"If you will excuse me, Devlin - I must show my presence at the feast. I am certain Harry will wish to see you for himself, before you rejoin your school mates."

With those words, Dumbledore rose and left him to Snape. The World Renowned Potions Master scowled at him with blatant disapproval.

"Is your childish dimwitted brain even the least bit capable of understanding what you just did?"

Devlin regarded him intensely for a moment.

"Yes," he said. He sat down in the chair. "I'm as dimwitted as yourself, as a matter of fact."

Snape's eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. He took an advancing step.

"You have no idea what you are getting yourself mixed up in-"

"You know, it's funny, because you always demand my father call you Snape and not Severus, but you hold the information in your hands to make him hate you again, don't you?" Devlin rose from the chair, setting his shoulders and smiling - charming and unsettling, up at Snape. "You could make him your enemy, Severus."

Snape seemed to falter. His his brow tightened and Devlin could sense him trying to calculate how much knowledge Devlin had with which to back his claim and how many of his words were for show. His regard was almost frantic, but whatever he might have attempted was sadly interrupted by the door bolting open.

It was Harry.

Devlin had known it would be.

He looked as though he hadn't slept since the attack, and that perhaps he had not changed robes, either. His hands were covered in superficial scratches - things they wouldn't have bothered healing. In someone like his father, healers made decisions on what to heal and what not to heal with magic, because the more someone was injured and magically healed, the less effective the treatments became. His face looked meticulously healed, but he'd be in the newspapers, so that had to have been a strategic decision.

"Devlin."

His voice was a wash of amazement, but he didn't look as surprised as Devlin might have thought. Relief flooded his face, swarming in his eyes like parched grass feeling the first shower. Snape shifted uneasily, as though he had originally planned to leave the instant he was no longer responsible for Devlin, but now felt uncertain. Devlin felt that wash of control consume him temptingly. The idea of making someone else feel so uncertain (a feeling he never existed entirely without) was intoxicating.

Harry wasted little time before his arms were around him, dragging Devlin against him.

"Thank you for bringing him to the castle, Severus. I really appreciate you volunteering for that."

Devlin managed to see Severus' expression; hard and unyielding. His gaze should have been on Harry's face, but instead it was flickering to him. It was harder to feel that sense of triumph and power with his body pulled against Harry like a child. He peeked back at Severus with hooded eyes, thinking of what the man had said to Albus in his defense.

"I had little choice, Potter," he said, and swept toward the door. "I will return him to the feast when you are through."

The door closed on smooth magicked hinges.

Harry drew away to look at him. It had always unnerved Devlin to see Harry's eyes so full of the things that he struggled just to comprehend. It was the thing that most separated them. He might be nearly twelve instead of nearly ten, but he still felt trapped by Harry's eyes when they were so full of love.

He still didn't quite understand it; he could mimic every expression he had ever come across, but he remained certain that his mimicry of this would fall terribly short. He still felt sure that if he could somehow understand this, if he could mirror this expression, Harry would believe anything he said. He couldn't though, and he still felt as he had at nine years old; hallow at the idea that he would never be entirely able to compete in this world, sure Harry would someday notice that this indefinable thing separated them so distinctly.

"I think you grew," Harry said, and he laughed, his eyes full of tears. Devlin tried to understand, for what seemed the hundredth time, how Harry would feel such conflicting emotions at once and make them seem as though they possibly belonged together.

"Yeah, a little," he said, because he would know. Voldemort had tinkered with the potion with expertise and of course, that had meant knowing Devlin's exact weight so that the theoretical test subject got the same dosage per hight and body weight as Devlin. The pain in Harry's eyes seemed to seep in deeper and his smile dimmed a notch.

"I've missed you, Devlin," he said. "Your mum and I - and Emma - have missed you so much."

"I know," he said. He was afraid to completely shed the facade he had developed with Voldemort. Afraid to meet Harry with feelings he was not meant to have. Do not be a foolish boy, Devlin, Voldemort had said to him, and the words clung to him like a virus that he didn't even think the Great Harry Potter could cure.

Harry searched his face, seeking reciprocation, but Devlin did not give it to him. There was a bit of Devlin that wanted terribly to crumble before Harry; to let Harry decipher the riddles that trapped him, confining him to a cage he feared to escape. That part wanted Harry to find the convergence at which the real Devlin was - to set him free.

