200 favorites and 300 followers! You're amazing!
Really I would have never thought that so many people would like my story! =) I can't thank you enough.
Anyway, sorry if it took a while to update but I was really worried about my cat. He had his nose bleeding for a few days anytime he sneezed.. turns out he's allergic to the mimosa.. for one time that my father does something nice and buys the plant for women's day.. -.-
Well, enjoy the chapter!
After breakfast he went with his father to the man's study. They talked mostly about the school and what he wanted to do.
Tom made clear that it was his son decision if he wanted to go back to Hogwarts or give a try to the Academy.
Both had many pros and cons. He would be sad to leave behind his friends, both old and new, and he would miss the beautiful castle.
But the Academy curriculum was ten times better and gave him the possibility to learn everything he could, and with Dumbledore he would need it to protect himself.
It would be far from home but Kieran would be there for him, along with the guardians. From what he understood Key was their leader but they would obey his orders too, not that he was interested in that. He just was hopeful to become friends with them.
Also it was his ancestor, Morgana Le Fay, along with Merlin who founded the Academy and if what was written in the letter of the headmistress was true he had some kind of duties as the heir. He would have to ask Key about it later.
Slytherin and Gryffindor had attended the academy too, and were two of the most powerful wizards ever knew. It was a great opportunity and he should not waste it, as his father said.
For that he needed to train hard though, he did not want to seem a little boy who knew nothing and to be left behind by his classmates, as an heir he needed to uphold a certain image and prove his worth after all.
Of course he choose to take all the subjects, bar from divination since he did not have the gift.
Decision made, he started to read as much books he could, starting from the ones he bought in LA since his elves had not yet finished copying his libraries. He would take a look at the work once it was all done.
The talk with Madam Lamia went exactly how Kieran expected it would. He shadowed to her office in the first hours of the morning demanding answers.
"My Lord, what is the meaning of this? Barging in my office unannounced and.." she tried to scold him but he silenced her with a look.
"I can do what I want as you well know. Now explain why you tried to have my men kidnap Aries!" he knew he should be more polite, after all she was way older than him being a vampire, and she always helped him since he set foot in Avalon for the first time; but his protectiveness toward his boyfriend prevailed.
"Aries? How come you address the second heir so informally?" she inquired "and I wanted him here, because he would surely have been in Dumbledore's care and he needs to be trained. This is not a child's play, attending the Academy is a serious thing"
"I know that perfectly well, Lamia. But you should have been more informed. Aries was with his real father at the time, the Dark Lord Voldemort, maybe you know of him, and I assure you he was not happy at the sudden invasion of his manor. Nor was I." he admonished her "As for how I know him. I met him some time ago, and already started to train him even before knowing he was the second heir."
"You know him? Kieran this is big.. you shouldn't have.. what if you?" she was rambling and he didn't understand what the problem was. It's not like he ever risked killing the other, and they lost the second heir. "You can't do what you want when you want if there is something like that at stake! What is your relationship with the boy?" she demanded.
"Don't you dare to order me around!" he snapped making her flinch "Not that it is any of your business, Lamia, but we're together." she seemed both shocked and relieved at the answer for some reasons she refused to tell him.
"I'm going back now. The guardians will stay with me, they may be useful in training Aries. Don't bother to send a teacher, I will take care of everything regarding school matters." with that he vanished again enveloped by his shadows before she could even think of replying.
He felt a bit guilty at how he treated the vampire woman and would surely apologize at the start of the term. He didn't know if these feelings were caused by the bond or if his own emotions were stronger than he thought. He had never been in love after all, and did not know what to expect exactly from that. Maybe the next unexpected thing to experience would be jealousy.
Fred and George, as promised, thought carefully about the blood adoption. It was really the best solution, they knew it, but they still had doubts. They had been Gred and Forge all of their lives and thinking of becoming someone else was difficult and even a little sad.
It was not the physical changes that upset them, looking different than usual but still the same as the other was not a problem for them. They feared losing their identities and becoming someone else that they did not recognize. It was an unfounded fear, they were not going to change who they were for anyone, but it was still there.
Also, they knew they wanted Snape to do it but even if the man offered to adopt them, they were still not sure that the man really wanted them or if he was doing it for pity. Stupid, Severus Snape showing pity on someone, but for their confused minds it was a possibility. There was still the threat of Dumbledore to think about. The man would be in danger if the old man suspected anything about the adoption.
After hours of talking between themselves they decided that maybe a third opinion would be a good thing. The only one that they could ask was Aries, they trusted him and he was one of the few people that truly knew them being able to tell them apart too, something their own mother could not do.
