Harry Potter 1. Mind

**Warnings:**  
Dumbledore bashing  
Lily and James bashing  
Manipulative Dumbledore  
Dark!Harry  
Independent!Harry  
Powerful!Harry  
Non-canon characters.

**Summary: **Kieran is famous, but Harry's beautiful. Kieran is Humour, but Harry's Tragedy, which lasts for ever. Twin masks of Humour and Tragedy, bittersweet. The vampires won't let the beautiful one wither, the humans want the sweet one to prosper. Brother-WL.

**Legend:  
**_**Elena's thoughts  
**Thoughts_

_

* * *

_

_Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.  
__-Shakespeare, As You Like It_

* * *

Strangely dressed people poured through the streets of London, eyes flashing with joy that threatened to burst and explode like the display of fireworks over Diagon Alley. Old and young, rich and poor, there were no barriers between them as they celebrated the Dark Lord's downfall. Singing the name and praises of Kieran Potter, a group of Obliviators stumbled out into muggle London, tipsy on ecstasy and drugged with exhilaration.

A tall man watched them promptly go on and violate the International Statute of Secrecy with a bemused smile playing on his lips. The ministry would be horrified. He was less amused, however, when one of the Obliviators staggered towards him, crushing him in a hug. The man pretended to be oblivious as the wizard rambled on about the Dark Lord's downfall, but he grasped the man's violet robes.

'What do you mean, Kieran Potter defeated him?' He hissed, his mind whirling. This wasn't supposed to be possible; it was all foreseen by Kelda. And Kelda was never wrong. 'Are you sure it was _Kieran _Potter, not _Harry _Potter?' The Obliviator wrinkled his forehead.

'Who's Harry Potter?' the Obliviator asked, confused. 'Is he related to Kieran Potter?' The man wanted to smack his head and mutter a _'no shit, Sherlock,'_ but he resisted the urge. The Obliviator probably wouldn't know who Sherlock Holmes was either.

'Never mind,' he forced a smile onto his strong Italian features. 'I must have heard wrong.'

The Obliviator squinted at him, his eyes clouding in mistrust. 'Eh, you aren't around from here, are you? What's the likes of you doing here?' The man cursed under his breath. The Obliviator wasn't as drunk as he hoped. He merely smiled a placating smile at the befuddled ministry employee and muttered a quiet _'obliviate' _under his breath. _Oh, the irony, _he thought, amused again. _Using obliviate against an Obliviator. _He immediately erased all traces of his encounter and pushed him back towards the group huddled in the same robes.

'Glory to Kieran Potter!' he called out, and the group raised their arms as if toasting him, chorusing the phrase back. Grimacing, the man disillusioned himself. He had to get the news back to his clan immediately. Were they really wrong? Or was the wizarding world wrong? Debating the issue, the man absently shifted into the form of a dragon and took the clouds, eager to be rid of London's gloomy skies.

* * *

The world of the Court of the Strange was a strange world, but what could you expect from drunkards and madmen, poets and dreamers? Elena smiled to herself, peering at her reflection in a distorted mirror of screaming souls. A face with honey-gold eyes of a royal vampire, with lines criss-crossing across it like a piece of cracked glass peered back at her. She admired the face's flawless nymph-like features, combing her fingers through her titanium-blonde hair to let it curl in demurely; delicate strands of spun gold fluttering gently about her face. The flawless image of a vampire royal blood-child frozen forever in a child's body.

She looked perfect as usual, she decided, but something was missing. Tapping a finger against her chin, she held out a hand, and a mask landed into it immediately. Bone-white as if made of china, hers was a mask carved with a face smiling happily, the broken humour twin of the tragedy opera mask. It felt cool against her face, presenting an impersonality that delighted her. Through the eyes of the mask, she could see a pair of twins, not at all alike. She cooed at them with the pretence of maternal love; but she was only interested in the one with the alluring green eyes and glossy raven hair. She frowned when she noticed a disfiguring scar in the crude shape of a lightning bolt, but she dismissed her fears. It did not mar his beauty; it only enhanced his mysterious allure of the dark power that pulsated around him.

'What a beautiful boy,' she cooed, her voice sounding distorted behind her mask. 'There are so few beauties in the world, and only beauties understand each other. I will understand you when no one else will.' She cast a dismissive glance at the boy's brother. One would call the child frail-looking, perhaps rather handsome, and maybe that would earn him a few pats on the head, but he was not a beauty like his twin was. Thus, Elena dismissed him from her mind entirely, not realizing that he was hailed throughout the wizarding world as their saviour, the Boy-Who-Lived. She had no time for unpleasing things.

'I am Smiles. I call to you,' she whispered, her mind searching, searing, filtering. She focused and _called_, enthralling the few that possessed the most precious, the most magnificent minds of all. She smiled tenderly as three others appeared in her psychotic world.

'Miss Smiles.' The three whispered her name with reverence. 'You have called, and we have come to you.'

The three wore the same porcelain masks as she did. The only difference was the expressions on the mask. _Such impersonal beauty, _Elena sighed to herself.

'I assume you've all heard of the uproar already?' The three nodded, and Elena turned her attention to the one wearing the mask that was frowning vehemently.

'Mr. Angry,' the man nodded in acknowledgment. 'You're one of those who dance with both the riddle and the doddering old dwarf. What of the riddle's downfall?' Riddle was the code for what the general world called the Dark Lord, Lord Voldemort, and the doddering old dwarf was the ministry, both as short-sighted as the other. Mr. Angry tilted his head, as if summing up the events.

'The riddle was defeated by a boy-child, Kieran Potter,' Elena clapped her hands delightedly.

'The one with the green eyes and dark hair?' she said, excitedly. Oh, to be both beautiful _and _powerful _and _famous! A pity that he didn't have the right mind to join the court. Oh well. She would dwell more upon that later. Her face fell behind her mask as Mr. Angry shook his head.

'Kieran Potter has brown hair and hazel eyes, Miss Smiles, but what does the dwarf know? The dwarf dances the tango alone while the world is waltzing.' Elena frowned. How could this be? The beautiful boy's twin had defeated the riddle? She pouted. What a disappointment.

'What is the name of the other one, the boy's twin?' Elena started to twirl strands of her long blonde hair around a slender finger, starting to become less interested now that she discovered that the boy with the chartreuse eyes wasn't part of all the hype about the end of the riddle.

'Harry Potter.'

'Harry Potter,' Elena repeated. 'Take a note of that!' A rabbit dressed smartly in a business suit holding a quill and a long roll of unfurling parchment popped out of her thoughts and into existence, quickly scribbling down the name as if it was the most important two words it had ever heard. Elena smiled. In this dream world of psychosis, she was queen.

'Anyway, Mr. Tear has something to tell us, don't you Mr. Tear?' The child in the smiling mask beamed at the rather tall man donning a mask that looked agonized. A single engraved teardrop accompanied by a scowling face confirmed his identity.

'I might not be able to be called anymore,' Mr. Tear confided, conjuring up a small elephant to sit on. 'See? An elephant! An _elephant_!' The rest of the four gasped and shook their heads. Elena felt a tear ran down her face. She hated saying goodbye to one of her Court. Her beautiful, terrible, Court of the Strange.

'I can't replace you,' Elena clutched at Mr. Tear in distress. Mr. Tear shook his head sadly, but brightened up.

'My daughter, Luna, is only a few months old, but she has the makings of one of us. Perhaps she will succeed me as Miss Tear?'

Elena nodded thoughtfully, still not at all happy that one of her members was turning, well… _normal. _Her golden eyes travelled and managed to connect with Mr. Tear's sharp blue ones. 'Will you not be an observer anymore? Will you not be part of the Court of the Strange, malicious pranksters, house of the insane?' Elena turned her face away, as if to grieve about something precious. In a way, her madness _was _precious, a special part of her, and Mr. Tear losing that precious thing hurt.

'I'll look into her mind, Mr. Tear,' she agreed. She finally turned to look at the remaining member, the one who had said nothing yet. Mr. Sad rested upon a small mound of butter, rearranged in the shape of Kieran Potter's head. Elena noticed that maggots were squirming in the young boy's eyes and burrowing down his cheek in the shape of a teardrop. She nodded approvingly. Artistic, with a dash of macabre.

'What of those you serve, Mr. Sad?' Elena asked gently. She admired Mr. Sad greatly, even if he _did _insist on wearing socks on his ears and hands. She supposed it could be a fashion statement. 'I will repay them with pain tenfold for the pain they have done to you,' she said as she noted the welts on Mr. Sad's hands. _Ironing his own hands_, Elena thought disapprovingly. _What an unoriginal punishment. They should suffer horribly for that alone. _

'Mr. Sad knows his family to be rather indifferent,' the small masked figure admitted. 'Mr. Sad _does _know from Nana, the Potter's head house elf, the fate that awaits young Harry Potter.' Elena motioned for Mr. Sad to continue. It was about the beautiful one. It was important to her.

'Mrs. Potter and Mr. Dumbledore are planning to train young Harry Potter to be Kieran Potter's bodyguard,' Elena nodded. 'Nana has told Mr. Sad that Mr. Dumbledore is planning to make Harry Potter worship his brother like a God.'

Elena flared angrily, and images of Albus Dumbledore molded onto the brown spots on a giraffe appeared, before the animal's eyes imploded and it's torso melted, images of Dumbledore's face eaten away by some form of invisible acid. The rest of the members of the Court remained impervious to the gory display of Elena's anger.

'How dare he make someone beautiful worship someone that is not!' her fury manifesting as ripped cardboard that rained down upon the four, scorching and burning itself up in mid-air. 'It should be the other way round!'

'I will protect the beautiful boy's mind,' she vowed to the three. 'Because one day, I will make the whole world bow down to our beauty.' Her exotic golden eyes scanned the rest of the quartet. 'Send people to protect,' she said quietly to Mr. Angry. 'We will use the army of our Court, who act where we cannot,' her eyes flashed angrily. 'I will call, and they willanswer.'

'For those who have beauty,' Elena nodded at the Court, laughing as they bowed to her in return, 'must learn to wield it.'

_All things dead and beautiful,  
__All creatures mad or enthralled,  
__All things twisted and fanatical,  
__Elena will call them all._

She let the eyes of the mask show her the twins again, gazing intently at the one with dark hair.

'Twin masks of Humour and Tragedy,' she cooed at them. 'Humour will fall and Tragedy will be mine.'

* * *

Precisely thirty-seven seconds later, Harry Potter's head held two minds. It wasn't a miracle by any means, but it was strange and disconcerting for him all the same. Not that Harry Potter knew what strange and disconcerting meant. He _was _one-year-old after all, even if he could maintain a basic conversation using the words 'apple, banana, chair, magic.' Harry gurgled happily in the arms of Sirius Black as Elena poked through his mind.

_**You have a lot of untapped potential, **_Elena told him. She knew he didn't understand, but it was nice to talk all the same. _**Let's see if I can tap it. **_

'I don't know where James and Lily have been rushing off to, pup, but I don't like it,' Sirius confided in his godson. 'I haven't seen much of Kieran either…' Running his hands worriedly through his dark tousled hair, Sirius sighed. 'Remus says he's coming soon, so we won't be too lonely, eh?'

In all honesty, Sirius Black wasn't sure what was going to become of the Potter family. With James mouthing off about how Kieran was 'just like him', and Lily's secret talks with Dumbledore- oh he knew all about _them_, no matter how much Lily tried to keep it a secret, he and Remus had been landed with the unofficial job of taking care of Harry. And somehow, Sirius felt sorrier for his favourite godson than his twin, even if said twin was going to have to save the world or die trying.

Lightning bolt, crescent moon, lightning bolt, crescent moon. Those were all the images Elena could glean from Harry's godfather's mind. So Harry's twin had the crescent moon scar. Elena scowled at the unoriginality of it. The moon had been crescent at the night of the attack. _The lightning bolt is much more prettier, _she assured the one-year-old. _I know you can't think properly right now, so let me do all the thinking for you. I will protect your mind. _Without pausing, she reached out beyond the walls of the Potter's little house in Godric's Hollow, her grasp reaching out, out, out, until it closed in around someone's mind and _pulled. _

_Bathilda Bagshot, _Elena pursed her lips as she searched through the unwilling mind's memory. _What an ugly name. You should be privileged to protect our minds. _Without bothering to look any further into the old but still sharp mind, she absorbed its memories and used it to construct the first layer of walls that served as Harry's mind protection.

Elena hummed quietly to herself as the infant's own mind howled in discomfort, mentally and physically. Sirius Black hurried to soothe his godson, his mind perplexed as to why his nephew would bawl like this. Harry was an easy child, gentle and quiet, not the raging terror that had been Kieran, who had wailed through the nights.

'Hush, Harry. You'll shut down my mind if you carry on with that bawling,' Sirius joked, rocking his godson back and forth. Elena stared balefully at Sirius, not appreciating the joke. If he carried on with the jokes, she'd have to absorb his mind.

And all he'd be was a drooling, mindless husk for a few moments.

And then he'd be dead.

* * *

'Is that the Boy-Who-Lived?' Harry shook his head as the old lady looked at him with disappointment._ Disappointment_. His stomach felt sick from it. He felt sick from everything. The way his parents seemed to be entirely focused on Kieran, intense on showering him with affection. They didn't entirely neglect or abuse him, but next to Kieran, Harry felt like a… _burden._

_You are a beauty, people should be __**graced **__with your presence, _the voice in his head had told him repeatedly. _Beauties are not burdens. They are treasures._

Harry never felt any less than a treasure at the moment. He was only two-years-old, and Elena had only barely modified his mind. She was more used to ripping minds apart and consuming them rather than _enhancing_ them, something she regretted. She had already caused severe retardation in some people- what were their names…? Shortbottoms? Littlebottoms? She couldn't remember, but they wouldn't recover. Their minds couldn't even nourish her in their diminished state. She rarely spoke to Harry, reasoning that he probably couldn't understand her superior speech. She'd try, try, and try again.

'Why, aren't you adorable?' Harry looked up at the exclamation and blinked his wide, viridian eyes at the grey-haired witch who beamed down at him. The old witch squealed and clapped her hands together, picking him up and crushing the two-year-old to her chest.

'What's a little thing like you have any business running around unaccompanied?' The witch frowned and carried him off to a little table where a small circle of elderly witches sit. 'No, someone might carry you off, with those cute little dimples of yours.'

She sat him down on the silver table where all of the old ladies called him 'simply a little beam of sunshine' and stuffed him full of sweets, and gave him a few sickles to "buy some for later". A small crowd gathered around the two-year-old, basking in his enchanting allure. Some were saying that he should model for Twilfit and Tatting's child clothing line, some called for him to be put on Christmas cards.

'You're like a little dark angel!'

'You're going to be absolutely _striking_ when you grow up, little boy,' a photographer told him, snapping pictures. A dignified old lady agreed with him. 'Why, it sends my heart all a-flutter just thinking about it!' She chucked Harry under his chin. 'You're going to be a heartbreaker, you are.'

_**Beauties are treasures, **_Elena told him slyly, _**my powerful, beautiful boy.**_

Across the large room of Kieran's first "press conference", Harry could feel someone's eyes boring into him. He turned his head from all the attention just for a second, and locked onto his twin's hazel eyes with a superior childish smirk.

_I'm beautiful, _that smirk seemed to say. _And you're not. You might get all of Mummy and Daddy's attention, but people love me more._

Elena watched the scene that no one else had noticed from the eyes of the head journalist from the Daily Prophet, and was pleased. None of the crowd was commanded by her; it was all Harry's doing. She left the poor journalist's mind with a few simple suggestions, before travelling to another journalist's mind with even more of her "suggestions". After all, she reflected, little Harry was a beauty. And beauties deserved the _world. _

James and Lily Potter were horrified the next day when images of their eldest son was splashed across the nation's leading paper, among with hundreds of contracts begging the little boy to model for clothing. Harry was banned from all the press conferences in the future, which made Elena angry, when she heard of it, which in turn, made Harry angry.

_**Kieran may have to save the world like a common, used soldier, **_she had said, _**but you will rule it.**_

That night, Elena had force-fed him hundreds of minds that she had absorbed from dark purebloods that were every bit as enamoured with their own prettiness and wealth as she was. She resolved to learn more about the actual fine art of cultivating a mind of someone beautiful, but she had run out of patience!

Harry Potter woke up in the middle of the night, gazing into the liquid-gold mosaic eyes of Elena, listening to the mind of a vampire frozen in a twelve-year-old's body talk about his little brother, and truly, truly understood what she said for the first time.

'Only beauties understand each other,' she had told him earnestly, kneeling on his bed. 'I understand you, and you understand me. But no one else will,' she said sadly. 'To be misunderstood time and time again is very distressing for me. That's why I can't stay in my own body anymore.' Two-year-old Harry who, before this night, had never grasped what "distressing" and "misunderstood" meant, in a quiet display of childish innocence, vowed to protect her forever.

Elena had merely smiled at him and shook her head. She cradled his small face in her tiny hands and shattered his innocence, letting him see the world through his clear emerald eyes.

'Isn't the world so _ugly_,' she had breathed, her eyes sad and disapproving as she looked out of the window through Harry's emerald orbs. 'Your brother is very ugly,' she had informed him, and he agreed. Kieran would never be beautiful like him. And for that, Harry pitied him.

'I don't know why they spend so much time with him,' he said, sighing, the stars in the night sky distracting him momentarily. 'If there's a chance he's going to die, shouldn't they spend more time with me instead of him? They're wasting their love on someone who might leave them forever.'

* * *

_One year later_

'Mommy?' Lip wobbling, eyes wide in distress, tears beginning to gather- Lily Potter melted and handed over a pouch full of galleons, linked directly to the Potter Vault. Harry joined Elena in the mental victory dance, celebrating the small victory.

_**After years of poking in your mind, after feeding you so many delicious minds that I wanted for myself… **_Elena mock-sniffed, as if she was about to cry tears of happiness. Her eyes shone with a malicious gleam.

Harry rolled his eyes, flinging the money pouch up and catching it, swinging it merrily by its two little ropes. Another victory to Harry Potter.

_Don't remind me, Elena. I don't mind __**you **__absorbing minds, but don't remind me about it._

_**But now you can claim you're the smartest three-year-old in the whole world! **_The vampire mind smiled happily, knowing that she had won the argument.

Harry wrinkled his nose as he rounded a corner. _Right. My parents will just claim Kieran is. Didn't he kill off the Dark Lord after all? _He smiled happily as he stoppd in front of a dusty, old shop and read the name of it to himself. _Obscurus books. Sounds like a good place to start. _Elena frowned inside his head.

_**The one time your overprotective parents let you come to Diagon Alley and you go to a bookstore? **_She snapped.

Harry ignored her, stepping gracefully into the dusty book haven, emerald eyes with strange specks of gold flicking lazily from one tower of books from another, a mask of boredom set onto his face. An old, bearded man looked up at him suspiciously with weary eyes, but softened as he looked upon the three-year-old with wide almond-shaped green eyes. Harry noticed the look/ He couldn't help the fact that he enjoyed reading, could he? The minds that Elena had cracked open for him gave him knowledge, but opened even more questions: Why did wizards have magic, and not muggles? Why did wizards have to use wands? Why would channeling magic through a piece of wood even help? And a few hundred other questions.

_**Well, since we're here… Wandless magic, magical theory. **_Elena peered through Harry's eyes, the gold flecks becoming even more pronounced. She was disappointed with what she saw. Just piles upon piles of dusty old tomes, not even organised in any way. Harry felt her dismay and frowned too. How in the name of Merlin was he supposed to find books on either subject like that?

_A little help here? _He called to Elena. _After absorbing thousands of minds, you've got to be able to at least do __**something**__._

_**Don't test me, mortal, **_the vampire snapped. There was silence for a few moments, before she sheepishly amended, _**Let me take over. I can still access the magical reserves of my poor, slumbering body. **_

_I'm not a sharing person, _Harry warned. _If you do something strange… _For some reason, Elena burst out laughing, a screeching, ear-wincing laugh that made him grit his teeth. _**Ah, strange, **_she snickered. _**Strange strange strange. Court of the Strange. **_

_You have issues, _he told her, but relinquished control on his body anyway. It felt more than disturbing watching his body do things that he knew _he _couldn't do, but he endured it. He trusted Elena- after all, he wasn't dead from her doing yet. _**You are too beautiful to die, **_she told him swiftly, as he felt her spread her mind over the bookstore, tendrils of it tapping through the books, looking for the ones they needed. He rolled his eyes. She always went on about his beauty with the zeal of a religious fanatic, worshipping it, cradling it. _**Accio Lord Hans' Theorem, Obsolete wands: Guide to wandless magic, Magic and your body, Prankster's guide: Hexes, jinxes and potions. **_

_I never realised I needed that last one, _Harry said dryly, half-amused. _And we need it because…? _

_**We can test them out on your brother, **_Elena offered, catching the books neatly before they could slam into her- _his _arms. _**Plus you could do with a few light-hearted spells. **_

_Says the person who feeds me minds full of nothing but dark spells, _he retorted, pushing himself back to gain control of his body. He sighed quietly as he twitched a finger. Things only felt right when he could actually move his limbs. He had no idea how Elena could stand being a disembodied mind.

_We are __**not **__testing them out on Kieran, _Harry eyed the small black book dubiously, wondering if Elena would squeeze his mind painfully again if he refused to buy it. _**Don't even think about it, **_she warned. He sighed. He was buying it after all. He felt a little unease as he realised he was being _manipulated _by a mind, but pushed it out of his head. Walking up to the counter, he beamed at the old man, hoping that the dimpled smile would distract him from the strange choice of books.

'Hello Mistah,' his eyes friendly and, most importantly, wide and trusting. 'I'm getting books for Mummy's birthday!' The man's grizzled features melted into a fond smile as he tousled the little boy's hair.

'Okay then, that will be five galleons for the lot,' he put the three books into a brown paper bag. _**Three galleons, **_Elena told him. Harry immediately looked chagrined as he peered into the little money bag, his lips puckering in dismay.

'I only have three galleons,' Harry pulled out three golden coins from the large pile and showed them to the storekeeper. Tears began to gather at the edge of his eyes. 'Oh no, I can't get a good birthday present for Mummy…'

As Harry looked up at the man with sparkling emerald eyes, tears threatening to burst forth, the man melted into a puddle and took the three galleons and pushed the bag to Harry.

'Eh, don't tell anyone about this,' the storekeeper said, wiping his own eyes. 'Be kind to yer Mum while ye can. Merlin knows, I didn't,' Harry nodded solemnly, smiling happily at the man. 'I promise I will. Thanks so much, Mistah!'

As he skipped merrily out of the store, he snickered to himself. _He fell for it, hook, line and sinker._

_**I've created a monster, **_Elena said proudly, golden eyes light and happy. Harry merely laughed at her, not ashamed of being called a monster. _Monstrous Harry, _he thought to himself. _It has a nice ring to it. _

The three-year-old with the minds of people more than ten times his age walked down the streets of Diagon Alley with an almost eerie grace, the dark mind of a vampire instructing his movement. And all around him, the people crooned: _What a beautiful, beautiful child. _

* * *

'It is daring of you to see an audience with me, Kelda,' Elena said coolly, her bone-white mask upon her face again. When she wore the mask, she wasn't a vampire, a blood-child, or Harry's whimsical Elena. She was the leader of her Court of the Strange. _Masks upon masks, _she smiled to herself, her mask smiling with her. _And this is the most beautiful mask of all. _

'Perhaps it is, vampire, but we must know,' the one called Kelda was strong, not bowing her head or submitting to the claws of insanity that gripped at her mind. 'Why are you protecting our Archon? Why are you corrupting him?' Elena frowned behind her mask. She wasn't corrupting her angelic mortal, she was merely… instructing.

'Your Archon is beautiful, _dragonista. _And who are you to keep beautiful children away from me?' The dragonista bared her teeth at the vampire blood-child, the uncontrollable rage seeking to _crush_, to _overwhelm. _How _dare _this lowly vampire challenge her claim? How dare she steal their Archon away!

'You are as bad as the elves with beauty, immortal,' she said quietly, seeking to placate. The dragonista wasn't going get the vampire to unhand their Archon with anger. Vampires were proud creatures, proud of their intense beauty and immortality, and the last thing Kelda wanted to do was to offend the vampire before her.

'Take off your mask, immortal,' Kelda beseeched. 'I wish to see your beauty.' Elena raised an eyebrow. Yes, she decided, she wouldn't deny the lowly dragonista before her with her beauty. Afterall, people who didn't have true beauty should at least be allowed to gaze upon it. Grasping the bottom of her grinning mask, she pulled it off.

'A royal vampire is after our Archon? And a seer as well,' she noted, looking at the golden eyes which appeared to have small lines of cracks running over them. Kelda could not deny that the flawless creature before her was indeed beautiful. There was a reason vampires were called 'veelas of the night', with their dark sensuality and wicked allure. And the vampire that corrupted their Archon was a _seer_, and Kelda remembered belatedly that royal vampires who were seers where automatically denied the throne and cast out. _A seer- a symbol of destruction and insanity. _And she had pointed it out.

'My sire was seer,' Elena said quietly. '**Skarab** of the clans Tremere and Releres, cast out for having broken-glass eyes. Disowned by brother Kraven, his beauty despised by all,' she smiled, not a trace of bitterness in her voice, but stated it as if it was a mere fact.

'And as seer, I must share my words with all who do not see,' her golden eyes flicked to Kelda coyly, looking at her from under her long lashes. 'Do _you _seek them?' Kelda nodded, her voice caught in her throat. She knew who she was dealing with now, and regretted ever answering the call. The vampire Elena was known by the magical creatures. She was the dementor of the mind, absorbing mind and knowledge, utterly insane. Kelda laughed bitterly to herself. And she had willing travelled to a mind dementor's domain.

'_The Archon sits quietly in despair,  
__Three sides calling him to be their heir,  
__Don't call too loud or he will tear,  
__And the Court of the Strange will not stay unaware.'_

'The Court of the Strange? What's that?' Elena merely looked at her with the bemused smile of someone who knew something she didn't. Kelda could've smacked herself. No one questioned Seers. And she just did.

'Leave, foolish _dragonista, _and don't call for Elena ever again,' the mind dementor replaced her mask, the impersonal smooth beauty covering her elegant features. 'Because if you do, it will be on much unhappier terms.'

Kelda left and Elena was all alone in her mind once more, listening to the sound of Harry's heartbeat and gentle, sleeping mind. Quietly, she hummed to herself, letting her mind sink into a state of rest.

'The Archon sits quietly in despair, three sides calling him to be their heir. Don't call too loud or he will tear, and the Court of the Strange will not stay unaware.' Elena touched the face of her mask, an elegant finger tracing the curve of it's too- wide smile. She let herself drift out of Harry's mind and looked at him from a distance, her eyes half-lidded in a fond smile.

'_Let tears from your eyes change into a voice of a scythe, let your scythe glow a tarnished silver. Half-circle of punishment will be your weapon, the unassuming sickle of death,_' Elena crooned, letting her eyes shut. And the mind dementor, lover of beauty, sister of insanity, caressed the mind of Kieran Potter, promising him that one day, his blood would run down the walls.

Smiling to herself, Elena fled the undeveloped mind of a normal three-year old into the mind of ten-year-old Nymphadora Tonks.

* * *

_2 years later_

'Headmaster Dumbledore is going to come over today,' Harry said aloud. He felt more comfortable talking to Elena like out loud, not just mentally communicating with what he affectionately called her: The voice in my head. Elena didn't respond. So Mr. Sad had been right all those years ago. She smirked. A five-year-old bodyguard. A brilliant plan, but like all of what she had found out about the rest of Dumbledore's plans, it looked and sounded better on parchment. The vampire seer floated out of his head and sat cross legged at the end of his bed.

_**Don't worry, exquisite boy,**_Elena cooed at him. _**Elena will protect you from evil, ugly old headmasters.**_

'Is he a threat?' Elena shrugged. Could be, could not be. She didn't want to search the old man's mind for answers. She welcomed spontaneity with open arms, and told that to Harry.

'Don't tell him about me,' she ordered, and her powerful boy rolled his eyes, as if to say _are you joking? _

'I'll probably end up in St. Mungos if I told anyone about the voice in my head,' he joked, but Elena's face remained serious. 'Fine, and I never thought I'd say this, but I'll act more like Kieran.' Elena beamed at him and patted him on the head.

'When you wake up my body, I'll turn you straight away,' she promised. Harry grimaced. He did not want to have a fierce debate about his mortality at the moment. Besides, Elena always won. She never gave up. Elena was always trying to give him things; mind, knowledge, power. Plus, she could always out-cute him.

'Anyway, Dumbledore,' her face went back to seriousness, and he resisted the urge to sigh. Lecture-Elena was always hard and demanding, making him recite long, prepared conversations until she thought he sounded convincing. She had managed to unlock his ability for photographic memory, expanding upon his gift for quick memory, so the problem wasn't with memorizing. 'You fail at acting,' she had told him. 'We will work on that.' And work they did.

'Dumbledore is a manipulative old man. He scares me,' Elena said softly. 'I'm not infallible. If he finds about me, it will be very bad,' her cracked golden eyes looked piercingly into his, and he nodded. Harry couldn't help but feel a little scared. He had _always _thought of Elena as omnipotent, annoying, but always _there. _The few times she left him always left him feeling an inexplicable sense of loss.

'I have stolen minds that he has tinkered with. He is so skilled with manipulation that none of his victims know that they were manipulated for their whole life. That is what he plans to do with your _brother,_' Elena scrunched up her face and Harry laughed humourlessly. He didn't understand what grudge Elena held against his brother, but he shared it. Boy-Who-Lived, Saviour of the Wizarding World, defeater of Lord Voldemort… The reason why his father never really paid much attention to him. _"Kieran looks so much like me!" "Lets go, Ki, your brother's reading again." _

_Bitter, bitter, beautiful boy. _Elena smiled a secret smile.

'And that is what he plans to do with you.' Harry's head snapped up in surprise. Him? What would the Headmaster of Hogwarts want to do with _him_? He wasn't the one who was going to kill Voldemort or die trying. And he was glad.

He didn't like to be tied to things that didn't concern him.

'But you won't let him, Harry, because you're _beautiful._' Elena smirked and flipped her golden hair behind her shoulders. 'And you will become more than dangerous,' Harry smiled. Dangerous. It sounded… appealing. And toxic.

'I will become dangerous,' he said softly. 'No one will pity me again, or even think that they can use me.'

'Dumbledore thinks he can have you,' Elena purred, eyes half-lidded in mockery. She leaned in close to him, wrapping an arm around his neck. Harry felt nothing. No warmth from the half-embrace, only a light tingle of the limited magic Elena could do in her form. 'But no one will have you,' Harry smiled back at her, a lazy, languishing smile, out of place on his 'innocent' five-year-old face. 'Our beauty is not to be possessed.'

'Our beauty is not to be possessed,' he echoed, the phrase ringing in his mind. Beauty was his, and his alone. No one in his world was beautiful, not Kieran, not his mother, not his father. No one except Elena. And he remembered what she had crooned to him, so long ago.

