Disclaimer: I do not own.
//This is Parseltongue.//
Paraselenic
Heuristic // to point out, to reveal
Hermione was fuming as she stormed away from Ron, her cloak billowing around her in a manner frighteningly similar to Snape on a good day. He was such a bigoted idiot! When first entering the Wizarding world, she had seen how different races worked together, and had foolishly believed that the Wizarding people were not prejudiced like muggles were… but she had been so wrong. Where muggles would persecute a person for their skin color, religion, or sexual orientation, wizards persecuted for blood purity and the acts of your parents before you. It was disgusting, and she had been sick of it from year one.
She could handle being called a mudblood, because though it was a paltry slur, she had only learned of it a few years prior. Most insults are only insults because of the way you are brought up, words you hear are bad from a young age. Mudblood, while rude, was easily ignorable to her. Besides, she knew very well that her parents were muggles. It didn't bother her. She felt blessed to have been gifted with magic, but she wouldn't trade her family for the world.
But then she had started to notice the state of things in the Wizarding world. A world that feared the name of its terrorist so much that they could not bear to even see it written, a world that enslaved a sentient being for their own use. Slavery in the muggle world had been a terrible, horrible thing, but she found it so much worse in the Wizarding world. At least in the muggle world the slaves might have run. House elves had no choice as they were magically bound to their masters, hardly able to think of freedom let alone attempt to attain it.
She had seen the way people had reacted to Remus Lupin -- poor, sweet Professor Lupin -- simply for a curse he had had no choice in bearing. There was no cure for lycanthropy, no way to stop himself from transforming. He had been dealing with it since he was a child, forced into a segregated world where he had to hide his affliction for fear of being killed for it. What had he ever done to anyone? Hermione didn't know, but it was just another thing that sickened her.
Perhaps wizards saw no difference between people for their race, in muggle terms, and perhaps one could love whomever they pleased openly… but the Wizarding world had its own unique set of prejudices that seemed even more petty and disgusting than those she had grown up seeing. And wizards thought themselves so much better? It was a travesty, and Hermione wished more than anything to be able to beat the Wizarding world over the head with their own idiocy.
She set after Harry intent on getting as far away from Ron as she could right then, still needing to talk to him, but more than anything needing to be around someone sane and reasonable for a while lest her temper get the better of her.
She rounded the corner and had to jam her knuckles into her mouth to stifle her gasp, quickly pulling herself back against the wall out of sight. She blinked rapidly and peeked around, sure she had to of been seeing things… but no. There was Harry flush against Draco Malfoy in a dark corridor. Her mind quickly ran through the possibilities. Their stance looked too… intimate for them to be fighting. Hermione blushed. Harry and Malfoy? Not in a million years! She peeked again, seeing Harry's face far too close to Malfoy's neck. By Merlin, it couldn't be… right?
She wished she could hear what they were saying, assuming they were speaking. She was too far to hear or accurately read the pair's facial expressions, and her heart was thundering in her ears. Not that she had a problem with homosexuality, mind you, but she hadn't thought Harry was that way, let alone with Malfoy of all people! She tried to think of another plausible reason why Harry would pressed thigh to chest with his rival, anything that would make sense. Nothing seemed to.
At least until she looked again.
Harry muttered something with a dark smirk on his face, a look so out of place that Hermione nearly gasped again, seized Draco by the neck and threw the blond away from him. Draco slumped down the opposite wall with a groan of pain. Harry stalked in the opposite direction from Hermione, leaving the brunette to hold a hand to her heart and stare after him with a perplexed look.
How could a person as gentle as Harry wear a look that malevolent?
What had they been saying?
How was Harry strong enough to bodily toss Malfoy from him, a boy at least half a foot taller than him?
She didn't know, but she surely was going to find out… no matter where the truth led her.