He shoved that part aside.

He held himself stiff, knowing if he allowed any of his emotions to manifest themselves physically - even one harmless tremble - he would never be able to regain what he had honed so skillfully. Someday, he would be stronger. Someday he would decide who the real Devlin Potter was, and he would show the world. But someday was not today, and today someday seemed terribly far away.

Harry, he knew, would not harm him, no matter what facade he showed.

"I saw you last night," Harry said and Devlin bit the inside of his cheek as the raw memory clawed it's way into the forefront of his mind, ripping wounds that he did not know how to heal. Devlin looked at Harry, a sense of unreasonable and illogical betrayal springing to life inside of him; as though Harry were purposefully trying to tear his crutch of a facade away from him. Devlin clung mercilessly to the only mask he had ever been afforded. His only protection.

"Me too," he said.

"I was trying to tell you that I love you - no matter what. Tom didn't want you to hear that, Devlin."

Devlin wanted to scowl - to pull his protection tighter against him.

"I know," he said instead. "It's not something he understands or puts much weight in, but he knows it influences people, and that is not something he would have appreciated."

The words were calculated. Facts. Definitions. Common knowledge. Things that could not lead to his death. Devlin had always loved words. They had been his first shield as a child against Voldemort. In front of Harry they had lost all taste; a means to an end that was only necessary because of someone that was not there. He considered and plotted and weighed them before he let them leave his mouth. The wait made all the flavor disintegrate until only the reasons behind them were left. Logic was a flavorless affair. Understanding still sat silently and comfortably in Harry's eyes, but there was a yearning there too - a want for something more from Devlin. Something Devlin could not give him.

Harry looked at him through his Killing Curse eyes. The intensity did not bother Devlin, because he was already dead. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He pulled the shield tighter around him.

"I saw the camp," Harry said. A risk. Harry combined logic and risk in a delicious way that Devlin had always admired, even when he had been terrified of him as a nine year old. It had been this calculated risk taking that had inspired Devlin to take a risk with Voldemort - to treat him as he would have treated someone like himself as a child.

Devlin was almost entirely sure he knew what Harry was referring too, but the small uncertain part of him clung desperately in his mind, willing himself to doubt. He was acutely reminded that he was not one of the kings on this chessboard; he would always know less than the mediocre amount he assured himself he did.

"Did he bring you to a camp, Devlin?" Harry's eyes were big with hesitant uncertainty and a sudden yearning for a possibility he obviously hadn't expected. Doubt had entered his mind and Devlin could see how easy it would be to lie and claim he had no idea what Harry was talking about.

Past, present, and impossible futures whirled wildly in his mind, creating chaos.

"He took me to a house," he said, and felt the present narrow around him like noose, pulling him along a tapering future.

Harry inhaled a breath that Devlin did not think he realized he had been holding.

"A house," Harry said, his voice shaky with relief. He swallowed. "Because I already knew about the camp. That would have been terribly foolish of him to bring you there."

"I would assume so," he said, keeping his face carefully confused; as though it were he who yearned for information about what Harry was talking about. "Aren't you going to ask if I'm hurt? It's all Dumbledore could think to worry about."

He knew his welfare, and Harry's lack of inquiry, would veer the conversation onto something not so precarious. Harry blinked.

"Are you hurt?"

"You didn't think he would hurt me?"

Harry looked at him closely.

"I was worried about him killing you, Devlin," Harry admitted, slowly. "Really worried about that. But just hurting you - I had faith you would know how to handle him like you had before."

Maybe a normal boy would have heard Harry's word and felt they were callous or uncaring, but Devlin was not a normal boy. Devlin heard it and felt a wash of gratitude and appreciation wash through his body and make him go a little limp. He realized that when he had thought he was only defending Voldemort he had also been defending himself to Dumbledore. It had been almost insulting that someone could look at what he had managed to do at six and conclude he would have done worse rather than better at eleven.

All Devlin could make himself do was nod.

Harry slouched against Dumbledore's desk. There was a smile tugging at his lips, as though Devlin had relieved him of some terrible apprehension.

Dead.

His lie didn't change the fact that the Auror was dead, just who Harry thought had done it.

"Did you escape? Did he let you go?"

The words wiggled their way past the image of Damian's lifeless body, breaking apart the image.