'_Only beauties understand each other.'_

He smirked.

'Where shall we go?'

'No where yet, Harry-beauty,' he half-smiled at what she had taken to calling him at times. 'First, we meet Dumbledore,' she told him, golden eyes flashing. 'And when we find out what he wants from us, we leave.'

'Why are we leaving so soon?' Elena shook her head, rapping the side of his head. Harry frowned. She was telling him to think. He gritted his teeth. Dumbledore, from what little information Elena had pushed into his mind, was powerful. And ugly.

'An ugly person who has power is a danger to us,' he recited one of the phrases that Elena had drummed into his mind. The vampire nodded, smiling again and she managed to levitate something from Harry's table. He was a little confused when he took the object and flipped it over in his hands. It was a pure white mask, one of those white opera masks.

'One of the brother masks to the Masks of Tragedy and Comedy,' Elena explained as he examined it. It had furrowed curves for eyebrows, and a mischievous-looking smile. Elena levitated it onto his face, and the five-year-old touched it as it sank into his skin, feeling the tingle of magic across his face.

'That will be the mask you wear with everyone but me,' Elena explained. 'You are beautiful,' he had long grown unabashed when she insisted on telling him that over and over again, 'and you can't afford for people to see our true selves, our inner beauty, for it would blind them and drive them to madness,' Elena looked sad again, and Harry assumed she was thinking of her corporeal body. He knew that she missed it, more than she would let on. Perhaps it was because she didn't have a mask to cover her beauty with.

'Harry!' It was his mother. Both Elena and he remained perfectly still at the shout. Beautiful people did not become startled or wear their emotions on their sleeves or on their flawless faces. 'Time for breakfast! Professor Dumbledore's coming soon, so hurry!' Harry slid off his bed gracefully, raising an eyebrow as Elena made no movement.

'I'll join you when our dearest Dumbledore comes,' she smiled sweetly at him as he shook his head and left, her eyes following his retreating back. 'Go, Mister Mischievous,' she whispered, her eyes dancing with amusement. 'Act while we observe.'

Harry Potter would be molded into her image, Elena decided. And what a _beautiful _and _terrible _image that would be. Elena's smile faded as she let her thoughts wander back to the old Headmaster.

'What a wonderful game of chess we shall play, Albus Dumbledore,' she said aloud, knowing that the only person who could hear her was Harry. 'But I play to win.'

_Elena, Dumbledore's arrived. Kieran's like a hyperactive puppy with the attention. Perhaps we should distract the attention before my dear little brother becomes drunk with it._

The vampire child laughed quietly, closing her eyes and allowing herself to fade from the bedroom. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking through Harry's eyes, focused on his breakfast of pancakes.

_**I'm here, Harry-beauty, **_she assured the five-year-old. Privately, she smiled. The stakes were high, but she was confident she would win. _Let the games begin, Dumbledore, _she thought.

_Let the games begin._

**

* * *

**

Rewrite of Sacrifice. That one sucked, big time. This one is just kind of, well, weird. I just want to make this clear, though:

Elena is not going to end up with Harry. Not a big fan of Harry/OC. :o She's like a poltergeist, except mind-wise. Malicious little bugger.

Lily and James don't abuse Harry. He just resents the fact that they lavish more attention upon Kieran. Harry hates the fact that Kieran gets so much adoration because he's the Boy-Who-Lived. Kieran hates the fact that Harry gets so much adoration because he's cute.

Love goes both ways.

On the other hand: Harry is just a little twisted. Not exactly evil, but a little bit mean or cruel at times.


	2. Court

"_When you look closely people are so **strange** and so complicated that they're actually beautiful."_

_

* * *

_

The boy was sinfully beautiful, there was no denying that. Alluring green eyes with striking strands of gold woven into them, glinting as the bright rays of the sun fell upon them, appraised Albus Dumbledore. Not, he noted, a little disappointed, with reverence or awe. And the power that curled in the space around him- deliciously and enticingly _dark. _The headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry suddenly felt inadequate, and wished he had dressed in finer robes than his royal purple one with lucid green stripes. He shifted uncomfortably as Harry finished his once-over and turned back to his breakfast, glossy coal-black hair falling into his eyes and covering his lightning bolt scar. The action said one thing: _I am not impressed by you._

'Professor Dumbledore!' The headmaster smiled at the Boy-Who-Lived, glad to turn his attention to something other than the brown-haired boy's twin and his unearthly beauty. 'Professor Dumbledore, tell me about Hogwarts!'

Glad for a distraction, Dumbledore eagerly told stories about his esteemed school, cleverly incorporating James' Marauder Days into them. His sky-blue eyes flicked every so often to Kieran's crescent moon scar, until it appeared that he was talking to the scar instead of the boy.

'I never knew my father was a bully,' Harry drawled in the middle of one of his Marauders versus Severus Snape tales. 'Thank you for enlightening me.' Dumbledore blinked. He had never met or heard a five-year-old that talked with the sophistication of what Harry had just said. And James Potter, a bully? There was a deathly silence at the breakfast table, no one knowing what to say.

'Pardon me?'

'And you shouldn't encourage house rivalries like you do, _headmaster_,' Dumbledore caught a swift upward curl of Harry's lips. A smirk! The boy was _smirking _at him. At this point, he almost thought he was talking to a Slytherin or a Malfoy. 'It's just an accident waiting to happen.'

'Harry James Potter!' Lily stood up, flushed, looking with disbelief at her eldest son. Kieran and James had the same slack-jawed expression as they gazed at Harry. 'How dare you disrespect both the Headmaster and your own father! Have you no familial pride?' Harry looked as if he was about to say something, but bit back his tongue. All of them caught the little action.

'What were you going to say?' Now it was James' turn to stand up dangerously, glowering at Harry, the son he had usually ignored. Harry barely gave him a mocking glance, and Dumbledore knew from hours spent teaching a Malfoy, that the look simply meant: _You are inferior. _Where had Harry picked up these mannerisms?

'I was going to say, that with a family like mine, there would be no surprise if I didn't have any familial pride,' Harry said quietly, his emerald eyes gleaming with the threat of a challenge. Dumbledore quickly stood and put a hand on James' shoulder- he knew his ex-student's fiery, explosive temper all too well.

'Now now, James, there's no use being angry at a five-year-old,' he said soothingly. _Even if the five-year-old sounds more like Lucius Malfoy than an innocent toddler. _Kieran was about to open his mouth but shut it quickly as his brother simply looked at him for a moment with bored tolerance, none of the respect that Albus thought someone would look with at the Boy-Who-Lived..

_I own you, _that look seemed to say. _Nothing you say is important. _

Alarm bells started ringing in the elderly headmaster's mind. This was not good. _This _Harry would never stand down and become his brother's shadow, to protect him, to give his own life if necessary. When Dumbledore looked at the five-year-old, all he could see was bewitching beauty and enthralling, dazzling dark power. But a child was a child, and even he had been a child once. He knew how to deal with children; how to control them.

'Well,' Harry said lightly, lustrous forest-green eyes piercing through his brother's hazel ones. Kieran cringed in his seat and squirmed uncomfortably under his brothers gaze, as if afraid that Harry was going to attack him. The alarm bells immediately turned to screeching sirens. 'That went well. If you need me, I will be in my room.'

'Not so fast young man,' James snarled, refusing to obey his old headmaster's urges for him to sit down. 'Professor Dumbledore still wants to talk to you.' Harry looked at said headmaster with aristocratic distaste in his eyes and arched an elegant brow. The headmaster gritted his teeth. Never had a child been so _insolent _to him before! 'To little old Harry Potter?' an insincere smile played about his lips. 'I know all about the family hierarchy, Father dear. Kieran at the top, me at the bottom,' emerald eyes pierced Dumbledore's.

'Go ahead and burden my _little_ brother with the task of saving England and France,' disapproval shone in his eyes. 'henceforth known as _the whole world._' His voice sounded bitter, his tone practically screaming: You're sacrificing my _five-year-old_ brother to save two countries? Bravo, seriously, bravo! 'Again, I will be in my room.' Without a second glance at his family, he disappeared upstairs.

'He's normally such a sweet and charming boy,' Lily said with tears in her eyes. James immediately went over and hugged her. 'I'm so sorry, I'm not sure why he said so many awful things in front of you.'

'It's alright, perhaps young Harry is simply not a morning person,' the headmaster said with forced joviality. To be honest, he was shaken, shaken at the dark power that exuded from the boy, shaken at the way he had looked at him with pureblood arrogance. 'Well Kieran, I suppose it'll just be you and me,' he smiled at Kieran, who beamed up at him. _Not as beautiful as his brother, _Dumbledore thought with a vague sense of disappointment, then caught himself. _That doesn't matter. He is the chosen one._

'Come now,' he ushered Kieran into the sitting room, mind whirling with images of the silent confrontation that he had had with Harry. The boy was wild, his eyes simply screaming "uncontrollable!" But there was a way to control him. There _had _to be. 'We have many things to discuss, my dear boy.'

* * *

'Wonderful,' was the only praise he could wrestle from Elena. Her eyes _glowed _with happiness and a finger flick later, the white mask rose from his face onto the bed. 'One day you won't need the mask,' she told him. 'One day you will sound that powerful naturally. It comes with confidence and power,' she assured him. Harry smiled. 'I must congratulate you on that excellent piece of taunting you did on your brother. Years of crushing and controlling has him under our thumb.' Harry never understood what grudge Elena held against Kieran, but he reveled in it. 'Your made your mother cry, by the way. Nice touch.'

'The mask did make it all easier,' he told her as she resumed her normal position- cross-legged at the foot of his bed. 'But I still don't understand why we made them so angry.' Elena rapped the side of his head again, reminding him to think. _Everything I tell you to do has a reason, _she had told him when she first did the action. _Think._

So Harry thought hard, his mind racing furiously through the undisrupted timeline of Elena's time with him, rushing through the hundreds of phrases she had taught him. He chose the most appropriate phrase. 'Beautiful ones do not wear their emotions on their sleeves,' he decided. 'Throughout that entire clash with Dumbledore, all we did was radiate disapproval, distaste and hostility.' Elena nodded, telling him to continue.

'We were establishing ourselves?' He shook his head before Elena could reply. 'No, we kept our barriers up.' Elena wouldn't just make him do something rash to prove something to Dumbledore. He knew that she preferred to let people underestimate them. _Let yourself just become a pretty face, _she had instructed. _Someone who likes books. Harmless. _And he had. But Elena had taught him to fight viciously. She was a harsh taskmistress. She made him run laps around Potter Manor where they had moved after the reporters had mobbed their Godric's Hollow home. She had trained him in something she had called "parkour" and what _he _had called "flinging yourself off a building repeatedly while under a disillusionment charm".

And then she had told him to be 'harmless'.

_Think, Harry, think. She won't tell you anything until you pass this test. Test? _Harry grinned. _Test._

'We were testing him, seeing his reactions,' he looked sneakily at Elena. 'Did he pass or fail?'

Elena smiled. 'It was an observation test. I've found out that he is completely colour-blind,' Harry snickered as he remembered the atrocity that was Dumbledore's robes, 'and that his preferred method of action is to sit back until the situation becomes threatening. That is not a good plan of action,' Elena said seriously. 'Trust me,' she smirked. 'I absorbed a commander's mind.'

'But he's the commander of the light side,' he told her, frowning. 'That can't bode well for them.' Having a commander that preferred to act only when everything became dire was indeed bad.

'No, it won't,' she agreed. 'Which is precisely why we are joining the grey side for as long as we can. Leave the light and dark to battle it out.' Her eyes became dreamy, the spider web-thin lines becoming more pronounced. 'Before light and dark, there was nothing. Two halves mixed together. Elegant grey.'

'And if grey fails us, we'll become dark,' she told Harry. 'Righteous anger is ugly, and that is all that the light has,' she said sadly. 'I can't abide ugliness.'

Harry nodded, quietly agreeing with her. Anger could only last for so long before fizzling out anyway. 'Are we going to fling ourselves off anymore buildings today?' Before Elena could answer, there were a series of knocks at the door. '_Dumbledore,' _Elena hissed. They leapt into action immediately, Harry grabbing at the mask which melded with his face once more, presenting an apathetic mask to the world, save for slight inflections of dislike, and Elena comfortably seeing through his eyes again. He summoned the book on his desk and decided it would do. It was just another potions book.

The door opened before he could say enter, earning Albus Dumbledore minus points. _Rude, _they both thought simultaneously. Harry groaned mentally. _I'm becoming too like you, _he told Elena.

_**That's good. That means you are very close to perfection. **_

'Harry, my dear boy,' _**We have to do something about your name. We need a formal version of it. **_Harry mentally agreed. He didn't want people like Dumbledore calling him such a familiar name. 'How are things with your brother?'

Harry smiled bitterly at Dumbledore behind his mask. It always came down to Kieran. Always. 'He's alright,' he said dispassionately. 'He stays out of my way.' Dumbledore looked amused.

'The quirks of sibling rivalry,' his eyes misted over in nostalgia, a faraway expression drifting in place. Harry looked blankly at him and Dumbledore shook himself out of his daze. 'Having the Boy-Who-Lived for a brother must be very hard.' Elena cackled in his mind, her harsh ringing laughter twining with his own, startling Dumbledore.

'You don't know what you're talking about,' Harry told him, a humourless smile on his lips. _**I hate him, **_Elena said quietly. Dumbledore regarded him for a moment. 'Then explain to me how it feels,' the headmaster said gently.

"**_That most foul of human beings, the fanatic, is deluded by the belief that he or she can change the course of events. Such a maniacal ego can thus easily rationalize sacrificing other human beings to his or her goals."* _**She quoted. _**He wants to sacrifice you.**_

_It is not going to happen, I won't allow it. _

'I have no need to explain anything to you, headmaster,' Harry said with as much politeness as he could summon. 'Kieran and I don't communicate enough to fuel any sort of feeling.'

'But you live under the same roof. Come now Harry,' _**We **__will __**do something about that name. **_Harry agreed. Someone who had plans to use him would not address him with such familiarity. 'Surely you feel something for your _little _brother?'

'In his world, his brother is our father. In _my _world, any relatives I might have are made of paper and bound in leather.' He gestured at the potions text in his lap. 'They are much more engaging companions.'

'You should spend more time with your brother while you can,' Dumbledore said quietly. 'I don't believe that Lord Voldemort is completely gone. When he returns, Kieran and you must dedicate yourselves to the war efforts, and you might not see much of him.'

_**Presumptuous, sacrificial mortal! **_

'_Must?_' Harry said icily, lips curving upwards. '_Must _dedicate ourselves?' Eyes hooded and exuding distaste, he challenged Dumbledore. 'Conscription does not exist yet, Headmaster.' Dumbledore blinked dumbly, as if a kitten had just roared at him.

'But surely you want to save all the poor children who might die at Voldemort's hand?' Harry pretended to think about it for a while, before snapping his eyes back to Dumbledore's.

'No,' he smiled, his hands clasped together in a sign of decision. 'No one hails the soldiers, only the hero. Kieran can fight for himself.'

'It is very selfish of you to say that, Harry,' Dumbledore said gravely, his eyes sorrowful. _Sorrowful. That I'm not going to a meek little lamb and allow my head to be chopped off as sacrifice. '_But someone has to protect your little brother until he can save the world-'

'Otherwise known as _two countries,_' he interrupted. _**They could just hire some mercenaries from China, **_Elena agreed. _**They are very formidable fighters. **_Harry blinked. _How did you know that? Their magical community is the most elusiv- __**actually**__, I don't want to know, _and he grimaced. Elena hummed happily to herself, murmuring something about very nourishing and delicious minds.

'But Kieran has many enemies,' _**including us. **_'and so he needs to be protected. For some reason, Dumbledore looked at him intently, as if expecting him to volunteer. _Oh Merlin, _Harry realised, _he __**is **__expecting me to volunteer. _Elena nodded smugly. _Is he serious? _

'Are you serious?' he asked aloud. _**Now, talk about Kieran's age, not the protection. That's too much. **_'Kieran's only five-years-old and he has _enemies_? I never realised my brother was so offensive.' He smirked. Kieran _could _have the potential to gain many enemies. He was James' twin; hotheaded, quick to flare up in a temper, and more importantly, thought he was the best thing to exist since pepper-up potion.

'Death eaters, Harry, death eaters and their children.' Dumbledore took off his half-moon glasses and his sky-blue eyes pierced Harry's. The weary sky-blue orbs rested on the boy's for a full moment blinded by his flawlessness and dark beauty. Dumbledore swallowed and looked away. 'Which is why Kieran needs a bodyguard. I was thinking that you, as his brother, would care for his safety.' Harry looked at him pityingly, as per Elena's instructions. _You must be stupid, _he made the look say. 'I was thinking that perhaps you would allow me to train you to become his guard, his shadow. To fight for him when he cannot.' Dumbledore swallowed. 'I ask you to sacrifice yourself for your brother.'

_**He's an idiot, **_Elena observed dispassionately. _**And I thought a master of manipulation like he would be smart.**_

'You could always hire an Auror to follow him around every day,' Harry said coolly, radiating distaste and incredulity instead of anger. 'If you are expecting me to throw my life away for the sole purpose of protecting my brother so he can be a _hero_, you overestimate the boundaries my honourability and fraternal love.'

Dumbledore looked at him incredulously and suddenly, Harry felt a probing sensation at his head. Within a few seconds, Harry was off the bed, fists clenched and eyes wide and angry, Elena forcibly taking over his body, calming his mind down from the shock. Even with mind shields, it was uncomfortable for a mind to experience intrusion. Harry felt shell-shocked, his mind numb and unresponsive for the first time in his short life.

'How dare you use legilimency on me, a _child_,' Elena hissed in his voice. 'My mind is not a book for you to read. I thought you actually required me for a purpose other than confirming that my brother was infinitely more important than me.' Elena made his eyes half hooded and looked away sadly, her look of mock-sadness more efficient than his would ever be. 'Think me naïve, Albus Dumbledore.'

'But I'm not naïve enough to forgive your attempted intrusion,' Elena let artificial sadness well up inside enough to produce a lone tear to slide down his cheek. 'I don't feel safe in this house anymore.'

Without waiting for Dumbledore to do anything, she flung his body out of the open window, managing to cling to the railings of the small balcony on the second level of the house before doing a drop and forward roll. Before the Headmaster could shout out to them, Elena disapparated through the wards with the soft crack of a house elf.

_**Don't worry, Harry-beauty, **_she coaxed him. _**He didn't enter your mind. It was just a little prod. Elena will take care of you. No one will touch your mind but me. **_

_I pray to Elena my soul to keep,_

_Kiss my mind and lay me to sleep.*_

* * *

'Pup? Why are you here?' Sirius Black became increasingly more alarmed as he looked at his favourite godson's tear-streaked face as he stood in the luxurious grounds of Black Mansion alone. His godson looked vulnerable and shocked, as if something had hurt him deeply. 'Why are you crying? Who hurt you?'

'Dumbledore,' was the only thing that Harry would say in his soft, childish voice. 'Dumbledore.' The five-year-old looked up with his big emerald eyes, as if full of confidence that he could do anything, even save the world. Sirius melted.

'Oh, Harry,' he whispered, as he crushed the little boy to his chest, his heart breaking. He kept his anguish in control. It wouldn't do to lose his temper in front of the crying child and terrify him more. 'Hush now, I'll put you to bed and I'll call James-'

'No!' Sirius was startled as tiny fists grasped his robes tightly. 'No!'

'But they have to know that you're alright, they're probably worried sick,' he said gently to his godson. Harry shook his head, his face scrunched up, more tears running down his cheeks.

'No,' he repeated. 'They'll take me back, I'm not safe there.' Sirius' eyes widened. Not safe? At _home_? 'What do you mean, you're not safe there?' he demanded. 'My dark angel should feel in his own home.' Harry still shook his head vehemently as Sirius carried him up the stairs, eyes impossibly wide and beseeching.

'Don't let them take me away,' he whispered. Immediately, all coherent thoughts of returning Harry to Potter Manor dissolved to be replaced by concern. 'I won't let them take you away,' Sirius promised, hugging his godson fiercely to his chest. 'You're my favourite and Remus' too. I'll call him here, if that's alright with you?' The raven-haired boy nodded slowly. 'I won't let anyone hurt you here, I promise.'

'With all your heart?' Sirius nodded. 'And mind?'

'And soul,' he assured the five-year-old. Harry beamed at his godfather through his tears, and that sight alone could have gotten him to agree to anything his little dark angel demanded of him. He was simply too _adorable. _And Sirius Black vowed to destroy the one who had made his godson cry.

* * *

'The Black family is the richest one In Europe,' was the first thing Elena told Harry, when Sirius had left the room. She sat at the end of the king-sized bed like she always did back in Potter Manor. 'They have shares in almost every European country and have staged hundreds of hostile takeovers.' He blinked, confused.

'They take over countries?' Elena rolled her eyes at him.

'They take over _companies_,' she explained. 'Each member of the Black family undertakes formal training in finance and politics. They dabble heavily in muggle industries as well as magical ones, which is why they are the wealthiest.'

'I can't imagine Sirius as a financial genius,' Harry snickered at the thought of a spectacle-wearing Sirius in a grey suit, discussing numbers with goblins.

'Well, he isn't,' Elena grumbled. 'The last true Black genius died in-' She stiffened and quickly changed the subject. Harry looked at her curiously, but decided not to push the matter. Elena would tell him if she thought it was necessary. If she didn't, _then _he'd push. 'Have you any ideas for a name?' Harry narrowed his eyes. He knew she was changing the subject. He resisted the urge to shrug; Elena was annoyingly adamant about not doing it. He scrunched up his face the way she did and shook his head.

'We-e-_ell_,' she drawled, 'do you want to remain with Harry for short?' He nodded. Someone had once told him that 'harry' actually meant disturb or distress, and it made him laugh. When people called him Harry, they were disturbing him.

'Harold or Harrison could work,' he told her, but she merely frowned at him. 'Unoriginal.'

He grimaced as well. He did _not _like the name Harold. It sounded inelegant. 'It might be pushing the boundaries of Harry a little, but Hadrian could work,' the golden-eyed vampire tapped her chin thoughtfully. 'Hadrius!' Her eyes lit up happily. 'Hadrius!' she repeated, as if daring him to disagree with her. 'Hadrian means dark one,' she held out a shimmering hand to touch his hair.

'It suits me, in more ways than one, hmm?' They both laughed quietly. Neither of them could bring themselves to join the light. His power was definitely dark, they had deduced, and the light would sooner kill him than let him join their side. The light blinded your eyes before you could see if it was beautiful. Dumbledore blinded your mind before you could see the world for yourself. Harry gritted his teeth. _Dumbledore._

'Harry,' he looked up, the serious tone of Elena's voice surprising him. He met her broken eyes, finding himself reflected in each and every one of the cracked pieces of gold. 'Have you ever thought of just… leaving for a while? And returning afterwards?'

Elena looked impassive as the door opened quietly, her eyes following Harry's other godfather, Remus Lupin, as he walked to sit next to Harry. 'Hello, cub,' the werewolf said gently.

'Hi Uncle Remus.' Harry let his legs dangle off the edge of the bed limply, head looking down. 'How have you been?'

'I've been alright, cub, but I'm not sure if you have been,' Remus placed a hand on Harry's head, weaving his fingers through the artistically messy hair. Harry sneaked a look at Elena to peek at her expression; she hated it when people touched him. _You don't know where their hands have been, _she had said. But Elena had a strange expression on her face, one he couldn't exactly define. It looked… It looked a little like-

_longing._

'Cub?'

_Speak for me Elena, _he suddenly felt tired. Dumbledore, Kieran, James and that look of longing- _please._

'It was the fish,' Elena said lowly, and even he was surprised and confused, let alone his godfather. _Fish? _'I asked if we could try having fish for dinner, because it was good for the brain, but Kieran said he didn't like it, and that was the end of that. I am nothing next to him,' Elena whispered. Harry shivered. It was eerie listening to someone spill out his thoughts in his voice. 'I don't exist in mummy and daddy's eyes.'

'Of course you exist, Harry,' but Remus sounded faraway and awestruck, blinded by his godson's exquisite looks. _**No one can see pass our beauty, **_Elena said mournfully to him, her fists clenched. _**Dazzled, stunned, blinded, bewitched, enthralled by it, but no one can look away from or through it.**_

'Professor Dumbledore came today,' Elena whispered to Remus as if she was telling a secret, 'and I could see in his eyes that only Kieran exists. And then he-' Elena bit _his _lip and turned away. Each and every one of her actions were perfectly measured, calculated, aiming for maximum sympathetic outrage. It was an art, Harry realised, and he admired her for it more than she knew. _Manipulation with gestures and feelings, instead of words. _

'And then he what, cub? Don't worry, you can tell me,' Remus tried to coax the truth out, but Elena drew the carrot of information just out of reach, but still dangling tantalizingly in front of him. 'He-'

'I can't help you unless you tell me,' Remus jumped as Elena grasped his arm. 'Would you really help me,' she asked with a tone of desperation in _his _voice, 'or would just tell me it's nothing, tell me that the great Albus Dumbledore would never use legilimency on me because he's so _great _and a-'

'Dumbledore used _legilimency _on you?!' Remus roared, throwing his arms up. '_SIRIUS ORION BLACK, _get up here _now_! We need to plan Dumbledore's funeral!'

_**Do they mean that? **_Elena wondered idly. Harry rolled his eyes.

_They're joking. If Albus Dumbledore does have a funeral, the day it was on would probably be a national holiday, and people would go through five hours of silence._

Sirius rushed into the room bewildered, his eyes settling on his best friend. 'Why? Is he dead?'

'He's going to be, when I get through with him…' His godfather growled under his breath, muttering idle death threats. Elena, being Elena, happily discussed making some of his threats happen on Kieran.

_Don't even think about it, _he warned Elena. _The Wizarding world might just have a collective mental breakdown. _

'What did he do?' Sirius scratched his head and Elena looked at him, fascinated. Harry groaned. No matter how much he convinced her, she was determined that Sirius was actually half-dog.

'He used legilimency on _our godson!_'

_**The half-dog's reaction is very amusing, **_Elena noted as she watched Sirius Black, for lack of a better term, _freak out. __**I would like to absorb his mind one day. He really is very angry.**_

_Legilimency hurt, _Harry said waspishly. _**Oh don't be silly, **_Elena chided. _**It was just your country's strongest wizard using legilimens on you. **_He rolled his eyes but couldn't help laughing as Sirius began to kick the objects in the room and stubbed his toe on the cupboard. _It was worth it, though._

'Padfoot,' Remus snapped sharply. 'Get a hold of yourself.' Sirius sheepishly sidled over to sit on the other side of Harry, mumbling apologies. Remus patted Harry's head. The real Harry winced as he saw the expression of discomfort flit across his face- Elena did not like or really even tolerate touching unless she allowed it. 'We're going to decide what to do about this,' the werewolf paused and shook his head. 'This is going to be a very sensitive matter… I know that I can't possibly leave you with James anymore.'

'Huh? James is his _dad, _Moony. Why can't he stay with James?' Sirius demanded, and Remus smiled apologetically at - _Harrlena, _Harry decided to call her, and stood up.

'Come on Padfoot, Harry has told me many things,' Remus winced. 'Most of them rather… disturbing.'

Elena floated out of Harry's body, letting his mind snap back like a drawn out elastic band.

'That was funny,' he told her as she sprawled out at the end of the large bed. 'What do you expect is going to happen?' Elena merely tilted her head and looked at him, her golden eyes sparkling.

'What do _you _think?'

* * *

_1 month later_

'Court is in session.'

Elena smiled to herself, eyes bemused. A slender finger caressed her cupid bow lips as she eyed Dumbledore. 'I don't like you,' she cooed at him, laughing as _her _Harry shot her an amused look. 'I don't like you at all, Albus Dumbledore.' Her eyes conveyed a message that no one could see: _He is mine._

Her golden eyes danced as the Prosecutor stood, her mind stealing over to his and giving it a caress. She nodded to herself. He was adequate for what was required for him. _Pieter Bullman, _she smiled. _Your mind will be mine when your usefulness runs out._

'Your worships,' he bowed to the congregation of Wizengamot, 'you are asked here today to deal with an allegation of illegal use of legilimency on a five-year-old child, Harry James Potter, by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards.' There were gasps around the packed room, to Elena's satisfaction. She tugged at Harry's raven locks. _**I don't want to pressure you, **_she told him, _**but do you agree? **_

Her plan was a risky one, but she was confident that it would succeed. All she needed now was her host's permission. She would stick with him through either of his decisions, though she suspected that he would agree with her. _After all, _she thought with an indulgent smile, _I molded him in my image. _She looked at him searchingly, but could see no emotion. Just the detached beauty of his mask. Then he nodded once, and she was free, dashing from mind to mind, forcing her distaste for the elderly headmaster onto them. Leaving imprinted commands took a lot of time, especially if these people would override them with their own thoughts.

'In the morning of the 12th of June, Albus Dumbledore allegedly used legilimency on Harry Potter, brother of Kieran Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived.' Elena frowned, but allowed it to pass. _**We can always use it to fuel our argument later, **_she assured Harry. She could feel the simmering emotion of quiet anger behind his mask. _**Let it pass for now. **_

'Shocked by the intrusion, Harry Potter displayed accidental magic and apparated to Black Manor, the home of his godfather, Auror Sirius Orion Black. Auror Black then called upon Remus Lupin, Harry Potter's second godfather, who was informed by Harry Potter about the sequence of events. I shall call upon my first witness, Sirius Orion Black as my witness, your worships.'

Elena watched through the rheumy eyes of an elderly witch as Sirius entered the courtroom with the Court Security Wizard.

'I, Sirius Orion Black, do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,' Sirius finished.

Amelia Bones nodded at him. 'You may seated with the court's permission. Are you willing to testify under the influence of Veritaserum?' Sirius hesitated for a moment, but nodded.

'I am willing.'

The Court potions master hurried over and dripped three drops of the clear liquid on Sirius' tongue. Elena switched to another mind. Harry remained impervious to the pitying glances thrown at him.

'What is your name?'

'Sirius Orion Black.'

'Describe the events that happened.'

'I was just heading out to James' house to visit, when Harry appeared. He was crying, and he looked so shocked; I was scared something had happened at his home,' Sirius shuddered. Elena regarded the half-man half-dog for a while, feeling-

_I'm hungry._

In a flash of irritation, she zipped in and out of minds, disregarding the discomfort of her victims who felt like they were coming down with a severe case of headcold. Elena's golden eyes swept across the court room, landing on a little boy that looked around Harry's age. She drifted over to him and cooed.

_**Hello little mortal, Elena's come to feed.**_

With that, she leeched onto his mind, sucking his mind essence; particularly the part that controlled and built up magic reserves. _So tasty, magical essence, _she crooned happily. The boy would be only barely better than a squib- Elena would leave him that much. She laughed in delight as she discovered his name.

_Longbottom! _Elena cackled to herself as she discovered the boy's name. _Your family seems to pull me towards you. _She looked dismissively at his grandmother; her mind was too old and fatigued to even tempt her.

