Squalo was absolutely miserable. How the fuck did it come to this? What the hell was the Ninth thinking, freezing the boss like that and claiming he was trying to take the rings by force?
Anyone who had regular interaction with Xanxus knew he didn't give a flying fuck about the title of Decimo, if only because he despised the Ninth generation and taking over would mean he'd have to deal with them more!
More to the point, the Ninth was using this as an excuse to put the screws to the Varia, claiming they needed "better management".
Better management his ass! Boss had them organized better than Tyr did when he was in charge, and even though he had gotten stuck with an underage Storm because of a fluke, he had made damn sure the kid would be able to handle it and that his Storms respected him properly as a full member! The old bastard had never liked Xanxus, even though he claimed him as son, and the feeling had been mutual!
Therefor it was little surprise when Squalo found himself cringing at the thought of explaining this to Daniela, who was sure to be very pissed when she found out the full story.
"Ah Squalo. I hope you're here to say my dear grandson is sick with something, because I can't think of any good reason he would avoid me unless he got a girl knocked up and is trying to find a way to explain it to me before he does the right thing," said Daniela all pleasant like.
Squalo flinched.
"Voi, I wish. Boss isn't that stupid and he always carries his own protection for just that sort of thing," said Squalo.
Boss was anything but celibate, but he wasn't stupid either. If he went out drinking, most times he found himself a very amicable bed partner who knew it was more or less a way to unwind or a one-night stand.
He had a reputation among the club crowd for being very considerate to his bed partners and never doing anything without protection, and for being a bit of a tiger in bed. More to the point there had yet to be any complaints about his performance...most girls came back for a repeat whenever they spotted him in clubs, and more than once he had multiple partners. Squalo had seen him walk out with two or three girls (and in one notable instance some rather hot triplets) quite a few times.
Squalo would honestly prefer it if Xanxus' paranoia about protection had failed and he had knocked some random girl up!
Instead he bit the bullet.
"The Boss is gone."
"What do you mean gone?" asked Daniela, eyes narrowing him. "He's not..."
"The Ninth somehow got it in his head that the rumors about a coup against the Vongola were all because of Boss. He's claiming house arrest because we were trying to burn out some rats that had snuck into the main family that no one was doing anything about, hoping to smoke out the source...and when the Ninth confronted Boss something big happened and the bastard claimed that our attempts to install the Boss as Decimo failed. It was like suddenly he was there, then a void appeared. He's still alive, but that's all we know. We're not even allowed to see him," said Squalo in frustration.
Daniela was pissed. She knew her son was an idiot, but this was sounding worse than a case of bad communication skills! It was bad enough that her idiot son had continued the lie that Xanxus was his illegitimate son when by now most of the Alliance had heard the real story about him being adopted long before he was taken in by the Vongola!
Adopting a recently awakened Sky, even a Wrath like Xanxus wasn't unheard of. But continuing such an obvious lie and making it look like said Sky had a chance to actually run the family when such things were often locked to the original bloodline? That was the height of idiocy.
"Explain everything," she said, growling. Heads were going to roll if she had anything to say about it! Thanks to the magical potions Xanxus was able to source her, she was feeling closer to fifty than her actual age. So much so that she rarely had to use her wheelchair to get around.
Her lifespan would be cut if she had to use her Sky Flames, but that was a small price to pay. No one was meant to live forever, after all.
Squalo began from the beginning, and the more he spoke, the angrier Daniela got.
So much so that quite a few things were beginning to smolder.
Someone was going to have a very, very bad day by the time she was through with them!
In the Iron Fort, Timoteo Vongola had a very nasty premonition that he was not going to like the consequences of freezing Xanxus.
Three months later, in an undisclosed location in Scotland...
"The fourth champion... is Harry Potter!"
Dead silence. No one had seen the legendary Boy-Who-Lived since he was hidden away by Dumbledore. Some speculated that whatever he had done to end the Dark Lord had rendered him a squib, which was why he had never come to Hogwarts. Others believed he was training in a secret location to act as the champion of light should the Dark wizards ever decided to make a round two, at Dumbledore's orders.
So no one was even remotely prepared when, in a massive crack that sent the windows behind the staff table shattering like so many shards of ice, a scarred teen with some rather interesting hair accessories and a pissed off red-eyed gaze appeared without any warning.
He looked nothing like the famous images of Harry Potter they had all seen in one form or another (most of them were pictures of James Potter with green eyes and a lightning scar).
