DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Harry Potter or any of its characters. I also do not make any money from this.
WARNINGS: Yaoi (male x male), Yuri (female x female) adult topics, swearing, sexual scenes and violence
PAIRINGS I know of so far: (pairings will be added as they are mentioned in chapters)
Ron x Hermoine, Blaise x Cho, Neville x Cho, Saito x Draco
This has not been Beta'd.
'text' is thought
"text" is talking
AcadianProud: The question about Harry will have to wait for a bit unless you want to spoil the story :p Void is about to be explained. Hope you enjoy!
XxHushHushxX: Is about to be explained :p And you'll have to see what happens to Saito. All of this really useless, I know, but I want you to keep guessing, and waiting. Thank you for the review!
Hidden Element
Chapter 30: Bad Realizations
Elementals:
Ice and Void – Draco Malfoy
Fire – Pansy Parkinson
Earth – Blaise Zabini
Nature – Cho Chang
Light – Cherrie Everdeen (OC)
The Forgotten:
Electricity – Saito Blackstar (OC)
Animal – Carsly Hendricks (OC)
Shadow – Alakai Petrovski (OC)
Water - Yasmin DiAngelo
Wind - Miya Hendricks (OC)
"I think we need an explanation..." Hermoine muttered at the sight before her. It wasn't every day that they came across a situation that could not be found in a book. This felt unbelievably unnatural to her, like a hand having been severed. It was becoming a common feeling these days too.
Beside her, Ron had placed a hand on her shoulder to prevent her from moving forwards. True, Ron was just as curious by nature as his fiancé, one of the attributes leading to their healthy relationship, yet where as Hermoine analysed situations by thought, Ron did by emotion.
When Harry had stormed into the house after a few minutes waiting in the street, Blaise calling at his back, they had found them in this exact position. They had yet to move from it.
He didn't know if Draco knew what he was doing, or if he was still fuzzy from whatever it was that had happened, but letting Harry hold him the way he did, one could almost assume they were together again. He was going to go with the latter as no matter how much Harry had expressed his love of the blonde to Ron, he had forgotten one crucial fact.
Ice was by no means single.
Come to think of it, Ice had either helped them immensely or landed them in great trouble with his 'living arrangements'. It would have to be addressed at one point, but was quietly filed to the back of his mind.
Nothing out of place, nothing broken, odd or supernatural to be seen. But when Draco had opened his eyes, they were pure black, instantly shifting into a frosty pale blue the minute Harry squeezed him harder.
"Lets get him upstairs first, I'm not sure if he's feeling ill or not." Blaise frowned. Although Dracos thoughts were muddled and lazy, he couldn't help but mentally sigh at the thought of how often he'd been put to bed in these past hours.
Trudging upstairs in a single file, the group made their way to the blondes room, Harry gently setting him on the bed before taking a seat by the windowsill. All he knew was the thought of merely touching Draco was too much. He had to get distance between them.
Blaise sat on the edge of the bed, Cho next to him, making Draco pull up his knees rather sluggishly and taking a while to do so to make room, Luna joining Harry on the windowsill with a pillow for support. Ginny, Ron and Neville sat on the floor leaning against the wall and Hermoine on the only available couch.
There was a tense silence before Hermoine coughed exasperatedly. For a bunch of teenagers who helped (in Harrys case had actually done so) killed Voldemort, they were cowards when it came to breeching awkward topics. She repeated her earlier question of needing an explanation before staring back and forth between Blaise and Draco.
Blaise opted to ignore the question for now, which made Hermoine scowl. There was a hint of concern in his captive glance which always made him feel like Blaise was using Legilimency. It always made you want to answer when you didn't want to, and even then, he had seemed to already know the answer. That, however, was just the way Blaise had always been since he knew him. He was oddly curious, but he never asked questions. Slytherin through and through, he watched, calculated, compiled his findings, all in a matter of seconds.
This was one of the other reasons Blaise had been appointed 'protector' of his two childhood friends. Unlike both Pansy and Draco, he simply knew when someone was a threat and when not. There was a reason his family has stayed mostly neutral to the war. Draco had always wondered if it was some form of Zabini family trait.
Although he didn't show it in the way he talked or the way he moved, or rather at all, Draco and Pansy always held a knowing smile that he was the mothering hen of the group.
"You're grabbing all the attention, this is growing to be a bad habit of yours..."
Draco managed a small smile, his head was still a mess. Thumping to its own internal beat, a dull ebbing of residual pain.
"I'm sorry, would you like to be the one constantly in bed?"
"He's right you know." Ginny piped up. "You seem in the habit of jumping either trouble or surprises upon us."
"Nothings changed then," Ron smiled cheekily, earning a soft slap to the knee from his sister, earning himself a glare that was intended to tell him how inappropriate his timing was.
Ron knew from experience exactly how Draco was fond of finding trouble. At some point the git ferret had simply turned into Malfoy without him having realized it. When he did, was surprised and confused all in once, but found it to be due to the simple fact that somewhere down the line, Malfoy had stopped insulting him on a serious level. There had, of course, been the fact of finding out the blonde and his best friend was dating, it had been a painful pill to swallow.
Then there was the whole, Malfoy senior wanting to remove him from Hogwarts to get his dark mark. Then the whole he might come steal him or disown him for being a failure fiasco. And through all this the fact that Mrs Malfoy had yet to respond to any of her sons letters pleading for help.
And who could forget Dracos sudden attitude change, and suddenly Harry was a single man who fought with a vengeance and then disappeared.