"Both," Devlin said. Harry frowned. "One is not exclusive of the other."

He didn't think Harry really understood.

"I'm glad you're here," Harry said, resolutely. There was that smile that had always been just for Devlin. "Do you want to come home for a couple-"

"No," he said. Nothing would be a worse signal to Voldemort than him running away to Harry's house. "I want to be with my friends…be busy."

Harry's features softened from the jolted expression his one quick response had incited.

"You can talk to me about anything, Devlin," he said. Devlin knew it to be true, but also knew he wouldn't. He had made that choice several moves before.

"I don't want to talk about any of it right now."

Harry nodded.

"I just…I have to state the obvious here, Devlin. I saw you last night and so did a lot of other people. You have to be careful what you say and do. I'm working at the Ministry; right now they definitely see you as a kidnap victim. Maria and Andrew allowed the Ministry to view their memory of the kidnapping."

Devlin's face heated with humiliation.

"Please stop saying that word," he ground out. "Can I just go?"

Harry frowned and fidgeted.

"I'm going to have you come home this weekend. Emma needs to see you well. She's been worried sick about you. We can talk more about it all then, alright?"

All Devlin wanted to do was get the words out of his head - kidnap victim - so he nodded.

OoOoO

Severus Snape was waiting for him outside the Headmaster's office, his gaze hard and unreadable.

"Let's go, Mr. Potter," he said, reaching out to grab Devlin's wrist.

"See you soon, Devlin," Harry said, going back into the Headmaster's office, probably to use the floo. When Harry was gone, the grip around his wrist tightened and the Professor used it to spin him around, coming face to face with him.

"You are a child," he said, the words as sharp as a nail, as if he meant to a pound a foreign idea into Devlin's head. "You are a little boy, too foolish for his own good."

Devlin glared up at him. Seeming to take his silence as evidence of defeat, Snape dragged him along. They were at the Great Hall, it's double doors closed. Devlin could smell the food beyond and hear the chatter of voices. For a moment the cacophony beyond the wooden doors filled his head with sounds from last night, but then Snape opened the door, and he saw all the children. Normal children; smiling, laughing, and eating.

Snape gave him a shove, and he stepped past the threshold.

It took a moment for his appearance to register. Eyes were on him, doing double takes. There were fingers, pointed at his frame. Whispers that a normal boy wouldn't have heard. The cacophony died gradually until it was only the murmur of the few unaware.

He found that stillness inside of him and wrapped a cloak of nothing, nothing, nothing, around his shoulders. He imagined pulling the hood of the cloak up and at once felt his features relax. His feet glided across the floor toward the Slytherin table.

They did not cheer, or clap his back, or smile at him. Their faces were impassive, neither twisted with a scowl nor tipped into a smile. He thought once more, at the lack of hexes concealed beneath the table, that this was simply how it was done in Slytherin.

He wondered if Tom Riddle had been given such warm welcome as a first year.

Green reached across the table to pass him the rolls. Devlin looked at him; at the brown eyes full of caution and uncertainty. He took the roll, observed the momentary wash of assurance in the boys eyes, and then turned in the other direction, seeking out someone else.

"So Malfoy, tell me what we've been covering in classes."

The boy looked startled and fumbled for a moment before he began to speak coherently, even intelligently, about their courses.

"You can have my notes, if you like," he added at the end. Devlin nodded, even though he knew he would not need them. He noted, with some triumph, that Green was paler than before.

Devlin wanted to lean close to him and say 'No, I did not miss fact that the onlytime you left my side was right before I was kidnapped.'

Instead, he tore the roll in half and used his wand to char the insides.

OoOoOoO

There were two trunks at the foot of his bed, one floating above the other so that he could lift both lids. The Slytherin crest was burned into the side of the one from Grandfather, and his dorm mates eyed it with curiosity.

Devlin shed his clothing without much thought, exposing all those scars he had been foolish and childish enough to be concerned by at the beginning of the year. Demi eyed his boldness from his bed.

Instead of going directly to sleep, Devlin slipped into his bed, drew the curtains, and pulled out the present Voldemort had slipped into his pocket.

The box was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. A pouch of jingling money sat atop everything else - at least twenty galleons. Beneath that was a plastic, fake, muggle gold coin. He felt the thrum of magic through it and knew it was a portkey. An accompanying parchment simply said "Morsmordre" which Devlin took to be it's activation key.