The adults, once they got their wits about them, absconded with the mystery teenager into Madam Pomphrey's tender mercies as it was clear he was badly injured from something.
Many of the students began to wonder... who was this teen and was he the missing Boy-Who-Lived?
In the Hospital Wing, three days later...
Xanxus woke up, pissed as hell and all too ready to rip someone's throat out...without being Erebus at the time.
On the plus side, he was alive and out of that fucking ice. On the down side, he still felt like shit and it wasn't improving his mood any.
Not to mention his guns were gone and his magic felt positively sluggish.
He squinted, and realized his contacts were missing. That pissed him off, because he didn't have his glasses on him at all.
He growled.
"Where am I?"
"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I find it strange that you were summoned, considering the Goblet selected Harry Potter as champion...and he is but a boy of merely fourteen," said a voice pleasantly...and filled with the same bullshit "grandfatherly" persona crap Timoteo liked to use but couldn't quite pull off.
Grandfatherly aura, Hogwarts, the familiar feel of Sky (though it was clearly a tainted latent) and several clashing colors... there was only one thing that added up to.
"How the fuck should I know how I got summoned? Last thing I remember was the old man bitching about some bullshit that made absolutely no sense before putting my ass in stasis on a false charge," snapped Xanxus. "Though maybe whatever did the summoning latched on to the nearest Potter it could find, even if it was a branch line."
He brushed off the casual legilmency, which only further confirmed who he was dealing with.
It wasn't like he lied after all. He had never gone by Harry Potter in his life, and he was technically a member of the branch line that most people didn't really know about.
"The Potters do not have a branch line."
"Shows what you know. One of the sons that wasn't due to inherit went and made a new family for himself under a new name in Italy four hundred years ago, and it's still around," snarked Xanxus. He had a roaring migraine, he couldn't see worth a shit, and he was not happy being stuck in this castle.
"May I inquire which family?"
Xanxus snorted derisively.
"Fuck you. If you didn't recognize who I am on sight then you don't have the clearance to know which family I'm from," he shot back.
The Italian Ministry was annoying enough about the whole mafia truce they had going on. He was not going to be the one responsible for the English sticking their nose in something they had no business dealing with.
Besides...he had that whole Boy-Who-Lived bullshit locked up tight under a special fidelius charm so no one ever figured out who Xanxus actually was.
"I see," said Dumbledore. He didn't sound too happy, but at least he wasn't forcing some fourteen year old to deal with this tournament. "I'm afraid that since the Goblet chose to summon you in lieu of Mr. Potter, you will have to compete in his place. May I at least have a name for the records?"
"Xanxus," he said simply, not bothering to give his surname. "And I seem to have lost my focus during the transition."
"We can arrange for you to visit Diagon once Madam Pomphrey clears you. I'm afraid you'll be the subject of much speculation from students and adults alike, however."
After all, they weren't expecting a fourth champion, much less someone who was summoned in place of Harry Potter!
Xanxus ditched his "minders" with laughable ease. He only needed some wand wood and a quiet place with a forge to remake his guns... he was overdue to replace them anyway, since the last pair were crude and falling apart. Wrath flames could be brutal on metal alone, and Flame treated metal was far too expensive even for him to use when he was just starting out.
Getting to the Varia safehouse was easy enough... he had the main ones memorized for just this sort of occasion. It was with great relief he was able to find his glasses from where the mooks stored them at random (thankful that his grandmother found the fact he always lost them funny enough to store extras in all the safe houses just in case) and was able to see properly again.
Like hell he was going to suffer squinting until his prescription was ready when he knew where an extra set was! He was still able to reorder his contacts (multiple sets) and acquire his usual prescription for his migraine medication from a Vongola-allied pharmacy. They just needed to see his ID to clear it without having to deal with all the red tape.
That done, he dove into the closest store and got spare clothing... there was no way he was dealing with magical England's fashion sense when he wasn't a student of their damn school and had already passed his secondary exams before he was frozen.
With his essential items finished (and his contacts to be delivered tomorrow, if not sooner) he went back to the magical alley where his minder was quite incensed with him for disappearing.
"Fuck off," he said curtly, not giving a shit about the old cat's angry hiss at his language. "You're not my mother and I needed to get actual supplies, not the overpriced crap you sell in the alley."
He waltzed right into Ollivanders and rather than deal with getting a wand he would never use, he asked bluntly "Where would I be able to acquire some wand wood?"
"I'm afraid I don't sell that sort of stock here. Only premade wands and the odd custom orders," admitted Ollivander.
"Do you know where I could find some?"
