical.
Potter smirked infuriatingly before turning away, putting on a mask of righteous fury at this new enemy. Severus's smirk was sardonic and black eyes focused on the charmed ceiling.
Just who was Harry Potter, really?
A/N: This chapter was written a few weeks before Deathly Hallows. Yay for being unintentionally canon. XD
Revised: 3/19/09 (Redundancy chapter of redundancy? Jeez. Another thing that will need super attention when this is all over.)