Oh there had been more things along the way, but now was not the appropriate time as Ginny had so eloquently glared at him for.
"That's true, and there are still a lot of things that need to be discussed. I just want to know what we needed to go to the street for when we could have helped him if he was merely unconscious." Hermoine sniped, in no mood any longer to be ignored.
"Void, you said?" Harry questioned from the windowsill. "You once said that Draco had two elements, didn't you? Ice and Void. You said Void before you told us to get out." Blaise nodded minutely, keeping a steady gaze on Draco. He was silently offering his help. This explanation he could give, but no one knew exactly what the others element felt like, what it did to you. He would forever wonder how it felt to be on fire whilst Draco could forever be wondering how it would feel to be encased by Earth.
Draco dragged his gaze to the ceiling. There was something comforting about its texture, and even though he could feel all eyes on him, (as it was apparent with Blaises own starring that they would get none from him) he could not see them.
"Void is everything and nothing, at least that's what it feels like to me. It's your worst fear without seeing it. Like having a dementor close, the fear there, the panic, but not the visions. Void is a thing, or rather attack of the mind, the imagination. It pulls you into whatever I create for you. I can tell your brain you've severed a leg, and the pain will be excruciating.
I can conjure up a giant to tear you to pieces, and even though it wont look like it on the outside, you will definitely be screaming inside. It doesn't look tangible, but its there.
Under its control its pitch black, to you it probably looks like nothing. It also leaks, it catches, it claws. You walk past without seeing someone in that state and you plunge straight into it yourself, the reason why Blaise told you to get out."
"Its contagious?" Neville asked timidly.
"Yes and no. Its not an air bound thing, so it can't drift, if you don't stand in the immediate area your safe, at least you are when I'm not focussing it."
Harry thought on it for a moment, questions spinning through his head, before he picked one.
"You looked shocked when you realised what was happening."
"I was." Blaise licked his bottom lip nervously. "I've only ever seen Void twice in my life."
"Why so rare? Shouldn't you be able to call upon it when you want to?" Ginny asked softly, yet curiously, it was Draco that answered.
"Ice was just that much stronger. Void only ever came out when Ice wasn't there. It always kept it at bay." There was a silence once more as the situation seemed to thicken. None seemed to want to ask the ultimate question. Luna just came out and said it bluntly, however.
"What's wrong with your Ice?" Draco grimaced, finally looking from the ceiling to the sheets instead.
"I can feel it. It's close. Yet at the same time, I can't feel it as a part of me. Oh, I feel Void, a lot more prominent than it once was, but Ice seems dim, almost as if I can only sense it because its familiar, calling to me because it's in the wrong place, but I cant feel it through my veins, or in my touch."
There was no doubt about the fact that Draco seemed saddened by that fact. They didn't know the whole bonding with an element experience, but when it became a part of you so extremely (so they'd been told), one would have cause to feel upset when it suddenly seemed to have...left.
"I used it earlier on..."Harry trailed off in confusion.
"You shouldn't be able to."And although it came out as a snap, it was dimmed by the soft warble in his voice.
"What is the cause of this? Is it a temporary swap? Permanent? And how did it even take place to begin with? Is it the thing about his wand?" Ginny tumbled the questions out, Blaise having to lift his hand up so that she would stop spilling them.
"I don't know, that's the honest truth."
"And before you even try, I don't either." Draco grumbled as the lance was quickly passed to him.
"You don't know an awful lot about yourselves, do you?" Neville wondered. "How did you find out as much as you did, without there being books and all?"
"Dumbledore. He told us all we had to know about ourselves that we couldn't teach or learn ourselves. How we have them and our knowledge about them is all thanks to him. Our training, however, was never finished. Dumbledore died, the war started and we were scattered across the globe so as to learn whatever else it is we could." Cho supplied helpfully.
"But how did Dumbledore know?" Hermoine insisted. "Maybe if we find the knowledge he had, then we could sort out what we need to, maybe even find another way to win ourselves a battle before it escalates." Blaise snorted at her optimism, Ron raising an eyebrow as he received a look, sending his own silent 'yeah, tell me about it. She's like this all the time'.
"You have to understand, Dumbledore wasn't your average man. He was old, older than anyone else in the world I guess, besides Flamel. He knows these things, because he's met one before. A metal elementalist, I think it was."
"They don't always stay the same?"
"No. We're born with an invitation, a suggestion for something to live and coincide with us that others don't have. Like every person is different, so is the element that replies, or meshes."
"So there's really no other way of finding what's wrong. Nobody else that would know?" Ginny hooked a piece of Ginger hair behind her ear.
"Voldemort did."Luna sang softly. Happy that she'd come to the conclusion. When everyone stared at her in a confused fascination, she grinned and presented her comment more clearly. "What I mean to say is, that Voldemort has his own set of followers. Maybe they knew the same elemental. Metal was it?" she hummed.
Blaise felt like smacking his forehead. He had completely forget about that option.
"So there is someone we could ask." Harry snorted at the statement.
"Dead, remember?"
"No. Not who I was referring to. We are not the only living elementals. We might not have the answers, but the Forgotten could."
Draco groaned and stared back up at the ceiling. Blaise was giving him that hinting look, the one where he didn't have to say anything out loud, but made it exceedingly obvious what it was he would have asked if he were to speak
He was not looking forward to a conversation with a certain someone about how an ex somehow got hold of part of his soul, so it felt. He'd have to, however, if he wanted answers.
Time was running out anyway.