Chapter 3: Kai
WARNING: This story may contain traces of: spoilers, tortures, memory loss, magical spells, semi-AU after fifth year, swords, powerful spells, badly written but still very awesome duels, rambling author notes and anime references. Engage at your discretion.
THE OTHER WARNING: This author is currently very busy and suffers from severe cases of bad humor. Take the WARNING seriously, just not the author in general.
And now we finally step foot into the quagmire that is AU.
Where the hell am I?
That was the first question that flitted through Harry Potter's mind. The second question was What is this place? And the third was Is that Snape?
He had been expecting a totally different setting. A cell in Voldemort's dark dungeons, a filthy room in an even filthier house, Dumbledore's eccentric office, even the Azkaban with the dementors! But no way in all the nine realms could he ever even think about this place. Wherever this place is.
It's beautiful. A hundred times better than Hogwarts, the Burrows and all the places he had been combined. It was grand, magnificent, homey and just wonderful in every sense of the word. The sense of family was tangible in the air. Even in memory the sense of belonging was so strong it started to suffocate him.
Then he knew.
This is hell.
The comfort oozed from the walls, wrapping around him, choking him. He could hear his mother's laughter, his father's playful howl, Sirius' gruffly tone, Remus' soft story telling cadence, Dumbledore's twinkling smile, Mrs Weasley's overly concerned berating, his two best friends' teasing arguments. He could hear the voice of every person he ever cared about, calling for him.
He wanted to go to them, to tell them he is all right, that he is fine, that he would always be right here. But, even in memory, he knew he couldn't, he knew he couldn't go to them, that soon there will be even more voices searching for him.
Then the voices turned mocking, turned vicious, turned cold. He could hear his mother screaming as the killing curse hit her body, his father telling her run, Remus' hungry howl as he tore a claw through Snape's chest, Sirius' unspoken goodbye and apology as he fell through the Veil, his classmate's whispering him as a liar a cheat an attention seeker and his friends angry bickers and always forcing him to choose sides between them.
The good and the bad, the frantic warmth and the bitter cold clashed together in a never ending war. It tugged at his mind, shredding and tearing through every resolve he may have left, almost leaving him a broken and teary mess on the memory floor.
He wonders of the voices are different to everyone.
It took every flimsy shield he created during Occlumency to half shut the voices out. When he could finally turn them into soft static at the back of his mind, he turned his gaze to the little boy by the window, reading a book and all too comfortable with his own company.
The sill was lined with glass jars, filled with a flower he had never seen before. There was no leaf on the stem. It was red, blood red, with petals that were like those webs spiders always spin diligently morning noon and night. There were strange flowers, and Harry could sense the hidden meaning behind them.
The boy was not that different to the person he had last seen on the floor of Lord Voldemort's dungeon, half swimming in his blood. Except younger, shorter, hair less long and without the watermark lines that formed a mask around his eyes. The eyes were still the same, black, cold and unfeeling; Harry wonders if they would ever change.
"Reading again, Prince?" A voice sounder behind Harry, when he spun around, he had to suppress his urge to pull out his wand and shout the worse curse he knew, not that he had his wand.
The boy that stood behind harry was a few inches taller than Snape, shoulder length black hair, bangs falling into his crimson violet eyes. Handsome, almost identical looking to the Snape that sat next to the window. Except where Snape often carried himself with only confidence and detachment, the boy held himself with a thick air of arrogance and cruelty.
The boy looked so much like the teenage-memory he has seen in the Chamber of Secrets, as if the crimson swimming in those violet eyes was any less of an indication.
This boy was undoubtedly Tom Marvolo Riddle
Snape merely quirked an eyebrow at Riddle, his black eyes never leaving the battered book he was holding in his elegant hands.
"Still has not find another way to occupy your time?" Young Tom began to toss up and down a fiery red ball, sitting himself in front of Snape, as if wandless magic was just a normal, everyday occurrence to him.
"I reached number 61 this morning, I see no reason to go higher and exhaust myself further," even at this young age, Snape still has that silky voice of his that gave the opening speech in Harry's first potions class that scared everything out of everyone.
Tom sighed tiredly, "You should not go even that far, you were on number 50 yesterday were you not?"
Snape nodded his head slightly and turned a page, giving no explanation on what 'number 50' and 'number 61' meant. Something to do with spells, or perhaps books?
