Chapter Seven - Tangles
The next morning Harry was woken up by shrieking. It wasn't long before Bel rushed into his room, giggling madly. Harry squinted at him, just managing to make out his face.
"I take it worked, then?" Harry mumbled, still half asleep. He caught the blurred outline of the prince nodding frantically, before he flung himself onto the bed next to him.
"He looks like Levi messed up with his static, only worse! How long will it take for him to comb it out?" he asked.
"He can't. It'll stay like that until I use the right shampoo. How long do you think it'll take him to ask for it?" Bel had told him how precious Squalo was about his hair, so he wondered how long it would take for him to admit defeat.
"Ushishishi! He'll be begging by this evening," Bel told him confidently.
"Great. I have time to sleep in then." Harry closed his eyes, fully determined to get at least another two hours of sleep. Bel obviously had other plans.
"Get up! I need breakfast, and you told me that you wanted to learn how to throw knives, and I have that stupid peasant schoolwork to do, and Squalo won't leave his rooms today so Levi will be in charge, and he's a pain if he thinks I'm slacking, because he thinks I'm too young, even though I'm better than he is, stupid peasant, and Lussuria told me that he'd buy me new boots if I tidied my room."
Harry's head was spinning. He didn't think that Bel had breathed once through that whole diatribe. It was too early for this.
"Bel." Harry's tone was firm enough to make Bel stop bouncing on the bed and turn to look at him. Or Harry thought he was looking at him. With his hair over his eyes, and without his glasses, it was hard to tell. "It is five O'clock in the morning. It is too early to get up. I am going to sleep for another hour and then I will get up."
"Fine." By the tone of his voice, Bel was pouting. "Can I stay here with you then?"
"Fine. Just be quiet."
With a quiet giggle, Bel dived beneath the covers and cuddled up to Harry, who threw an arm over him loosely and closed his eyes with a sigh. He drifted off to sleep with a thousand memories in his head, of doing this with a hundred different child soldiers who couldn't express with words how much they needed reassurance.
According to his inner clock – developed at the Dursleys and refined by war – it was exactly an hour later that Bel woke him up by tugging his arm harshly.
"Come on! Breakfast!"
Harry barely had time to grab his glasses from the bedside table before he was dragged out of the room. The minion had brought his contacts as well his glasses from his apartment the previous day, but Bel wasn't giving Harry any time to mess around.
After a full English breakfast, which impressed Bel and drew Lussuria and another Officer, who introduced himself as Levi, into the kitchen, Harry was dragged out again by Bel. His inner neat freak cringed at the idea of leaving all the dirty dishes just sitting in the kitchen. Knowing his luck, they would still be sitting there come dinner.
He spent the morning being dragged around by Bel. He thought the permanent-sugar-rush was supposed to end by the time they were ten! Twelve-year-olds should be wanting to laze around, not moaning because advanced algebra was too easy, and trying to invent a way to have two dozen knives in the air at once, and manipulate them all with his wires. By lunch he was exhausted, and forced Bel to sit down and eat something. Lussuria was there too, making a sandwich.
"Have you seen Squalo today? I haven't seen him at all, and I don't know what he was screaming about this morning," Lussuria asked absently. Harry shuddered as he watched the flamboyant man smother his jam sandwich with hot sauce. Some things just shouldn't exist.
"Ushishishi! The prince hasn't seen him," Bel declared innocently. Lussuria shot him a piercing glance.
"Of course you haven't, dear. Do you know what's wrong with him?"
"No idea!" Bel sang, as he danced across the kitchen collecting the ingredients Harry asked for. Literally danced, complete with pirouettes. The kid was weird.
A dozen eggs-worth of omelettes later, Bel was begrudgingly helping Harry wash up when a minion dashed into the room. By the patch on his uniform, Harry could tell that he was one of the Rain Squad, and suppressed a grin.
"The Captain would like to see you, sir," the man said, standing at attention.
"Of course," Harry replied, rinsing off the last plate and handing it to Bel to dry and put away. "Come on, Bel."
"The Captain asked for just you, sir," the minion insisted.
"But he put Bel in my care. I would hate to neglect my duty," Harry told him. Stepping past the gaping minion, Harry and Bel made their way up to Squalo's room, which was two doors down from Harry's.
All the Officer's rooms were on their own corridor. The Sky was at the end, with the Rain on its right and the sun on its left. Next to the Rain was the Mist, and then the Lightning. Next to the Sun was the Storm, and then the Cloud. It meant that Harry actually knew where to find Squalo's room, which would have been a lot harder if they were spread out all over the mansion.
