Plot: Harry and his lover Severus move to Forks, following the violent culmination of the war. Friends dead, or traitorous, the two turned to each other and began a charged relationship. Severus knows something in his lover's path is secret, but chooses not to delve into the abuse as he already feels he is taking advantage of the youth. Emotionally disconnected, Harry begins high school where he meets Edward and begins to feel for the first time since the death of his beloved godfather.

A/N: Thank you for the lovely reviews, it's been a long time since I wrote a fanfiction, but hopefully I'm going to get back into the swing of it. A couple of people asked why it was posted twice – to be honest, I just wasn't sure which section it belonged in more, Harry Potter or Twilight. Hope that's not a problem!

I probably should have listed a few warnings as well – though consensual, the relationship between Harry and Severus is, I suppose, dub/con, and Harry is underage. He is fifteen when they first sleep together, and as this is AU, the passage of war has moved quicker than canon, and he has just turned seventeen.

Chapter 2: And so it begins

Harry Potter was not a confident creature, never had been – regardless of the inventions of a certain acid-tipped quill – and never would be. With small steps, he made his way further into the school, overwhelmed by its normality. It had been over six years since he'd stepped inside a muggle school, but the smell of mopped halls and the aroma of reheated chips that wafted out from the kitchens was the same this side of the Atlantic as it had been on the other, way back then.

He stepped into the office and shivered as the air conditioning unit, ribbons twirling, feebly attacked his bare fingertips. Always cold, he was always cold since it began. Since he had returned from that maze, bereft of a golden-haired friend, he had shuddered and shivered and bundled himself in as many layers a possible. His thumbs, poking out of unravelled patches at the ends of his grey jumper, twiddled nervously. He couldn't quite believe he was back into a school, back among children. They were children.

After what seemed like hours, he finally reached a hand across the counter for his timetable, accepted the welcoming words of the secretary with a nod and pained smile and retreated from the office.

'Hi! You must be Harry Black.'

The teen in question almost leapt into the air, but restrained himself, instead jolting into stasis. He viewed the boy next to him uncertainly, taking in his Converse, jeans and hooded jumper. He posed no threat.

'I'm Eric, I'm the eyes and ears of this place and They've asked me to show you around.' Harry didn't ask for clarification, as the youth beside him began to wax lyrical about the hallways and playing fields and clubs of the high school. It all called to mind films and programmes he'd caught snippets of as a child. He would keep his head down, in a way he never could at Hogwarts, and just get on with it.

They had begun to walk, Eric's hand a guiding force on the newcomer's arm. Harry fought to overcome his discomfort, focussed instead on the soft scraping sound of his overlong jeans dragging along the linoleum, on the soft fray of each individual thread as it met gentle resistance and unwound. Some part of him, perhaps his heart, sympathised with the denim's plight.

*

By lunch time, Harry was wishing quite fervently, that he hadn't, on the spur of the moment, chosen the surname Black. Every time he was freshly introduced, he flinched at the short sound which served to remind him of everything he'd lost. Sirius… Sirius would despise what he had become. A weak little boy reduced to taking the comfort of a snake. Particularly this snake. And Severus. God - when he discovered that he'd not only announced their presence to the muggles, but damned him, for the foreseeable future, with the name Black… Harry shivered once more.

'So you live with your uncle?'

With an effort, Harry tore himself from his thought and focussed his eyes upon the girl opposite. Jess. He nodded, and if not quite voicing assent, grunted slightly to imply it.

'What about your parents? Where are they?'

Harry noticed the looks that others shot at the girl, no doubt as surprised by her tactlessness as he himself was. Or would have been if it were not for years spent beside Ron Weasley. He cut off his train of though swiftly. Ron… Freckles and a toothy grin, red hair fanning over his own t-shirted stomach as they lay out in the summer sun… He stomped it back down.

Before he could find an answer, Mike Newton, a letterman jacket wearing blond with an easy smile – increasingly sent Harry's way – intervened. 'So just you and you uncle, eh? That must be cool. Bachelor pad!' He grinned, and with not little surprise, Harry founded himself smiling back.

'So,' he began softly, voice disused and unsure of itself. 'What do I need to know about this place?' He angled the question towards the girl, forgiving her tactlessness.

She lit up and began, with abandon to tell all she knew about slutty cheerleaders and perverted teachers, of speedo-stuffing swimmers and the summer prom which had ended in a fistfight. Harry nodded along, neither encouraging nor discouraging the girl, merely basking in the glow of her… normality. He had never thought he would come to treasure his aunt's obsession, yet here he was, craving the normality of gossip, of chips and ketchup and pizza slices, washed down with coke in a cafeteria. He banished the whisper that noted pumpkin juice was more refreshing and shrugged off invisible hands clamped to his shoulders. Abnormal freak.

A flash of white in the gloom outside caught his eye.

'Who are they?'

*

A calm man, but not a patient one, Edward Cullen noted introspectively. Vampire, he corrected. Double history was drifting – nay, meandering – towards a close, finally, yet his very toes itched with the need to leave. Modern history this semester – he'd seen most of it first hand, had no stomach for Mrs Clarkson's jingoistic slant, her dewy eyed patriotism. It bordered, he felt, as the bell finally rang out, on the xenophobic. She'd probably never left the country, encountered these people, these places she taught…

He made his way out of the building, slow, steady, hyper-aware of his movements. When they had begun, when Carlisle had first enrolled them into a high school and set them loose, a constant mantra of slowlysoftlyhuman had buzzed unendingly through his mind. No longer. Shrugging off stares and sighing into the stagnant air, he slipped into the cafeteria and made for his siblings, sat still and stiff at 'their' table. He entertained a small smile, a lip-twitch really, when whispers of his good-looks fluttered into his mind. Flashes of conversation and thought rammed at the walls of his mental defences, very few making it through – soscaredhatemathsanddixonwillkillhopeheasksmesoonhehastoaskmesoonherskirtissoshortijustwannagodtheylookjustlikemalfoyshegetsherhairlikethatrichbitchlastsliceofpepperoni - and he focussed harder on blocking out the inanity of teenage life and sat down.

'Careful Edward,' Jasper said softly, the hint of a smile twisting his lips from their usual pained line. 'You'll get a big head.' Edward tossed a playful glare and proceeded to toy with his plate of pasta. No doubt his brother had felt a flash of pride. Git. Later, as he sat in Biology, he prayed that he could return to this scene, to the brightness and constant hum of the cafeteria, to the hissed jokes and human-mocking of lunchtime. He sat, ramrod stiff, leaning towards the open window, breath held. Who was this boy, this Harry Black from Britain? Why did his scent smell so…

Edward felt truly tested for the first time in decades, held new respect for his brother, older but newer to this unnaturalness, this game or test or whatever it was. He ignored the youth's stilted attempts at conversation. Ignored the teacher's words and weak puns. He focussed with all his might on the dark hair teen's mind and… nothing. He couldn't hear a thing.

Once more he leapt from his seat as the first waves of the ringing bell reached his ears, and strode swiftly away from the enigmatic young man with the overpowering scent.

A/N: Sorry nothing amazingly original thus far.