Title: The Boys Who Lived
Author: Shara Lunison
Beta: Batsutousai
Rating for this Chapter: K+
Pairings: Harry/Henry (OMC), others
Warnings: SLASH, eventual twincest, slightly manipulative!Dumbledore, grey Harry/Henry, OoC-ness, others as I think of them.
Summary: The Potter twins are attacked by Voldemort and somehow defeat him. Now the Dark Lord has returned and they have to choose between light and dark. SLASH, Twincest, rated M for later chapters.
Disclaim Her: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Chapter Fourteen: Peskipiski
Myrtle's bathroom on the second floor was covered in a scant inch of water and smelled exactly like an overflowing toilet—which it technically was.
"So?" Ron asked. "Where is she?"
"Oh Ron, really…" Hermione began, but just then a high-pitched wailing came from the last stall on the right and the translucent form of a young girl wearing Ravenclaw robes shot through the door to float before them.
"You're boys," she spat in disgust. "What are you doing in here?"
"We, er, were just wondering…" Harry tried.
"Just wondering about poor, dreadful Myrtle who died in the girl's bathroom? I suppose you told them all about me?" she directed at Hermione.
"Well, yes, but…"
"Well now you've seen me! Go away!" And with that she began to sob brokenly and, wailing, returned to the stall whence she came.
"Myrtle, wait!" Henry cried.
Sniffing, she turned to look at him questioningly, if a little suspicious.
"We were wondering if you would tell us how you died?"
Her entire demeanor changed immediately. "Ooh… it was ever so frightening!"
"Crocodile tears…" muttered Hermione.
"What's that you're muttering?" Myrtle snapped at her.
"Nothing!"
"Good. As I was saying, it was terrible! I was in here crying in my stall—you know, the one I haunt—because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses again. Well I heard the door to the bathroom open and someone said something in this weird language I couldn't understand. But what I noticed was that the person speaking was a boy." Here she stopped and glared at the three boys in the room. "So I poked my head out to tell him to get out, and then I died."
Ron blinked. "What, that's it? But how?"
"I don't really know. All I remember is seeing a great pair of big yellow eyes, and then I was just floating away, dead."
Harry frowned. "Well that gives us something to go on, anyway. What do you know about Tom Riddle, Myrtle?"
"He should have been in Ravenclaw." Myrtle sniffed. "He was ever so smart—prefect, Head Boy, top marks every year. I couldn't believe it when people told me he was an orphan. I never spoke to him really, but everyone thought he was very charming and intelligent."
"Do you know if he was a parselmouth?" Henry asked.
She shook her head thoughtfully. "I never heard anything about that, and I was quite good at keeping up with the rumors back then. I'm sure the whole school would have known if he revealed it."
"Right." Hermione started shooing the boys towards the door. "Thank you for your help, Myrtle. We need to get to class now and then lunch. And of course Defense this afternoon and all."
"Yeah, thanks!" Harry gave her a broad grin, and the ghost simpered and batted her eyelashes at him just before they escaped through the door.
The four made their way into the corridor and split up. Ron and Hermione had their History class now and the twins had a free period. The two boys headed down to the great hall early for lunch and played chess for an hour while they waited for their friends to return.
As the great hall filled with chatter, the four friends quietly discussed what they had learned.
"It sounded almost like the monster's eyes are what killed her," Ron mused, biting into a large boiled potato on the end of his fork.
"What sort of creature kills with its eyes?" Harry asked.
"A basilisk," Henry announced. Everyone looked at him curiously. "I did all that research last year on Serash and I read about all kinds of other snakes in the process. Basilisks are hatched from chicken eggs sitting under a toad, their gazes are deadly to anyone who sees them, a rooster's crow can kill them, and spiders flee from them."
"That certainly seems to fit," Hermione murmured. "But why would something like that be in the school?"
"Well, the Chamber is supposed to be Slytherin's creation. So if he were going to leave something down there to protect the school or to kill off all the muggleborns…" Ron said.
"Then it would be a snake," Harry finished.
They sat down at the Gryffindor table and pondered the problem of the Chamber.
"Do you think we should tell someone?" Hermione finally asked.
"Tell someone what?" Henry said. "Harry has effectively stopped Malfoy's plans by hiding the diary. He's the only one who knows where it is. So long as the diary doesn't resurface, only Harry and I are able to get into the Chamber, wherever it is. I think we're all agreed that neither of us really wants to kill people with a giant snake that's been living in the school for a thousand years."
"Understatement," Harry muttered.