Harry knocked briskly on the door before pushing it open. Squalo yelled to him from the ensuite bathroom, but Harry wanted to get a look at the room before he got distracted. The room was done up in shades with blue, with a floor to ceiling bookcase taking up an entire wall. Other than that, the room wasn't much different than his. There was a lamp on his bedside table, and a small figurine of a horse, but they were the only personal touches. There were no knickknacks or ornaments on the bookcases, only neat rows of books, none of which looked to be fiction.
"Voi!" Squalo yelled from the bathroom. "Are you coming?"
Harry grinned as he strolled through the bathroom door, Bel at his shoulder. "What seems to be the problem?"
Squalo spun round and glared at them.
"Voi! Brat, what the hell did you do to my hair?" At that, Bel lost his battle with laughter, setting Harry off as well.
He tried to fight it, but Squalo just looked to ridiculous. His hair looked the most extreme case of bed hair ever. It was tangled and knotted, with parts of it standing on end. Normally half-way down his back, it was so knotted that there wasn't a single strand that managed to reach past his shoulders. It was kind of like the world's messiest afro, with hair brush bristles and comb teeth visible.
"Fix this!" Squalo shrieked. "I'm not cutting it!" Harry was alarmed to see the glimmer of tears in his eyes. Maybe he had been too harsh?
He had been kidnapped, tied up, given a head injury but no medical attention, and been roped into being a babysitter. This was completely justified.
"I can fix this, don't worry," Harry soothed him. As he started the shower running, he spoke to Bel over his shoulder.
"Could you go and fetch me the shampoo and conditioner? They're in the blue bottles."
As Bel trotted off, still giggling, Harry tested the temperature of the water. Finding it satisfactory, he had Squalo sit on the edge of the bath, so that he could wash his hair. It was always so awkward doing this. Harry had yet to find a completely comfortable way to wash someone's hair without the proper hairdresser setup.
"I've already tried that," Squalo growled at him, even as he leant backwards slightly.
"I know. My shampoo will work miracles, seriously. Don't worry about it," Harry told him, as he soaked his hair.
Bel came skipping back into the room with the bottles Harry had shown him last night when they had devised their plan. Now he was thinking that this might be overkill. Not enough to stop, but still.
It only took five minutes to work the shampoo through the mess, and another five to rinse it out. The hair was slightly less knotted, but not much. Once he had dried the hair to the point where it only slightly damp, he worked the conditioner through, which took half an hour. Through it all, Bel sat in the corner giggling to himself, and Squalo was amazingly patient. He didn't even complain when Harry pulled the hair trying to get the more stubborn knots out. Eventually, the knotted mess was a smooth fall down his back, thick with the conditioner. Harry gathered it up and swirled it up so it was piled on top of Squalo's head. He was relying on the amount of conditioner to hold it in place, which he knew it would.
"Leave that in for half an hour, and then rinse it out," he told the blond, as he led the prince out of the bathroom.
"Voi! Once I find out how you did it, scum…" Squalo let the threat trail off menacingly, and suddenly Harry didn't feel guilty.
Bel burst into giggles as soon as they were back in Harry's room.
"Ushishishi! So how does it work?" he asked
"The condition has a special dye in it. It looks white, until it's activated. It turns bright pink when it's wet enough. The dye lasts for a week," Harry grinned at Bel.
Half an hour later, for the second time that day, a furious 'VOI!' echoed through the mansion.
Mammon ignored the commotion in the mansion. She couldn't hear any crashes, so there were no repairs she would have to pay for, which meant it wasn't important. She had another issue to deal with. It had been a while since Mammon had thought about the Wizards. She knew about them, of course, and kept half and eye on them, but they tended to keep to themselves, especially the British. She had heard about the war going on in England, but had ignored it. It had been when Boss had been planning his coup, which took up all of everyone's time. An unforgiveable oversight in retrospect. Harry Potter was an influential figure, with the potential to cause a lot of problems. The Mafia and the Wizards were separate for a reason. A conflict between them could level the entire country. She needed a way to control Potter if he became dangerous. Keeping him on their side was much better than making him an enemy, though, so she didn't want to alienate him. He was rumoured to be one of the wealthiest Wizards in England, so keeping him accessible and amenable was a very good thing.
A pile of paper appeared on her desk in a flash of purple flame. Even her English Wizarding contact knew better than to use parchment. It cost three times as much per square meter as paper did. She hummed to herself as she flicked through the pages. This was interesting. It was a weakness that she didn't want to have to exploit, but the option was good. Having insurance was always a good thing when dealing with powerful, influential figures. She would have to have Levi send some of his people out. Something as important as this shouldn't be trusted to anyone not Varia Quality.
Exams are over! Hopefully, I should be able to update more frequently now.