They found him in the library curled on a couch reading, he started early in the morning and book after book he still had not stopped, apart from a short break for lunch when Kieran had to pull him over his shoulder since the boy refused to come. It was entertaining to see the little wizard punching the other's back demanding to be let go.
Deciding that another little break would not hurt Aries, they went to sit on either side of him waiting to be acknowledged.
"What can I do for you?" he asked after placing a bookmark in his transfiguration tome. He saw at breakfast that the twins seemed bothered but instead of asking he had decided to wait for them to come to him. He did not want to force them to talk to him and he knew that if they needed advice or help they would come on their own.
Gred and Forge told him immediately about their dilemma, recounting the events in Snape room and their fears and doubts. Aries would be the only one able to calm them and reassure them what they wanted was the right thing.
"Guys" started Aries "if Severus is who you want to be your father, who you trust in this situation and you are sure that you can live with being other people, Snape's sons, for the rest of your lives… You should do it." he told them keeping his voice soft "Leave behind your worries about Dumbledore or else. Severus is perfectly capable of taking care of himself and if he's the one who offered, it means that he really wants you."
"you're right" "we shouldn't think" "of such things" "we'll try" "and decide" "based only on" "what we want" "thank you, little brother" they said with a small smile and a hug, they left him alone with his book.
But soon he was ambushed by the ten guardians. They seated themselves all around him, as if they were trying to leave him without escape routes and just looked at him.
He started to feel uncomfortable with all the staring, mostly because he did not know them "Um. Can I do anything for you?" he asked, keeping the stuttering at the minimum level possible and trying to hide behind his book.
"As a matter of fact. Yes you can" Asher, or Wolf, replied. He seemed always the first to come forward, it must have been with some kind of hierarchy inside the group that stuck even if not on mission. "You see, I've known Leo for four years now… we're really good friends" he trailed on.
"What he's trying to ask is: how in Merlin's name did you manage to wrap Leo around your little finger?" Mik was sure to always get to the point, he did not like when people talked around things, even more when he was curious about it.
"I.. I didn't do anything" he replied, a bit surprised about the kind of question. He expected something different, school related maybe or about his role as heir of Le Fay.
"How did you meet?" inquired Maya, she seemed the more level headed of them all. She radiated calm and Aries could not help but smile at her.
"Um, it was when I run away from my supposed relatives. He was working at the inn to help a friend" a question followed by another and he found himself telling them everything that happened. He could feel that they were trusted people and would not betray him, so he did not really mind their trying to get him to talk to know every little detail about him. So he told them all from the Dursleys to his years at Hogwarts. He kept his moments with Kieran for himself though, his boyfriend would not appreciate if he gave away those details and he wanted to keep them for himself too, even if they insisted for more.
At the end they were all scandalized at his treatment by the hand of the muggles and at the actions of James Potter and Dumbledore. They all vowed to protect the new member of their strange family and show him what being loved and having true friends meant. They were all creatures with strong instincts and knowing one of their own had been harmed angered them incredibly.
He found himself surrounded by the girls in the blink of an eye. Maya was hugging him against her gentle bosom while Valerie caressed his hair, Nadia held his hands and Layla rubbed shooting circles on his back . He felt a little overwhelmed, not being used yet to so much human contact.
"Man, you're a women magnet!" laughed Lucas at his predicament while Mik pouted at being denied the same affection, receiving only a shoe in the head from the blonde tiger.
"Anyway" started Jasper after a while "thank you for what you're doing to Leo" he said with a little smile, showing a white fang.
"I'm not doing anything" he replied confused "why are you thanking me?"
"Because you're changing him" piped in Leander "or better, you're giving him the chance to be fully himself, to open up to someone and to experience love. He's always so.. on guard, if you would, around people. It took us a lot of time to get him to trust us."
"Yeah, he doesn't show himself" "to anyone, always with his" "mask firmly in place" commented Aidan and Nadia.
"With you he's like we've never seen him before, and we're happy for that" smiled Valerie.
"We hoped for so much time that he could find someone to love him, he's a beautiful person and deserves only the best" stated Maya, who was still holding his hand from beside him.
"I hope everything works right between you two, you're a beautiful couple" chirped Layla bouncing in her seat.
Aries did not know what to say to that. He did not know that Key was so different at school, but he should have imagined it, he was raised like a pureblood after all, and it seemed that all of them had some kind of mask in place. He was also happy, not having realized before that his boyfriend was showing him a part of himself that no one knew before him. So he just smiled to them, emerald eyes sparkling happily.
"If you're ambushing my boyfriend for juicy details, you better start running" Aries turned quickly and found Kieran grinning, resting with his side against the door, arms crossed. He slowly righted himself and stalked towards the others. Valerie left him her seat, so he could stay beside Aries, after thanking her with a small smile he sat down wrapping his arm around his little Emerald shoulders, who instantly snuggled up to him and kissed him softly on the lips.