"Well, that's true…" Hermione hesitated.
"'Mione, really. Unless something happens, we have no reason to bring this up with the professors. We've got enough information for now. And Hen's right, without the diary no one will be attacked." Ron tried to calm her down.
"All right," she sighed.
Harry absorbed himself in eating for the next few minutes and was surprised when a bouncy first year with blond hair suddenly squished himself between the two twins and smiled adoringly at them both. "Hello, Harry! Henry!"
"Er, hello?" Harry asked uncertainly.
Henry just scowled.
"I'm Colin! Colin Creevey!" Every word was filled with excitement. "I was so surprised to get my letter, my dad's a milkman, you know. And then I learned about you two and now I know we're in the same house and I just wanted to introduce myself and say hi, so hi!"
"Hi," Harry said shortly. Hadn't he already said hello once?
"I just think you two are so amazing, and I can't wait to get to know you more and can I have a picture?"
There was suddenly a camera in the boy's hands and first Harry and then Henry were blinded by the point-blank flash that filled their vision. "Thanks!" Colin cried. He stood and took one last snapshot of both of them together before running off to where the other first years were sitting to tell them all about the Potter twins.
"Looks like you've got a fan," Ron sniggered.
Henry sneered at him and turned back to his lunch, what little of it he could see with the spots obscuring his vision.
"I hope he leaves us alone now," Harry muttered.
They finished eating and made their way to the DADA room for their first class with Lockhart. Everyone lined up outside the door, and they made sure to stand near Draco so that they could talk to him without really talking to him. Hermione was clutching the full set of books and looking quite excited, while the three other boys held their two texts and smiled at one another. Draco was also holding a full set and sneered at the three boys who were holding the different ones. He was clearly wishing he had thought of that.
"I meant to thank you again, Hen," Ron told the elder Potter. "These books are loads more useful than the Lockhart ones."
Henry smiled. "No problem."
The door to the classroom opened and the smiling face of Gilderoy Lockhart greeted them. "Welcome! Come in, come in!" He waved everyone through the door and they trooped in to take their seats.
The classroom was nothing like it was the year before when Quirrell was teaching. The windows were uncovered, letting in lots of natural sunlight, and the walls were thickly coated with pictures of their defense professor—if one could call him that.
All the other students thumped the stack of books onto their desks, many of them wearing scowls. Lockhart beamed around the room and began to speak, "I'm glad to see that everyone has bought my full set…" His eyes landed on Harry, Henry, and Ron's desks where they sat just behind Hermione in the second row. Draco had taken the last seat next to Henry. "What's this? You have different books?" Lockhart asked.
"We have accurate books." Henry sneered at the man.
Lockhart frowned, marring his cheerful façade. "Oh, this won't do. This won't do at all. I'm afraid you're going to have to buy the full set if you expect to keep up in this class. And I was going to give everyone a pop quiz on the books today to see how well you've all read!"
He actually sounded quite upset. It was almost touching, Henry thought. "I believe you will find, Professor, that we are more than capable of keeping up with the second year curriculum without your books. They are an unnecessary expense, and quite frankly I would simply burn them once I am finished with your class."
Lockhart actually turned white with horror. "I will be discussing this with Dumbledore. I believe it will say somewhere in the rules that students are required to buy the recommended texts for each class."
Henry just sneered at him again.
"Now, class!" Lockhart recovered from his shock and began passing out thick sheaves of parchment to each student. "Here's the pop quiz I mentioned. You have thirty minutes, and I wish you luck!"
Henry stared at the first question. 'What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?' And on it went, ending with 'When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be?'
With a smirk, he began filling in his answers. To the first he wrote, 'Lie-lac', unwittingly giving the correct answer. He continued casting aspersions on the professor's name, getting more and more creative until he reached the end and wrote, 'Who cares, though I'm sure he would like to have a new "heroic deed" tied up with a ribbon and delivered to him so he can write another dreadful book about it.'
"And, time!" Lockhart crowed, picking up the collected papers from each row. Let's see how you did, shall we?" He began to leaf through the papers. Henry watched carefully and smirked when he could tell the professor had reached his. It was very satisfying to see him pale drastically—and was that a nervous tick he saw in the man's neck? Two more papers seemed to give him equal pause, and Henry assumed that Ron and his brother had also bullshitted their way through the "quiz".
"You three." Lockhart pointed at them. "Detention with me every night this week. And longer if I get Dumbledore's approval about those books. You clearly need to actually read them—an error I will be sure to correct in our detentions together."