_Elena. _The vampire's head snapped up from the mind essence she was feeding on. _Elena. _

_**Haarrry, **_she purred, _**shouldn't you know better than to interrupt me while I'm feeding?**_

_I do know better, but I __**do **__mind when you feed on a child. It's disturbing, _Harry said sharply.

_**Children should be seen and fed on, not heard. **_Elena left the little boy and floated over to _her _little one and sitting on his head, her legs resting on the back of his chair.

_Sirius finished about 20 minutes ago. Dumbledore has been gently prodding my mind for the past 10 minutes. Can we get rid of that? _Harry pleaded, rubbing his head. Elena's eyes narrowed. How _dare _he play with _her _Harry-beauty's mind? Only she had the right to.

_**I'll kill him, **_she promised. _**Jump up and shout when the next one comes; I'll control you.**_

She didn't have to wait long.

'Ow!' Everyone turned to look at him, and he swallowed as Elena took over his body. 'He's doing it again,' she said, pointing childishly at the imposing form of Albus Dumbledore. _Wearing robes that don't make you want to scrub your eyes out, _he noted thankfully.

'What is he doing, Harry?' Amelia Bones looked stern, unhappy at the interruption but obliged to ask all the same. Elena made him sniffle, as if he was about to cry, earning him the adoration of most of the courtroom and mollifying Bones. 'He keeps poking my mind with his!'

'Albus Dumbledore!' Bones snapped, her eyes flaring. 'You have been taken to court for using legilimency on a child, and you _dare _to use it again on the same child in _this courtroom_?' She waved away Dumbledore's protests. 'Rest assured that I will count this against your case.'

_**Look at your parents with their eyes full of hatred and fear, **_Elena pulled his thoughts from Dumbledore and redirected images of his parents back at him. He looked at them unfeelingly, as if they were strangers and not his parents. Then again, they had been little more than strangers for the past five years of his life. _I am nobody's child._

_**You are mine, **_Elena told him. Then she began to cry, to the dismay of the courtroom.

'Why are you crying?' Bones asked gently. 'Is he doing it again?' Elena shook her head.

'I'm going to die,' she said softly. Harry marveled at her ability to play the entirety of Wizengamot like a fiddle. All of them were leaning forward in their seats. 'I'm going to die.'

'Why are you going to die?'

'I can feel it,' she whispered, waving an arm at the light side of the court room, a finger extended and pointing at James and Lily Potter. _Parents dear, _Harry smiled in cruel amusement. 'My own parents want me to die.'

Elena wept, and the world crawled to her like a slave seeking approval from his master.

'Madam Bones, if I may say something?'

'The floor recognizes Sirius Black,' Bones nodded.

'Under no circumstance will I leave Harry with them,' Sirius snapped angrily. 'From what Harry has told me, Kieran is practically treated as an only child. James is my best friend, and he hasn't even talked to me about Harry even once. Harry, tell them,' he waved at the Wizengamot's general direction, 'what you told me when we talked.'

'Mum looks at me like I'm a tool to be used. Dad doesn't even look at me anymore,' she whispered softly. 'And the way Professor Dumbledore looks at me is the worst.'

_**Harry? Any suggestions? **_He blinked.

_Pardon me?_

'How does he look at you?'

_**How does he look at you? **_Elena echoed. He felt her hand back his body to him, and he began to slowly panic.

'He looks at me like-' his voice caught in his throat as Elena began sending images of Dumbledore gazing at him, a strange and indiscernible expression in his blue eyes. _**Like he wants to eat you, **_Elena offered. _**And cook you in sweet, sweet tartar sauce. **_'Like he wants to control me,' he said aloud.

'I was thinking that perhaps you would allow me to train you to become his guard, his shadow. To fight for him when he cannot. I ask you to sacrifice yourself for your brother,' Elena said, taking over his body without so much as a request. _**My apologies, **_she offered, sensing his displeasure. _**I decided to seize the moment.**_

'What was that?' Bones said sharply, her eyes wide. 'What did you just say?'

'That was what Dumbledore told, no_, ordered _me to be,' she whispered deceptively, but Harry could feel her amusement. He was only mildly disturbed that he shared in it. 'And when I said no, he attacked and ravaged my mind.' Harry smiled to himself. Elena knew what she was doing when she chose those words. It made the whole thing seem much more macabre and inspired much more revulsion.

'With the court's permission, Madam Bones, I would like to remove Harry from his _neglectful _home, and, if he agrees,' Sirius sneaked a look at his godson, 'I would like to adopt him into the Black family and make him my _heir_.'

There was an instant outrage- James calling his own best friend a traitor, Lily looking numbly at him, as if she couldn't believe that he was her _son._ And Elena? Elena merely smiled as if that this was all a part of her plan.

_Is it? _He asked, interested.

_**I have no desire of sleeping somewhere cold tonight. **_Harry raised an eyebrow but made no comment, waiting patiently for the clamor to stop. _**Don't be naïve, beautiful boy. The world will never stop clamoring for us. **_

_Because we're beautiful?_

_**Beauty is power.**_

_And powerful?_

_**Yes. **_

'I really cannot allow this,' Dumbledore said, his eyes piercing and glittering with emotion. 'I cannot allow this,' he announced, to the joint amusement of Harry and Elena. The shouts stopped immediately, making Elena frown. _**Your body is yours now.**_

'With all due respect, sir, we are discussing the issue of my life,' He said sharply, slipping into what he called his _dangerous and powerful _mask. 'And my life does not concern or involve your say in it.' He turned to Sirius. 'I would like to be a Black,' he said quietly. 'Especially if being a Potter means that I would have to allow Headmaster Dumbledore attacking my mind.'

'Look here young man,' James roared, standing and jabbing an accusing finger at Harry. 'I am your _father_ and-'

'You certainly haven't acted like one lately, _father dear_,' he purred. _I seriously am becoming more like you, _he told the golden-eyed vampire.

_**Like I said before, it only brings you closer to perfection, **_she smirked in reply, before moving to sit on the bald head of a man a few rows down.

'How dare you.' It was Lily who stood up this time, Harry noted interestedly. What did she have to say to him? 'The Headmaster and I have planned your training for a long time; you should feel _privileged _that you can help your _twin brother_ in some way.'

'Privileged?' Harry laughed aloud, a high and delighted childish almost-giggle, reminding the entire court that he was, in fact, five-years-old. '_Privileged. _Do you know what _he_,' Harry gestured at Dumbledore, 'was asking of me? I ask you to sacrifice yourself for your brother,' he quoted. 'Sacrifice.' He turned and looked directly into the scared hazel eyes of his twin brother.

'Kieran,' he said deceptively gently, 'would you like it if I was gone _forever_? So you could have our parents to yourself? You already have all their love and attention, I know that. But you wouldn't have to see me every morning and be reminded of my existence.' He smiled. 'Would you like that?' And slowly, slowly, a smile spread over Kieran's face and he nodded. The smile dropped off Harry's face, leaving behind a blank canvas of dark beauty that made quite a few sigh in delight.

'You ask me to sacrifice my life for him,' he said tonelessly. 'A brother who would delight in the fact that he would become an only child. Who would not appreciate any sacrifice I would make on his behalf.' _**Who is not beautiful, **_Elena added. _**Who will never make a good leader, because he is spineless and terrified by you. Who is shortsighted and unloving. No one should have to sacrifice for him, especially not you.**_

'That is why it's called _sacrifice, _Harry. Kieran must-' Lily's face _glowed, _and he looked away, finally disgusted, refusing to listen anymore.

'Like I said to Dumbledore, get a freaking auror,' he told her, his heart bitter and revolted. He barely noticed when a petite twenty-something woman stood, disturbed by the fact Elena had not reprimanded him for his "unbeautiful abuse of the English language". _Elena? _The vampire didn't answer, so he peered down from his secluded box and froze. She was crying.

_You're crying, _he said numbly. Her golden eyes locked on his, and she made no move to wipe them away, as if defiantly proud of them. He was at a loss. Kieran never cried, because there was no reason to, and _he _never cried because he had Elena. Who told him he was beautiful everyday. Who trained him. Who was his friend and mentor.

He suddenly felt drained.

'Stop,' he said, halting the woman in her passionate speech. 'We haven't come here to argue about my family. I just wish to leave the house of someone who looks at me like a sacrificial lamb and have a restraining order against Dumbledore,' he said quietly. He looked at the woman whose speech he didn't hear a word of. 'Thank you. She wanted to sacrifice her own child for another, so she is no longer a mother in my eyes.' He looked at Sirius. 'I just want to go home.' His gaze strayed to Elena once more and rubbed his scar. '_Please._'

He only had to look at Madam Bones for a few moments pleadingly to get her nod, and the case was over in 10 minutes. He got his restraining order against Dumbledore; the elderly Headmaster could only approach him for educational purposes, not that he would pay any attention to it, Harry thought tiredly. The woman who had spoke for him turned out to be the Head of the magical children welfare department, and ruled that he was to go to Sirius, but also demanded _half _of the Potter inheritance to be given to him on the spot. _It's not about the money, _he wanted to growl, but he was too tired to argue. Elena had floated back into his mind and stayed silent, even when he called her name.

'Preposterous-'

'The Black vaults have more than enough! We don't need it.'

'This is not about the money,' the young woman said. Harry agreed heartily with her, but he didn't understand why she still demanded it. 'This is about _justice,_' she said. 'This is about _child neglect._' _You're not getting a cut from it, _Harry thought at her.

And that shut everyone up.

'Harry? Harry, it's time to go.'

'Sirius?'

'Yes, Harry?'

'I…' he pressed a hand to his scar and rubbed it. 'I don't want to be _Harry _anymore.' Sirius chuckled as he steered Harry away from a throng of reporters, but his laughter had a bit of a sympathetic edge. _He understands, I think, _Harry thought to himself, _that need to be completely different. _

'Then who do you want to be, pup?'

'Hadrius,' he smiled. Sirius tousled his hair.

'Hadrius _Black _it is, then.'

Restraining order and half the Potter fortune within his grasp, and it was just _too _perfect, something had to come along and destroy it-

_**Harry, promise to me that you'll help me do something. **_Harry didn't pause from his steady walk away from the courtroom, throwing off the looks of sheer _hatred _that he could feel coming away from his family. There was an edge of _something _to Elena's almost-plea that made him think: _there is something I'm missing, don't trust her._

He could sense her approval from his thinking of that.

_Will it involve mass destruction? Countries dying from its people being mentally retarded? _He paused. _Will it involve my brother having a miserable existence?_

_**No, no and yes.**_

_Good. I promise to help you, _he thought back savagely. When Elena had suggested that they break darling Kieran in more ways than one, he found himself warming up to the idea but there was this sense of _something_ that accompanied it, and that alone had compelled him to tell her 'no'. And it was gone, and he was just so _free. _In all legal senses, he didn't have a brother anymore.

All the brotherly ties that had chained him had rusted and dissolved into unfeeling little piles of powder because of the smile and the nod and-

_I hate him._

_**Hate can be a beautiful thing. Our kind of beauty; passionate in its darkness, cold and unbound. It wants for nothing, does not land you with responsibility and chains like love does.**_

_Is it better to hate than to love?_

* * *

Elena curled up into a ball in Harry's mind, the barriers that saved him from mental attacks were not comforting as they usually were, but like the walls of a prison: unyielding and offering no escape. Harry's innocent question rang in her mind.

_Is it better to hate than to love?_

Hands touching her, burning her, searing into her, whispering _I love you; I hate you. _She wanted to tell the beautiful child that of course hate was better than love- no one really got hurt by utterly detesting something or someone. _Love hurts and breaks you, _she wanted to say. _Hate merely destroys the person you loathe._

But the words that she had thought at the dragonista Kelda so long ago came floating back to haunt her. _I'm only instructing, not corrupting. I am who I am and he is who he is._

_**That is something that you will have to find out for yourself, **_she told him finally, just as Sirius apparated them both to Black Manor. _**It is not my place to tell you.**_

_Okay then. _

_It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see, _she reminded herself. _Your heart might not beat anymore, but his still exists. _

Elena watched as her beautiful child made an excuse (_I'm so tired…) _and went up to the bedroom. _His _bedroom, Elena thought with relish. _Hadrius Black's bedroom. _Being a Black would get him further than being a Potter ever would. Knowing the Potters, they'd probably deny him from even seeing the galleons he would never be allowed to inherit. Now that Harry had half of the wealth of the Potters- for that, she would have to thank and stay away from the mind of the young woman who had helped, she could See quite a few possibilities for the remaining amount within Kieran's grasp.

None of which boded well.

'Elena?' she blinked. 'What did you want me to help you with?' She took an unneeded deep breath and stepped out of his mind, wondering if he would actually go through with it. She looked fondly at his tense face- did she usually do things that made him tremble in trepidation? She thought to the little boy that she had reduced to little better than a squib. Maybe.

'Harry-'

'Will it involve a lot of death?' he interrupted. _**Beauties don't interrupt, **_she thought at him disapprovingly. _**They wait calmly for the other side to finish, then they very calmly peel the other side's argument apart and obliterate it. **_He nodded sheepishly in apology.

'Well,' Elena tapped a finger against her chin. 'The people are already dead…'

'I am _not _helping you raise an undead army to take over the world,' Harry scowled. 'Raiding a graveyard isn't really a hobby of mine.' Elena sighed. When had her beauty grown so sarcastic?

'Not raising inferi, my little genius,' she rolled her eyes. 'Vampires.'

'And _why _are we going to frolic amongst vampires? Any particular reason?'

She shrugged. He flinched.

'Oh, it's nothing much,' she lied smoothly, 'I just need you to help me to regain my body.'

Harry blinked.

'When are we going?' She smiled at him and levitated the mirror from the wall to them and caressed it, tapping the unyielding surface.

'We go tonight.'

And there was that _edge _to her voice again, that edge that immediately made him suspicious and think: there is something I'm missing. He looked at Elena who was still playing with the rather large mirror, and looked at the damage she had done to the wall.

_There is definitely something that I'm missing._

* * *

"_It is amazing how complete is the delusion that **beauty** is** goodness**."_

* * *

This was a long chapter. o:

Kudos to you for getting through it.

Clarification:  
Harry may get together with someone, but I haven't figured out who it'll be yet. ):  
They will be going to Hogwarts.  
There will be vampires involved.  
There will be dragons involved… Don't think dinky little plastic toys. Think Norwegian Ridgebacks.  
Harry will be able to think for himself.  
He will tangle again with the Potters. (:  
Oh yeah, I'd appreciate it if you could tell me when you usually read ff. Friday? Saturday? Sunday? :3

* * *

"**_That most foul of human beings, the fanatic, is deluded by the belief that he or she can change the course of events. Such a maniacal ego can thus easily rationalize sacrificing other human beings to his or her goals."*_**

Quoted from Charley Reese's article.


	3. Think

"_The difference between pretty and beautiful is:  
__pretty is temporal  
__whereas  
__**beautiful is eternal**__."_

* * *

'Alright then,' Harry nodded, but his unease poisoned his system. 'Sirius might launch a missing persons report,' he warned her. 'How are we going to get around that?'

Elena waved the mirror she had levitated from the wall. 'This,' she said simply. Harry arched an eyebrow, wondering if she had finally gone insane. She had warned him about it.

'What, are we going to smash it on his head and hope he falls unconscious?' Elena stuck her tongue out at him and shook her head. _**So sarcastic, beautiful child, **_she murmured into his mind. _**May I? **_

He allowed his mind to be pushed away from his body, Elena's familiar one sliding into the space to take control. She used his hands to pick up the mirror and held it to his eyes.

'Do you trust me?' she asked aloud. Harry nodded inside his head.

_With my mind._

_**You shouldn't, **_she reprimanded him, twisting his features into a frown. _**Even I wouldn't trust myself with my mind.**_

_I can't win, can I?_

He watched as Elena made a little cut in his finger with a quick thought of _Lacero_, dripping three drops of blood onto the mirror. 'Thief ritual: Mirror diversion,' she whispered, using his finger to draw a crack in the shape of a lightning bolt, separating the mirror into two equal halves.

'Action and reaction, equal and opposite.' Harry watched, fascinated, as Elena pushed his hand into the right side of the mirror, pushing _something _out of the left side that started growing at an alarmingly fast rate.

'Harry,' she smiled, 'meet Harry.'

He found himself looking into his own eyes, but they were pure green without the familiar specks of gold. He grimaced. There was that sense of loss again, that curled in his stomach and irritated him.

'This is the Harry clone, a mindless being that follows instructions,' Elena explained happily, poking the cheek of the clone. 'You will obey Sirius Black. You will learn all you can about finance and politics. Request a goblin to teach you and be more than polite to him. Be deferential if that is required.' The clone nodded slowly. 'Ignore the Potter family, consisting of Kieran, Lily and James Potter. If Dumbledore approaches you,' she paused for a moment, 'defeat him and call Sirius. Act like Harry would. Read books about wandless magic, herbology, transfiguration and potions,' she added as an afterthought. The clone nodded again, but his expression was not as slack-jawed this time, but appeared to radiate an air of responsibility.

'Do anything that Harry wouldn't do, and I will erase you from existence,' she warned, making the clone smirk as if saying 'of course you will'. Harry frowned. The expression was incredibly annoying and vastly superior; he wasn't sure if he liked it. He peered through his own eyes out of the large window of his new room, waiting for the sun to set. They both preferred to do things in the dark, in the comfort of the night, away from accusing thoughts and minds. She pulled up Harry's shirtsleeves and checked that the array of sharp knives that were strapped to them were still sharp, and did the same thing with the ones strapped to his trousers, favouring a quick muttered sharpening spell.

Elena put a hand on his clothes, and sent a short burst of magic at it. _Vestis converto in pictura ex mens mentis. _The fancy dinner suit jacket that wasn't meant for a five-year-old turned into a dark, hooded robe, silky to the touch. _**You are wearing the robes of an active vampire assassin, **_Elena informed him. _**No one will harm you unless they have a death wish.**_

_Wonderful._

_**I know I am.**_

'It's dark,' she smiled. 'Time to go.' She nodded at the Harry-clone, golden eyes narrowing and turning hard. 'I will visit you every week and transfer your knowledge to Harry,' she snapped, before leaping out of the window on the tips of her toes in a way that he could never mimic, a disillusionment charm on her lips and trickling over them.

_Where are we going?_

_**Knockturn Alley, **_she smiled. _**There's a reason why light ones tend to avoid it. There's a vampire portal there. **_

Elena gave Black Manor one last sweep, and disapparated with a soft crack like that of a house elf's, sending his hooded robe whirling as they were deposited in the grim and grungy street of Knockturn Alley. No one turned to look at them outright, but eyes swiveled ever so discreetly to gaze at his robes. As Elena used his body to walk swiftly through the winding alleyways, Harry could feel everyone stiffening around him. _So a vampire assassin is that feared, _he noted. They stopped immediately as a hand barely touched his shoulder, and Elena slid a throwing knife out of its straps to rest comfortingly in their hand. She gripped it tightly.

'Fly, little vampire, through the night; you think you control the wind you ride. Go, vampire, bring fear and fright, you think you are a god in your foolish pride,'* Elena hissed and the hand backed off immediately and fled, a few other hooded people fleeing with him. A tingle of power ran through him enticingly, ensnaring his mind, dizzying and making him feel drunk on it.

_**Do you like that, Harry? **_Elena purred at him, her mind like a playful cat as she stalked through the alleys, passing vampires that looked curiously at the extremely short stature of the person in vampire assassin garb. _**Do you like the power you wield, the knowledge that you can make a vampire flee with a few well chosen phrases?**_

_I want it, _he whispered, his emerald eyes bright. _I want it._

Smirking, the golden-eyed vampire tugged the sleeve of a vampire she was sure she once knew. 'You,' she said softly in Harry's voice that was as high and childlike as hers. 'Ambroz Liguer, commander of the armies of Tremere and Releres?' The vampire nodded slowly, his too-bright blue eyes giving him away as a creature of the night.

'What do you want?'

'I have a need to talk to the Kraven-kene,' she whispered, slipping the dagger she still had clutched in her hand up Ambroz' sleeve and allowing him to grasp at it. 'You have my word and my dagger. I will not attack anyone on your land.' The vampire commander nodded once, sharply. One did not negotiate with a vampire assassin. He led the suspiciously small figure clad in entirely black robes to what appeared to be a blank wall and slashed his palm with the dagger that Elena had given him, pressing his bloody palm to the grungy bricks.

'Ambroz Liguer, commander of the fox, the blood and the dead.'

_The blood is blood magic, the dead is necromancy, but what's the fox for? _Harry asked curiously. The fox didn't really jump out at anything in particular.

_**I know someone who would explain better than I would, **_Elena told him happily. _**You would want to wait for his explanation.**_

They watched as the bricks of the wall shimmered for a moment and disappeared, revealing only darkness behind it. Elena kept a tight grasp on Liguer's sleeve, following him with her languid predator stalk into it, closing her eyes automatically as sudden light flared around her.

'Welcome to Caele, assassin,' Elena merely nodded, but Harry's eyes were wide in awe. _It's beautiful, _he breathed. _I've never seen anything like this in my entire life, not even in books._

_**It is very beautiful, **_Elena said, with a hint of pride, but before she could continue praising the city-wonderland, she doubled over and just managed to prevent a gasp from wheezing out of Harry's lips. Something tangible snapped, and Harry felt it whistling past his head. The power left traces in the air that sizzled and burned out and he heard a _scream_-

_Elena?_

Silence.

His body slumped into a heap on the ground, his mind reeling. _Silence. _There had never been silence in his mind- there was always some sort of scuffle, Elena darting in and out of his head like it was a hotel room, him arguing with her over something or other, there was always _noise._

He couldn't remember when he hadn't had her voice in his head.

'Assassin.'

_What do I do?_

_**Think for yourself, **_Elena suddenly snapped in his head. _**I am not infallible. If you think I'm going to barricade myself in your head for your whole life or unlife, think **__**again**__**. Now get up and stop being pathetic. If you are pathetic here, you will die.**_

She sounded almost dizzylingly giddy for some reason, more elated than irritated or angry. He pushed himself up gracefully with a foot and looked calmly at Ambroz Liguer, an icy look in his emerald eyes with aristocratic arrogance. Admirably, the vampire commander merely continued walking as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. _**You will be able to do that, **_Elena told him, the giddying edge in her voice evident, _**and much more.**_

'Assassin,' Ambroz repeated when they were at the front of what he guessed was the palace, 'If you attempt to harm our king, nothing good will befall you.'

'If you're assuming that I lust for a violent, drawn-out death, you should assume otherwise,' Elena drawled in Harry's voice, smiling as the commander's jaw tightened. 'No assassin would attack a vampire king on his own land,' she slid his eyes to form a mocking glance at Ambroz. 'Please remember that before you embarrass yourself in front of another assassin.'

_Where did you go?_

_**You'll find out soon enough. **_

Before they could enter the palace, a tall vampire stormed out, hair as black as Harry's own electrified by his angry power, regal robes doing nothing to hinder his speed. Ambroz dropped down to his knee immediately, his hand as a fist over his heart, but the man had eyes only for Harry. He grasped the front of his robes and knocked down the hood, peering harshly into Harry's stiff emerald gaze.

'_You,_' he hissed angrily, golden eyes flashing. Harry bit his lip to prevent a gasp escaping. He was a royal vampire. 'You released _her. _Don't deny it; I can see _her _in your eyes.' He made a quick impatient upwards gesture at Ambroz and the commander rose immediately, looking at Harry in a curious hostile manner.

'The wards and binds holding Elena were destroyed precisely two minutes ago, the moment this _mortal _vampire assassin stepped into Caele with his _destructive _dark power,' the vampire still hadn't released Harry, and he began to feel like he was about to choke. 'The magical backlash,' he continued, 'destroyed three of the mind mages that were pinning Elena down.' Golden eyes that were uncracked glared furiously at him and he felt a little disturbed.

_Who is he?_

There was only silence, signifying his cracked golden-eyed vampire's absence.

'Foolish mortal,' the vampire said wearily, as if tired from his furious outburst. He dropped Harry and regarded the five-year-old intensely, muttering to himself under his breath. 'Yes, I can see why she chose you,' he whispered. 'You're like her. _Dangerous_. Powerful.'

'I prefer to call it beautiful,' Harry blinked. It was a child's voice, high and lilting, but with a silvery predatory undertone that whispered _dangerous, _as the tall vampire had suggested. He had heard it before, he thought, perhaps in his dreams. His eyes widened as the owner of the voice landed in a flurry of white robes and smiled cheekily at him.

'Harry, I have my body back!' she grinned happily, catching his hands and twirling him around in a circle. This person was Elena, yet she was not. His Elena didn't look so… _ethereal. _Elena in his mindscape had been a simple, unadorned child. Beautiful, of course, but within the grasp of mortal mind. He peeked to appraise this new Elena. Hers was the kind of beauty that he had never seen before; that now terrified him.

_What are you, _he thought at her.

'I should kill you for this,' the tall vampire snapped at him, his voice resonating with barely suppressed rage. Elena tilted her head and shook it.

'I wouldn't do that if I were you,' she told him silkily. 'The dragonists wouldn't be too happy about that.'

'And _why _would and should I care about the lowly dragonists?' he hissed back at her. She merely shrugged- _hyprocrite, _he thought at her playfully, but she merely stuck her tongue out at him for a brief second.

'You haven't had _them _burn down your village, have you?' she grumbled at the vampire, flicking a lock of the straight silky golden hair that cascaded down to her back. Her eyes, the only feature of her that Harry could truly recognise, were happy and flicked from Harry's face to the vampire's, before twirling to stand at the vampire's side, putting a hand to his ear as if whispering.

'His name is Hadrius Black. _He_ is **archon**,' she whispered loudly, winking at Harry as if he knew what it meant. The vampire stood stock still and clenched his teeth. 'I will never allow you to imprison me again, _**Kraven-kene**_,' Harry's eyes widened. The vampire was the vampire king of the two most powerful vampire clans? _And he had threatened to kill me. And he imprisoned her. _Elena flashed something black imprinted in her palm in Kraven's face but withdrew it just as quickly.

'I am Skarab's heir,' she said, the playful mood gone immediately. She pointed at Harry without looking at him, her eyes locked into a combat with the vampire king's. 'He is the archon,' Harry felt two pairs of eyes rest on him for a moment. 'He is _also_,' Elena continued determinedly, 'a beauty; a treasure of the living world.' At that, the vampire king threw back his head and laughed.

'You are truly Skarab's heir,' he told the simmering vampire girl. 'Both of you spout the same nonsense about beauty.' Before he could laugh again, the vampire king had a small hand clutched around his neck. 'Perhaps we should speak in private, Kraven-kene,' Elena suggested politely, her eyes sparkling, restraining Ambroz with a quick hand gesture. 'As seer, I must share my words with those who seek it.'

'I don't seek it.'

'Shut up,' she snapped. Harry's eyes widened. He had never heard Elena utter those two words in his entire life. Her eyes flicked to Ambroz. 'You,' she said coolly, 'will take Harry to meet Leonardo. He'll know what I want. If even a hair on his _beautiful _head is harmed,' she narrowed her eyes, 'I will hurt you.'

'Leonardo-_ukal_,' Ambroz stressed the title for the Thief Guildmaster, 'should not have to-'

'Shut up.'

With that, Elena dragged the vampire king back into the palace, leaving him with Ambroz.

_**Be careful, Harry-beauty. The citadel may be beautiful, but it is our kind of beauty. Dangerous. The danger is very real here. Do not say anything until you meet Leonardo.**_

_Why?_

"**_As soon as there is life, there is danger." Oh look, my rabbit appears and whispers your name to me. _**Giggles in his head. _**Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter it says, rain down your lightning and scorch the earth; the light sings, but you sing louder, we will walk the path of grey.**_

_What's happening to you?_

'So, Hadrius Black. Do you know what you have done?' Harry continued walking, his eyes low and his hood down. 'We call her Elena Euthanasia. Euthanasia means mercy killing,' Ambroz' voice dropped down. 'Have you asked her what she did to her _father_; her _sire_?' The vampire laughed softly as Harry gritted his teeth. Elena had never mentioned anything about her "sire" but the barest minimum. She hadn't even mentioned the "archon" thing until today. 'You wouldn't follow her as blindly then, would you?'

Ambroz pushed open the door of a white marble tower that seemed to extend beyond the clouds, motioning for Harry to follow. 'This is the Thieves Tower. And I believe that you will truly regret what you have done today,' he told him. Harry resisted the urge to ask him if he was a seer in the most sarcastic tone he possessed. 'Elena Euthanasia is insane, mortal,' the vampire said as he pushed him towards a vampire with long dark-brown hair and clad in black and purple robes. He didn't look old, more like a teenager, Harry thought. Around Elena's age. 'And it won't be long until you become like her as well.'

'Ah, dearest Ambroz,' the vampire said silkily, winking at Harry, his sapphire eyes sparkling. 'Don't worry about him, his bark is worse than his bite. And I mean that literally,' he smiled, showing a bit of his fang. Harry groaned mentally. _Vampires making jokes about their fangs. _Ambroz merely nodded, and with a 'Good day, Leonardo-ukal,' and left. Leonardo's smile dropped immediately and muttered a quiet _'son of a bitch'_ under his breath. He then looked at Harry and a guilty expression stole over his features.

'Oops, she's going to kill me for that,' he grinned unabashedly as he ushered Harry into another set of rooms. 'Sit, Hadrius Black. We have a little to discuss then we can get right to the training.'

'Training?' Harry tugged down his hood and looked questioningly at Leonardo. 'What kind of training?'

'She hasn't told you?' Leonardo smacked his head with a hand. 'Of course she hasn't told you, the little bi-' his eyes widened, '_-scuit._ Biscuit,' he amended, rubbing his head and wincing. 'I don't know how you put up with her.'

'Coffee,' Harry admitted, half-smiling. He decided that he liked Leonardo a lot. 'A lot of coffee.'

'Good idea, I should try that. Anyway, training,' the guildmaster clapped his hands together excitedly, beaming at the five-year-old. Harry backed away a little. 'Elena's trained you in parkour, right?' Harry nodded, and the vampire grinned. 'Wonderful. I don't suppose she's taught you the strictly _illegal _street-fighting style of-'

'Skarab-kolen. I have the scars to prove it,' he smiled wanly. A mixture of knives, jabs, kicks and an intention to inflict as much damage as possible, Skarab-kolen was not meant for incapacitating; it was meant to put an end to enemies. _Permanently. _

'Well, now there's two of you that should be banned from Caele,' Leonardo muttered. 'There's no point teaching you our considerably less aggressive,' he rolled his eyes, 'thief capoeira. So let's go through the mental list.'

'Poisons?'

'Done.'

'Traps?'

'Done.'

'Illusions?'

'Done.'

'Rituals?'

'Not yet,' Harry grimaced. 'She refused to teach them to me for some reason.' Leonardo nodded thoughtfully but made no comment.

'Well, we'll test you later, but have you learnt to use any other weapons apart from knives?' Harry shook his head.