Hazel eyes narrowed on the brunette witch who had come across the Potter and Malfoy boys in the hall. This could prove to be a problem. Had the girl been able to overhear any of Potter's rants? The watcher had been utterly intrigued by the surrounding darkness in the boy, the way his power had flared in his anger. It was nearly intoxicating, and unlike anything they had ever seen, even in the Dark Lord himself. But the thrill was short to last as the Granger chit was noticed peeking, undoubtedly trying to put the pieces together in her astute mind.
They considered Obliviating the nosy girl, but that might raise too many questions.
It was interesting to them that Potter was so incautious. Obviously, despite the Slytherin tendencies he had shown, he was still quite a Gryffindor underneath it all. He was meant to be undercover, yet he assaulted the Malfoy heir in the halls where anyone could have seen. And someone had. Was he so confident in his abilities that he thought he would not be caught? Or did he, perhaps, not care if he was found out?
The watcher didn't know, but it was an interesting thing to ponder.
They considered revealing themselves to the boy, allowing him to know that they had another ally in the school… but they thought better of it. If the Dark Lord had not seen fit to tell him, they would not either. The boy had shown no indication that he knew of their leanings, and until he did they would stay hidden in the shadows, waiting for the time to expose themselves.
What a day that would be.
They couldn't wait.
But until that day, they had a role to fulfill. With an agitated purse of their lips, the person slipped away into the shadows.
Harry walked the hallways silently, on his way to Dante's rooms for a sojourn. Since he didn't have his weekly visits with Voldemort this month, he had been visiting his friend every Friday evening to take his potions and ensure he wasn't caught doing it. Oftentimes he only stayed for an hour and then went out to hunt, taking his suddenly free evening to make sure his temper never got so short again, but most often he just took the time to relax in the company of someone who knew all his secrets and whom he was able to be himself around.
November was drawing to a close and there had been no word from Voldemort until that morning, and Harry had been annoyed to find that instead of anything informative it had been full of verbose descriptions of towering mountains and massive fjords lining the coast. Harry had never taken Voldemort as the type to wax poetic about scenery, but apparently he still had a lot to learn about his friend. The only information that had been given other than several paragraphs of rambling on about the beauty of Norway was that the spellsmith he was searching for remained elusive and his search could last until Yule. As it was the 29th of November, this aggravated Harry greatly for no reason he could understand.
Harry sighed inaudibly as he halted in front of the stone expanse that was the entrance to Dante's rooms, hissing out the Parseltongue override and slipping into the rooms. Dante was not there currently, but Harry made himself at home in front of the fireplace, pulling over a book he had found on his last visit on Vampire ritual magic. Dante likely had a detention or something teaching-related to deal with, so Harry would just relax until he returned.
Harry nearly salivated over blood rites and magics he found, wishing that he had the power needed for them. Unfortunately, Valerian had assured him that his vampiric magic would not be developed enough for at least another decade or more; it was not unheard of for it to take a century for it to be usable. And once the magic was accessible, it would begin corroding his wizard magic, slowly diminishing it to nothing. It happened to all Vampires who were originally wizards, the slow degradation of Wizarding power as their vampiric power rose. Dante was an anomaly, known as the only Vampire to keep his ability to use a wand more than a century; it made him all the more sought after as he had kept his with minimal corrosion even after nearly a millennium. Even Valerian had lost his Wizarding ability after seventy years.
This, however, meant that Harry would be unable to do much, if any, Vampire magic during the current war. He would have no shadow walking or summons, no elemental spells like Valerian was famous for. Harry sighed petulantly as he paged through the book, looking over all the things he would not be allowed to use.
A half an hour passed on this thread and Harry was quickly growing bored. Where was Dante, anyway? He replaced the book on the coffee table and began to flick through a sheaf of papers that were stacked neatly adjacent to Dante's armchair. It was his planner for his classes, and Harry snorted amusedly at his matter-of-fact statements about the ineptitude of his students. His amusement, however, was short-lived.
Harry sighed and pushed the papers back, frowning into the fire. Dante was a good teacher in his own way, and he was absolutely brilliant when he chose to apply himself. However, he hated teaching students he did not choose himself. Harry was at a loss as to why he would willingly take a job teaching teens when he could have his choice of students amongst the immortals. He knew, of course, that Valerian had requested for Dante to come back and watch over him, but it still made little sense to Harry that Dante would freely choose to teach at Hogwarts.