"Now, everyone else seems to have done fairly well, though you might want to re-read some of the particulars that you weren't sure about. Miss Granger has answered every question correctly." He looked up from the papers and smiled winningly at her. Hermione blushed. "Ten points to Gryffindor! Now then…" Lockhart moved back behind his desk and placed his hand on the cover of a cage that was hanging next to it. "I have prepared a bit of a practical lesson for the rest of the period today." He removed the cover with a flourish. "Freshly caught Cornish pixies!"
"But they're not even dangerous!" Ron protested.
"Nonsense. Quite nasty little things if you get on their bad side. Very mischievous! So, the incantation for stunning them is peskipiski pesternomi. Got it?"
The class mumbled various forms of negation.
"Good! Have at them!" And with no warning whatsoever, the professor opened the cage and unleashed hell on the classroom. The pixies proceeded to destroy the room, pulling hair, destroying numerous sets of Lockhart books (something that Henry unobtrusively aided by blowing up several sets himself, including Draco's, who winked at him in gratitude), and even lifting poor Neville toward the ceiling by his ears.
Hermione began casting immobulus jinxes at the pixies, catching three or more at a time as they harried the students. Most of the class had fled in terror, along with Lockhart. After ten minutes of chaos, they had replaced the last of the pixies back into their cage and gathered up their things to leave.
"The nerve of you three," Hermione huffed. "I know you have good books, but you really should have purchased the Lockhart texts. Detention all week! I don't know when you're going to study…" she continued to complain in a scathing whisper as they trailed along behind her.
Draco had managed to lose his goons and was walking slightly behind them so he could listen in but not appear to be hanging out with them. Henry subtly passed him a note letting him know what had happened and what they had learned in the past day or so. The blond smiled gratefully at him and then hurried past them with a sneer as he headed to the Slytherin/Hufflepuff section of History. The twins split off from Ron and Hermione at the doors to the great hall, giving the red head a sympathetic look as he followed the still ranting girl. They joined the rest of the second year Slytherins for History, continuing the organized note taking that they had started the year before.
Binns droned on and Henry watched out of the corner of his eye as Draco opened and read the note below his desk. The blond's grey eyes widened minutely before he destroyed the note with a quick incendio. A few people looked around to see what was burning, but only ash was left on the floor, which no one noticed.
The three boys stayed bent over their papers, pretending to take notes. Draco unobtrusively scrawled a few lines on the corner of his parchment and ripped it off a moment later, crumbling it with a sigh and throwing it to the side where it rolled off his desk and into Henry's shoe.
The dark-haired boy lifted his foot and placed it back down on the other side of the paper, kicking it to the other side of his desk and knocking off a spare quill with his elbow at the same time. He bent down and quickly retrieved both items, uncrumpling Draco's note and rustling through his own papers at the same time to cover the noise. When he was sure none of the other Slytherins were looking, he glanced down at the note to read: 'If the DL is in MM, why send diary to H?'
It was a valid question, and not one he had considered. The Dark Lord had survived well enough from their last encounter to find a new body to inhabit. He had been staying at Malfoy Manor all summer, and would have to know about Lucius giving the diary to Ginny Weasley and that it would end up back in Hogwarts again. But the why of it didn't make sense. A number of new questions suddenly occurred to him. What was the diary, exactly? Why did it exhibit such power over the one writing in it? How did opening the Chamber again benefit Voldemort? How could something the Dark Lord had once owned have such a strong memory and personality? How were the Chamber, the diary, and the Dark Lord connected?
He didn't have answers for any of the questions. As he burned the note under his desk, he waited until Draco gave him a sidelong glance and shook his head slightly. He didn't know. But he intended to find out.
-o-0-o-
The first week passed slowly. All five of them (Draco would read alone when he could) researched every spare moment in the library, trying to find answers to their questions. They never found any. Whatever the diary was, it wasn't written about in the normal section of the library. Hermione suggested using her influence with Lockhart to get a pass for the restricted section, but they would need to know the exact title of the book they were looking for and none of them had any idea where to look.
The detentions with Lockhart passed slowly. He set them to reading all seven of his series on the magical creatures he had fought, and when they finished those even made them read his autobiography, Magical Me. Dumbledore, much to the Professor's irritation, had decreed that since the boys were reading the required text during their detentions, they did not have to buy them after all. Especially since the texts they had purchased were more than adequate. The end of the week saw many first, second, and third year students sending for the texts Henry recommended by owl order.