'Elena said she wanted me to focus on Skarab-kolen. She said it was the most important.' Leonardo regarded him for a moment, and Harry could almost hear the whirring in his head. He had a sudden wish to do what Elena could do- invade his mind without him noticing and listen to his thoughts.

'Alright then, let's start off with weapons training,' Leonardo pulled Harry to his feet and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. 'Let's see how you square up against my little thieves.'

* * *

_Palace of Caele_

'Are you going to slaughter the town?'

'No.'

'Are you going to kill me?'

'No.'

'Are you going to-'

'Relax, Kraven-kene,' Elena tucked a lock of fair hair behind her ear. 'I am not going to kill anyone while Harry is here,' she looked at him slyly, 'you'd better take good care of him.'

'Why are you so obsessed with the mortal boy?' The vampire king sounded almost angry, 'what is so special about him?'

'He is beautiful,' was the airy reply. 'And powerful. You feel it.' Her reply sounded like there was more to it, but the vampire king didn't want to ask.

'Why did you bring him here?' Kraven stood up, uncomfortable with sitting idly near Elena. 'Couldn't you have trained him yourself?'

'No,' she replied simply. 'I could not. And, dearest Kraven-kene, _uncle_,' she smiled slyly, 'you should be nice to him. He is their archon after all, and we both know that dragonists aren't as lowly as you think,' she purred. Kraven gritted his teeth. Dragonists were considered royalty amongst magical creatures, however much the vampires denied it. Elena said the boy was the archon, and even more terrifyingly, Elena never lied. He could tell by the small smile on her annoyingly flawless face that she knew she had won the argument. And now… Kraven out a hand to his temple, rubbing it soothingly.

'What do you want me to do?'

* * *

_Thief tower, weapon level._

The thief sneakily scanned the room. No one was looking at him. Why would they, he thought bitterly, when a mortal, protected by none other than Skarab's heir, the insane Elena, was quite calmly shooting arrow after arrow at a target 300 meters away?

Oh, and did he mention that he was getting a bulls-eye _every time_?

The thief gripped his own bow in jealousy, cursing vehemently as his fingers gouged a hole in the wood. Hopefully, Leonardo-ukal wouldn't notice and skin him alive. Carefully,_ carefully_, he pointed his loaded bow at the mortal's back, aiming for what he reckoned was the spinal cord. Leonard-ukal wouldn't favour a paralysed mortal, would he? It was disgusting, the way the Guildmaster fawned all over him, the little mortal, not even ten years of age.

Disgusting.

He'd be doing everyone a favour if he got rid of _it_.

Slowly, he pulled back the string-

A leg kicked the bow upwards and a pale arm curled around his neck, its hand pointing what he was sure was a knife at a point below his ear.

'Really,' she purred, 'is that any way to treat an esteemed guest?' The thief paled, two words running through his mind that scared him, possibly to _death._

'Elena Euthanasia,' he choked out as the arm released him, the knife intentionally scraping his vulnerable flesh. A drop of dark blood welled and the thief felt it trickling down to the front of his throat. Elena regarded him for a moment, looking unimpressed, and the thief just wanted the ceiling to fall down on him.

'Ferrin, is it?' she said after a while, and the thief was treated to the horrified feeling one got after the most dangerous vampire in the citadel had rummaged none too gently in his mind. He nodded mutely. Elena gave him one more dismissive look. 'I will be watching you.' Ferrin watched as the young royal vampire picked the mortal up and waved merrily at the Thief Guildmaster, making the protesting mortal wave as well. As she glided past him, Ferrin felt himself being levitated and flung into the opposite end of the archery compound, slamming heavily into the wall, shattering his femur and kneecap. He howled; the pain _burned _and he felt as if shards of glass were sticking through his skin. As he looked down, he realised in horror that shards of white _were _glinting out of his skin. He promptly fainted from the pain.

Across the room, Elena smiled at the scene, her hand covering Harry's eyes.

* * *

'Who are you?' Was the first thing Harry said as they sat down in his new room at the palace. 'You aren't Elena.' He appraised the vampire that called him _her _Harry, and shivered. _Unnatural, dangerous beauty. _'You can't be.' She looked calmly at him.

'Well I am,' she pouted, 'so there.'

'If you are, then you've hidden a lot about yourself,' he said lowly, rubbing his lightning scar. 'Why do they call you Elena Euthanasia?' He noticed the expression that flitted over her beautiful face before being replaced by an impassive mask. Anger, sadness, happiness. Harry gritted his teeth. He needed coffee.

'That,' she said finally, 'is none of your business.'

'Yes it _is_,' he snapped back angrily. 'You've spent most of my life in my mind, I deserve to at least _know _something about the voice in my head.'

'Careful, Harry,' the silky tone was back again, that threatened and whispered his death. His hands curled into fists that left crescent shaped imprints in his hand. 'Anger is but one letter short of danger.' Elena stood and held out a hand to him, pale and unmarked, but he could see the shimmer as the glamour on it faded. In its place was left a series of large scars that looked suspiciously like-

_Words, _Harry thought, his eyes wide. He reached out with a trembling finger to trace them and his heart sunk. _DEMON CHILD, _it read. He looked up at Elena.

'Oh,' was the only intelligent thing his brain could supply him with. 'Oh.'

'Anyway,' she said casually, retracting her hand and lounging back down against the chair. 'We will train here until we go back to Hogwarts.' He looked at her, hiding the sense of betrayal that stuck him. _Why didn't you ask me what I wanted? What if I don't like it here?_

'I won't always be here,' his eyes widened, but she patted him softly on the shoulder. 'Don't worry, they'll know better than to even _touch _you, with Leo, Kraven and me.' He blinked, opening his mouth to protest. The vampire king had threatened to _kill _him, for god's sake. 'Oh, don't worry about that either. You'll find Kraven _surprisingly _pliable and open to your needs.' Her smile didn't appease him, but he decided to nod. An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. _Why can't you be here with me? _Then another thought popped in his head and his mouth turned into a thin, hard line.

'Oh yes,' he said, making his voice just like hers, impeccably polite but with the hint of a threat, 'would you care to tell me what on _earth _is an "Archon"? Because you've never mentioned that to me before. In my entire _life_,' his eyes flared. She stood and patted him on the head.

'In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.'

Harry gritted his teeth and grabbed her wrist as she turned to leave, wanting to demand answers, but her other hand shot out to grip his neck and she crushed him into the wall, her eyes only a few centimeters away from his. His back ached- he was sure that the wall had broken underneath the force that he had slammed into it.

'Don't touch me,' she said in a monotone, but her eyes widened as a tear slipped down his cheek. _How can you hurt me? _Another tear leaked from his eyes and he let the tears just flow. Elena let go of his neck and reached out a hand but he flinched immediately, making her withdraw her fingers. _Don't hurt me. _She looked as if she wanted to say something but he didn't want to hear it. _I don't want to hear you ever again._

'Get out,' he said quietly.

She looked at him for a long moment with an indiscernible expression, nodded, and fled the room. Harry gingerly peeled himself off the wall, wincing as what felt like a hundred needles stabbed him. He took a deep breath and turned to look at the wall. _Blood. _And behind smashed plaster, a marble wall. _Elena did this to me, _he thought, but he pushed away all the feelings of hurt and betrayal. Hurt and betrayal did not help. He walked into the en-suite bathroom and looked at his tear-streaked face in the mirror and the blood that was making his dark robe stick to him. He noted every single detail- the small rivulets of blood that ran from his head to the back of his neck, his flushed face and his eyes red with crying and the way his back felt like it was being torn apart. He thrust the memories to the front of his mind, confident that the photographic memory (that _she _had given him) would remember and remind him of it for the rest of his life.

'This is what _she _has done to me,' he told the Harry in the mirror. 'I will never be this pathetic again.' He wiped the tears from his face, his green eyes hard with fury. 'I will never let _anyone _harm me again,' he vowed to himself.

'I smell blood.' someone burst into the room, and Harry swiveled to look into Leonardo's displeased face. The vampire thief's dark-blue eyes examined him, his mouth resembling a tight line. 'You silly mortal,' he said softly, carefully enveloping Harry in a hug. He didn't struggle, instead letting himself loll against the teenage-looking guildmaster, his breathing coming in short pants as he struggled not to let the pain overwhelm him. 'Mortals are so fragile,' he said as his fingers probed Harry's back, 'but nothing Melisande can't fix.' He rose, carrying Harry on his stomach out of the half ruined room.

'Let me guess,' Leonardo said conversationally as he glided down hallways. 'It starts with an 'E' and ends with a _completely messed-up_.' Harry nodded and winced as Leonardo suddenly stopped, kicking open a wooden door.

'Melisande?'

'Oy 'Nardo, can you come knock this insomniac out for me?' Harry felt himself lowered onto the bed and a few moments later, heard someone groan and slump down. 'Thanks, but… I didn't really mean it. Thanks all the same, though.' He felt a hand prod his head gently.

'Oh, so _you're _Hadrius Black. I'm Melisande Roselli, healer, yadda yadda yadda. Care to tell me how his back looks like tenderized meat, _Leonardo-ukal?_' Harry looked up from his face-down position and laughed quietly; one had to when the thief guildmaster was holding up his hands, protesting his involvement. _A universal sign of peace, _Elena's training whispered to him, and his mouth went back to a tight line. _Or it can mean 'I have no weapon'. _The equally tall female vampire who was glaring at me flicked her blue hair- _dyed, _Harry thought absently, and turned back to look down at him, her lovely immortal face mistrustful.

'What happened?'

His face hardened.

'Fine, fine, have it your way…' Melisande muttered unhappily, 'here, drink this. It's a numbing potion.' She tilted the blue liquid to his lips and he swallowed. It tasted nice and strangely like grapes and pineapples. 'You're going to need it,' she muttered.

'_Accio maximus_ wood, plaster, stuff that shouldn't be in a mortal's back…' Leonardo snickered, and Harry suddenly heard a slapping sound. 'dirt, dust, plastic, wool,' she continued happily.

It didn't hurt, Harry mused, but it was definitely strange feeling objects embedded in his back being dislodged none too gently. Yes, it was strange. He adamantly refused to think of the person who had inflicted this on him. She wasn't important anymore. He would train and become stronger than her.

Then he would repay her tenfold for what she had done to him.

* * *

_China, House of Memory._

Elena leaned against the wall of the House of Memory, smiling as it whispered back to her in her sire's voice.

'This is the House of Memory,' he said, as if he was standing next to her. 'Everything you touch contains a memory.'

'Bring me to the room of three,' she told the wall. There was a moment of silence, then it shimmered and an oval appeared, showing her the room of three. She stepped in and felt the wall close back behind her.

'This is the room of three,' the familiar voice intoned, but Elena waved a hand as if trying to get it to be quiet.

'Shut up,' she said softly, as she looked up at the tall ceiling of the room. Three people were painted there, flawless and happy. _Skarab papa. Regulus papa. _She levitated herself up with a _wingardium leviosa _and touched their painted faces and was immediately plunged into a memory.

* * *

_Memory._

'What do you mean, _paint the ceiling, _it isn't as if you can rip down the cei-' Elena smiled as the younger her _accio_-ed the ceiling down, laughing quietly as Regulus papa sighed, exasperated as it hovered above them. She watched as her sire entered the room and looked bemused.

'Do I even want to ask, lover?' Regulus rolled his eyes as the golden-eyed vampire embraced him, catching his lips in a quick kiss. Elena's fingers trailed across her chest to where her heart should have been beating and frowned, her expression identical to the one her younger self wore.

'That's icky,' the younger Elena complained, the ceiling hovering dangerously above. 'Regulus papa and Skarab papa are icky people.'

Elena ignored the rest of them and looked up at the ruined ceiling, reminded of what she had done to Harry, but her cracked eyes were quiet and emotionless. _He deserved it, _she thought to herself. _He touched me. _

'How strange,' she said aloud, as she allowed her gaze to drift back to the three who were laughing and play-fighting. She felt a detachment from them, as if they were mere strangers and not people close to her. Suddenly, everything she saw was all grey and black and grey and black, the only vivid colour was the crimson red of blood; blood on Skarab's hands, running from Regulus' mouth and neck, and blood all over her. _This blood, it will not wash off, _she remembered what she had once said.

'How strange,' she repeated softly, looking down at her stained hands, watching as the blood dripped off it, drop by drop until it revealed her scars. 'I don't feel anything anymore.'

_Regulus Black Most Ancient and Noble House of Black last Black genius can't tell Harry that-_

_Blood._

_So much blood on my hands._

_It will never wash off._

'Aah.' She gazed at the dull, lifeless eyes of Regulus Black and smiled, knowing that she had killed him. Her gaze flicked to her beautiful sire, his eyes as golden and as cracked as her own and smiled, knowing that she had killed him as well.

'I will kill until I feel,' she told the corpses as she left the room, which immediately reverted back to its bloodless, bodiless state. 'Because that is what both of you would do, and that is what Harry wants from me.'

Elena walked quickly through the large hallways of the House of Memory until she reached a sparsely decorated room with just a small bed and chest of drawers. She pulled out the top drawer and lifted a hooded black coat, three-quarter length, plain, heavy from the poisons and knives that she had strapped inside and a similarly simple long-sleeved tunic and trousers. And for the finishing touch, a pair of boots with knives sticking out a few centimeters above the heel. A white mask with the benevolent smiling face lay beside it, and she donned it. She dressed quickly, leaving her useless white robes neatly folded on the bed. She drew a piece of parchment out of the coat pocket and scanned the names that gently pulsated with the colour of their danger level. She hunted only names that glowed black.

Black, meant only one thing:

Bring in, _dead_.

'I am Euthanasia,' she whispered as she touched the first black name lightly, allowing herself to be portkeyed directly to the name. She smiled as the man, Walden Macnair, widened his eyes. He was new to the list, then, if he didn't look at least vaguely confident that he could defeat an Assassin.

'I am Euthanasia, Walden Macnair,' she told the horrified man, slipping a knife from her sleeve. 'When I call, you will bleed for me.'

_Aah, Harry, I do this for you._

* * *

_1 month later_

'What do you mean, they're _dead_?'

Hadrius Black leant back against the wall of Leonardo's office as he watched said Guildmaster roar at the head in the fireplace. He wondered what had happened that made him lose his usual laid-back composure. Whatever it was, he decided, it wasn't good.

'That is _bad_, Riolen. We don't need another lunatic with a talent for killing; have you checked who it is?'

Oh, it was Assassin business again. Harry looked away from the scene, bored. He was sure he would join them one day, if only for the reason he preferred to kill rather than steal for a living.

'Euthanasia?' he heard Leonardo say quietly, and his ears pricked up. _I've heard that before, _he thought, preoccupied. 'Are you absolutely sure?' Harry heard the head in the fire's surprised tone, and he felt even more intrigued. 'Alright then, don't send someone to kill. Yes, I know Euthanasia's been inactive for at least a decade, I might have an idea of what triggered it.' There was a pause as the other person murmured something. 'No, I will not tell you,' Leonardo said sharply, before muttering an _'aguamenti'_, removing the head.

'Stupid assassins,' he told Harry, before ushering him out of the room. 'We're going to do more rituals today,' he beamed brightly, but the happy demeanour didn't fool him. He ran the name through his memories and in less than a second, a memory bounced to him.

'_We call her Elena Euthanasia. Euthanasia means mercy killing.'_

Harry gritted his teeth. 'Leonardo,' he said quietly, 'why is Elena taking on Assassin business again?' He felt the vampire stiffen and smiled to himself.

'She's crazy,' he said abruptly as he pushed Harry into one of the numerous ritual rooms. 'She's absolutely insane.' The five-year-old merely gave him a look, the one that said _what do you take me for, an idiot? _The guildmaster sighed as he sat down on the cool granite floor of the ritual room, patting the space beside him to tell Harry to sit down.

'Elena is a seer,' he told Harry, who rolled his eyes. _What gave it away, _he thought at him, _the cracked eyes or the way she looks as if she knows something and you don't? _'There are two different types. True seers which are infinitely rare, and plain seers, who are more common.'

'Is she a true seer?' Leonardo nodded.

'There's been a human that was also a true seer,' he said thoughtfully. 'Her name was Cassandra Trelawney. Elena's sire was also a true seer.'

'Skarab?'

'Yes,' Leonardo grimaced, as if he had tasted something unpleasant in his mouth. 'There are few vampires who are true seers, and if there are, they are cast out of their clans-'

'Why?' Harry furrowed his eyebrows, feeling troubled. 'You said they were rare, shouldn't they be prized?'

'No, true seers have a bad reputation for becoming, well,' the master thief winced. '_unstable. _Skarab was the model for all things a royal vampire should become, and Kraven-kene was the younger, less-adored brother. Until Skarab's eyes cracked.'

'The moment it was known, Skarab was no longer the heir to the throne, which is why Kraven-kene is the king today. I remember though,' Leonardo sounded disturbed, 'that about a week before he left Caele, he started talking about how he couldn't feel, and something along those lines. Nobody could make any sense out of what he was talking about. A few days later, he slaughtered a few magical human towns in Britain which is why we are so hated in that country today,' he winced. 'But when he returned, it was like he had never become a seer- he was perfectly behaved.' Harry's eyes widened.

'So you think-;

'At least she's not like her sire, yes?' Leonardo interrupted quickly, standing and pulling Harry up. 'Don't talk about this, ever,' he warned Harry quietly. 'I know you wish to have your revenge against her, and that is normal, but you can only do that by surpassing her and gathering more intelligence on her, not ambushing her while she's in _that _state.'

'You sound like you've done that before,' Harry observed, arching an eyebrow as Leonardo handed him a dusty tome on rituals. The master thief smiled tiredly at him and nodded.

'I know how it feels to have the person who mattered most to you hurt you,' he said quietly, 'it doesn't feel good, does it?'

'No,' Harry agreed, looking down at the book, a sombre feeling settling over him. 'It doesn't.'

'Alright then,' Leonardo clapped him on the back cheerfully, as he pushed the door halfway open, 'with your freaky photographic memory-'

'Three hours at the least,' he answered absently, his eyes already scanning and memorizing the first page, flicking the second page almost immediately. _One done, a couple of thousand more to go. _'Get lost,' he told the guildmaster with looking up from the text, hearing the rich chuckle as the door shut, leaving him in solitude.

_How could you do that to me? _He thought as his eyes scanned the pages lifelessly. While that thought had once made him melancholic, now it made him furious. _How __**dare **__you do that to me, _he pored over the pages with fury, knowing that he could be better than her, that he could defeat her and have her knowing, golden eyes looking at him with horror.

_I will surpass you. _

_I will defeat you._

* * *

_Two months later, night. _

'Leonardo.'

The guildmaster looked up into the smiling face of a white mask and sighed softly, allowing her in. 'Euthanasia,' he greeted.

'How is he?' she asked bluntly, not even pretending to appear as if she had come for another reason. Leonardo smiled bitterly. There would be no other reason she would come back.

'First, let me tell you that he hates you,' the masked face revealed nothing, but he liked to think that behind the porcelain, the features were twisted into a guilty frown. 'He absolutely detests you,' he said quietly with relish. He could see the gold behind the mask, _so like his, _and all he wanted to do was to hurt her until she cried.

'Understandable,' was the cool reply. He gritted his teeth. 'His training?'

'What you did to his mind is despicable,' he said conversationally, 'but it does happen to be one of the most brilliant I have come across. Photographic memory, hmm? How many people did you turn retarded for that?'

'Collateral damage,' the masked girl waved it away. 'Of course he is brilliant. He was always brilliant. I just made him all that more wonderful.' The edge of almost religious zeal crept back and coloured her words.

'Modest,' Leonardo snorted. _I hate you, _he thought, as the girl took off her mask and shrunk it, letting it rest in her coat pocket, looking at them with those cracked golden eyes that he loved and hated. _I love you._

'We live in a world of illusions and masks, until we lose sight of who we are,' Elena sounded tired as he pulled her into his embrace. 'Seers cannot forget the person underneath the mask like I have done.'

'How many have you executed tonight, Elena?' he asked softly as she laid her head on his shoulder, her golden hair tickling his neck.

'Five,' she said, with a hint of despair in her voice. 'And I still feel nothing. I will be running out soon,' she said ruefully.

'The world is never short on people to dispose of,' Leonardo replied, tactfully not using "murder" or "kill". 'Blood must be spilt every day.' Elena nodded, but her thoughts had already fled from her distasteful executions. Leonardo could practically see the lightning bolt and emerald green in her beautiful eyes.

'He will never be able to forgive me.' It was a statement not a fact. The silence whispered a _he will never forgive _when Leonardo didn't. She smiled at him and jumped off his lap.

'I can try anyway,' she drew her mask out and enlarged it before letting it cover her features. 'Keep him safe,' she told Leonardo, before she disappeared into the night. 'Keep him happy while I can't.' He had no doubt who the 'him' she talked about was, and he didn't miss the flash of concern in her eyes. Leonardo had known Elena for decades and he had never seen her be concerned for anyone before. Harry had known Elena for what? Four years, five? And she was virtually mothering him. He knew that she had threatened the vampire king and he had seen what she had done to one of his training thieves for the mortal. He suddenly felt such a loathing for Harry that he surprised himself. To calm himself, the young guildmaster reached for a bottle of red liquid and poured himself a glass for it, breathing in the scents deeply as he swirled it, as if it was some old and exotic wine to be savoured.

_Blood of a mortal child, _he thought to himself as he sipped from the glass. _How pure, how sweet._

* * *

_One year later.  
Letters._

Elena,  
Here is the report you have asked of me.

Hadrius Black, also known as Harry, has completed the ritual level. He is now on the weapon level of the Thieves Tower. He has obliterated Knife Alley, and is currently training in archery. He has demonstrated to be proficient at flying. I estimate that he will be able to master the weapon level in two years.

Harry has expressed interest in necromancy, though the blood mages have been dying to get their claws into him, the fucking bastards. Perhaps to gather intelligence about you. They have a disturbing fascination with blood children, as we both know. I have no earthly imagination why a six-year-old would want to tango with corpses, shall we say, so I have advised him against it, but he is adamant.

Elena, I have no idea what is running through his mind, and I find myself not wishing to find out. He is turning out to, well, be like you. It is like you, Skarab and Regulus all over again, and I don't want that to happen. You said you would attempt to find a way to earn his forgiveness; you should do it soon. You don't see what he looks like now.

Before you start storming to Caele, allow me to reassure you that he is still devastatingly beautiful for a six-year-old, so please calm your mind. No, he isn't marked with scars. But, for lack of better words to express it, he is turning out like the mask you made for him. I know about it, don't attempt to disclaim it. I won't even ask what you were thinking when you did it, because I honestly do not want to know.

He is relentless in his studies. That may be a good thing, but his purpose for it is not healthy. He seeks to defeat you. He is cold and laughs rarely. I believe that Melisande called him 'a little block of ice', which is what I fear he has become. Kraven visits him often and they have lengthy conversations, which both vaguely amuses and disturbs me. He has gained many allies; thieves, necromancers, blood mages. Allies, not friends, even if they wish it.

He is not a mortal child of six years.

Is this what you wanted him to be, Elena?

Leonardo.

* * *

_Reply_

Dear Leonardo,

It doesn't matter what I want him to be. He is who he is, and I merely shaped him. He can break out of his mould if he wants to. Stop him from becoming a necromancer, if you are able to.  
I am trying to find a way, don't worry about Harry's hostile intentions. If he does wish to kill me, I will fight him.  
If you mention my sire's mate again I will sear your tongue off, my foul-mouthed friend.

Elena.

* * *

_Another year later.  
Letters._

Elena,

Hadrius Black has against my predictions, completed the weapons level in one year. I would have called it nigh impossible have I not seen it happen. He has moved on onto the last level of my tower, the missions level. If he continues to work at this speed, I estimate that it will take him two years to finish it.

He trains everyday with a single-mindedness that I have not seen for a long time. It is that same single-minded ferocity that I watched Skarab trained with when I was merely a training thief. Skarab also completed the weapons level in a year.

Melisande worries about him, I can tell, and the only time he can tear himself from training is to visit both of us. He has become quite tall, and he has made it clear to his allies that he will not be turned by their families. He has begun studying necromancy, and I don't dare to protest it too loudly lest he suspect. He allows no one to call him Harry anymore, not even Melisande and I, and it is surprisingly easy to think and write of him as Hadrius. He never talks about you. Kraven still visits him and they have lengthy conversations.

I think Kraven has told him about Skarab.

Leonardo.

* * *

Leonardo,  
I will kill Kraven. I will personally ensure his demise, if what you have written is true. He has no right to tell Harry about Skarab papa. Find out for me if Kraven _has _told.  
Harry wishes to be Hadrius, now?  
I will remember that.

China is beautiful, Leonardo. The air is so fresh and the sky is so beautiful. Perhaps we should visit it together one day. I think that my chances of earning his forgiveness are next to nothing, but I shall give him a gift that might at least help in my case:

I will give him the gift of understanding.

But for now, everything around me is beautiful, and I will stay here for a while.

Elena.

* * *

_Yet another year later  
__Letters_

Dear Elena,

As I predicted, Hadrius is halfway through the mission level of my Tower. In three months, I predict that he will be able to do his final mission in three months.

* * *

'Luna, pretty one,' Elena's pale fingers grasped the child's face lightly, examining it, smiling at it. 'Would you like to be mine?'

* * *

_Letter  
_Fuck that, Elena. What the _fuck _were you thinking when you did to him what you did? To you, it might seem like nothing, but to a five year old, the person who's been with him for four years suddenly _slams him into a wall, _making his back look like 'tenderized meat', as Melisande so eloquently put it, and just leaves?

* * *

'Everything will be wonderful if you'll be mine, Luna,' she promised. Promises of beauty, of poison, of dreams. 'Everything you want will be yours.'

* * *

_Letter  
_Betrayal, Elena.

We both know how betrayal feels, so let's not pretend or dance around the subject anymore.  
The reason I'm writing about all this is because of what happened today.

* * *

'Give me your heart and I'll make it beautiful, give me your dreams and I'll sing them aloud,' her eyes became half-lidded as the tears burned and slid down her face. 'Give me yourself and be mine.' She cradled Luna's face in her tainted hands, spreading the taint of blood that _would not, could not _come off.

'I'll be yours,' the little girl promised.

* * *

_Letter  
_It's been three years since you left, in case you've forgotten. No one has mentioned you to him in three years, except in hushed whispers and hastily scribbled notes. Do you even remember his name anymore? Harry Potter; Hadrius Black. Are my letters nothing but a nuisance to you, reminding you of someone you have left behind for dead?

Because that is what he feels, Elena, that you have abandoned him. His allies spoke of you to him, and I remember what he looked like when he responded. He is everything that you wanted him to be:

Cold and heartless  
Beautiful and merciless  
Powerful and troubled

* * *

'Will you really be mine, Luna?' Elena's eyes were sad as she looked away. 'Even if I am cold and heartless, beautiful and merciless, powerful and _corrupted_,'

'I will be yours,' the seven-year-old girl promised. Her blue eyes were dreamy and her voice ethereal, and she was everything that Xenophilius had promised her to be.

* * *

_Letter  
_He killed today, and he seems to have gained even more allies because of it. If that is what he will do if someone mentions you, I dare not think what he would do to _you. _

Despite everything, I have grown fond of him, even when our talks become less frequent, even when his eyes grow lighter despite the darkness in him. Don't kill him, that is all I ask. You were the one that made him like this.

* * *

'Then wear this mask, Luna,' she produced the mask that Xenophilius had worn before her and put it on her face. 'There, you look lovely,' she sighed, enthralled by that dispassionate white mask.

'Hello, Miss Tear,' she cooed, as her hand stroked Luna's pale and vulnerable neck. 'Welcome to the Court of the Strange.'

* * *

_Letter  
_Take responsibility for what you have made him into, at least. I love you Elena, but I'm tired of being left to clear up your messes. Mend this one for once, instead of tossing him into an incinerator and scattering his ashes over that blasted country you're so fascinated with.

Kraven has told Hadrius about Skarab, but I am not sure how much.

Think about this: If Skarab had hurt you, what would you have done?

Leonardo.

* * *

'Give me your blood,' she whispered, her hand on Luna's neck. 'Miss Tear.' She sank her fangs into the soft neck, her tongue darting out to lick droplets of the crimson delight. 'Beautiful,' she whispered, her mind intoxicated. _So pure, so delicious._

* * *

_Reply_

Dear Leonardo,  
You have made a few mistakes in your letter. Harry, no, Hadrius, is not a mistake for you to 'clear up', he is not _my _mistake because he belongs to no one.

Cold, heartless and merciless; that is not what I want him to be, not what I made him to be, and that is not who he is. I want you to give him the mask for his final mission. It is a portkey that will take him to the House of Memory. This letter is your portkey. Let his assignment be to steal something from my House.

You gave me your gift of understanding, and I return that gift. Your portkey will be activated by his, and the magics of the House will allow you to travel with him, unseen.  
Also, by your last paragraph, I can sense you're trying to appeal to my sense of honour.

I don't have one.  
What is honour after all, but tatters and shreds of morality after we die for the final time?

In answer to your question, if Skarab papa had hurt me, I would exact appropriate revenge instead of damaging myself like Hadrius is doing.

I-

Forget it.  
Elena.

* * *

_3 months later_

'Training thief Hadrius Black,' he said smoothly, watching the raven-haired boy with not a small amount of bitterness in his eyes. _Why are you so important to her? _'You have had three months to prepare for an unknown mission; that mission you will receive here today.' _What is so fascinating about you? _Leonardo gritted his teeth. It was obvious. _Flawlessness. That fucking flawlessness that both of them have, that Skarab had. That I don't have._

'You are to steal any item from the House of Memory,' he waited for a moment for Hadrius to interrupt him with a question as to its whereabouts, but to his surprise, the boy merely nodded. 'This is the portkey that will take you there, when you are ready.'

The mask. Leonardo had checked that damned mask over a thousand times. The only magical property it possessed was the ability to transport the person to the House. It was just a porcelain creation with a grinning face. _Mischievous, _he had thought. But the expression that shadowed Hadrius Black's face for just a moment informed him that the mask wasn't just what it was.

'Thank you Leonardo,' the boy said quietly, before bowing and leaving his rooms.

_I hate you._

'I know.'

Leonardo looked up and saw Hadrius looking at him with a sad smile, weariness in his eyes as his back rested against the door. He froze- had the boy become thought sensitive? He couldn't have, he was a mortal and those were rare. Perhaps he should get a mind-mage...

'And she doesn't, you know,' he said softly. 'Like me like that. I don't think she can like anyone like that,' he paused, as if trying to clarify the matter, then shook his head. 'Forget it.'

_Forget it._

He shut the door without another word.

* * *

_Archon __(är__k__n__, -k__n)_

_1. Ruler  
__2. Lord  
__3. Hadrius Black_

_

* * *

_

_Come dance with me at the masquerade, beautiful boy. Bring your mask and let us dance through the night, _Elena laughed happily as she sat on the roof of the House of Memory. Kelda sat next to her, stiff; tense. Two children of their species, both influential, both powerful. _How alike we are, _Kelda thought, slightly amused.