"So? What were you talking about?" inquired Kieran.
"Nothing!" Mik, Aiden and Nadia all hurried to reply. Not the best way to keep a secret. He looked at them with a raised eyebrow as if to say "really inconspicuous guys".
"They just wanted to talk a bit and become friends since I'm your boyfriend" replied Aries with his best innocent look. Even knowing it was a lie Key could not resist those huge eyes and pouty lips so he just nodded and kissed him again.
The others sighed in relief at Aries great save of the situation, and thanked him silently.
"Where did you go? We were looking for you." asked Asher.
"I went to talk to Madam Lamia. Everything's okay." he reassured them "but I think my magical mobile doesn't work anymore" he said holding up his phone and shaking it a little.
"That's strange" commented Lucas. Those phones were modified from the normal muggle devices to work on magic; they did it themselves last year using runes to make the things run on magic.
"The only thing that comes to my mind is an overload due to a sudden spike of magic, but it's not so common" said Valerie.
"Maybe it was on Aries birthday. When the glamour fell there was a huge wave of magic, it lasted nearly an hour" mused Key while looking at Val to ask her opinion.
"It is possible. And it would explain why we couldn't contact you for the mission" she replied.
"Anyway. Did you need something?" he asked since Asher told him that they were looking for him.
"Yeah, we were wondering if we could help Aries for his training" everybody nodded at his words. They felt useless in the vast manor without anything interesting to do, there was only so much exercise they could stand doing before going crazy with boredom. And any school work was done within the first two weeks of holiday.
Kieran looked at Aries as if to ask what he thought about the idea. He knew how shy he could be with strangers and even if he seemed fine with his friends they could be a bit overwhelming at times.
"Um, I'd like that" he admitted "and I wouldn't mind making some friends before the term starts."
"Very well, you can help then." conceded Kieran. Aries was right, he could use some friends and the twins and Layla were the same age as him, they would get along wonderfully he was sure of that.
The guardians all seemed excited at the idea of both tutoring the boy and to get to know him better, it would be a good chance for them to become his friends. Now they only had to decide who would teach what and make up schedules so that the young heir would be ready for the start of the term.
In the following days, as decided, Aries started to train with everyone and found the experience to be really good since they all had different styles and pointers to give him. In the meanwhile he was still doing some self study and a lot of reading from his books.
The elves finally finished copying everything, after a week. The library compartment of his trunk was huge. There were four floors of bookcases in total, all magically expanded, in the center of the room there were a few long tables with chairs for when he needed to do serious research and couches and armchair in front of a fireplace for more relaxed reading. In the exact middle of the room there was also the master book, where all the books in the library where recorded so he could find all he needed just by writing a few words in the great tome. It was positioned on a golden stand that looked like a phoenix in flight with the book laying on his spread wings.
His collection was now massive, surpassing the Hogwarts library many times. Every time he could he went in there curling on his favorite armchair and read what he thought interesting. Later he would try the spells learned until they came natural to him. Kieran was rubbing off on him with his need of perfection.
Sirius was now helping him in human transfiguration, seventh year material in Hogwarts, and wanted to start soon in his animagus training claiming that a true marauder needed an animal form. He could not wait to start on that, curious and excited at the idea of transforming in an animal. He wondered what he would become.
His father told him in confidence he was a basilisk animagus, a really rare thing, and showed him his form. He was beautiful, nearly thirty feet long with shiny black scales that gleamed red if hit in the right direction by the light. Would be become a snake too? Or transform in a feline like his mother who was a winged lioness?
After much pestering he convinced Sirius in starting earlier and was back to meditating to find his form. Really boring but it was the best way to do it. One could use a revealing animagus potion too, but the bond with the inner animal would be weaker and it would be easier to give in into the instincts of the beast.
The funny part was when Sirius started pestering Kieran to have him learn the art too, not knowing that the young man was already proficient in that. It was entertaining seeing the marauder coming up with different kinds of methods to convince his nephew, one more improbable than the previous. When Sirius transformed in Padfoot and licked Kieran all over the face at breakfast one morning, the control of the young Lord snapped.
He turned in a dark golden lion with a black mane all of a sudden landing on top of the poor dog and roaring at the top of his lungs. There was to say that he was really huge as a lion, a strong body all of powerful muscles, and Padfoot was soon whining under his weight. He could not be blamed, everyone would be scared shitless in his place.