As he was lost in thought, he didn't realize Dante had returned until a hand fell onto his shoulder, causing Harry to jump in his seat. "Merlin, Dante, don't scare me like that!"
Dante huffed lightly, looking to the ceiling as he seated himself regally in his lounger. "You are foolish, Mylläkkä, dropping your guard so often. The longer you have remained here the more lax you have become. It will cause you nothing but trouble."
Harry sighed and pushed a hand through his short hair. "Am I so bad?"
Dante nodded silently.
Harry grimaced. "Yes, well, I'll try and watch out for that. I don't honestly mean to… but my plans have been progressing so slowly that I'm becoming lethargic here. I need a break from pretending I'm someone I'm not if I am going to survive through this year."
"I wonder the same about myself," Dante muttered. "These brats are going to be the end of me, I swear it."
"Why…" Harry paused as he tried to formulate the question, needing to voice his earlier thoughts. "Why do you teach here? I know you hate it."
"Because Lord Valerian asked me to watch over you, Mylläkkä, and there was no way for me to do so without becoming an instructor here."
Harry scowled. "I don't need a babysitter, this is not some crèche, and I don't need you to be here, Dante. You could just as easily have bought or rented a home in Hogsmeade to be near me. I'm sure Valerian doesn't require me to be watched twenty-four hours a day."
"Mylläkkä…" Dante said in a harder tone than his usual monotone. "After all Valerian has done for me in my long life, I would follow him to the ends of the earth if he asked me to. However, I would do it in my own way and with my own comfort. I would not teach if I did not feel the need to be close to you, Harry," he enunciated the name slowly. "Whilst my fidelity is with Valerian, I am not in a linear timeline with him. For this journey, I chose to place my loyalty with you. Not for the Boy-Who-Lived, or whatever name they choose for you in the future, or for the heir of Valerian, but for the young man I have trained for the last years."
"But why, Dante? Why choose this? I don't… I don't understand."
Dante sniffed and looked away. "My reasons are my own."
Harry wanted to protest but knew better, letting a slightly stiff silence descend on them. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes for several long minutes, feeling the tension draining from his shoulders. It was nice, this relaxation, but it was also painfully boring. Not that Dante was not a good conversationalist… but that was only when he felt like speaking more than a word or two. And after the monologue of a few minutes prior, he knew not to expect another for the night.
"Morgana's tits, I'm going to die of boredom," he murmured.
"Is your Lord Voldemort not yet returned?"
Harry jerked in his seat, not realizing he had spoken aloud, seeing Dante ignoring him behind the same tome he had been reading from earlier. "You won't believe this," Harry said with a growl, "but I finally got a letter from that berk… he spent an entire page of letter going on about the bloody scenery and nearly nothing on when he's getting back here except it's taking longer than he thought it would! Can you believe that?! The arse leaves for a month for whatever Merlin-forsaken reason, totally stalling any planning we might be able to do, leaving me to fend for myself here, and he doesn't even write anything bloody useful!"
Dante raised an eyebrow. "I suppose my company is not good enough for you, then?"
"You know that isn't what I meant. But my conversations with Tom are different. We're terribly alike in several ways, and thought he's an awful git a lot of the time, I really enjoy my conversations with him. Stuck with all these idiots day in and day out, it's nice to have an intelligent conversation." He paused ans sent Dante a smirk. "One consisting of more than three words at a time, that is."
"Why not attempt to speak with the Potions master? He seems sharp."
Harry made a face. "Yeah, he's sharp alright. Sharp as a tack and nearly as painful. No thank you. His hatred of me runs too deep for him to consider having a civil conversation with me at this point. Perhaps someday I will be able to convince him that I am not my father, but until then it would be hopeless. Besides…" he shifted a bit, looking away from Dante. He didn't know why he was suddenly uncomfortable. "I like talking to Tom. If the berk would just come back already, there wouldn't be a problem!"