'Elena…'

'Aah, dragonista. You worry too much,' she said lightly. 'He will come, and you can see your beautiful archon for yourself.' She smiled and conjured up strips of rectangular white paper. 'And when you do, I can kill you,' her eyes swiveled to Kelda. '_Hmm?_'

The dragonista nodded but her palms were sweating. She knew that this was the price that she was to pay, but as long as she had the linked minds of her clan with her, that was alright. _You might kill me, but I am merely one of many, _she thought at Elena, and the vampire girl laughed again and scattered the paper all over the roof of the House.

'Dragonista, I will not have your kind meddling with your archon's young life,' Elena said sternly, before dissolving into giggles at her own tone. Kelda swallowed. The dragonists were a royal race, but that didn't mean they weren't terrified of anomalies like Elena. _A mind dementor, _she shivered, _**the **__mind dementor. Guarding our archon?_

Elena looked at her shrewdly, the dark glimmer of intelligence present in her light golden eyes. Kelda waited for her to say something profound in the silvery tones of a seer.

'I like cheese,' Elena said at last. 'When I was alive to eat it, I think I liked melted cheese. With bread.' Kelda blinked as Elena giggled to herself. 'Do you like cheese?'

'Err…'

'I don't think I'll kill you after all,' the vampire decided. 'It will be funny to keep you around. Besides, Harry, no, _Hadrius,_ may kill me if I kill you when he comes to his birthright.'

'How can you speak of killing so easily, vampire?' Kelda sounded curious, not distasteful. 'How can you speak of taking life without remorse? All life is beautiful.'

'It most definitely _isn't_,' Elena rolled her eyes. 'As to your first question,' she smiled wickedly, baring her extending fangs, 'I have no morals. Sur_prise_!'

'Dare I assume that our archon has no morals as well?' Elena laughed and laughed, the silvery peals of thunder slowly changing to into harsh shrieks that hurt the dragonista's ears. The golden-eyed vampire girl looked bemusedly at Kelda before tilting her head to one side, one slender finger twirling blonde curls around it.

'What do _you _**think**?'

* * *

_To find yourself, think for yourself.  
__-Socrates_

* * *

Argh.  
They'll be heading off to Hogwarts soon enough, so no worries.


	4. Wonderland

"_It's a terrible thing to be alone -- yes it is -- it is -- but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath; as terrible as you like, but a __**mask**__."  
__-Katherine Mansfield_

* * *

As Harry held the mask, he smiled. Leonardo hadn't mentioned how to activate it, only that he had to be 'ready' when he did. _What does one do with a mask_, he asked himself, before rolling his eyes._ You wear it, of course._ And this mask… His hands curled into fists. What was Leonardo playing at? Elena was part of this, he knew, but there were still so many questions that circled it.

_Mister Mischievous_, he could hear her singsong voice whispering the name to him. _Put on your mask and come to the masquerade with me._

He felt so bitter.

Had he not trained for three years for this? Isolated himself in order to defeat her? But what would he do if he did manage to kill her? He bit his lip, gazing at the hollow eyes of the maliciously grinning mask. Killing her wouldn't do anything. He'd simply be a murderer; an ungrateful brat that murdered the one who had given him everything. Three years had changed his mind; after the first few months, he had no longer been consumed by revenge, but mostly training for the sake of training. There hadn't been a better thing to do. He had ignored his allies because-

_**No one can see pass our beauty. Dazzled, stunned, blinded, bewitched, enthralled by it, but no one can look away from or through it.**_

_Elena would be so proud if he could hear me right now_, an unbidden thought curled in his mind before he expelled it, clenching his jaw. _But she can't hear me,_ he reminded himself. _I have to think for myself. _

_After all_, the sad smile still on his eight-year-old face, _isn't that what beauties do? _

He slipped the mask onto his face.

* * *

Elena immediately felt the presence of two more minds and touched the dragonista Kelda's arm lightly. _They are here,_ she thought at her, laughing quietly as she shivered. _Don't like the feel of my thoughts?_ she asked, amused.

_No, it's just the idea that you could rip my mind out from me with a single thought_. Elena smiled as she pulled the dragonista down from the rooftops, drifting gently down to land softly on the ground. She ordered the House of Memory to not allow Harry to hear or see them.

"Don't be silly, dragonista," she chided as she followed the eight-year-old. 'I, as my sire before me, have an immense respect for the royal race of dragonists.' She caught Kelda's hand and sensed her surprise at the action. _Can't I be a child too?_

"Will we be able to see the things he sees?" Elena knew that Kelda meant the memories and she shook her head. The House of Memory was _private_. Hers, Skarab's and Regulus' house, and Harry's if he wished it. Perhaps Leonardo could be part of it as well. The dragonists had no business in it.

"We won't be following him," she explained to Kelda. 'We're going an entirely different way.' At Kelda's questioning look, she pulled her to the nearest transport wall in the House.

"The Garden of Memory."

* * *

Harry stepped cautiously into the House of Memory, wondering which item he would have to steal. He knew there was a trick; the mission that would test his skills to see if he had what it took to become a Master Thief had to be tough and challenging. Leonardo had told him that the vaguer and simpler the task, the harder it was, which meant that there was something to his House that didn't meet the eye. He looked at a single painting that hung on the cream-coloured walls and tugged at it, before slapping his forehead with a palm.

_I am an idiot,_ he thought to himself as he muttered a _wingardium leviosa_. Wandless and silent of course, as demanded of all thieves. Harry hadn't seen a wand in the three years he had stayed at Caele. When he had asked, Leonardo had told him quite snootily that thieves did not depend on sticks for their survival. He had laughed, of course, and had been grateful for the wandless training that… she had given him. He cursed under his breath as the painting didn't budge, but continued looking curiously at it frosted over, before parts of the painting began to show through. _In the shape of an arrow,_ he realised. _Go forward. _

He walked forwards.

The first rule in a thief's unofficial guidebook was to never follow instructions in another person's house. But Harry hated to be predictable, and he could use a little interesting twists in his life. Establishing the light tread of a predator, he cast a disillusionment charm and a deaf-tread charm on himself. _Something's watching me,_ he thought to himself. _And honestly? I don't give a fuck._ Leonardo would be pleased that Harry was a closet foul-mouth. Melisande, however…

He spotted a table and tried to summon it, but instead, it froze over and a small doll appeared on top of it. Harry eyed it warily. It was a simple cloth doll with buttons for eyes, but then again, he'd seen more innocent objects that happened to be potion bombs. The doll was a little dirty, with patches on its' faded red fabric dress, and Harry doesn't really want to touch it. Don't mistake him; he had no scruples with taking a little girl's doll, but he was a thief of good taste. And presenting Leonardo with a raggedy doll was more likely to send him into fits of laughter then it would motivate him to give Harry the title of Master Thief.

_But better safe than sorry. _

Gritting his teeth, he reached out with an extended finger and thumb to gingerly pick up the doll, but the moment his finger brushed against it, he _fell_.

* * *

_Memory_

A little girl ran happily down the cobbled street, dressed in a simple peasant dress, a heavy mass of golden hair flying around her like a halo except for two small parts of it on either side that were bound near the bottom with an iron band. She dragged a little doll with a vibrant red dress with her as she greeted the villagers, but they only looked at her with irritation. _Malvada belladonna,_ they whispered as her beautiful face fell. _Malvada belladona; evil, beautiful girl._

Large grey, cracked eyes widened a fraction in horror as they honed in on a single tall figure. The girl bowed her head respectfully, casting her eyes demurely to the ground as he approached. "Father Lucio," she whispered, suddenly aware of the silence that surrounded her. No children running in the streets. No hens clucking. No shouts, no song. Just pairs and pairs of eyes on her.

"Seize her." It was a command, not a request, and she felt pairs of hands grasp her and she screamed, because their fingernails dug into her soft skin and it hurt. _Let me go_, she wanted to say, but she knew they wouldn't; the whispers about her had gone on too long and-

"Elena di Angelo, you stand accused of witchcraft," the priest's voice never wavered as the little girl thrashed around, looking at her with expressive distaste. "You will be condemned today and exiled from this town…" The little girl didn't seem to pay attention, her eyes choosing instead to focus on the doll that she had dropped a few metres away. _Doll,_ she thought numbly.

"She's too beautiful to carve," someone said in almost-wistfulness, but sounds of disgusts followed that proclamation. Elena watched as they debated the issue, before someone produced a sickle. It wasn't sharp, but it was well polished and gleamed, reflecting her scared gray eyes back at her. _Would it have been more symbolic and less obvious if you used a scythe?_

"Well, pretty girl; daughter of a whore;" a rough-looking farmer leered at her, "I suppose we'll have to mark your hand." _Please, stop touching me…_ She felt a tear run down her face. Mark her… hand? What did that mean? Mark? Hand?

A glint of metal and a smirk.

_Pain._

Blood everywhere.

_Don't touch me!_

Burning, burning pain, her hand; her hand; were they cutting it off? Why were they cutting it off? No they weren't, _oh the heavens_ it-

"Get out of our village, demon child! Die in a ditch where you belong." Where I belong; where I belong. Where do I belong? With mama in the sky? The girl looked up at the sky and watched it turn dark; the sun giving way the moon and the stars. And to darkness. Blissful, blissful, darkness.

"I'm telling you Regulus," the girl's ears pricked up and she said wearily, "I am not hallucinating. Vampires don't hallucinate; the smell of blood can't be faked and minds can't be faked. So there." It was a beautiful voice, low and rich and lovely.

_Don't touch me._

She felt someone approaching; two people, and a tear slid down her face. More pain? No more pain. _Go away. I want to die and join the sky._

"Fuck," she heard someone say. She frowned. That was a bad word. "Fuck. What the fuck." Bad word. "Fuck."

"Regulus Black, she's a child," the first voice scolded gently, and she felt a pair of cool arms pick her up. _Stop touching me!_ "My poor, beautiful child. What have they done to you?" She opened her eyes and looked up into pretty golden eyes that were cracked like her own. "Oh. _Oh._ Regulus?" Another pair of pretty eyes joined the pools of gold, except this one were a somber grey like her own. They widened.

"Seer," grey eyes whispered, as if in reverence. "Now there's two of you." The golden-eyed one smiled at her as the grey eyes moved away.

"Beautiful child," the twin jewels of gold whispered, "won't you be _mine_?"

_

* * *

_

_Present day_

That was not what he had been expecting, to put it lightly. Harry put a hand to his head and rubbed his scar. He had been both inside the gir- _Elena's_ mind and watching outside of it. He had heard her thoughts and had felt what she felt; he looked warily at his left hand, relieved that no one had attacked it with a sickle. It was sick. It was _sick_. He wasn't scared by a lot, especially after spending time with Melisande in the medical wing. Admittedly, what they had done to Elena wasn't the worst he had seen, but how old had she been? Four? Five? Even the hardest hearts felt for a child.

_So that's why she didn't want me to touch her…_

Fuck.

He had been thinking up ridiculous theories about why Elena was so against him touching her. At night, when he couldn't sleep because his face was still buried in a pillow and his back was burning, he thought that she didn't want to be dirtied by his fingers. Well, _fuck._ He didn't burn with shame, instead feeling a certain dread enveloping him. He didn't dare to even look back at the doll that had seen that particular horror. It also explained how Regulus Black and Skarab had found her. His mouth tightened into a thin line. Kraven had told him a lot about Regulus Black, Skarab and Elena over the years. All of it was split between bad, very bad, and massacring towns.

The hallway felt almost claustrophobic as he continued to walk down it, mutilated and bleeding flesh was everywhere he saw; out of the corner of his eye or integrated into the walls. Soft, unmarred skin and suddenly a- he winced. It had been bloody. And they had cheered.

Bloody fucking hell.

He pushed the memories aside and carried on walking; for that was what they were after all- memories. In the past. That meant they weren't happening right now. His eyes darted to a room at the side and he moved soundlessly into it. It was huge, with a glittering chandelier hanging from the ceiling. _Tasteful_, he thought, bemused. He scanned the room. Long table, comfortable-looking chairs, a fireplace and all other accessories that hinted at it being a dining room.

He leaned against the wall next to the opening of the room and closed his eyes, using a Thief's technique called Aura Sight to send his magic as feelers to gently tap the objects in the room. All of them had a strange magical aura- even the chandelier and the fireplace, but one in particular stood out. He walked over to it with his eyes still shut, the colours of the fiery auras outshining the rest of the room which was a dull unmagical grey. The fierce auras of the object were all the same; white mingling with flames of gold, except for one that was pure gold. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was going to show him a disgusting memory like the doll did, before shaking his head and grabbing it.

He felt only cold metal for less than a second before falling into another time.

_

* * *

_

_Memory_

"Skarab papa?"

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

_Blood._

The dining room was eerily silent, punctuated only by the annoying dripping. The chandelier swung to and fro gently as if buffeted by an unseen wind and chairs were nothing more than splinters.

"Skarab papa?"

Golden eyes looked into golden eyes, drops of blood fell to the ground with a patter. _Seer madness. It's caught up with him._ She trailed the blood, the steady dripping until she her eyes arrived at the source of the blood. The freshly killed corpse of Regulus Black. A thought crept into her mind that wasn't hers, tinged with madness and longing, compelling her to obey its command.

_Give me your blood; let me taste you; let me devour you._

"No," she said, finality ringing in her voice. It was that finality that enraged her sire until he grasped her neck and squeezed.

"My childe," Skarab crooned, his voice silky and seductive as if he was talking to his lover, "why do you deny me what is mine to take?"

Elena looked at him firmly, her eyes beginning to water with the pain. Vampires didn't need to breathe; they were already dead, after all, but it hurt all the same.

"Not yours," she whispered, watching his eyes widen in fury, before she kicked upwards, sending her sire's arm flying and dropping to the ground, knives in both of her hands. Skarab sneered, his own knives in hand as well. Elena waited for his first move. She knew his fighting style; he liked to strike fast, obliterating the enemy before he could even begin to attack. But she wouldn't be as easy to destroy; she had a tendency to survive harsh circumstances.

The tip of the knife grazed past her as she forced her body to flip over the table, watching it embed itself into the creamy white wall. Her eyes flicked back to Skarab. He smirked at her, making her fingers twitch towards her arsenal of poison-coated throwing knives. _Fuck you,_ she thought at him savagely, launching three sharpened daggers at his head that barely connected, managing to lodge in his shoulder instead and sending him a step backwards with the combined force.

"Really Elena," he smiled as he pulled the daggers out with barely a wince, a finger going to the cuts. "Have you forgotten who taught you those skills?" Skarab lifted the finger to his mouth and a tongue darted out, licking the dark blood off. Her eyes widened.

"Perhaps this is the time for a lesson…" he twirled a throwing knife and looked at her with his eyes narrowed in almost amusement, "in _obedience!_"

She gasped as the knife slammed into her stomach coated in magic that crunched and ripped, and she rolled out of the way of another shower of knives that came at her. She looked anxiously down at Skarab's knife and winced at the damage. It was nothing incurable, but it still hurt like a bitch. She gritted her teeth as she pulled it out, isolating the magic to that part of her abdomen. _You're using magic now? Fine. I'll use magic as well_. Elena thought fast; she couldn't defeat her own sire with Skarab-kolen, he had invented it himself. _Think!_ Skarab had only studied to become a thief and had taught her, but he had allowed her to study necromancy as well. She laughed bitterly as she threw a knife at her sire, not even expecting to get a hit in. What use was necromancy now? It wasn't like they were in a graveyard or had any dead bodies…

_Regulus._

Her mind worked fast. An unprepared summoning required a lot of power for only a few minutes of using the dead. Not worth it; if it didn't work, she would be defeated with no question. Regulus hadn't been dead for long, and she could… She grimaced and muttered a disillusionment charm, steeling her mind. Then she did what no one else could, what Skarab could never do. She left her body and zipped into Regulus'.

"Skarab," she said in Regulus' voice, reaching out with Regulus' hands, widening Regulus' eyes. Regulus, bless his soul, had strapped dozens of knives around his body despite the fact that he was next to useless at them. Elena surreptitiously summoned five of them into her hand, all poison-tipped. _I fight to kill._ She made a small cut in the skin below his eyes with the extended tip of a dagger to make "tears of blood" run down his face for a theatrical effect. She watched with almost malicious glee as Skarab seemed to lose his mental footing and stumble towards her in his lover's body.

"Regulus! Oh god, Regulus," her sire whispered, dropping the knives he held in his hands and embracing her. "I didn't mean to kill you… I, you're alive," he said with such adoration that Elena had no qualms doing what she did next.

"I love you too," she cooed into his ears as she dug all five of her knives straight into his head, pushing until the metal tips extended from his forehead. She immediately threw him away from her onto the floor, feeling a morbid satisfaction as the ground jammed the knives deeper in and making him wail. Vampires always took such a long time to die. She detached herself from the bleeding corpse of Regulus and back into her own body, feeling the pins-and-needles sensation of her wound immediately.

"Skarab papa," she greeted him happily as she vaulted over the large dining table. "How are you feeling?" He looked at her with his aureate eyes, fogged with pain but clear of madness. He gurgled something as the black blood slid from his lips, but she felt his thoughts reach out to her.

"_I pray to Regulus my soul to keep. Kiss my mind and lay me to sleep."_

* * *

_Present day._

Kraven had lied to him. He had told him that Elena had killed both Regulus and Skarab because she was insane and _felt like it_. How much was the truth? How much had he lied? Why did he even care? He left the dining room quickly, not wanting to stay in the same room where two people had died, one of them his godfather's brother.

_And Kraven wants me to be his heir…_ He laughed. How twisted the world was. _I'm going to be a liar's heir._

Everything felt light, all of a sudden, as if he wasn't walking on ground but on air. He looked down and realised that he was hovering a few inches from the ground and smiled. _There's something you don't see everyday. _The House probably had something to do with it, he guessed. He knew by now it was far from normal. _Is this Elena's house? Or Regulus Black's? Or Skarab's?_

His green eyes were closed, using his Aura Sight to navigate his way. There were auras where there was nothing; hidden objects. He didn't try to approach those. It was better to leave warded objects alone in this house then to approach them, even more so if it was actually Elena's house. Even if she hadn't killed Regulus Black, she was twisted enough to use his body to kill her sire, and that said a lot about her personality right there. He frowned as he approached a flaming wall of sheer aura; it was purple, the aura that indicated transportation. _A transportation wall? How utterly… _He shook his head and smirked, closing his eyes and walking through it, gaining the slight sense of immateriality.

"Hadrius outside and Harry inside. It's strange."

"How is it strange," Harry smiled evenly at the golden-haired girl, "_Elena?_"

* * *

Elena returned his little smile as she banished Leonardo's mind from her House of Memories and reached out with her mind to caress his. She frowned a little as she realised the extent of Leonardo's foul-mouthed influence. _All my hard word undone. Perfect gentle-boy image, ka-puff! _However, she was extremely happy with how her beautiful boy had turned out; there was only one large flaw she needed to correct…

"Just strange. You are referred to Hadrius outside but you think of yourself as _Harry. _Why?"

"You looked into my mind." She noted with approval that her Harry-beauty sounded neither surprised nor angry, but stated it as if he was reciting a bland fact. Kelda stood beside her, frozen in surprise at actually meeting her archon in person. "And Hadrius is a nice name. Wouldn't want it go to waste." Her eyes followed his movement as he scanned her Garden of Memories, not a single emotion flickering in his eyes. _That, _she disliked, and was going to remove.

"How much of you is a mask, Harry?"

"Not sure, and I hope you jump off Everest for fucking with my final mission," he replied, the end of his lips twisting up into a smirk. "And, is there anything here I can actually remove?"

Elena laughed as the invisible dragonista beside her blushed at Harry's language, and laughed at Harry's suggestion. _Abseil _off Mount Everest indeed. "What do you mean, not sure," she said, her tone slightly sharper than it had been before. "A mask is a mask. Make it, use it, throw it away. What the _fuck,_" she smiled maliciously as Harry's eyes widened- oh did he think she didn't swear? It was called being at close quarters with Regulus Black. "What the _fuck,_" she repeated, "do you mean by 'not sure'?"

"I feel that it has become a part of me," she watched Harry touch the bone-white mask that was on his face, a mischievous grin etched onto it. "I don't know where it starts or where it ends."

"And you are content with that?"

"I'm fine with it," he said off-handedly, his fingers still curled on the bottom of the mask as if hesitating to take it off. "I don't want to rip out a part of me after all."

"If that is what you wish," she shrugged. She wasn't a preacher. If that was what Harry-beauty wanted, then Harry-beauty would have to deal with any consequences. "I'm curious," she told him, her eyes searching his, "why haven't you attacked me for injuring you?"

"Because I know why you did it," he said quietly. "Your thoughts. The pain. You showed it to me, and now I understand." Elena watched him as he discretely gazed towards his left hand as if a ghost of her pain lingered there. "I have no right to attack you for that."

"Don't think like that," she said sharply, her eyes narrowing in dislike. "One should not let a single incident define their entire life. The… _touch issue,_" she pursed her lips, "is just a side-effect I haven't managed to rid myself of yet. You are fully within your rights to attack me if _that is what you want._"

"It's been _three years_ Elena, _three fucking years _of mediating everyday, trading insults with Leonardo, training until my mind threatens to resign;" he paused as if wondering how he would continue his rant, "I've _changed. _I'm not exactly the messy-haired child who needed you to think for him when you left me. I could defeat you if I tried, I think."

Elena looked coolly at him for a moment, smiling as he just spoke his fatal flaw aloud. _Aah, damned hubris. You and I meet again._

"You have indeed improved to become a different person, _Harry-beauty, _but your arrogance has improved as well… How long have you trained as a thief?" He was still young, she could excuse him. But if there was one thing Elena truly, _truly _disliked, it was arrogance. Arrogance got people killed. Arrogance was disgustingly, well, _disgusting. _It oozed and slimed and wrapped itself smugly around the minds of people until she didn't even want to get close to those minds.

"I've trained for three years."

"I've trained for four times that," Elena said quietly. "Never underestimate an opponent. It is important to understand the opponent as fully as possible before confrontation," she lectured, her mind slipping back into the instructor mind frame she had used with Harry when he was still a small child, firm and gently rebuking.

"You can't expect anyone to _understand _you, Elena," her beauty drawled as a reply, the amusement lighting up his almond-shaped emerald eyes. "You might have experience, but I have luck."

Elena shrugged in response, but her left hand clenched into a fist, the scars on her skin becoming more pronounced. She raised it to Harry's masked face and locked onto his eyes.

"Luck. _Luck. _You are not stupid," she said slowly, as if she was talking to a baby. "Why are you acting like you are?" She watched his peridot orbs flit quickly from her scarred hand back to her eyes. _Has your arrogance dulled your mind? I taught you better, my beautiful child, _she thought sadly. "My scars were not healed when I became vampire because they are a part of me," she continued impassively, "they remind me of the motto I live by. Do you know what it is?"

"_I am not infallible,_" Harry replied easily. She smiled. She knew that he would remember it. "You drummed that phrase into me so many times, I'm sure it's been hammered into my skull."

"If I am not infallible, then you definitely are not." Elena made her voice sound disinterested now, because she was tiring of the conversation. She'd much rather talk about interesting things than to _preach _to her beautiful child. She'd talk of _shoes and ships, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. _She giggled and let her arm drop back to her side, smiling sweetly at her Harry-beauty. They had years yet to correct that little flaw that she did not like.

"I'm tired of preaching, beautiful boy," she looked coyly at him from under her lashes, "I am yours to steal if you ask politely." She smiled as he rolled his eyes.

"My _pulchritudinous _Lady Elena," he said with bored tolerance, "if I may be so bold as to ask your permission to steal you away so I can _finally_ become a Master Thief?" He extended a gloved hand in mock politeness.

Elena tilted her head and smiled as she banished the dragonista beside her from her House and placed her ungloved hand in Harry's demurely. "Why of course, you dastardly thief, you may steal the Lady Elena away."

With that, she apparated them both from her beautiful House of Memory into Leonardo's private rooms, laughing at the expression on the surprised guildmaster's face.

"I'm back," she told him. _And something is wrong and rotting in the citadel of Caele._

Leonardo leant back in the leather armchair he was reclining in and closed his eyes, taking an unneeded deep breath.

"You complicate everything."

_

* * *

__Night._

"What has Kraven been doing with my beautiful child?" she snapped at Leonardo as if he had been the one responsible for it. "Also, I noticed quite a few new additions to his vocabulary…" her voice trailed off for a moment as she smiled, "I like it."

"_What?"_ He had been expecting a serious death threat at the very least. Thank god Elena was in one of her insane moods.

"It adds to his bad-boy image," she explained happily. "I suppose asking him to behave like a princelet was too much with _you _around, corrupting Skarab papa's ideals."

"Don't play the saint with me, Elena. Regulus Black was a good friend of mine. You're him at the core," he smiled tiredly, his sapphire eyes a quiet request for permission. She merely jumped into his lap, stretching like a cat.

"Onto business," she said briskly. "The dragonists have laid formal claim to Harry as their archon, which complicates matters. A _lot,_" she said unhappily. Leonardo could understand her disapproval. The dragonists were the royal race, and there were limits to what Elena could do in that area. If they had laid claim to Hadrius Black…

"There isn't anything you can do," he told her gently as she frowned. "Did you manage to negotiate?" She nodded.

"They'll leave him alone until he is thirteen-years-old, and they'll let him finish his Hogwarts education."

"It is better than nothing," he made his voice sound as reassuring as it could without turning patronizing. "You have him _officially _for five more years. No one said anything about _unofficially._"

"I like your style, Leonardo," she poked his cheek gently, "I'm bored with talking about the dragonists; they are so boring and predictable." Her face darkened as she continued talking. "Let's talk about Kraven poisoning the mind of my beautiful boy _instead_," she growled.

Leonardo winced. He hadn't really touched upon the issue in his letters. "He wants to make Hadrius his heir," he explained carefully as Elena fumed on his lap, expecting her to lose her temper. "Kraven-kene has decided that having the archon of the dragonists as his heir would be a bonus."

Elena tensed for a moment then shrugged. "Kraven-idiot can do what he wants and deal with the consequences. Action and reaction are equal and opposite," she smirked, "_you _taught me that, remember?"

He laughed and ruffled her hair. Elena was ruthless and her actions were brutal, but she didn't preach or force anyone to do anything they didn't want to do. That was in a redeeming quality than most of the world had.

"So, what are you going to do with Hadrius?"

"I'd like to take him to all the places Skarab papa and Regulus took me to," she told him shyly, as if she was scared that he thought it was time-wasting. "You're coming too," she added. "You're going to end up a tower-dwelling recluse if you carry on like this."

"What about the guild?"

"What _about _the guild? Thieves aren't babies you know, we're independent and the only reason we even _have _a guild is to teach the younger ones," she said impatiently. "Any competent Master Thief can take care of the guild. _Live _for once, Leonardo. It's what _Skarab papa_ would have wanted you to do."

There she was, with that constant guilt trip. And it worked every time.

* * *

_Next morning_

"Harry," Elena said thoughtfully as she watched him eat his breakfast, "have you been paying attention to your clone lately?"

"The clone?" Harry shook his head as he reached for a bread roll. "I haven't seen him since you created him."

"It," Elena corrected absently, fascinated as she watched him tear chunks out from the roll, "We are going to visit it today then; we might have to resummon it." She blinked, surprised as he shoved a roll in her face.

"If you really want a roll that much..." the eight-year-old rolled his eyes, making the inelegant gesture dazzling with his emerald orbs as Elena took the bread from him, mimicking his gestures and daintily putting small chunks of it in her mouth.

"It looks better than it tastes," she admitted after hastily swallowing the chunk, "Blood is better."

"Debatable," he argued as he rolled the soft part of the bread into a small ball. The rest of his argument was cut off as Leonardo stalked into the Palace's dining hall and took over the conversation.

"No human food," he told Elena, who pouted. "The bread is the only thing that tastes alright, but it's about as nourishing as paper. Anything else that can barely sustain us tastes worse than dirt."

Elena immediately made a face and put the bread roll down, resigned to watching Harry eat as Leonardo chattered to him about how he scored on the Master Thief exams. _Master Thief Black, _the butler had called him that morning, and it sounded like sweet music to his ears.

"It'd be nice to see Sirius again," he had told her after Leonardo had lapsed into watching him eat with a fascinated expression on his face. He didn't understand why vampires liked to do that. Even Kraven had been content to watch him slowly eat his way through an egg sandwich. "He and Remus were good to me while the rest weren't."

_

* * *

__Black Manor_

Elena saw possibilities where others didn't.

For instance, it was highly possible that the Harry clone had gained self-awareness, and had to be destroyed. Sixteen of her possibilities showed that. The other three were of the clone gaining enough self-awareness to try and fool them.

Either way, it was going to end up de-summoned.

It wasn't murder if it had never actually lived, Elena reflected. Not that she would lose any sleep over destroying a living being anyway. Now that she had made the decision to de-summon it, yet more possibilities arose. She laughed quietly at one that showed them smashing the mirror on its head and pushing it off the building. She'd avoid that one if possible; it was so _inelegant_.

"Can we go now?" asked Harry petulantly. Elena smiled as she nodded. Sometimes she forgot Harry was a child with the way he acted, but sometimes he did things that were so innocently _adorable _that he couldn't be described as anything _but _a child. She was under a Disillusionment charm like Harry was, after deciding that enquiring if she could travel in his head was not a good idea.

"I wonder if Sirius has noticed any difference," Elena said as she scaled the Manor using the ivy growing on the side. "If he has, we kill the clone."

She could hear her words echoing in Harry's mind. _Kill the clone, kill the clone kill the clone killtheclonekilltheclone. Kill __**me**__? _She frowned; her Harry-beauty thought that she would kill him? How wrong he was. Elena would never harm anything inherently beautiful. She ripped the window from the walls of the house with her bare hands as she sat on the spacious ledge, smiling as she landed inside the large bedroom. She gently placed the windows to one side. The soulless copy of her Harry-beauty looked at her with alarmed eyes- _so he has gained self-awareness_, she thought disapprovingly. Immediately, all possibilities of the clone's future ended, signaling that it was so close to inexistence that there was no point seeing its future anymore.

"Have you missed us, clone _dearest?_" she cooed at it as it backed up against the wall. The real Harry lounged against the holes that were once filled with glass and _smiled, _smiled at the exchange, emerald orbs half lidded in delight. Her golden eyes flicked to meet his green ones. "Shall we," she murmured, making her fangs extend until they almost touched the end of her chin. Harry laughed, a wonderful, light sound, that swirled in her mind and pushed her into intoxication. The clone's eyes- so pretty, so frightened, so delicious and _green _as she grabbed as his fragile mortal neck and slammed him into the wall.

"Don't worry child," she whispered, "this will only hurt as much as you think it will."

_Permutare mens mentis._

In her mind's eye, a hand molded out of raw mind magics reared and snatched the swirling compressed ball of energy that was the clone's mind, filled with a wealth of information that was to be Harry's. It was created for that purpose, and its purpose had been fulfilled. Thus, they didn't need a self-aware clone running around.