Yes, he supposed, if he were clever enough, he would know how to contact Voldemort.

OoOoOoO

He was still. The quiet of the night wrapped itself around him, cloaking him in it's near darkness. Snow shifted beneath him and spread out before him like a white frothy sea. Wind whipped at the snow, sending some into the air and building hills around him. Something warm pressed against his thigh, and he looked down to see the wolf, his dark coat stark against the white land.

"Everything is frozen," Devlin found himself saying, as though the words held more meaning than simply to express the state of the valley around them. The wolf scraped at the ground. Beneath the snow the grass was green, covered in a layer of glass-like ice.

"Perhaps, if you were running, it would not be winter," the wolf said, in the voice that never belonged. The amber eyes rose to regard him intently.

"Perhaps this is what nothing, nothing, nothing looks like," he said, and knew they were talking about the same thing.

"Perhaps," the wolf agreed.

"Everything is safe beneath the snow," he said, looking at the tiny patch the wolf had cleared with his paw. It somehow seemed so perfectly reassuring.

"For now. If Spring arrives in time."

Devlin looked around him at the landscape, feeling as though he should have control over when the weather changed, but knowing it was absurd, all at once.

OoOoOoO

"Devlin!"

Somehow he had least expected her to seek him out. Indeed, he was almost startled to see her whole, well, and solid before him when he turned around. She had been like a ghost in his mind for so long.

Maria's hair was whipping around her head like a fire in the wind - untamable and fierce. Her hands were covered in purple gloves and her cloak looked to have been hastily thrown on. She was wearing her sneakers instead of boots, and he imagined her feet were frigid covered in all this snow. Her face was determined and strong, and he reeled away from all the fierceness there.

His legs felt weak beneath him yet, illogically, part of him wanted to run away from her so that she could not see what he had become. He was no longer Emma's Devy, just as he was no longer the boy who had rescued her. The ice in his veins stopped him from running. Another part of him swelled with something close to the intoxicating feeling of power, power, power, at the idea Maria had sought him out. His magic crackled inside of him, cracking his frozen feeling with fire. All of it made him want to crumple into the snow, hoping it would protect him against her like it had against his Grandfather's fire.

"Maria." He said it like a whispered, reverent, word; the sort a King might outlaw, or a Dark Lord punish. His knowledge pulled coldly at his lungs even as his own truth heat his blood.

"Glad you know my name," she said, that storm still so clear in her blue eyes, it's origins foreign to him. He did not understand. Of course he knew her name. He could never forget, no matter how many times he had tried to erase her terror from his recollection of that day, right near here. No matter how many times he had tucked himself under the covers, pulled them over his head, and tried not to picture her face, as he'd told her to hush - as the cold, imperfect, realization had crawled across her features. He looked at her, looked at her eyes. "I thought maybe you hadn't meant to be so mean."

There was a storm brewing in her eyes and he wished he could understand. He stared harder, pushing his wish out into the air, subconsciously.

Tears, sour against cheeks. Palms, wiping and covering eyes. Screaming, raging, throwing, and then cruel endless uncertainty, known through the shift of eyes, the stone at feet, the quick glances away from faces full of pity. Green eyes, swarming into vision, a man, "I heard you've been really upset, Maria," in a voice known well, warm callused hand in another hand, walking "You're acting like you don't believe in him. I believe in him and so should you. We will get him back - but I think he'd be so sad to see you like this, Maria." A boy, so perfectly well looking, standing in the Great Hall just a tad late for the Opening Feast. Professor Snape, bat-like, behind him. And the boy, the boy, the boy - while he eats, while he leaves for bed, when he arrives for breakfast the next morning, in the hallway when he looks and looks away, and rushes past. And - the boy, outside, in the snow. Walking alone. The world moves in a jumble - cloak and mittens and slippery sneakers and toes numb and a gaze only for him and - 'Maria' and…

He gasped to find himself inside his own mind, the storm still rising in her eyes.

"I didn't - I don't want to hurt you, Maria. I meant not to hurt you."

The eyes narrowed, critical, logical, fierce. Where had the smudges gone? He wished he'd been there to see them fade away.

"So you ignore me? How is that supposed to help?"