Tom sighed again, and pulled Snape's head into his arms, never minding the book squashed in between them, "You need to stop this Kai, you've been getting even less sleep than usual. You can't just tire yourself so much that you fell asleep in your food to block those voices out. "
The show of concern was too strange for Harry to comprehend. But for some reason it doesn't seem out of place when a teenage Voldemort was hugging a changed form of Severus Snape. It felt right, like it is the supposed way of doing things. They are like a family, Tom was like a brother, a concerned big brother that worries over his little brother's sleeping habits.
A brother...
Slower than it should have taken his rarely used brain should process, Harry Potter connected the dots.
Kai... and... Fai...
The scene shifted, and he was at a completely different setting, a quite familiar setting. He was at school, with the younger version of potions professor Snape, rather than the Kai he had just seen. It was midday, he was at Hogwarts, watching Snape skip stones into the great lake, with a flower named lily.
Lily was as radiant as he had seen in the memory during his last Occulumency lessons, albeit younger. Her red-gold hair flaming in the wind, brilliant green eyes narrowed in thought and concentration as she attempted to beat Snape at skipping stones, and perhaps something else.
"I don't get it Sev," She almost pouted as she said this, her school robes blanketing her as she flapped down on the bank.
Snape chuckled, as if knowing the reason behind the pouting Lily, but still asked, "What?"
"How you can be so good at everything! Charms, Transfiguration, Astronomy, DADA, especially Potions. Tell me Sev!" The almost pout turned full force, it was strange and very adorable, making Harry almost go up to Snape and demand the answer himself, not he could, or wouldn't.
Snape did see the pout but overall ignored it, making Lily pout even more, "I have secrets Lils, I guess that's just another one," His black eyes glinted, indirectly hinted the conversation needs to be over. Harry gathered that Snape and his mother were friends before the disastrous event of their fifth year.
Friends, maybe perhaps something more. Lily is always a wonderful person, by what everyone else had told him. Oddly, it didn't make him feel ill when he first considered it. It's comforting, to think that Snape might have had a good period of the time before everything came crashing down. If that story was to be believed.
"Secrets?" There is a curious gleam in Lily's eyes, very much like the gleam in Hermione's eyes when she found something new to be read or found out about. Harry learned to detect that gleam, it is merely a choice between freedom and endlessly hours stuck inside the library. "Is that why you are so cold? To guard them?"
Hurt and pain flashed in Snape's eyes, before he immediately put an iron clamp upon it, "I learnt along ago the it was better to be cold than to feel the elements, even the pleasant ones." He gave Lily a thin smile that Harry is sure would never reach his eyes.
Lily smiled hesitantly back, as if knowing the reason he froze his heart. If the story Hermione read to them that night after she received the book via owl post was true, then a frozen heart would be the best choice of protection. She placed a hand on top of Snape's, a comforting way of saying I understand.
Harry smiled, compared to Snape, Harry's suffering had been minuscule, even in memory, the voices almost drove him mad beyond recognition.
Snape smiled again, his black eyes warming up slightly at the touch, of someone other than his brother actually caring for him.
"Thank you Lily," He whispered.
A puzzled expression, an indication of head, "For what?" Before Snape could answer Lily dragged herself up, as if before a huge lake was the most comfortable place in the world, "Come on Sev! I'm gonna beat you to the castle this time!" She took off running, hair making a flaming red flag behind her and his robes getting in his way.
Snape chuckled openly, and chased after her.
The scene blurred and shifted into another.
A new day dawned in Snape's memory, waking up the hundred of students that lived and learned at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the house elves were bustling around the kitchen, preparing another hearty breakfast. The teachers were sweeping up lesson plans and stray parchments, half of them not looking forward to face the dunderheadedness of another day of dunderheaded students.
It was a different Hogwarts than what Harry had known, younger and perhaps fresher, but it always had a feeling of home that he would do anything to have.
In a flash the day shifted, pulling Harry away from watching the beautiful sunrise Hogwarts always received from the sky, and found himself in Minerva McGonagall's Transfiguration class, watching third years turn branches into drapes or curtains, or blankets if you want to stretch McGonagall's patience. Almost all of the students were struggling. All, except for two.
James Potter was turning his branch into drapes and back again and repeating the process, desperately trying to catch the disgusted eye of one Lily Evans with a wicked wink every couple of seconds. Showing off his genius at Transfiguration and daring anyone else to steal his place as the Lord of the Transformation with the Biggest Ego of Them All as Harry had heard Sirius mutter darkly while he jabbed his wand around and tried to pluck Pettigrew's eye out.
"Yes Padfoot, James is the Lord of TBETA, but he is the prince of everything!" Pettigrew shot back, almost fearfully. James' face fell from a sick beaming mess to a dark scowl that could make Lucius Malfoy hide behind Voldemort's robes as the nearest refuge.