_Bye-bye._

Elena sank her fangs into the clone's unresisting vulnerable flesh, watching as the light died in its eyes. So like her Harry-beauty, so beautiful. Even its blood was beautiful-tasting, exotic and flavoursome. Class-A for sure. Her golden eyes slid towards Harry who was sitting down on the bed, a hand held to his head. Elena could sense the whirlwind of information assaulting him and had no wish to delve into it, preferring to continue her feeding. There was a smile on Harry's face, a happy smile.

_He is happy, _Elena told herself, _but why am I not happy?_

Suddenly feeling bloated, she pushed the unconscious clone away and snapped his neck cleanly, erasing any trace of his existence with a Funeral Pyre spell that sent him up in flames. She used the large mirror hanging on the bedroom wall to summon another Harry clone.

"Behave like Harry," she told it shortly, and it merely gave her a distant smile and a nod. She frowned and decided that Black Manor wasn't the most hospitable of places at the moment.

"Come, Harry," she said quietly, pulling the eight-year-old off the bed. "Places to be, people to kill."

_I have everything that makes me happy…_

_A body, Harry and Leonardo._

_Yet I'm not happy._

Elena laughed bitterly as she disapparated herself and Harry off Black land. Happiness was overrated, as was sanity. She would do fine without either.

_Freeze my heart and silence my soul._

* * *

"Where to?" was the first thing Leonardo asked when Elena had whisked them back to the gates of Caele. Elena tilted her head as her mind worked furiously. Perhaps they could go to the House of Memory first, but there was something else she had to settle first.

"You have decided to go to Hogwarts, yes?" Harry nodded, which made her frown a little. Why did he want to go to that distasteful little school in that distasteful little country? For the love of Skarab, that country basically said that she couldn't hold a wand! Not that she needed one, of course, but it was the principle of the matter. It couldn't be- _No. _There was no love between the brothers, but… _why? _She resisted the urge to rummage around in his mind and clenched her fists instead, using that to ground her instinct. She had never tried to restrain herself. She looked at Harry. _Why am I doing it for you, then?_

"Alright," she said finally. "We'll go back to England."

"Why? Why can't we stay here?" the eight-year-old frowned and regarded her suspiciously. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"What?" Elena rolled her eyes, putting her hands on her hips. "I'm going to Hogwarts with you, tha-"

"You can't!" he blurted out, a hand automatically going to his scar to rub it in irritation. "You-"

"Because I'm a _vampire,_" she snapped, a small stab of hurt striking her. _Hurt. Kill him. _She frowned. _Mask yourself. _"Is that _it_, Harry-beauty?" she said quietly.

"If it makes it any better, I'm going as well," Leonardo offered to the child's dismay. "I stopped growing at the same age as Elena. It is either _us _as bodyguards or strangers that might not be as kind as we will be. Kraven-kene wouldn't let you out of Caele if he could help it."

"A compromise?"

Elena nodded. She had barely had time to discuss the matter with Kraven and threaten mental damage before she got his reluctant agreement. She had known that the vampire king would agree. They had many vampires that were prominent members in both the societies of non-magical mortals- she refused to call them _'muggles'_, and magical mortals. However, there hadn't been a lot of vampire activity in magical Britain, despite the fact that one of their numbers was the non-magical Prime Minister of Britain, so she had managed to convince him that Harry could be an ambassador for magical Britain, of sorts.

It had worked.

"Alright then, though I don't know why I need any bodyguards…" Harry rolled his eyes as Leonardo waved a hand transfigured all of their robes into the nondescript hooded black robes of an assassin.

"You're as good as Kraven-kene's heir, and as such, he would prefer that you remain intact." Leonardo slid a crisp white card which had the address of the assassin headquarters printed neatly onto it to Harry. "We need to head to the London chapter and register."

"Register?"

Leonardo rolled his eyes and lifted down his hood to cover his face. "Register. With the Assassin Chapter of London. You don't expect we can waltz anywhere and attack anyone," his sapphire eyes flicked to Elena, who smirked. "Except Elena," he amended, "she managed to wrangle a diplomatic immunity pass. _I_ need to register with them."

The golden-eyed vampire shrugged. "They liked me," she offered. "Harry-"

"Hadrius," Harry corrected automatically as Elena frowned at him. Fine. If her Harry-beauty wanted to be unfamiliar, then she would be unfamiliar as well.

"Hadrius," she said coolly, "you will not be allowed with us _into _the headquarters itself, so think of this as your first mission, if you will." She reached into her pockets of her robe and pulled out a familiar small black book and handed it to him. _**Prankster's guide: Hexes, jinxes and potions. **_"Deliver this to The Burrow, Ottery St. Catchpole in Devon. The room is green, inhabited by two red-haired twins."

Elena noted the stiffly set jaw, the hard, calculating emerald eyes and the blank expression on Harry's face as he nodded briefly and took the book without even giving it a glance. _So indecisive and angry. _Right then, she decided that he was a threat.

_Hadrius Black must never know the truth._

* * *

_Assassin guild, London chapter._

"He appears to strongly dislike you," Leonardo snickered as let a drop of black blood fall onto the Identification Parchment. His name appeared in beautiful calligraphic letters in black ink along with his title. "No, it seems to extend further than that." The muggle clerk that the guild had coerced into doing their paperwork blankly took the paper and wrote down his name into a large ledger.

Elena regarded him for a moment with no particular expression then rolled her eyes. "No matter. The realization doesn't affect me as much as I thought it would," she sighed, leaning back against the wall. "What I think and what I feel are two entirely different things."

_I hoped it wouldn't be like this, _Leonardo thought bitterly. _But hopes are like promises- meant to be forgotten and broken. _

"He is not my enemy," she continued, her eyes sweeping the room carelessly, looking anywhere, _anywhere _but him, "but I'm tired of his coldness, tired of seeking his approval…"

He closed his eyes and exhaled.

"I wash my hands off him."

* * *

_"This is Elena," _Skarab had introduced when he had visited the House of Memory. He pushed a little girl forward and twirled a lock of her long, long hair around a finger and brought it to his lips. _"She's so beautiful, isn't she?"_

_(What a beautiful monster she has become.)_

_"Maybe you two could be friends," _the royal vampire had continued, as he and his 'daughter' both looked at him with their damnable, fractured golden eyes. "_Or more," _he had raised an eyebrow suggestively, to the embarrassed amusement of Leonardo.

_(Friends or foes or even lovers?)_

"He fascinates me," she told him, her gaze now resting on the blank white wall, as blank and emotionless as her pretty golden eyes. "No matter what, he is my beautiful, beautiful boy."

His fists clenched.

_She was beautiful, he realised, even when she was dripping in blood as dark as the magic she wielded. Even when her eyes had that dangerous glint, a sign of madness and a threat of destruction, even when she had held a dagger at his neck, crooning that his blood tasted like trash-_

_She was beautiful to him._

"Even if I hate him, even as I wish his death-"her breath caught, but she continued, "He is still mine. And I take care of what is mine."

_He thought of her often, and more often than not, the mind mages found him holding her hand as she slumbered in forced sleep. Obsession, they called it. Unhealthy. But he didn't care. _

"Though I understand," Elena continued bitterly. "I am a monster to him. Who can like a monster?"

"_You are my friend, and I take care of my friends," he had told her once. And she had looked up at him with those eyes that saw so much more than anyone would see in ten lifetimes and smiled, lifting a delicate hand to touch his cheek gently._

_"Even if I am a monster?"_

"Congratulations," the clerk said, turning his dull eyes on Leonardo. "You are now able to operate within the parameters of Great Britain."

_Congratulations, _Regulus Black had said mockingly, the last time he had saw the dark-haired mortal alive, _you're in love with a monster._

He turned on his heel and apparated away, escaping her, escaping scars that still bled.

* * *

_Ottery St. Catchpole, England_

Information whirled around his head- books upon books of numbers, percentages, the fine art of balancing accounts and taxes, even what Elena had said about 'hostile takeovers' so long ago flooded his mind. Harry tossed the little black book that Elena had given him through the window of the decrepit house and glared at the pale-green room balefully from his hidden position on the branch of an old oak tree. _Mission complete, _he thought dully. Having his first mission as a young Master Thief be a _delivery job _was more insulting than anything; it was like having his virginity taken by a ugly, flat-chested hermaphrodite. He felt _cheated. _

"Kid." Harry just managed to restrain himself from immediately attacking his guildmaster, but his effort didn't escape Leonardo's eyes.

"The best Thief is one that knows when to attack and when _not _to," Leonardo told him, a smile gracing his face. "Control yourself, you wouldn't want to _damage someone accidentally, _hmm?"

Harry grimaced. That was a low blow coming from the vampire, and he knew it. He studied the angular face with the aristocratic features and noticed the tense lines on the side of his mouth along with the skillfully forced smile. "No need to take it out on me, you know," he murmured. Leonardo looked at him sharply, a questioning look in his eyes.

Harry shook his head. "I can read expressions well," he said shortly, jumping off the tree and rolling his lithe body forwards into the ground to transfer momentum. "For the last time, I can't do what Elena does."

Leonardo regarded him with thinly-veiled suspicion for a moment, then shook his head. "As you say then," the thief guildmaster said, shifting himself from the branch to his side with eerie grace. "If you'd care to listen, I might have a piece of advice for you." Harry arched a brow. Advice? Not orders?

"I suggest you drop whatever grudge you're holding against her," he said quietly, without even bothering to wait for Harry's response, "it's getting old quickly, in her eyes and mine. Get over yourself."

"She slammed me into a _wall_," Harry snapped heatedly then quickly smoothed his features into an indifferent mask, his hands clenching and unclenching rapidly. "And _left _me." The last part, he had to fight not to make it sound choked.

"She's done a hundred times worse to children far younger than you," Leonardo said coolly, his dark blue eyes flashing with a hint of anger. "Elena is the kind of ally that you keep closer to you than your heart, if only to make sure she isn't trying to wreck your plans or the country you're staying in. She's a true seer, and she's a _child_," he chuckled wryly, "not the best combination. You can't reason with an obstinate child."

"You're suggesting I drop everything and let her back into my mind like before?" Harry asked sarcastically, running his fingers through his dark, windblown hair.

"Exactly!" Leonardo exclaimed happily, snapping his fingers. "I _knew _you weren't stupid."

Harry looked at him blankly for a few moments, trying to see if the vampire was joking. _He isn't. He's actually expecting me to-_

"See it from my point of view, Hadrius," the guildmaster carried on quietly. "She wanders, and she might wander further and further away from you if you don't hold her close." His eyes darkened as they bore into Harry's. "Where she goes, I go, even if it is against you."

Harry clenched his teeth. "What are you, her manservant? I was so sure she'd grown up enough not to need one." he asked spitefully before he could stop himself, wincing as the words come out as petty and as childish as it had sounded in his head. Leonardo's eyes turned into what Harry called 'feral' for a vampire; his pupils turned into slits and his eye colour darkened considerably.

"Careful, Hadrius Black, Kraven-heir," he whispered silkily, sending alarm bells going off in Harry's head. A knife appeared into his hand and less than a second later, Harry found himself in a headlock with the knife pointing into his neck. "She is _precious _to me. You do not insult her. Use that _photographic memory_ of yours to remember that." Harry remained motionless, not even bothering to draw his own knives or try to attack the guildmaster. There was a reason why Leonardo was the guildmaster, and not people older than he was.

"That's a compromising position," a silvery voice drawled, making Leonardo release him immediately. A flash of russet-

"Your hair," he breathed, his hand immediately going out as if touching it. The blonde waves were gone, instead replaced by silky-straight very dark reddish-brown hair that glimmered in the sunlight, complimenting her porcelain-white skin. It looked nothing like Lily Potter's, thankfully. Elena held out a small blood-red marble attached to the silver chain on her neck.

"I collected a few bounties when you left, Leonardo. This was the bounty on one of the people I, ah…" she winked, "_disposed of_. It's an old blood magic and necromancy artifact, meant to be used to permanently change the appearance of a corpse. Since I'm dead already, it works." She concentrated for a moment, and Leonardo's hair suddenly turned a shade darker. "We'll be using this to get inside Hogwarts."

"You're having far too much fun with that," Leonardo grumbled, running his fingers through his lightly-gelled dark brown hair. Elena waved his complaints away and looked down at the marble with interest.

"Blonde wasn't really my colour," she explained, her eyes twinkling mischievously, gold brightening into a balance between blue and green. _Turquoise, _Harry thought. _Grounds the wandering wayward spirit. _Elena smiled at him, her newly-coloured eyes shining with amusement.

_Truce? _He thought at her, watching her tap her chin in thought, lips curling into a smile.

_Kin, _she thought back at him, reaching out to grasp at his wrist. _Let me show you what I see, Harry-beauty, and perhaps you will understand._

He blinked, and suddenly, he could _See. _Coiled ropes, around their wrists, their necks, and the auras like the ones he could glimpse from his Thief Aura Sight flared and coloured the air around them. _What is this? _The ropes were of all colours- gold, red, and a silver one nestled around his neck joining him to Leonardo's wrist.

_Look at them, see how fragile they are. _Elena touched the silver cord and it grew brighter under her touch, before she gently lifted it. It broke slowly, dissolving into silver particles that rose and winked themselves out of sight. _A bond of enmity, between you and he, _she explained in his mind. _So damaging, but so easy to break. What you held against me was stupid, and you aren't stupid. _

Elena let go of his wrist and the ropes faded from his vision, and Harry knew that he would never see them again. They had been dazzling and beautiful and he found himself missing them. No wonder Elena wasn't able to focus when she could see all these things. _And probably more, _he thought to himself.

"By the way, your mind is quite messy," she added as the shape and colour of her eyes suddenly mirrored his. He rolled his eyes and agreed with Leonardo. She was _definitely_ having too much fun with the new artifact of hers. "You might want to put the numbers aside; they're interfering with your thought pattern."

_

* * *

_

_Letters, two years later._

Dear Headmaster Dumbledore,

I am Kraven, the head of the Veela clans of Italy. I have heard of your esteemed school through my associates from England, the Lovegood family. My niece, Elena Skarab, and her friend, Leonardo Lamar, have expressed an interest in attending Hogwarts. Neither of them is of full Veela descent and both currently ten years of age.

Although the magical Italian schools are accomplished, I feel that my charges will achieve a better education in Hogwarts. I hope that you will allow them both into your prestigious academy and give them the chance of being surrounded by a magical culture rich in both prestige and tradition.

Yours with the greatest sincerity,  
_Kraven  
Master of Veela Italy._

* * *

Dear Master Kraven,

I would be honoured to allow both Elena and Leonardo into Hogwarts. If they have any extra needs because of their Veela heritage, the school will not hesitate to offer help. They are now entered on the Hogwarts register and will receive their acceptance letters in August, next year, as the rest of the students will.

I look forward to meeting them.

Yours in friendship,  
_Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore  
Order of Merlin, First Class  
Grand sorcerer  
Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards  
Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot_

* * *

"Now, Kraven-kene, Master of Veela Italy," Elena bared her teeth, twirling a knife that hovered dangerously close to his neck, "that wasn't too hard, was it?"

The vampire king looked affronted at his newest title but otherwise made no comment as his niece pocketed her knife and swished a finger to release him from his bindings.

"Don't look so displeased, _uncle dearest_," her eyes narrowed as he stood and brushed imaginary specks of dust off his dark robes, "we _are _called Veelas of the night, afterall," she purred as she brushed a few strands of her strangely dark russet-coloured hair out of her turquoise eyes. He shivered at the change of colour. At least when she had kept her original eye colours, he could pretend she was but a spawn of his disgraced elder brother, but now… She looked like…

_Fae._

He clenched his teeth and stepped neatly over the recently-conquered ex-Master of Veela Italy that was lying on the floor, the crimson blood pooling onto his shoes. They made a soft 'plop' sound as he stood at rest next to the door, his royal-golden eyes looking at Elena questioningly.

"Your heir is unharmed," she assured him.

"See to it that he is."

Elena laughed as the vampire king apparated away soundlessly; the threat was so _funny _and so _weak_. She laughed and laughed and laughed until tears began to fall from her eyes as she threw back her head, the liquid dripping onto the marble floor to mix with the murdered original Master of Veela Italy's blood.

"I am a monster," she told the cooling corpse, "the mad hatter; the Cheshire cat. Does that mean Harry is Alice?"

More tears made tracks down her pale and flawless skin.

"So many people trapped in my Wonderland..."

Elena could remember seeing Harry's pretty, innocent eyes, morph into hardness and a hint of the metal resolve that lay behind it. He had been looking in a mirror, she had remembered, and she had put her hands on either side of his head. He had been smiling at the fact that she couldn't be reflected in the mirror.

_Let me make you beautiful, _she had crooned. _Let me make you mine._

And he agreed, so she opened the paths of his mind that were usually untouched, clearing the fog of mortal thinking, slicing through the blurriness that was adolescence. And his eyes had changed; less merciful, less wide, but acquiring a gleam that boasted of superior intelligence and maturity.

That made him no less beautiful, in fact, he had become more dazzling through the dissolution of his innocent thinking. She had sighed admiringly at it, weaving her influence deeper into his expanding mind.

_I just want to be happy._

* * *

"I'm activating photographic memory in your mind for a week," Elena told him, making her long russet hair grown a few more inches longer until they touched her finely sculpted- _bad Leonardo, bad! _If Elena noticed the direction his thoughts were going, she made no comment. "If I leave it for longer, it might damage your mind."

He cocked his head to one side. "Is Hadrius' mind damaged?"

Elena shook her head. "He was a baby when I activated it," she explained, "so he was able to adapt to the change quickly." He heard her mumble something about breaking more than a few people's minds refining it and laughed. It was so like her. He stopped laughing immediately when what appeared to be an entire bookshelf of books land in front of him.

"You will memorise all the books here; they're the books that are going to be used for the next seven years." Leonardo raised an eyebrow. _Going to be used? Abusing your seer powers, hmm? _"Neither of you will waste time studying when there's more interesting things to be done." _But isn't studying what we're going to school for? _Elena merely stuck a tongue out at him before leaving their hotel room. She had been doing that a lot lately. He narrowed his eyes- she was hiding something, he knew it. But he shrugged and merely reached for the first book; he didn't really care about what she did as long as it was relatively safe for her. _Herbology for beginners. Wonderful. _

The door opened and a black-robed figure strode in, plopping down beside him and reaching for a book.

"You too?"

Hadrius nodded and started flicking through the pages as quickly as he was, eyes taking a picture of each page to be digested as he raced through the book. "Said she didn't want us to waste time studying," the ten-year-old scowled, "when we could be doing much more interesting things."

"Sounds like her."

The duo continued memorizing in a companiable silence; Harry not even glancing at the older boy's bizarre purple skin, courtesy of the crimson marble that Elena adored.

* * *

Elena looked unhappily at the marble as she rolled it between her thumb and index finger. The red orb reflected her thoughtful expression, and she grimaced.

_Will this make me happy?_

She had absorbed the knowledge, not minds- they were _too _precious, of several blood mages and used it to produce a variation of her marble. It could help her and Leonardo, but she wasn't sure if he wanted to use it, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to use it either.

When a child was turned into a vampire, the sire had the choice to set what age the child stopped growing at. Most children died from the shock of the turning, rarely did any survive. Those that did were known as blood children.

_Little devils of terror, sin and corruption. Unnatural- let them burn in hell!_

Leonardo and her had survived, and their sires had both gotten away with it. Skarab, because no one had dared to object to him, and as for Leonardo's sire, his family had executed him out of shame but kept Leonardo. Blood children had the strongest of vampire abilities, being able to adapt and make them grow from an early age. If would have been perfect-

If their sires hadn't stopped their growth when they were bloody _children, _forever declaring their outcast status. But the orb she had created with a mixture of blood magic and necromancy changed that, basically transferring the sire bond to their own control so they could age as they pleased and reactivating the dormant ability for growth, both magically and physically.

_I could grow, like Harry has, like everyone else can. My powers will increase, surely, but I will change as well._

Elena put down the red orb and picked up its cousin, one that she had made the colour of her turquoise eyes.

_Will it make me happy?_

* * *

"_I'll be your friend forever," he promised._

"_I'll hold you to that." _

Then he had encased her small hand in his, and they left the wards of the House of Memory. Five minutes later, she had killed a tiny village that lived beside the lake.

"_Does it make you happy?"_

"_Hmm?"_

"_Killing, I mean," he elaborated. "Does it make you happy?"_

She had looked at him questioningly, searching his face for reproach but found none, only mild curiosity.

"_It makes me happy," she told him, and it did. For some inexplicable reason, it made her happier than anything else in the world. She held out the bloody mass of flesh she had in her hands to him and he regarded it interestedly._

"_I take their hearts," she explained, "Regulus said I was a heartless monster. Now I have a heart, so I'm just a monster." She laughed happily, looking coyly at the dark-haired boy under her lashes._

"_Does it **bother **you, Leonardo-ukal?"_

* * *

"_Killing makes me happy, Leonardo-ukal. What makes **you **happy?"_

"_You do."_

_

* * *

"__Regulus Black wants to kill me."_

"_Then Regulus Black must die."_

_

* * *

"__I don't like Regulus Black."_

"_I will kill him for you."_

_

* * *

"__I don't like Hadrius Black."_

"_See things from his point of view, Elena. You as good as betrayed him."_

* * *

_What's so special about you, Hadrius Black? _Elena contented herself with letting her mind linger at the edge of Leonardo's familiar and warm mind, watching the ten-year-old mortal. _What draws us to you?_

Her mind's eye studied him thoroughly. Raven-black hair, glossy and eternally wind-tousled extending to the back of his neck. Eyes that resembled little pieces of emerald, forever reminding him of his connection to Lily Potter, forever reminding him of his less-than-desirable childhood. Those eyes had never been warm or expressive; they were shards of ice, ice that pierced and hurt. They rested on the creamy pages of the books she had acquired- legally, on a strange whim, and laughed quietly. The boredom _oozed _from the child and permeated the room as the boy sprawled onto the cream floor.

_Having fun, Elena? _Leonardo's words were accompanied by lines and lines of printed words and she swatted them away with a flick of a thought.

_I am. Are you?_

_What do you think?_

She laughed again at the sentence, buffeted by feelings of bemusement from Leonardo. How many times had she snapped that sentence at her beautiful boy- think, think, _think _for yourself, she had drummed into his mind. She was right in doing so, of course. The only thing worse than a mortal that couldn't think for itself was a _clinging _mortal that couldn't think for itself.

_One year until September, Leonardo, _she told the vampire guildmaster. _Excited?_

_It's a mortal school, _he replied irritably, _if you weren't going, I'd still be in Caele, happily torturing my lovely little thieves. _

_You don't want to go with me? _Elena asked sadly, letting injury seep into her tone. _I mean-_

_I go where you go, out of choice. Now stop trying to milk sympathy from me and go back to whatever you were doing._

Giggling, she left the Master Thief's mind and zipped back into her body which was lolling on the hotel's bed as if asleep, dark russet hair splaying on the pillows. Her mind filled the recently-vacated place and she sat up.

"Something's broken," she murmured, her fingers going quickly to her eyes, then to the silent place where her heart once beat. She tapped it twice and smiled.

"I think it's me," she said softly.

_There is no cure for your kind of evil._

Elena frowned and curled up under the covers, letting her long, thick hair shield her from the outside world until she resembled a ball of shining brownish-red.

_Shut up, Regulus, _she thought in her head. _He's dead and gone, _she consoled herself. _Dead and gone._

_Then why does he still haunt my mind?_

She laughed.

_There is no cure for my kind of evil._

_

* * *

_

_May 12__th__, 1991  
__China_

"Why can't we get the wands-"

"Sticks," Elena corrected promptly. "Your school has instructed that we buy sticks, so naturally, we must buy the best _sticks _that gold can buy. If you're going to use a stick for seven years, I'd prefer we acquire an adequate one." He scowled at her; he hated being interrupted.

"We could get one in England. We didn't have to come all the way to China," Harry said. Manchuria was bitterly cold, even with the dozens of warming charms and their specialized Thief suits that were supposed to adapt to extreme weather changes.

"They make the best sticks, according to Elena," Leonardo strode through the snow, entirely unaffected by the cold. _Stupid vampires, _Harry thought, a little jealous of his guildmaster's lack of aversion to the icy winds that buffeted them. He had finally snapped that morning and transfigured all of his clothes into what an Eskimo would wear, and he felt extremely bulky and overdressed compared to the two willowy vampires. He had been duly informed that the wandmaker store they were travelling to had been blocked against all forms of magical or shadow travel, so they were making the journey through the harsh outdoors on foot.

"Have a little more endurance, Hadrius," Elena encouraged. He merely gave her a _look, _something that he had grown increasingly better at. His looks conveyed more emotions and deeper meanings than his words ever would, and he felt it was better that way. Words were so empty and meaningless.

"Lin-Lin is a friend of mine," she warned them both, "if you antagonize him, blood will spill, and not necessarily by my hand. He trains in blood magic."

Leonardo wrinkled his nose. "Blood magic?"

"He's one of the ones you can talk to without trying to rip his head off," she assured the Master Thief. Harry looked at them with bored curiousity; he knew they had bad history with all blood mages and blood magic in particular, but didn't really know the specifics. Whatever it was, he'd probably never find out if they decided not to tell him.

"Look, see that wooden house over there?" Harry craned his neck and peered, his vision heavily obscured by the light snowfall and the winds that were trying to blow the snow in his face. But he could see a dark structure and he hastened his footsteps. He preferred to get out of the numbing whiteness as soon as he could.

He heard Leonardo sigh for a moment, then he felt himself be bodily lifted onto the vampire's back. He scowled. _I am not a fucking doll._ "That's enough endurance for one day," he heard the Master Thief tell Elena, "he _is _mortal after all." Then he felt himself move at a tremendous speed and closed his eyes automatically, burrowing his face into Leonardo's back to prevent whiplash. The vampire had probably cast a spell on his shoes or his feet to make them move much faster because he knew Leonardo could never move at the kind of insane speed they were moving at at the moment.

"_Ni men zhong yu lai le._" Harry tensed as tendrils of ice-cold magic curled around his mind. He had become hyperaware of people interfering with anything near his head after Elena had left, and it came in useful at times. He relaxed when he realised it was just a translation spell, and that the hooded man had just said something alone the lines of "you've finally arrived". _The language barrier at its weakest._

"Come, friends, we have much to do and so little time to do it," the hooded figure sighed as he ushered them in. Harry was dropped to the ground but managed to land elegantly on his feet despite his bulky overcoats. He shot Leonardo a dirty look.

"The little one first, hmm?" the man hummed to himself and nodded, gesturing for Harry to follow him into the back room. The ten-year-old struggled not to gape as he looked at the enormous room. Tails and furs of every colour hung from the ceiling, pouches were nailed to walls, and tables were full of neatly arranged gemstones, wood and other materials. There were also vials of what he suspected as blood.

"I will require seven drops of your blood, to be used for wandmaking purposes only," he told him, holding out a flat silver plate. Harry hesitated but nicked his finger with one of his knives and carefully dripped seven drops onto the plate. If Elena, someone who rummaged about in people's minds for the fun of it, thought that the mage was trustworthy, then he probably was.

"Thief, hmm?" Harry watched a small smile spread across the bottom of that part of the man's uncovered face as he nodded, and watched the man point at the silver plate. He grew alarmed as it burst into flames, but he noticed that it was a magical golden flame and that the blood swirled quickly and flashed into shapes and what he recognised as runic symbols.

"An interesting combination," the man told him, before sweeping off to pick up a few pouches here, a large piece of dark wood- "Ebony wood," the hooded man told him as he swept by, "most powerful wood for wands. It gives the user pure, unlimited power." Harry raised an eyebrow, skeptical. If it did, wouldn't everyone be clamouring for it? "Only suitable for some," the man added. "Or might go boom." He laughed at the last explanation. _Might go boom, _he echoed in his mind, envisioning the wand exploding in his hand. _Splinters, _he thought immediately, imagining inch-large splinters sticking out of his head and laughed quietly. He continued to watch the man pluck three strands of long silver fur and a golden feather, and a vial of crushed blue-green gems.

"Aquamarine, for insight and perception."

Harry frowned. Insight and perception. _Think for yourself. _How much did this man know? Curiosity piqued, he watched interestedly as the wandmaker melded the aquamarine and the ebony wood together, the wood glinting a shiny blue-green. With a flick of a finger, a small pillar of yellow flame engulfed the wood until it fell neatly into the man's hand, the aquamarine gone or hidden, but a perfect wand which had a hollow bottom. The man simply dropped the strands of silver fur inside, pushed the gold feather in, then his hands started working so fast that Harry couldn't see the rest of the items added. _Deliberate, maybe? Every wandmaker must have a secret. _Lastly, the man sealed the end of the wand with another sharp burst of yellow flame and took the silver plate with the blood now floating a centimeter above it.

"Here, now you must add the blood to the wand and let it infuse itself," the wandmaker handed the plate to Harry who took it, looking disdainfully at the blood. _Do I slide it off and just pour it or push the wand through it?_

The man gestured impatiently and made a tipping motion and the ten-year-old obliged, raising an eyebrow as the blood slid easily from the centimeter above the plate onto the tip as a large drop, rolling around the wand and losing its shape until it disappeared at the base of it. _Flashy._

"Is yours now," the man told him, before gliding out of the room. Harry looked down at the wand critically. Years of just using wandless magic had hardened him against the idea of waving a stick, even if it was a _magical _stick, around. It felt stupid, in a way, waving a piece of wood around and saying words. Sighing, he let his arm fall to the side and stalked out of the back room, joining Elena and Leonardo.

"You two," the man glared at Elena and Leonardo, "I have prepared for." He raised a hand and a black blur flew into it. Harry looked at the dark object curiously. It was just like a wand, except it wasn't made out of wood. It looked to be made out of a black, smooth stone.

"Black onyx," the man told Elena, who was looking at the wand with polite indifference. "Increases _grounding _and _productiveness,_" he emphasized the last two words which made Harry smirk. Grounding and productiveness, two words that did not _any _of them make. "Self mastery and self control," the blood mage continued, to his eternal amusement, "maybe you won't need him as much," Harry's gaze swiveled to Leonardo. _What did he mean by that…?_

"Shush, Lin-Lin," Elena said, taking the wand. "I'll need this. What stick will Leonardo have?"

"Amber, encased in hazel." Lin handed over the light brown wand to Leonardo. "Amber lifts _burdens _and activates unconditional love, enhances patience." Both Leonardo and Elena stiffened. And Harry snorted quietly in disbelief. Unconditional love? How cliché and _stupid_. "Hazel, wisdom, intelligence, _wrath._"

Both vampires looked perfectly emotionless, their expressions masked completely, Harry noticed, eyes narrowing. If it wasn't for their uncontrolled reactions- and it was extremely uncontrolled for them, he wouldn't have bothered trying to find out. _There will be no more mysteries. _

"No one will know the other content of these wands apart from I, because these wands are creations of the Lin family," Lin said quietly, but there was a warning undertone to his voice. "You snap your wand, I snap your neck." Harry looked at him, bored, while Elena and Leonardo laughed right in the wandmaker's face. He was used to death threats; he treated every single one of them as empty until actions accompanied it. The people who had made the threat had their heads removed and hung from the thief tower.