Colin Creevey seemed to have memorized the Potter twins' schedule and kept popping up between classes to say hi to them, whether his class was at the other end of the building or not. He never seemed to get tired of hearing Harry say, "Hello, Colin," back, and was somehow immune to the venom of Henry's glares.
Friday night, Henry had a very strange dream. In it, he saw the diary hiding in a dark hole behind a stone bust wearing a tiara. As he watched it, the tiara snapped in half and a dark shadow emerged and shot into the diary below it. In the morning, all he could remember was that he had had a dream that felt wrong in some way.
When the weekend came at last, it brought a surprise. Harry was delighted to find that a notice had been placed on the common room bulletin boards saying that Quidditch tryouts would commence on Sunday. He and Draco spent most of Saturday practicing on the field while their friends watched on. They pretended to be having a vicious match over who could catch the snitch the most times in an hour, for the benefit of the Slytherins who came to watch.
Colin again got in their way, standing at the edge of the stands and clicking the shutter on his camera as fast as his fingers could move. The twins were shocked to find that by the end of the day, the boy had managed to print multiple copies of the pictures he had taken of them during the week and was working with another first year girl on making magical calendars of them. It didn't seem to matter than the Harry in each picture tried his best to hide behind the frame and Henry simply stood there and scowled whenever anyone came close enough to look at him.
On Sunday, most of the members of each house appeared in the stands to watch the Quidditch trials. Harry and Draco were a shoo-in for both their teams. Gryffindor had been hurting for a good seeker since Charlie Weasley had graduated and Slytherin was always looking for new talent. Their line up seldom kept a single player from year to year.
Draco had the broom that Harry had not chosen, the Nimbostratus 10. He handled it fairly well, but Harry could see what his brother and Professor Snape had meant when they told him that very few seekers would be able to use it effectively. On his Cirrus, he could practically fly circles around the other boy despite the difference in speed.
By the end of the tryouts, they had both been picked for their teams and arranged the first practice with their team captains. Oliver Wood was, Harry was convinced, quite nutters when it came to Quidditch. They were to have dawn practice sessions three days a week and every day when it came close to a match time. But he loved flying enough to put up with it, he supposed.
After a long day of flying, the group returned to the castle for a well-deserved meal.
-o-0-o-
He had been intending to spend the day at the pitch to support his team as they picked new players, and instead found himself locked in a broom closet by two laughing upper years. Try as he might, no spell he could think of managed to break the enchantment on the door. Several hours into his vigil, Peeves suddenly started rattling the handle from outside and cackling with glee.
"What's this, what's this? Summat interesting in here that no one wants found?"
The door flew open and he ran for it, not wanting to get caught by one of the poltergeist's tricks. But the little man started chasing him through the hallways, throwing dung bombs at him and bouncing off the walls.
He managed to make it to the seventh floor and rounded a few corners ahead of Peeves only to reach a dead end with a large tapestry and two corridors leading away from it. He darted from one to the other, trying to figure out where to hide when he heard a soft pop behind him and turned to find a translucent glass door in the wall opposite the tapestry.
Hearing Peeves coming around the corner, he dashed inside and shut the door behind him. The poltergeist didn't follow.
The room was piled with junk and small treasures. Things broken, things hidden, things lost, and things to find. He began to wander through the piles to waste some time before reemerging to see if Peeves was gone. Something drew him towards an area in the middle. There was the bust of a stern man wearing a very feminine and elegant tiara that was cracked neatly along the middle.
Giggling, he picked up the pieces and pretended to put them on for a moment before placing them back, slightly crooked, onto the bust. As he did, the edge of something black and leathery peeked out from behind. Pulling it out, he saw that it was a blank journal with the initials TMR on the cover. It felt magical, even if he didn't know how or why. Deciding that someone must have hidden it and forgotten about it—it did look very old, after all—he pocketed it and made his way back to the door and went down to dinner. The Quidditch trials were long over by now anyway.
-o-0-o-
Henry paused with a forkful of green beans halfway to his mouth. There was something… familiar nearby.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked, feeling his brother's worry.
"I… don't know. I thought I felt the diary for a moment, but now it's gone."
"Maybe it's trying to make you sense it and come find it," Harry suggested.
"Maybe," Henry said. "I'll let you know if it happens again."
"All right."
But he didn't feel it again at all. But not because the diary's presence had disappeared. It was as though it was hiding from him.
-o-0-o-
A/N: MUWAHAHAHAHA!!!! Who has the diary now? Please read and review!
~Shara