Dante chuckled.
"What's so funny?"
"Oh, nothing, really…"
"Dante…" Harry growled, narrowing his eyes.
The vampire cocked his head with a smug look. "I find your crush on the 'terrifying' Dark Lord hilarious."
Harry promptly mimicked a fish, jaw falling open and closing several times before he could speak. "Wh-what?! You're insane! I don't have a crush on Voldemort!"
"He's all you've talked about in a month. You were practically counting the days until he returned from his mission, and now you're beside yourself over his absence being extended. Your interest in him is too strong to be purely platonic."
"That's barmy! You're insane!" Harry said redundantly, his face flushing a brilliant red. "He's not even good looking for Merlin's sake!"
Dante's smug expression fell into a lightly incredulous one. "There are many things that attract people in a companion, you know."
Harry's irritated blush didn't recede. "Bollocks. Looks always come first, then you figure it out from there. I mean, hell, how else would people end up together if not attraction?"
The look on Dante's face was the most expressive Harry had seen him in several years, somewhere bordering between disbelief and pity. "You truly believe so, Mylläkkä?"
"What else is there?"
Dante looked at a loss, still staring intensely at Harry. "Are you so socially inept that you have never heard of people being together for reasons other than sex? Surely you don't think that how attractive a person is should be the mitigating factor in a real relationship?"
Harry turned away from the hard blue eyes of his friend. "It's all I've known. I wanted Ariana because she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, never mind how much of an idiot she was. Valerian wanted me once I grew up and stopped being a scraggly little mutt of a child. What else is there but wanting?"
"And you've never found yourself caring for a person for reasons beyond that?"
"Of course I have! My friends have always meant more than anything else to me, and you and Valerian are closer to me than anyone else. How can you even accuse me of that?"
"I wasn't accusing you of anything. I merely wondered, as you seem to think that the only thing that matters in regards to romantic feelings is the looks of a person."
"It's not that at all…" Harry floundered, shaking his head. "I just… is there really more than that?" he said in a soft voice, still refusing to meet Dante's eyes. "I mean… can there be more to it than just finding someone beautiful? If there is… I've never found it."
"You assume, then, that anyone who's ever been interested in you has merely been so because of your looks? You think Valerian put up with you all these years because you were attractive?"
Harry shook his head slowly. "I hope not. I don't think so… I suppose."
Dante sighed, resuming his uncaring mask. "You are still so young, Mylläkkä. You will learn as time goes on that there are much more important things than beauty."
"I already know that! I just…" Harry waved his hands around. "I can't explain this. I know looks aren't all that matters, and I know they hardly matter at all, really. And in friendship this is true constantly. But can a romantic relationship really work out without sexual attraction? Honestly, Dante."
The blond tipped his head in thought. "I suppose it is necessary… but oftentimes it is a person's heart and mind that make them beautiful to us. It does not always hinge on the obvious qualities. Tell me what you think of when you think of your Voldemort."
Harry snarled quietly. "Don't call him mine, that's disturbing," he said automatically before meeting Dante's eyes. "I don't know how to answer that. I think of someone who I enjoy talking to, who I look forward to seeing. I am continuously surprised by how much I enjoy his company, how much I anticipate the following meeting. He is intelligent and witty, and exudes a tranquility I can't find in anyone else. He frustrates me to no end with his denials of his humanity and his temper can be disturbing when he forgets who he means to take it out on. But he's absolutely brilliant, his mind works in ways I can't even begin to follow! Do you realize how many spells he's created on his own? Dumbledore wasn't kidding when he referred to him as a genius! I could listen to him for ages, I swear…" seeming to realize he was rambling, Harry shut his mouth with an audible click, jaw clenching.
"And does that enlighten you at all?"
Harry sighed heavily. "Merlin help me…"
Dante smirked. "Again, this crush amuses me greatly. I believe I am going to accompany you once he returns; I have a need to see this in person."
Revised: 3/19/09