"Mr. Potter, we came here to insure you had a proper wand for the tournament!" hissed the old cat.
Xanxus stared her down, a tiger giving the old tabby a Look that said he was debating on turning her into his next snack. She shut up rather effectively.
"And I don't use a fucking wand. I custom made my focus for a reason, since waving around a stick that's basically euphemism for a dick isn't my idea of fun," he said flatly.
"A wand is not a euphemism for...!"
Xanxus raised a single black eyebrow.
"So 'polishing a wand' isn't another way for your teenage students to say they intend to..."
Ollivander was openly entertained by this scene in front of him.
"If you can give me the wood that reacted best to you before, I can have some custom ordered and delivered to you. Until then you can always purchase one of my 'wands' to serve as a temporary replacement."
"Don't need one. Only use my focus for the more finicky spells and ones that need the amplifier," said Xanxus.
"A rare knack indeed, Mr. Black," said Ollivander. "One that has sadly fallen out of favor of late."
McGonagall stared at him for a moment.
"Why did you call him Mr. Black when he claims to be from a branch of the Potter family?"
"Ah, but he is still a Black as much as a Potter, though he claims the name of the branch line instead. A move worthy of a Viper, one would say."
Xanxus caught the double meaning. He snorted.
"Tell that foggy snake that I expect pictures when they inform the shark, the bratty prince and the brawler that I'm out," he said flatly.
Ollivander smirked in return.
"Only if you agree to share them," he countered.
"Fair enough, or you could ask for copies instead."
"Considering the information I'm about to share, they damn well better make extra copies for me to enjoy," said Ollivander with dark amusement.
McGonagall...just looked beyond confused as she couldn't catch even a bit of what was being unsaid between the two men.
In Italy, in the Varia castle...
Mammon was going over their reports, still in a foul mood over the injustice to their cousin.
So it was only natural that, in the middle of drinking their preferred choice of drink that they stop, re-read what was in their hands...before doing an uncharacteristic spit take in shock.
Squalo barely had time to look up when Mammon literally teleported to his office, knocking the reports all over. This had to be important...and big...if the miser was messing up paperwork like this and not giving a damn.
"VOI! What..."
Mammon thrust the report into his hands.
Squalo decrypted the familiar cipher, before re-reading it again to confirm it.
His jaw dropped, uncaring of the fact Mammon was taking many, many pictures.
"Voi! Is this shit for real?"
"Easy enough to confirm... you know Boss wouldn't patiently wait when he knows the location of the safe house."
Squalo was already dialing the number of the mooks closest to the London safe house. Within fifteen minutes he got a very confused report.
"Sir, the glasses are missing and Turpentine was among the last ones to move them," said the mook.
"Go to the nearest Vongola-allied pharmacy and ask if anyone fitting the description of the boss came in to fill an order," said Squalo, not daring to hope. It didn't take long for them to confirm that someone had filled Xanxus' migraine medication order.
"Voi! How the fuck did he end up in England anyway?"
"Mu. There are a number of highly magical artifacts and rituals that could pull it off. One of them must have latched onto his core and dragged him there, accidentally freeing him from the ice. We need to keep this low-profile for now. If the Ninth finds out he's out again..."
"Voi. No need to tell me twice," said Squalo, catching on.
If the Ninth knew Xanxus out less than a year of being turned into ice (a very pissed off Daniela had explained what the Zero Point Breakthrough was and what it did), he might try something equally unpleasant while the boss was still recovering.
He was already trying to 'put out fires', so to speak, because Daniela and her gossip circle were spreading the actual truth of what happened, rather than what he was claiming. His reputation was at stake, since he couldn't actually nip the source of the counter rumors in the bud without doing even more damage to it.
After all, even the mafia had some lines that shouldn't be crossed without major political and social repercussions. Killing your own mother who was pissed at you for doing something stupid and trying to make the truth known was one of them.
Squalo called in Lussuria and Belphegor. Levi was a fucking thrall and they all knew it. While he would follow orders without hesitation or question, even Xanxus would have preferred a Lightning that had the balls to question things. He barely tolerated the man and only put up with his slavish loyalty because he had no one better currently lined up.
If he knew that the Boss was out and free, he'd stop at nothing to be at his side and that would blow the secret out of the water faster than anything else would. Belphegor and Lussuria, at least, knew when to be discreet and keep their damn mouths shut about what was really going on.
And yes, Mammon did take plenty of pictures at the disbelieving and hopeful expressions on their faces...even if they had to send their informant copies of them for him to laugh at.