"Not you two," the man snapped, "I know that you'll be back to me within a year or two. But you, younger one, if you damage wand, I damage _you._" With that last sentiment, the man pushed a frayed pillow into his arms and shooed them all out of the house into the bitter, bitter cold.

"I know you don't feel it, but it is _fucking cold_," he said aloud, trying to shield his face from the worst of the biting winds. He handed Elena the pillow portkey and grimaced. "Let's get out of here."

_

* * *

_

_July 31__st__, 1991_

"You came into existence on this day," Elena informed him solemnly, putting a small hand on his shoulder. Harry rolled his eyes, lacing his hands and propping his head on them.

"A 'happy birthday Hadrius' will suffice, you know," he told her. In Caele, the vampires had classified life as a disease, and he hadn't felt up to celebrating a birthday anyway. Back in Potter Manor, people had started by fussing over Kieran but ended up looking at him with eyes of adoration and quickly transfigured beautiful presents. A fake smile, an insincere laugh, and people could be as easily played as a fiddle.

"I acquired a present for you, Harry-beauty," she beamed at him. "You must treat her with respect and much love, or she will kill you." Harry had become all but immunized to death threats, but he decided to take the warning seriously. After all, it was _she _who was making it.

She whistled, a high three-note trill and a large silver and blue blur zipped into the room, and he looked into two feral aquamarine eyes that glared back. He raised an eyebrow, impressed. _Pretty._

"Owls are so _normal _and _boring_, so meet the finest specimen of Halcyon I could find," Elena said happily. "I suggest you get up and bow," she added, but there was now urgency to her voice, "_now._"

The Halcyon burbled happily as Harry gracefully bent low to the ground, its voice sounding like waves on a shore. _So the myth about them being from the sea is true, _then he frowned. _They're supposed to be a myth. How did Elena manage to get one?_

"Lin-Lin liked you, so he agreed to go with Leonardo and me to find some," she replied simply. The wandmaker? He frowned. The man had reminded him of Elena; slightly eccentric and serious death threats.

"Thank you," Harry said, and for once in his deceitful life, it was sincere. The Halcyon looked at him again with its fierce eyes. "I don't know much about Halcyons," he said, reaching out a tentative finger to stroke the black and blue bird's head. She was the most beautiful bird he had ever seen. She was about as large as a puppy, with cerulean primary feathers and jet-black secondary and covert feathers with occasional streaks of dark blue. _Beautiful, _he thought, before another less respectful thought hit him. _Looks kind of like a dog._

"Halcyon birds have the ability to grow larger or smaller at will," Elena supplied helpfully, "They are primarily battle birds."

"Can they control and summon wind and water?" Harry had delved into mythology before Elena had started to train him, and he had read the story of Halcyone, daughter of the controller of the winds and Ceyx. "And battle birds? I thought they were supposed to be birds of _calm _and _peace._"

Elena waved her hand dismissively. "Myth. And yes, to your first question. To an extent, they can. This halcyon is still a young one, so she does not have full mastery." Harry looked at the dark-feathered creature and arched a brow. _A young one? It looks like a fully matured dog, err, hawk. With its wings painted blue. _"What are you going to call her?"

Harry shrugged, looking doubtfully at the fierce bird. "I'm not creative with names. Pick one for me."

"Eris?" Harry rolled his eyes. He did _not _want his halcyon to be named after the goddess of _Chaos _of all things. His halcyon echoed her dissent. "You're right," Elena agreed, looking at the haughty bird, "far too cliché. Hmm…" she tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"Something to do with peace." he said, thinking about the mythology behind it again. "And battle," he added, "just to be contrary."

Harry stroked the halcyon with a gentle hand, earning him a nip of approval as Elena sifted through all the useless crap in her mind to provide a suitable name. "How about Hedwig?"

"Hedwig," he echoed, and the bird gave him a friendly nip again, signaling that she liked the sound of it. He patted her on the head- she reminded him of a puppy too much. Albeit a highly easily-ruffled and proud one. _I have got to stop referring to her as a dog. _"What does it mean?"

"Peace in battle, Swedish. Refuge in war or strife, German. "

"I'm just curious- how do you know these kind of things?" Harry tilted his head and grinned, still stroking his pupp- _bird _on the head. _Not a dog. Not a fierce, territorial dog. Halcyon. Fowl. _

Elena scowled at him. "Knowledge is power," she said grumpily.

"So in your eyes, power is the ability to memorise thousands of names, their meanings and their _origins_?" Harry smirked as he watched her stick out her tongue at him childishly. "Yes, I can imagine _that _coming in handy in a duel."

"You're just jealous of my superior knowledge of appellations," she sniffed haughtily, turning up her nose. He was about to retort when the hotel room door burst open and someone stomped in grumpily, brushing snow off his dark hair.

"Fucking Kiruna," Leonardo said, letting a mild _incendio _get rid of the rest of the snow. "I hate Sweden. All we can eat are _reindeers._"

"Don't let the Master of Sweden hear that," Elena warned, referring to the stern vampire that had welcomed them warmly to 'his' country. He was a clan member of the Tremere and Releres clan under Kraven's rule, but clan members barely knew each other existed. Leonardo absently patted Harry's halcyon on the head and chucked a small pouch at the newly-turned eleven-year-old.

"Here, every thief needs a small bag of tricks," he winked, slumping down on a chair next to Elena. "plus he's old enough for _it_," he told the russet-haired girl who merely scowled at him. "Every Master Thief gets the fox, you don't get to argue with me on this one."

Harry's eyes flicked to Leonardo. Images of weapons with bushy tails plagued his mind and he grimaced. That was… _strange_. Leonardo looked at him for a moment, a corner of his lips twisting up.

"Here," he said simply, tapping his left shoulder with his fingers. The black thief trench coat disappeared immediately to be replaced by pale white skin and-

His eyes trailed up and down the moving magical tattoo of a silver fox looking around the room with a lazy aristocratic glance. Its grey eyes settled on Harry, and the eleven-year-old could almost swear that it was smirking at him. He smirked back at it.

Leonardo vanished Harry's high-collared black shirt, placing two cold fingers on his left shoulder. "According to tradition, I should pass the meaning of the fox onto you." He smiled wryly. "Get ready for a boring lecture."

"The fox," he said, tracing a finger over his shoulder, leaving behind something cold that sank deep into his skin, "thinks outside the box. It is cunning and intelligent, and it wants us to approach everything from a universal point of view, to look at our plans differently and try a different angle of action." Harry felt his entire arm turn completely frozen. It wasn't unpleasant, just strange. He tensed as Leonardo pulled out a ritualistic-looking knife, embedded with rubies and emeralds.

"The fox reminds us to use _all _of our resources; both resources you can see, and resources that you _can't _see. Sometimes," Leonardo carved a thin straight line down Harry's shoulder, but he could barely feel it. "Sometimes," he repeated, "it means that we have to use some unorthodox methods." Harry didn't miss the way his eyes flicked quickly to Elena.

"The fox is eternally mindful of his surroundings." Another line, making a cross on his arm. "It is an immaculate shapeshifter and adapts to its surroundings well." A circle, around the cross. "The fox does not make waves, but adapts to its surroundings and blend into it."

"_khrarisma Hermes aionion."_

A brief flash of _something _that he couldn't entirely place encompassed his shoulder, sinking, sinking, sinking so deeply Harry knew it could never be removed, and he felt it connect to his magical core.

"The fox uses our surroundings and our circumstances to our advantage. On the hunt, it is like an arrow- straight and tightly aimed to hit our desired target. This is the fox, what it is, and what it entails. This is the essence of the fox; do you accept this of your own will?"

Harry looked up at Leonardo and smiled, the elation dancing and lightening his emerald eyes. _Yes, _this was what he wanted, what he could be, what he trained so hard to accomplish. This was a missing part of _him. _"I accept."

* * *

_September the first, 1991_

King's Cross Station was silent. It _would _be, when it was _four freaking a.m. in the morning, _Harry thought waspishly. He was used to extremely early mornings- vampires didn't need as much sleep as he did, and he awoke to the bustle of the citadel of Caele every morning. But that was at _five, _not a suicidal _four. _He felt more tired than he had ever been in his life.

"I hate you," he told Elena. The vampire merely beamed at him, her unnatural turquoise eyes lighting up in anticipation. She beckoned to him to come closer to her and Leonardo.

"Okay," she said quietly, her eyes darting suspiciously to the train conductor who was looking at them strangely. Harry rolled his eyes and cast a _confundus _at him. Wandlessly, of course, as Hedwig had stolen both Leonardo's and his wand and refused to give it back to them. Sadly, she hadn't touched Elena's wand, which was being twirled happily between the vampire's slender fingers. "The hat, which is what you are sorted by, won't be able to read our minds. Insist on whatever house you want to be, and refuse to lower your shields."

"Which house are we going to be in?" Harry asked her. She was a seer after all, even if she couldn't tell them anything most of the time for fear of disrupting the future. Knowing the future was useful.

Elena tilted her head. "I will be in Gryffindor," she stopped for a moment, as if expecting something to stop her and smiled. "Hey, I can talk about it. You're going to choose Ravenclaw, Leonardo, and Hadrius-" Elena suddenly jerked and her hands went to her throat, wincing. She held her hands up helplessly and made a slicing motion against her throat.

"I don't think I get paid enough for this job," she joked hoarsely, her normal lilting voice sounding scratched. Harry found the lengths seers went to make sure they didn't disrupt the future laughable, but was similarly intrigued by why Elena couldn't say what house he'd be in.

"You're undecided, Harry-beauty," Elena said, slipping back into the term of affection she had once always used with him, "and Hedwig doesn't like being disillusioned," she added as an afterthought. "We should get on the train, where you can shower her with much love and affection." She pointed at the silent mtal giant and at the empty space where a disillusioned halcyon was residing. A strange look suddenly stole over her face.

"I have too many Alices stuck in my wonderland. I want them out, but not even I can help them now," she told him, a smile curving her lips. _How strange and beautiful her insanity is. And how disturbing and terrifying as well._ Harry stood motionlessly as she reached out a hand to tug at his raven hair, but Leonardo caught the hand and pulled Elena close to him.

"Get into the train," he said lowly, levitating their luggages to float behind them. Harry tilted his head and decided to obey the guildmaster. He did not want to get stuck outside with Elena in one of her murderous moods. He heard a screech as Leonardo dragged her into one of the compartments, then silence. Leonardo pushed his head out and beckoned for him to come in. "All clear," he mouthed.

"What do we do if something like _that _happens?" he asked Leonardo and the hopefully sane Elena as he sidled into the compartment.

"There is no plan," Elena said in a sing-song voice, "we make it up as we go along."

He exchanged a look with Leonardo who shook his head. "Crazy seer shit," he heard the brunette vampire mumble under his breath. "Same with Skarab. You're both insane."

"Pshaw, you love us, so don't say that," Elena chuckled happily. She turned her strange turquoise eyes on Harry. "That _won't _happen again," she said with confidence, "and the plan is to blend. We'll have to arrange blood packages to be brought in…" Elena looked into the distance, a pensive look on her face. He frowned, the blood reminding him of something he had to ensure.

"No feeding on the students."

She looked at him sidelong for a moment as he looked, unimpressed by her. She nodded with reluctance. "You have my vow."

"And mine," Leonardo added, but he didn't look happy about it either. He arched an elegant brow. Did they really think he would allow them to attract attention? He didn't want his "school experience" to turn into a feeding frenzy.

"Now go to sleep, Harry-beauty," Elena said, pressing two fingers to his temple. He didn't fight them; there was no threat to his wellbeing. "We'll have to go over some fine points. Happy nightmares."

The last thing he remembered was what felt like a shot of numbing ice erupting in his head, and he dropped to the side of the plush compartment seats, his mind already succumbing to the dark realm of sleep.

_Happy nightmares._

* * *

"_For all the 'I's,' he is a man of many masks."  
__-Webster Schott_

* * *

Hopefully, no more time jumps.  
Am tired of time jumps.  
Hogwarts crap next chapter!

* * *

Fox symbolism stuff by Avia Venefica.  
I claim no ownership of Harry Potter & everything that comes with it; it all belongs to J.K Rowling.  


* * *

If you review, Harry will be your love slave forever.  
Or you could have a s'more.  
Your choice.


	5. Fly

"_Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it; it looks at you and does not forgive."_

_-Nikos Kazantzakis_

* * *

A light touch on his neck was all that was needed to wake him up. After the years spent in a city full of vampires whose favourite game was "bite the mortal", he slept lightly and had grown far more alert.

"Welcome back to the living world. We're done outlining the things we need to take care of." Harry threw Elena a dispassionate look for interrupting his dreamless sleep. _Bitch. _He laid back his head against the side of the door and started flexing his fingers to get rid of the pins-and-needles feeling in his hand.

"It's seven, people have started to wake up," Elena explained, leaning over to ruffle his hair. He swiped at her irritably, to her delight. "And I was getting bored," she pouted. He merely growled at her.

"The most beautiful boy in the world shouldn't growl like an animal," she told him, tilting his chin up with a finger to gaze into his eyes. Harry winced mentally; her headache-inducing glamoured eyes were back, hiding the fine lines that boasted that her seer-status. He looked away quickly, not wanting to get another headache. It was there again, one of those little things that hurt- _you're beautiful, you're beautiful, _so he locked it away and let it burn.

"Aah, but aren't we animals after all?" he said quietly, but it was an excuse all the same, and everyone in the compartment knew it. Leonardo merely rolled his eyes, and Harry could feel the '_you're an idiot' _vibe radiating off the older boy. "No, _my lady Elena_?"

It was a deadly dance that they danced, tangled with intricacies of murder and deadly attraction; knowing exactly how each other ticked, and he knew by the three words he had uttered and the brief gleam that had passed over her glamoured eyes, he had initiated a whole new dance with her. Blood would soon follow.

He found he liked it.

A corner of his lips twisted upwards in a smirk as he looked at her challengingly. _What dance shall we dance this time, lady mine? _Elena tilted her head to one side and a pale hand went to the side of his face, a malevolent smile appearing on her flawless features. Malevolence was a good look on her, he decided. It made her look like the devil's bride; inhumanly gorgeous and alluringly depraved. Both of them were like that; had that look in their eyes that told the world they knew how beautiful they were, and knew exactly how to use that beauty. Leonardo didn't understand it, but they did, so that was enough.

_Waltz with me._

Eventually, he had to look away from her azure orbs. The glamour was infuriating, but it had to stay. He placed a hand on the one on his cheek, leaning forward and averting his eyes to the ground.

"What will you have me do?" he asked demurely, his voice almost lowering to a whisper. He searched her face, seeing the spark of excitement at the familiarity of an old and beloved game.

_Let the dance begin._

* * *

Leonardo knew he could never even hope to understand them. There was an otherworldliness to them that enchanted and bewitched- that pulsating; he _couldn't _explain it, _power_, but it spread, fast and deadly, turning all eyes to them, admiring, wondrous, worshipping.

_Fae, _he found himself thinking.

They clashed, he thought, and when they had recovered, they clashed and clashed again. They made it into a sport; an art; he smiling as he decimated a family of church-goers, and she, when she offered an infant's heart to him. It was _beautiful, _they would say, and he quietly agreed. The exquisite ribbons that wound themselves around them and their every action called _beauty _would not, and could not, break.

One day, they would clash, and one of them would break. But they didn't seem to mind.

She made him worse, he made her terrible.

"I want to play a few… ah, _games_," she purred, cyan eyes smoldering. He felt himself drawn in by those impossibly blue glowing circles, willing to succumb to whatever she demanded, willing to follow her for the rest of his existence. But he knew that Hadrius, or Harry, would never bow to her until their dance was over. "I hope you won't mind."

_Of course he won't mind! _He wanted desperately to say, so she could stop that damned darkly enticing allure of hers, _we'll do anything you want. _But the boy merely looked at her, smiling, shaking his head, inducing a wrath in him that made him want to strike out and maim him for even suggesting his disapproval.

"I _will _mind, dearest Elena," and he was lost again, finding himself drifting towards the other. His words were no less than a blunt order, not the thinly veiled suggestions that Elena spoke in. It was demanding and possessive, wanting and settling for no less than everything a person could offer. That was beauty uncontrolled, and he was so raw, so grasping and greedy, and he _hurt _because no being could witness his magnificence and leave unscarred. "Don't play with _my _toys," the boy murmured. "It would be impolite."

"It would be," Elena agreed, but it was not a sign of submission, but co-operation. "I suppose I have enough toys of my own to play with," she sighed, and it was so sweet and melancholic that Leonardo would have given anything, everything, for her to smile. His mind was frenzied and haywire, not knowing which immortal god to follow and worship. "But I like yours the most." _Give it to her, _he wanted to scream, _give it to her!_

"You'll make do," he drawled, and Leonardo found himself agreeing immediately. Elena had enough to do with her time, and Hadrius was so _charming _that he made his opponent look barbaric and unrefined by comparison. "Was there anything else, or will you allow me to fall back into the decidedly blissful slumber you barred me from?" Elena grinned, her pearly teeth flashing.

"Perhaps we should cease our dance, Harry-beauty, we seem to be disturbing Leonardo quite a bit."

And just like that, it ended. No more frazzled, half-formed thoughts. No more compulsion to gape at the beauty of the two most beautiful people he had ever seen. They both seemed similarly dazed as they emerged from the addicting high they had when they challenged each other. It had even more devastating effects on the people beside them; their dark allure got so out of hand that Leonardo had once lost control and slammed Hadrius into a wall.

He cleared his throat.

Elena smiled sweetly at him. "Tell Harry everything he needs to know, Leonardo _darling,_" she purred, making his eyes go slightly glassy. Harry however, had quickly regained his mind and looking his usual emotionless, slightly sarcastic self.

"No one must know _anything _about us. Not your brother-"

"I disowned _them, _remember?" Hadrius interrupted with a malicious smile. "In truth, I don't have a brother anymore." Leonardo inclined his head but shot the eleven-year-old a warning glance. He _was_ his guildmaster after all.

"As I was_ saying_," he continued smoothly, "tell no one about who we are. We will try to associate ourselves with you to establish a relationship, but we'll climb that mountain when we get to it. However, we have made a rough plan."

Hadrius Black smirked at him and tilted his head back, a lock of dark hair flipping artfully into his eyes. "Bring it."

* * *

Waiting, Harry thought, was the most idiotic thing to be ever devised by man. Maybe he could get Elena to obtain a time-turner so he could go back in time to get rid of the person who had invented waiting. But for now, he would wait for Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini to walk through the compartment door. He frowned and funneled a little more magic into the shield that covered it; noise was starting to get through. If noise could get through, so could a wily first-year-to-be. And if _that _happened, well, that kid would be shocked to find a disillusioned Hadrius Black in the compartment.

_Target one is heading into the train and approaching your compartment. Repeat-_

_Shut up, _he said lazily, pointing a mental finger at the mental door of his head. Elena sent him the sensation of sulking and left, calling him an ungrateful human brat. He didn't need her dramatics, but appreciated the knowledge and let the attention-deflecting shield in front of his compartment drop.

"Hello."

Harry appraised Daphne Greengrass in a non-judgmental, unassuming way. She was one of those classical beauties, with well-defined features, high cheekbones and cold grey eyes. A waterfall of blonde hair cascaded down to her shoulders as she gasped softly in surprise. He smirked. He tended to have that effect on people, but the annoyed look that flittered over her face at the sound she made amused him. It was as if she expected total control over her surroundings. _Surprises are not welcome, _her grey eyes told him.

"Sorry," she said aloofly, stepping daintily into the train, "the other compartments are either full or contains imbeciles. I hope you don't mind if I sit here."

Harry made a corner of his lips curve upwards. Who _talked _like that? Or had his absence from England meant that he was absent from picking up on the colloquial language? _Imbeciles, _he mocked her in his head unwittingly. "I don't mind," he told her smoothly. "What's your name?"

"Daphne Greengrass. Why were there so many trunks and _clothing _outside?" She didn't look at him as he said it, preferring to look at a point above his head.

"Some people thought it'd be nice to stow their luggage in here," he said silkily, remembering the trio of redheads that had noisily chucked their battered trunks inside. A few moments later, he had blasted them out of the compartment. To his grim satisfaction, one of the trunks had split open and embarrassingly old clothes had burst out. "It makes for rather interesting decoration, don't you think?"

He watched the pretty girl smile icily, still refusing to look at him and rolled his eyes. "Do I look particularly hideous, or are you part of a religious sect that can't look at men?"

"Men?" Daphne smirked, flipping her hair, "I don't see _any _around here."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Ladies?" he mocked her, twirling a finger around his shorter dark hair, "I don't see _any _around here." Daphne reached over to him and whacked him on the arm, making him laugh quietly and hold a hand to his heart. "Ah, the fair lady striketh me. Woe is I, oh woe is I." With a dramatic sign, he fell backwards and let his body fall softly onto the hard seats. _Thank you for the acting lessons, Elena dearest. _

"You are such an imbecile," Daphne muttered, though he caught a small smile on her face out of the corner of his eye. "If it wasn't half past ten already, I'd try to find another compartment."

"Excuses, excuses," he smirked, his mind already wandering away from the conversation. "Since you can't, I guess I'll enjoy your wonderful company." _Hurry up, Zabini._

"So," he smiled at her, "what house do you want to be in?"

* * *

_Hogwarts_

Harry smiled a strained smile at Elena and Leonardo as they stepped gracefully into one of the small boats, a hand going to rub his temples. Hedwig had _not _taken kindly to being left behind, as the healing cuts on his hand showed. Elena raised an eyebrow as she held it in her smaller hands.

"Maybe I should have gotten a less temperamental halcyon," she mused as she dripped a drop of her own dark blood onto the cuts, the vampire blood sealing it up with a soft hiss. _Vampire blood, willingly given, rare but able to heal most, if not all wounds. Absolutely priceless in potions. _Harry rolled his eyes at the yellowing page that had popped up in his mind with the information and turned his mind to Elena.

"Don't let her hear that," he warned her, nodding his thanks, "it'll probably take months before she lets me anywhere near her again. Besides," he looked sharply at the smiling vampire girl, "didn't the school letter say 'students may also bring an owl _or_ a cat _or_ a toad'?"

Elena waved his questions away. "School _schmool_," she said derisively, "as if I'd let _that _stop us. It was so stupid. _One pointed black hat,_" she quoted, Leonardo laughing quietly beside her, "I mean, _seriously_?"

He tried to envision any one of them wearing a pointed black hat and shook his head. _Not going to happen, _he decided. And the uniform was… he winced mentally. Albus Dumbledore was a sick, _sick _man. They all looked as if they had walked straight off the cover of a fetish magazine that he had once seen when they had visited the seedier parts of London.

"Your brother who is no longer your brother is very annoying," Leonardo sighed, turning his dark blue eyes on him. Harry tilted his head to one side as if to say _tell me about it. _"I'm not sure who is worse; the redhead or him."

No one could blame him for the small stab of jealousy; he had never had anything much to _really _call his own. Not his parents, and anything he owned was forfeit to Kieran at a moment's notice. _And now he has both of them. _

"Gryffindor freaks through and through, and the redhead has a _rat,_" Elena rattled off matter-of-factly, though her lips curved up mysteriously at the end in her annoying I-know-something-and-you-don't way. Harry arched an eyebrow but she shook her head. _Don't ask now. _"He didn't talk about you at all," she informed him.

He looked at her flatly with incredulity in his eyes. _I'm supposed to care, __**why? **_

"Not sure how you can be so blasé about it," Leonardo grumbled, propping his chin on a fist. "If I were you, he'd be underwater with cement tied to his legs."

"I have different ways," he replied shortly, his fists clenched so hard that his knuckles turned white, "that are infinitely more subtle and effective than drowning the Boy-Who-Lived." And just like that, the matter was over. Elena smiled, Leonardo rolled his eyes and held out his hand, waiting for him to tap it. It was their way of apologising, in their world where words were worthless, and it worked. If there was anything he was profoundly grateful for, it was for their unspoken agreement to stay the _fuck _out of each others respective businesses.

Harry looked into the distance as he ran the events of what had happened so far in the day in his mind. Every single detail, down to the exact shade of the red on Zabini's tie was recorded and replayed. "Compared to those two, Zabini and Greengrass are acceptable allies. They're both intelligent and quick-witted. Greengrass can hold her own in a debate," he added, remembering the animated argument they had had about the technicalities of using peppered batwing instead of Murupi spores in a Draught of Claustrophobia.

"Zabini," Elena echoed, her lips twisting into a frown. "His mother is Esmerelda Zabini, a seer." She paused for a moment, then shook her head. "No, won't be a problem. Greengrass..." Elena's face suddenly looked stricken, _fearful, _but a warning glance from Leonardo stopped him from asking. She smiled pleasantly instead, but she didn't fool any of them. "Neutral family as well."

Harry's eyes narrowed as Leonardo and Elena exchanged a glance. It was another one of the secrets from _their _world, something he would never be privy to. He was a _little _jealous, maybe, knowing that there was a part of the two he could never reach. Glancing at his clenched fist, he made them uncurl and gazed haplessly at the crescent-shaped marks in his palm.

"Welcome ter Hogwarts!"

"Fuck this," Leonardo growled under his breath as they left the boat. "This is going to be fucking _hell._" Harry scowled unpleasantly as a dark-haired boy almost crashed into him, neatly sidestepping the clumsy lunge with a trained grace. He nodded distastefully as the boy apologised, eyeing the brandished slimy toad with concealed disgust. And for some strange reason, Elena laughed loudly as the stuttering boy revealed his name, fierce amusement lighting up in her turquoise eyes.

"Well, _Neville Longbottom_," she said with a lazy predatory drawl, "take better care of your toad and maybe we'll pretend this didn't happen, hmm?" Harry smiled unkindly as the terrified boy gaped openly at the vampire, said vampire trying to act as Veela-y as possible.

_I have a __**long **__history with the Longbottoms, _she whispered into his mind as the large, bumbling oaf of a man rapped thrice on the castle door. _Most of it is very unpleasant and blood-curling._

They were greeted by a smiling but unfriendly face of an old woman in emerald robes, darker than his eyes. _What a lovely reception, _he thought disappointedly. He wasn't expecting a fanfare at their arrival, but this was just getting low-key. He was more impressed when he saw the large size of the entrance hall, the flaming torches too bright for his night-sensitive eyes. The old woman, who was introduced as Professor McGonagall, led them across the magically dry stone floor into a smaller room off the hall.

Harry could immediately sympathise with Hedwig; being a caged bird when he had once roamed over _continents _with Elena and Leonardo was _not fun. _He resolved to let Hedwig out of the cage immediately once he could.

"Where's the fucking fanfare and trumpets?" from Leonardo was accompanied by gasps and admonishments from a bushy-haired, bucktoothed witch, but the taller vampire merely smiled at them and their minds drifted away. Harry rolled his eyes. A certain phrase floated into his head and made him smile tightly.

_Beauty excuses all sins._

Ghosts flew in, completely ignoring them as their spectral forms scared a few of the first-years "shitless", as Leonardo muttered under his breath. Harry listened patiently to them for a few moments and decided that the Fat Friar had to work on his Hufflepuff propaganda. Harry wondered if the Hufflepuff ghost knew about Robin Hood; he looked like what Friar Tuck would be, if he had existed. Biting back a malicious smile, he let a blank mask slip effortlessly over his features.

"Form a line and follow me."

Harry surveyed the Great Hall dispassionately. It was impressively large, and the ceiling was refreshingly imaginative compared to the tattered pointed hat that looked like the ones they had been required to buy. It was dirty and desperately needed a quick _scourgify, _stat.

_I'm going to put that thing on my head._

And then, it started to sing.

* * *

"Black, Hadrius."

Elena noted with satisfaction that an awed silence fell over the hall at her pretty boy's beauty. _You're breathtaking, _she thought delightedly as he gingerly placed the hat on his messy hair.

"Oh my god, he is _so cute!_"

"I know, but in the hot-not-adorable way."

"Duh."

Smiling, she turned her attention back to Harry. The ugly hat was taking a very long time with her beautiful boy.

Too long.

Frowning, she leapt into the aura sight that all Thieves strived to acquire and studied it; unhappily noticing the blue links that sprang from its bent tip to the Headmaster's forehead. She cast her eyes on her opponent; the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and almost fell backwards in surprise.

_He's using his powers on his students…!_

It appeared that the headmaster was instilling feelings of automatic trust and adoration in his students for him, and it worked. _That, _she wouldn't condone. Above everything, she had a conscience that spoke to her in Regulus Black's voice. And right now, it was telling her that something that involved using legilimency on children was very, _very _wrong.

There was only going to be one mind manipulator around here, and that was going to be _her. _Smiling, she let her own mind reach out just a little and put a small golden bubble around his head. The threads outside the bubble snapped and dissolved into dust, the struggling decapitated blue links emitting from Dumbledore's head pounding futilely against the bubble. The headmaster frowned, and the blue links enlarged.

Elena laughed inside her mind, the silvery echoes repeating her amusement over and over again. It was such a funny sight, watching the worms of Legilimency curl around his wizened head. She couldn't maintain the bubble for long; it was a delicate branch of mind arts, and delicate procedures were beyond her.

"SLYTHERIN!"

Opportunities lit up in her mind's eye, mirrors reflecting each one with slight variations because of the decision. She heard a faint snort amid the applause of the Slytherin table as Harry-beauty left the stool and the hat back onto the chair and went to join his house. She recognised the voice that came after it; it was Kieran Potter, esteemed Boy-Who-Lived.

"I knew he'd be a Slytherin sort, he's always been a black sheep," the boy muttered to the redhead next to him. _You're such an insignificant little mortal, it hurts, _she thought quietly, but made her way over to the duo.

"Hey," she smiled brightly, earning her two smiles of fond devotion. "I lost you two at the boats."

"I saw you sitting with Black," Kieran replied, sounding sour and his voice accusing. "What was _that _all about?"

Elena smiled again and shrugged, keeping her face deliciously blank of all other emotion. "Bad luck, I suppose," she mused. "Anyway, I bet you two will get into Gryffindor."

"'Course," Ron grinned and punched Kieran lightly in the shoulder. "We'd probably get disowned if we didn't, right, mate?"

Kieran grinned back and returned the gesture. "Yeah, Dad'll probably go berserk if I go anywhere _near _Slytherin. Then again," he added, "he'd go berserk if I got into Gryffindor. With happiness, mind you." He turned to look at her and smiled. "I hope you get into Gryffindor as well. I'd rather have you than _that _one," he nodded unappreciatively at the babbling Hermione. "She's been nothing but irritating since she barged in on us."

Elena agreed; the girl with the non-magical parents was rude _and _annoying; two combinations that she detested. "I hope I'll get into Gryffindor as well; I like you two." She felt no guilt as she hugged them both; knowing that she was merely preparing them for the role they were going to play.