Harry followed the watery gaze of Pettigrew, the murderous scowl of James, the curious eyes of Lupin and the don't know what-to-think expression of Sirius, to find a not surprising but still astonishing sight of a young man's magic.
The tree branch was suspended in mid hair, changing into drapes and blankets and towels no sane mothers would ever buy for actual use. There was a violet crane like symbol on a black mask that quickly flashed into a large raven with sleek and sharp midnight black feathers flying with a full moon, then again turned to a silvery white doe against a forest of yew and ebony.
The pictures were moving through each other, the raven was the most noticeable, sometimes popped next to the doe, stay for a cup of tea and popped back out of existence again.
Snape was the same as always, black eyes shone behind that thick curtain of greasy hair, quill pen scribbling madly upon a battered potions textbook, how in Merlin's polka dotted hats did a third year gotten a sixth year book was simply a part of the top ten in Harry's Things I Do Not Want To Know About Ever. Snape must be pretty distracted with his sarcastic comments and potions improvements to notice the three foot tree branch that is right above his head!
McGonagall smirked slightly, letting loose a few wisps of hair from her tight bun that escaped its restraining hold with her shaking of head, and focused back to giving the answer of proper wand movements to Frank Longbottom about a particular Transfiguration hex that she was pretty sure only two people in this year level is going to understand.
James Potter shooked his head enviously, his scaring-Lucius-Malfoy-to-hide-behind-Voldemort scowl lessening slightly on his good looking face.
"Prince indeed."
There is a soft snap in Harry's mind, and the memory moved on. Another came, another snap. In the glimpses he could make out, he knew they were mostly childhood memories, maybe even teenage ones as well, only some he could see an adult Snape in his black robes with too many buttons. He saw plenty of the young boy Kai, and most of them had Fai in them.
But what's going on? He tried to stop the memories from flowing past, to get one to hold still so he could see something else.
"Don't fight it Potter. Let them flow. You can view them whenever you wish later," a silky voice sounded behind him. When he whirled around, there stood Kai. Long hair and thick bangs that fell into his black eyes, handsome face and voluminous robes Snape loved to go billowing around Hogwarts in.
"Sir?"
"Most of what the story said was true, we are brothers, we are abandoned by our parents. That place did exist. But the king taking only me part was were he wrote it wrong," A mirthless chuckle, empty and hollow and surprisingly very Snape-like.
"Him, sir?" Uncertainty, afraid to ask delicate questions.
"Fai, Tom, Voldemort. Whatever you want to call him. He wrote the story to make everyone believe about us. We both held different versions of what happened that day. It's very different to say who is right." A contemplating look, thoughtful confusion in his black eyes.
"Who do you think is right, sir?"
"Who is to say. I gave solving that a long time ago. I believe I am in the right, but unless proven wrong, we shall see. I guess it is up to you, a Gryffindor that completely ignore his head and everything inside it, to figure it out."
"Sir, I don't..."
"Am I wrong, Mr Potter?" There's an undertone of amusement in his cold voice, somehow a lot colder when he is Kai and not Snape. A lot more empty and hollow and feels like it could rip your skin right off your bones if you touch it.
"Good luck then, Harry Potter." This is the first time he had called Harry's first name without any sort of an insult or remark on his father or just family in general. There's an inclination of head, and everything faded to grey, then finally to black.
When Harry regained his consciousness, he's in the cell again. The blood on the wall and floor are turning brown and started to flake. He could see a shell shocked Hermione and a mortified but slightly confused Neville. They had seen what Snape wanted them to see, to understand. But when Harry searched for the forth occupant of the dungeon cell in the grey-orange light dawn is so found of giving, he came up blank.
Kai is not here.
A/N: The plot, if there is any here, thickens.
I know some of you will be very confused with the Kai/Snape, Voldemort/Tom/Fai thing, as it will get even more confusing later on, I will unravel the yarn for you. Whenever you use Snape, it will be referring to the man with the greasy hair and the sallow skin and potion stained fingers. Kai will be the young adult with the really long hair and handsome face. Same thing with Voldy, and I will give all of you reading some warning when they change their appearances. Anymore things about that concept will be explained later on.
Reference of their appearance see Code Geass' Lelouch Lamperouge and Shin Hyuga Shiang. I love that anime down to tiny bits and pieces that are probably no bigger than plant cells.
Updates will be irregular. I plan to finish this story within the year.
Review, favourite and follow please. Please!