Devlin had not really thought of how his absence, while he was so clearly available, would make her feel, just that he had been uncomfortable - he had not wanted her to see. He did not want to hurt her.

…in the hallway when he looks and looks away, and rushes past…

But he had hurt her. Even while he knew he had, while he had seen it plainly, he did not know why or how to make it better.

"I-" he looked away, "I don't understand these things, Maria." He felt the gap in him like he had never before, a great chasm that had once separate him with his mirth over Malfoy's death and his father's solemn regard, now separate him from Maria. "I'm not a normal boy."

He was dressed in the same robes little Tom Riddle had once worn, his hair perfectly parted, his breath ice-fire in the air. His wand thrummed against his thigh. He felt as close to a monster as he always did.

She snarled and stepped forward.

-Feet going cold, muscles shivering, cold hair hitting lungs.-

"You're perfectly normal," she snarled, brandishing a finger at him. "You're just not quite regular."

He blinked, taken aback by the end of her words…of her defense.

Normal and regular. He had always used them quite interchangeably, and did not really see her difference. But she felt there was a difference.

He looked at her - dark hair in the dark night, urging hands in the forest, an owl in the playground, gleaming green eyes at a Ministry Ball, 'because, you were crying', 'I gave her the wand', wrestling with Freddie on her behalf, a note atop a Potions table, 'he knew who I was, he saved me from those boys' words from a fearful boy's mouth, whispered in the night - and Devlin thought maybe he could understand.

"I'm only a normal boy with you, Maria." She reeled back, the fierceness lingering beneath a cool surface of surprise. "You think I'm a normal boy because you make me act like a regular child, but I'm not and…I'm so afraid that you will see that. I don't want you to see that."

Afraid. The word left an awful taste in his mouth. The word echoed in his mind, turned silently on his tongue, and buried itself in the folds of his furrowed brow. Afraid. The ingrained word twisted in the dark corner to which it had been carved. The corner that everyone has for things that they are not supposed to forget. He was not supposed to be afraid. Fear is for lesser beings than ourselves. Afraid resided somewhere near it's cousin 'weak'.

Maria's storm had calmed and she took another step forward, reaching out to touch him. Her gloves were soft against his cheek.

"It's alright to be afraid, Devlin," she said. "As long as you don't let fear freeze you."

He thought of her, frozen between the tents. A reminder that she would know fear like his.

At first, her words did not really penetrate his mind, stuck as he was in that dark corner with the carved words of all the things he wasn't to forget.

"I ah…Maria I'm going to be late…"

He needed to remove himself from the abyss inside his own mind, threatening to consume him. He had to get away from her. To think.

He had said it.

"Yeah, I know. Just promise…you won't ignore me? You said you don't want to hurt me, and that would hurt me."

She laid it out so plainly for him, so that he didn't need to know why it would, just that it was how it had and this was the way to fix it. He nodded.

OoOoOoO

He is still again, his arm stretched out before him, feeling like it is the heaviest thing in the whole world. Around him, they stand like the dark pillars to a jail, silent to his ears, screaming at his soul. He is locked here. Trapped here. There is no whirl of past, present, and possible future, because it is all perfectly, horrifically, arranged before him and he has only to walk the narrow path allowed to him by the velvet covered knife.

"Avada Kedavra"

He feels it first in his blood, in his sinew, in his muscle, in his bones - in all the parts of his body he can only fathom exist. It is without temperature, but as painful as a burn, as aching as the cold. His body tries to pull away from it - this magic that is not meant to be, not meant to touch him. It consumes his arm like a solid rod, keeping his aim. This magic, made of such false need, is meant only for the person before him.

He wonders if it would cease to exist, should he find himself able to move his arm and find a different mark. But such wondering is pointless, because there is no whirl of possible future except the one already strangling him.

The magic tears out of him, breaking through his skin and into his wand with such force that he wonders how either can remain intact. The tent glows green, but in that moment he is blind. For a moment he feels as small as the particles Voldemort renders them to fly; as nothing as the air, as heavy as a boy. His chest reaches in silent, terrible, pain as the spell makes its mark and his magic fulfills his need, pulling his body upward, yearning for the return of something it has-

His eyes snapped open in the same moment that his body flung itself upward. Reality bore down upon him in the way a dream can never quite equally render. His breath heaved out of his chest and he fell backward with terrible relief that it did not betray him with a scream.