Half of the table was stunned into silence, who in fear since certain people could lose themselves to the animal instincts when under strong emotions, who in awe at the majestic form and the guardians simply enjoining the show. Meanwhile Aries got up from his seat running to the lion with little stars in his eyes, only to pet him and coo at him how beautiful he looked. At that Kieran's friend feared the worst, he hated to be treated as a kitten when in lion form. But to their astonishment again, he simply started purring under the boy's fingers and nuzzling his big muzzle against him.
Soon Fred, George and Draco singed up with Sirius wanting to learn to be animagus too. His training session, or better meditation session became more crowded he was glad to see. He liked his training one on one, but having some company felt good once in a while.
His father was teaching him parselmagic, an art that was handed down from father to son in their family. Tom did not have a parent to teach him, having instead to learn on his own from the many books of the library, and enjoyed being able to have some moments father and son like that with Aries. They were closer than ever, spending every night at least an hour on their own to talk and share memories. Aries finally found the steady figure in his life that he needed to guide him and make him feel safe, while Tom had his family back.
As for their studies, Aries found out that perseltongue was not only to used to talk to snakes, it worked even with dragons; something he would have much wanted to know back during the first task of the tournament. He could have avoided nearly becoming the horntail's lunch.
Spells cast in the snake language were also more powerful than normal ones, giving you the surprise effect since your enemies would be unable to understand or recognize what was coming at them and they could not be countered if not by a parseltongue. His only problem was that he did not realize when he talked in one language or the other. The only times he talked parseltongue it was because there was a snake with him, and doing on his own came difficult to him.
Talking daily with Vidar helped Aries adjusting to switch from a language to the other without problems, and also strengthened their bond so soon they would be able to develop a mind link too. Something that came a little slower with Yoru and Charon since he was not able to communicate like that with them without the link.
Lucius and Severus became both important figures in his life very soon. The lessons helped in developing a good relationship with them, just like Kieran said. Also, after a couple of weeks he could consider himself quite talented in potions, thanks to the master guiding him and the skill inherited from his parents. He easily brewed sixth year level potions and started to think of methods to make certain droughts more powerful, often helped by his teacher.
Severus was glad to see the boy being so carefree and learning everything in so little time. He really was natural.
As for runes he became quite capable, thanks to his eidetic memory and occlumency memorizing the runic alphabets was not too difficult, just long. Arithmancy was not one of his best subjects, finding a bit more difficulty in that, but he was slowly getting better. Lucius was a patient teacher and tried to make things more understandable for him.
On the bright side of the things he now looked at the men like a godfather and an uncle respectively, much to their contentment, and that of Selena.
Defence with Remus was going brilliantly, he had always been good at that, even at school he was the first of the class, much to Hermione's frustration; so they concentrated mostly on spell casting and dueling. He would learn new spells for his arsenal while sparring, and how to recognize them only by the color or wand movement.
Thanks to his werewolf speed and agility Moony was a formidable opponent, only bested by one of the guardian when they started to spar with him after the man thought he was starting to know his patterns too well. Silent casting was now the norm for him, and his wandless abilities were progressing even if it took a lot of concentration on his part, something he still needed to work while on duels.
Charms with the twins was always exciting and entertaining. They taught him things while having fun or plotting pranks on the other habitants of the manor. That lead to a three way prank war against the marauders and the fire elves twins. More than once other found themselves to be the victim of one of their works and spells would fly.
Sirius found himself transformed into a cat after eating a candy, he hated cats.
Remus was unable to see anything for a day when hit by a stray spell during a full out duel between Aries and the Aelius twins.
Severus sported blue hair for two days and Lucius's cane started shouting insults at random people, the latter was a favorite of everyone.
Tom's paperwork danced the tip tap on his desk one morning, and only because it freed him from work he did not punish anyone for the prank. After all, paperwork was evil.
The only one to come out untouched was Kieran. Even if they tried to prank him he always avoided being hit.
These were only examples of the twins kind of lessons. The prank war was a nightmare in comparison, and was ended only after the dark lord started shouting and threatening that there would be cruciatus flying if they did not stop immediately. He may not be a murdering psycho but his patience was still short, and his reputation helped in subduing the pranksters.
For his part Aries had never had so much fun in his life and could not wait to do it again. Maybe after his father calmed down a bit though.
Aaaand.. that's it..
I was thinking that maybe I could add a shorter chapter with all the pranks they pulled, just for a good laugh. What do you think? Would you like that or prefer the next chapter right away?!
To answer yout reviews: yeah Aries and Kieran are extremely cute together! I love them. Yana5 I completely agree with you, it makes you want to have someone like that =)
We'll see more of Arthur in te next chapter, but i'm still unsure of what to do with him in the end.
Last thing i want to say is... Review!Review!Review! the more you review the more I write! =)