_After all, it is no sacrifice if dearest Harry-beauty will shine. _

"Potter, Kieran!"

She was a little disappointed when nobody broke out in song about the triumphs of the eleven-year-old, and even more disappointed when no fireworks were released. _Snap, I owe Leonardo two favours, _she thought dispassionately. A wave of whispers swept through the Hall at Kieran's- or, as she had nicknamed him, "Great One", name.

In less than five seconds, he was proclaimed a "GRYFFINDOR!" and sent off to the table of red and scarlet. Just like that, Leonardo owed her two favours as well.

"WE GOT POTTER!"

The Guildmaster had bet that the Vanquisher of Lord Voldemort would have tripped and broken his neck before being sorted. She heard a long line of shouts and applause, and wondered when it would be her turn. She had heard Leonardo be sorted into Ravenclaw, just like she had seen he would be a while back after Harry-beauty, and wondered why he hadn't defied her and gone for Gryffindor instead. Time and the future were malleable, not brittle.

"Skarab, Elena."

_Yay. _With a faint smile gracing her face, she strode over to the dirty hat and placed it on her head.

_You're another one, _the Sorting Hat remarked dully, resigned. _You're like that Hadrius Black and Leonardo Lamar. What house do you want to go to? _

Elena blinked. _No arguments? _She thought disappointedly at the magical object. _No 'I'm going to tell Dumbledore'? _She had been expecting a real battle of the wills in which she had to damage the hat irreparably, but perhaps it wasn't needed for now.

_I don't really care anymore, _the hat confided, _looking through the minds of eleven-year-olds gets repetitive after the first few hundred years._

_Tell me about it, _Elena thought back a touch sympathetically, _I know how that feels, exactly. Do you tell Dumbledore everything you see in their minds?_

_Heavens, no! _The Hat exclaimed in disgust, _minds are very, very private things. Sacred, even. _

Elena raised an eyebrow dubiously. A dirty hat with _morals_? That was new. And apparently it didn't know the mind link it shared with Dumbledore. _I'm going to be in Gryffindor, _she ordered the hat.

_Oh, not even a please?_ With that, the Hat shouted out a morose "GRYFFINDOR!" and she plucked it off her head, her head turning slightly to the High Table where Dumbledore was sitting. His watery blue eyes widened as they met hers.

"Ariana!"

The thunderous applause ceased as the elderly Headmaster stood. Elena turned fully to look at him stonily for disrupting the happy atmosphere. _You're going senile, old man. _

"Ariana," he repeated brokenly. "You're Ariana."

She looked at him for a while, her unbeating heart threatening to jump back into its long-forgotten rhythm, then she smiled tiredly. "My name is Elena, Headmaster Dumbledore," she said politely. "I don't know who Ariana is."

"No, you are Ariana," he said, his voice loud and clear across the hall. "Except for the colour of your hair and eyes… You're like a perfected version of her. Of Ariana."

Casting him a pitying look, Elena joined the subdued table of Gryffindor, sitting next to Kieran as Professor McGonagall escorted the Headmaster out of the dining hall, allowing the feast to begin. She eyed the laden plates of steaming food with distaste, her throat growing slightly drier as she asked Ron to pass a bowl of bread. She could see the bulging vein in his neck clearly, pulsing with blood and- sighing, she snapped out of the bloodlust-induced trance and broke open the piece of steaming bread.

Blood was still a long way away.

* * *

"Pity," Harry heard an older Slytherin mutter to his companion, "we could have done with all three of the beauties." _The beauties, _Harry mused, lifting a neatly cut piece of steak to his lips. _What an unoriginal name. Elena would be horrified._

The Slytherin table held only whispered conversations and blank masks of apathy unlike the other houses. Daphne Greengrass tapped his foot lightly with her own to get his attention discretely.

"What happened to Dumbledore?" she asked quietly as she looked intently at her slice chicken. "Do you know who Ariana could be?" There was a distinct pause as he watched her shift slightly uncomfortably in her seat. "Who was that Gryffindor girl?"

"Why, _Greengrass,_ do I really appear as an avid fan of our dear Headmaster?" he purred, making an elegant gesture for the plate of broccoli.

Daphne merely looked at him, not looking in the mood for the games that Slytherins played. "Fine," he conceded, "I think that Dumbledore has gone senile; I don't know who Ariana could be, and _that Gryffindor girl,_" he quoted with a smile, "was Elena Skarab."

Greengrass scowled unpleasantly at him. "I know her _name_, but I saw her in your boat. I haven't heard of her family before; is she a muggle born? She looks so familiar, somehow."

"Why all this sudden interest in a _Gryffindork, _Greengrass?" Zabini said maliciously from Harry's side. "Jealous?"

"Of a Gryffindor? We _do _have standards, Zabini," Harry drawled, hoping that his fellow Slytherin would take the hint and drop it. However, the dark-haired boy didn't quite understand the subtle verbal nudge.

"We do, but Greengrass seems quite int-"

Harry resorted to a silencing charm, and to his annoyance, realised that both Leonardo and his wands were still with Hedwig. _That hoarding bird. _Daphne nodded at him and they continued their meal in silence, occasionally punctuated with light conversation about their families- the Black family was still considered royalty in some circles; a definite advantage in his mind.

While he talked Daphne through the strings of numbers in his head amid the cacophony that were the students singing the school song, he knocked politely on the door of Elena's mind, but it was a while before she responded.

_Yes, Harry-beauty? _He noted she sounded tired instead of perky and frowned. She had maintained that even if they were exhausted, they had to look more alert than as if they had slept for as long as they liked. Something was bad.

_Ariana?_

_Drop it. _

Uncertainly, unwillingly, he did.

_As you command._

* * *

"People, follow me! It's time for bed, no arguments."

"You have really nice hair," a blonde haired girl told her. Elena recognised her as Lavender Brown, the first Gryffindor of their year. "Any tips?"

_Tips? _An evil smirk crept up on her face. _Why not? _"I heard that you wash your hair in bubotuber pus; it doesn't matter if any gets on your face. It's good for the skin as well."

Lavender's dark eyes widened. "Wow, thanks! Where did you hear that?" she asked enviously.

Elena nodded at Hermione Granger, her bushy head easily visible through the small crowd of Gryffindors that were charging towards the Tower. Lavender looked at her incredulously. "She babbled on about it for a while, and she's a know-it-all," she explained happily, "so I'd trust that."

"Pity she doesn't use those tips on herself," Lavender sniffed, linking her arm through Elena's. "She could really use them."

_What a simple-minded mortal, _Elena thought as she let parts of her mind caress the blonde's. All she managed to glean were quite a few ways to apply nail-polish and hair gel. _Not useful, _she thought, so she decided to go back and mingle with Kieran and Ron.

"I'll see you later," she smiled, weaving effortlessly to reach Kieran with a few 'excuse me's.

"Phew, thought I lost you again," she greeted them both brightly. They looked at her as if she was insane. "You look tired," she noted.

"And you don't," Kieran yawned, stumbling on one of the steps. Rolling her eyes, she skipped up beside them. "I'm dead on my feet. I don't know how you're managing it, but I need what you're drinking."

_Kieran Potter wants to drink blood? That's… new. _"What, pumpkin juice?" she replied innocently, snickering silently as the Boy-Who-Lived fell face-first onto the floor. _No sense of balance, hmm. _

"Me too, mate," Ron added sleepily. "Hey, you alright down there?"

_You're tired, not __**drunk**__, _she wanted to say icily, but subtly levitated Potter up to his feet and propelled him forward. _But you're all very amusing, _she smiled, as Peeves appeared and what looked like an army of walking sticks hurled themselves at them.

_That, _she thought happily as the redhead shouted at the cackling poltergeist, _I can work with._

* * *

_September 7__th__, Saturday_

"We have classes with the Gryffindorks all year," Draco Malfoy moaned at the belated discovery. Harry frowned at how long it had taken him to notice; it had been a full week already, but he agreed with the blonde. _What was Dumbledore drinking when he put the Gryffindors and the Slytherins together?_ The severe itching between his shoulder blades did not help to lessen his annoyance. _We all seem to exist solely for his amusement. _

"Black," Malfoy called out, and Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes as several older Slytherins glared at the offending blonde aristocratic _brat. _Only his name and his father protected them from their quiet wrath. "What lessons do we have today?"

This time, he _did _roll his eyes. Malfoy had been trying to worm his way into the small "alliance" of three all week, right from the moment they had found out they were in the same dorm room. It was irritating, and the fact that he had refused to bow to Hedwig because he was "a Malfoy, and we don't bow to _anyone, _especially a _bird_," incriminated him even further. The halcyon had taken its own revenge, as Harry had discovered. The head of Malfoy's eagle owl lay several meters away from its body in the Owlery.

"You have eyes, Malfoy," he replied icily, "I suggest you look at your _timetable. _Which you are holding in your _hand._" He nodded at the crisp piece of paper that Malfoy had and rolled his eyes again as the rest of the first years tittered nervously. The role of "Slytherin prince" hadn't been established yet, and most weren't sure who to suck up to, hovering between supporting Malfoy one second and him the next.

He hadn't even managed to approach Elena or Leonardo with the way Malfoy tried to monopolise his time. If worst came to worst, he'd probably send a stunner at the blond boy. _Why not, _he smirked, the little finger on his left hand rising by just a centimeter. The aristocrat slumped over and crumpled onto an undignified heap from his chair onto the floor. The distracting itching increased and Harry pushed aside the irresistible urge to scratch it with difficulty. Scratching yourself in front of Slytherins was social suicide.

"Don't follow me," he told Zabini and Greengrass shortly, quickly leaving the dungeons. _Leonardo, where are you? _The reply came only a moment later. _Potion classroom. If you want to see the action, apparate._

Smiling, Harry did what Hermione Granger could have called impossible and shifted himself directly into the potion master's kingdom with a small _crack. _

"Bravo," he said quietly, clapping. "Bravo." The Gryffindors would pay a fortune to see what he was seeing now. Snape hung a foot above the ground, long knives that pierced through his robes and into the dank stone behind holding him up while Leonardo and Elena twirled a few more knives, a smile on their faces.

"I've made the vow, I'm going to get you the blood; what more do you want?" Snape spat at them, his dark eyes flaring with uncharacteristic anger. The blank, snide mask was completely gone, Harry noted with sadistic interest. Elena merely waved a knife at him and smiled.

"Oh, I just wanted to give you an incentive to make good on your vows," her bright blue eyes glittered maliciously. "But you're boring, so good-bye." Leonardo held up a hand and the knives zoomed into them, leaving Snape falling back to the dungeon floor face-first.

"If you ever try to give us… _detention,_" the last word was said with barely repressed humour, "again, I may castrate you." Harry and Leonardo winced and looked away. "With a fruit knife," she added. _Just to be melodramatic. _"I'll be expecting an exemption on Monday."

Snape nodded, his face still twisted into an ugly snarl as he got up shakily. "What about _Potter _and Weasley?" Elena shrugged.

"Give them as much detention as you can get away with," she advised, to Snape's pleasure. "They annoy me."

"I hope you rot in hell one day, Elena Skarab," Snape hissed. He turned on Leonardo and Harry, his smile malicious. "You too, Black and Lamar. And _I'd _be happy sending you to it."

Elena looked at him like an indulgent mother would look at a small child. "Hey, we're all sinners here," she murmured, her eyes flicking to Harry for a moment. He smirked at her. _I'm a sinner. _

"Maybe we'll all see each other in hell."

* * *

Elena looked tired as they lounged against the dark grey walls on the third floor. Sure, they had been told it was out of bounds, but that just meant that no one could stumble upon them. Harry rubbed his back discretely against the solid concrete and almost sighed in pleasure as the itching between his shoulders subsided. _What is it, anyway? Itching powder?_

"I have to leave for a while, Harry-beauty," she said, her voice light. "I'll leave a golem in my place."

He nodded mutely. _Nice news. _"Why not leave a clone?" Clones were copies produced of a person which had an annoying tendency to become self-aware where Golems were essentially animated rock with a heavy glamour cast over it to make it look as if it was breathing, eating or drinking. If given a choice, he'd take the clone.

Elena, however, merely raised an eyebrow at him. "_I _wouldn't let another me run around unsupervised, would you?" Harry cringed mentally; a copy-Elena would be funny at first, then it'd become a serious matter to be dealt with. The animated rock was a better choice.

"Is Leonardo going with you?"

"No," Leonardo replied from Elena's side. "I guess it's my turn to babysit the mortal."

Harry felt more fatigued as the teeth-grinding itch returned with a vengeance and he bit back a groan. They stood there in silence for a while, letting the moments flow by with the unspoken words. A quick glance at Elena's bright blue headache-eyes was a _where are you going? _A small downturn of her glossed lips became _you don't need to know. _Leonardo coughed discretely into his hand, adding emphasis to her point. Getting the hint, Harry dropped it and sighed aloud, the small sound asking the other two how they were coping.

"Spend a night with the Gryffindors and you'll appreciate silence forever," Elena said shortly, rubbing her eyes. "Even I need to sleep and they won't. Fucking. Shut. _Up._"

"Pretty girls don't swear," he said, smiling fondly at the foul-mouthed vampire. It had been an entire week since he had heard that word. The epitome of Slytherin foulmouthery, he had gathered, appeared to be 'mudblood'. _How tame. _

"Oh? Well I'm not pretty, I'm _beautiful,_" she shot back. "When did you start stereotyping, Harry-beauty?" She smiled, her eyes serene. "Mr. Rich, dark and handsome."

He smirked. _Well, fuck this. _"I'm sure the _other _Mr. Rich, dark and handsome would object to the title being awarded to me, Elena dear," he purred. "I've heard quite a few Gryffindor girls obsessing over our thieving Ravenclaw here."

"What, you mean the minute few who haven't been trying to jump your ex-brother?" Elena sounded tired and bored, a smile flitting across her face. "It's like they're all drugged with Amortentia."

Harry snorted softly. _How pathetic people are. _"That bad, hmm?"

"Worse, he's gotten used to the attention. Sometimes I feel more like a public relations manager than a friend." Elena sounded more amused by this than anything else. "I'm not sure which is better."

"Neither, I'd say. I think I'm getting off easy compared to you two. By the way, Elena dear," Leonardo purred, "I heard a certain Gryffindor girl was sent to the hospital wing for stealing and putting bubotuber pus on her face…"

Harry laughed quietly; the Slytherin common room had spent a quiet evening maliciously debating how low the intelligence of the Gryffindors had sunken. "Hermione Granger is now a very unpopular girl," Elena told him happily. "Lavender Brown said that she gave the intel." That was good. The bushy-haired know-it-all was beginning to annoy him during classes. He could say that she mimed a muggle's car windshield wiper.

"What happened when McGonagall pulled you aside for the uniform?" Harry asked interestedly, reminded of the event that happened yesterday. He looked down at his tailored 'uniform' and smiled. It was comfortable and practical, the goblin-weaved silk shirts and trousers, without house ties. Oh, and the combat boots. He couldn't forget the boots. "She isn't drooling or dead," he added, "so…?"

Elena scowled at the not-so-subtle attack on her less than precise mind powers and stuck her tongue out at him childishly. "I played the Veela angle," she admitted, "I said it'd hold back the allure and defend us against incapacitating hexes."

Harry raised an eyebrow at the latter part, catching the hint. _Wizards rape veelas now? You learn something new everyday. _"Smart, but doesn't explain why I get to wear it. Last time I checked, I was fully human."

"For now," she muttered, but shook her head. "Look at yourself," she said derisively, and he did. His combat boots needed a quick _scourgify, _he noticed, and did so with a flick of his finger. "I told her you were too pretty not to have creature blood in you, so she agreed."

Harry laughed, plucking at his clothes. "Does it really defend against hexes?" Elena rolled her eyes and he could hear Leonardo's mocking laughter.

"Of course not. As if we'd need crap like that when we could wear our thief robes underneath… You _are _wearing them, right?" Harry nodded, although he had done nothing of the sort. He resolved to wear them in the future. _Because one could never tell who would attack one in a magical school full of unstable girls who idolizes my ex-little brother_, he thought sarcastically.

"Do you hear that?" Leonardo said suddenly, striding away from the wall and looking around. His posture had slunk into predator mode; his eyes alert and his gait light and steady. "A growl."

"Are you sure it wasn't a Gryffindor thinking?" Elena grumbled at him but her eyes wandered around the walls, searching for something irregular. "Sometimes they sound the same; I would know."

"No, it was from an animal," Leonardo said seriously, his ears pricking up like an animal's. It was too easy to forget that the teenage-looking vampire was _the _Thief Guildmaster, Harry reflected, but with the manner he acted around Elena… He behaved more like a _butler. _Yet he was the most accomplished thief still alive, and this only proved it. "Extremely large," he added, "likely a canine."

His head turned quickly. "Another one!" He exchanged a glance with Elena. _Aren't you supposed to be an assassin as well? _She merely rolled her eyes.

"Hey, I just kill people," she offered, smiling, "There's no subtlety or tracking involved." Leonardo ignored them and began walking towards a small wooden door. Without pausing, he curled his fingers around Elena's thin wrist and tugged her along, not wanting to be left behind.

"Tippity tappity goes the raindrops, _whiiiirrr _goes my head. I can't think of anything anymore because 'cos I am dead," she informed him, her eyes sparkling happily.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Control the emotional unbalance for a moment, you little attention seeker. Things to do, people to see." He tugged her along to Leonardo who had his ear pressed against the door.

Elena blinked at him, her light blue eyes wide. "What-"

"_Shh,_" Leonardo hissed at her. "If I'm right, there's a _fucking Cerberus _behind the door."

_Cerberus, a multi-headed hound. In Greek mythology, it guards the gates of Hades. A Cerberus is extremely fierce and loyal, but impractical for use as a familiar because of its immense size. Not much is known about the Cerberean hounds because of the high fatality rate of its investigators. _

Harry felt pages and pages of information jump out and trying to overwhelm him with technical terms and images, the way it always did when he felt panicked. _Calm down, _he ordered his mind, and like a diligently trained dog, it obeyed.

"There's a Cerberus behind the door," he echoed, his mind quickly recovering from its mindless reeling. "Why the _fuck _is there a Class B animal behind the door?"

"You're asking _me_?" Leonardo took an unneeded breath in and shook his head. Those dogs were extremely bad news. None of them cared about the fact that it was in a school; it was there, so it was there. What actually _mattered _was _why _it was in the school and-

"What is it guarding?" Elena looked pensive as she looked at the door again. Harry turned the question over in his mind. It made sense for the purpose of the Cerberus to be guarding something; why else would anyone import a deadly battle canine into a school? And he knew that Class B dangerous animals like Cerberean hounds had strict control and regulation laws.

_Fuck you, Dumbledore, _he thought viciously at the elderly headmaster.

Elena's hand suddenly went to her neck and she crumpled. "I have to go," she said quietly, her pupils beginning to dilate. "Search for information on Cerberuses and how to get rid of them. Also," she managed a weak smile, "do your homework." Her voice became more urgent. "Anyway, liking gold _chemi_cals."

With that strange sentence, she apparated away with the soft _crack _of house elf apparition, leaving an unhappy vampire and human behind.

"Neither of you are ever going to tell me what all that was about, right?"

Leonardo nodded. "Just drop it," the guildmaster advised. "But that's not what I'm worried about. What was that last sentence she said?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Some random nonsense. She said 'Anyway, liking gold chemicals'." He raised an eyebrow at Leonardo's frown. _So serious. _"With extra emphasis on the _chemi _part of the chemical_._"

"Code," Leonardo said flatly. "When she can't say anything because of her restrictions, she uses codes that she can get away with."

"We'll crack it later; someone's coming," Harry hissed softly, and a small _crack _later, he arrived at the entrance of the dungeons. A murmured "gifted with the blood" later, he strode through the common rooms and nodded at Blaise and Daphne who were fiercely debating over something or the other.

"Greengrass, Zabini," he said shortly, conscious of the many eyes on him. "We're going to the library." Being Slytherins, they were loathe to obey his unveiled order, but not being Gryffindors, they were also reluctant to ask him why. Elena had simply labeled it as his "leader thing" when they had their brief mind conversations. A calculated pause later, they were out.

"You aren't ever going to tell us why we're going, right?" Zabini asked conversationally, walking faster to keep up with his long strides. Harry had, to his eternal gratification, grown much taller. Which in turn fucked up his calculations for balance, but it was worth it, watching Zabini and Greengrass struggle to keep up with him.

_I'm some sort of sick person, _Harry thought to himself. Then he laughed quietly in his mind as he realised something.

"Just drop it," he heard Greengrass tell the dark boy. "What _I'm _worried about is whether he'll turn into a Ravenclaw."

How alike the dynamics of his casual alliance with the two Slytherins were to his… _friendship _with Elena and Leonardo. And yet how utterly unalike at the same time. It amused him to no end, for some reason.

_But hey, it doesn't matter. I'm just a sinner after all._

* * *

"Okay, so she said-"

"I've cracked it."

Harry raised an eyebrow. _That was… fast. _

"It was driving me insane, not knowing," Leonardo admitted, "so I thought about it all through History of Magic and Transfiguration."

Harry had done his homework through History and discretely researched the three-headed-dog through Transfiguration. _We make a productive team. _"Enlighten me."

"Translated, she roughly meant: Alchemical gold," the vampire guildmaster explained. "Master thieves dabble in alchemy- I'll be starting the basics with you during Winter break, amongst other things." Harry rolled his eyes as Leonardo went on about alchemy, his eyes displaying his fascination with the subject.

"Stop rambling, Leonardo."

"What famous magical object can transmute base metals into gold?"

Harry arched a brow in disbelief. There was _no way_ the exquisite item, the only one of its kind would be at a _school. _"It can't be the Philosopher's stone," he said, his eyes flicking coolly to the shelves of books. Leonardo smiled, making his stomach drop. _He can't be serious._

The Thief guildmaster tilted his head to one side, dark blue eyes flashing in amusement. "Well, then. Guess what the dog's protecting?"

* * *

The day Elena returned was the day they had their first flying lesson. Harry had chuckled quietly at the humour of it all; he had been terrible on a broomstick, and his Escaping instructor had told him so in more blunt terms.

_Flashback._

"_You suck," Leonardo told him frankly as he narrowly avoided crashing into the Thieves tower. "You seriously suck at flying."_

"_People were not born with wings," Harry snapped at the amused vampire. "That means that we're meant to stay on the ground." _

"_Whatever. This is one thing where no amount of photographic memory can save you, only hard, mind-breaking practice. So PRACTICE."_

_End flashback._

So Harry had practiced. And practiced. _And practiced some more. _It frustrated him, and, he would never admit it, but it _terrified _him that he couldn't do something. If he couldn't even fly on a _broom,_ what other things couldn't he do? Good thieves never get caught, but if a good thief did, that thief high tailed it out of the place with anything he could get his hands on.

Which may or may not be a broom.

Everyday, after training, he had practiced with his loose group of what he called his "vampire allies", until slowly, surely, he had surpassed them. Then other more competitive vampires had heard of 'that mortal who was pretty good on a broom', and had begun to challenge him.

He had lost of course, in the beginning. Having slower reflexes and no freaky sense of precognition that his opponents had did not help his case, but practice did. So he _lost_, until one day, he won. And all it took for him to keep winning was, he said, "to try to lose and fail".

"Please don't make a golem you again," he told Elena. "It was painfully embarrassing." He remembered the way that golem-Elena suddenly stood up in class for no reason and refused to respond, her eyes glassy. It had been more than creepy.

"I haven't practiced necromancy for a long time, okay?" She groused unhappily as they headed to the pitch, keeping a respectable distance between them as if to say 'we're going to the same place by accident'. "And when I fall off my broom, levitate me."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Not good on a broom?"

"If I wasn't, I wouldn't be a Master Thief," she said pointedly, before nudging him, conscious of the rest of the students from the two clashing houses that turned to look at them. "I'm hoping to use you saving my life as an excuse to befriend a Slytherin. And since I'm not alive, there won't be a life-debt," she warned.

Harry smirked. Trust Elena to iron out the loopholes before he got around to thinking of them. "Pick the third broom from the left," she advised. "The one you were going to chose was bad."

Saying a quick mental goodbye, Harry stalked over to the third broom from the left, which incidentally, was the broom facing Kieran Potter's. _Wonderful. Thanks so much, Elena dearest._

Smirking, Elena headed to the surprisingly empty broom beside Kieran. _Huh_, he mused,_ would've thought there'd be a fangirl there._ The small mystery was explained when his ex-younger brother grinned and told Elena they had saved her a broom.

"Thanks so much, Kieran, Ron," Elena said sweetly. Sweet enough to make him want to retch. Weasley, however, lapped it up.

"It was nothing," the redhead replied abashedly, runing his fingers through unruly ginger hair. "Anyway, this is going to be so much fun."

"Naturally," Kieran replied turning to Elena. "Have you ever tried flying before?"

Harry watched her shake her head and noticed the imperceptible sigh that escaped her lips as Weasley and, he smirked, _Potter_ launched into a speech describing the merits of Quidditch. Which, he noted, didn't really have much to do with the techniques of flying.

"Don't worry, I bet you'll be ten times better than that Slytherin over there." Harry's head snapped upwards and his lips quirked up.

"You wouldn't be talking about little old me, would you, Potter?" he said silkily, an eyebrow raised in question. He looked away from the brunette boy into the sky, smiling at the clear blue backdrop and the puffs of cotton wool that drifted lazily across it. It was a stunning day… His eyes flicked back to- he couldn't deny it; his brother. Yeah, pity about him. "Really, I hope next time you stay back in your tower… You're spoiling the day for the rest of us."

"What do you mean, spoiling the day?" Kieran snapped angrily, and Harry could see the infamous Potter temper beginning to flare into life. _Does it really look so idiotic? _Harry thought to himself, laughing quietly as the Boy-Who-Lived begin to shout. _Thank god Elena crushed that in me before it got out of hand._

"If anyone's spoiling the day, it's you, you no-good Slytherin!"

Harry's smile spread. "No-good Slytherin?" he mocked Kieran, half-lowering his eyelids in a condescending gaze. "How eloquent of you, brother mine. I hope that you never write your own speeches in the future."

"I'm not your brother!" Harry felt gratified as he watched his brother flush in anger. Hey, who knew all it took was a nod to snap a fraternal bond? Weasley began to bluster angrily as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans behind his robes. _Veela protection my ass_, he thought amusedly at the dumb excuse Elena gave to McGonagoll.

"I'll never have a Slytherin for a brother!"

To be honest, he felt a little disappointed in his twin. That was the most childish sentence he had heard in a while, and that was saying something if you lived in a school full of children on their first time away from home. "No, Kieran," he heard himself saying, "if it was up to you, I'd never have been born, hmm?"

"You should never been born. You're just a mistake. Mum said so!" _Ouch_, Harry smiled. _That hurt as much as being poked with a stick did_. But it did still hurt. Just a little. He made doubly sure his expression betrayed nothing, but it made a little part of him quietly wither away. _**You're**__ just a mistake; you're __**just**__ a mistake, you're just a __**mistake**__._

"Wonderful, brother mine, but perhaps we can continue our enlightening debate later," he turned to nod briefly at the approaching Madam Hooch. "You may be childish enough to continue our argument, but I'd rather leave with my dignity intact."

Kieran's eyes bored into his for a long moment, and Harry was suddenly reminded of James Potter's hazel eyes. His hands suddenly clenched into fists inside his pockets, hating the image of the man he once called his father. Harry hoped he was hurting financially after the split of the Potter vaults. Despite his unenviable childhood, he had lived a life of luxury with his parents throwing money at him while lavishing their care on Kieran. Struck by a need to suddenly hurt something, he smiled maliciously at his brother.

"Sirius likes me best," he hissed at the smaller brunette, earning him a sudden startled look of hurt, quickly replaced by furious anger. _Funny how sadness always leads to anger_, he mused as Madam Hooch approached. "He left all of _you_ for _me._"

"Well, what are you all waiting for?" Madam Hooch snapped at some students who were milling about in a crowd nervously, "everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up." _What a pleasant teacher_, he thought to himself, though he knew that attacking the flying instructor in his mind was childish. "Stick out your hand over your broom and say 'Up!'"

"Up," he said dully, as the rest screamed themselves hoarse saying it. He laughed softly as he watched Elena's zoom into her hand without her mumuring her word; she had just wandlessly summoned it. His zoomed into his hand immediately, the way it always did. He found himself liking the idea of zooming around on a broom again, it had been too long since the last time he had had the chance to fly in the rare sunny days.

_Do you want me to castrate him for you?_ Elena sounded hopeful in his mind, all too delighted to be relieving his twin of his manhood. _I could do it with a spoon, if you wanted. _

_My brother should not be allowed to have offspring_, he agreed, _but we could deal with that with a quick sterilisation hex. Cleaner and less traceable._

He watched her pout at him, the dissatisfaction in her eyes stating that the issue was clearly not over. He heard Madam Hooch say something, but he was suddenly struck with an image of Elena attacking his brother with a plastic spoon. That alone was enough to make him chuckle lowly under his breath. He suddenly heard a loud slam and turned quickly- Neville Longbottom lay facedown on the ground as his broom shot into the forbidden forest. Hooch paled as she knelt beside the boy and he heard her mutter a "Broken wrist".

"None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing!" _Blablablabla,_ Elena chanted annoyingly in his head as Hooch went on about expelling them. _I had seen this possibility, but I was hoping he wasn't so stupid. Obviously, I drained a little more brain out of him than he could spare. Anyway, my plans for falling off a broom are ruined._

Harry smiled faintly at her and made his broom hover about a foot above ground level so he could sit comfortably on it. Since he wasn't doing anything interesting, he watched Malfoy degrade himself in front of the Gryffindors, brandishing a shiny object. He winced. Oh god, it was shiny.

_Shiny,_ Elena murmured in his mind. He closed his eyes. Vampires were like bloody magpies, always hunting after valuable items, especially shiny ones. He had read of a mind disease called the Magpie Syndrome, and wondered if all vampires were affected by it. Highly likely, especially since they had an entire guild dedicated to thieving._ I want it._

_Fine._

"Give that thing to me, Malfoy."

Everyone turned to look at him, their eyes wide. The Slytherins managed to pull off a nonchalant look while appearing politely interested at the same time, while the Gryffindors, lacking the finesse, gawped openly at him. _What am I_, he thought irritably, _a fucking painting for you to stare at?_

He knew Malfoy was in a dilemma. On one hand, he could just chuck it to him,but that would mean submitting and relinquishing any chance of ruling the first years. But Malfoy stood to gain a casual alliance by conceding. If he refused, however, that would mean openly challenging him and a division between the two that couldn't be repaired.

Malfoy's father had taught him well, however.

"How about a race, Black?" Harry rolled his eyes; he'd win hands down, though Malfoy didn't know that. And he knew Malfoy had begun suspecting about the scope of his abilities. "Not between you and I of course, but between you and _Potter_."

He froze. He knew his parents had tried their best to hush up the entire disowning matter, and it hadn't been easy, considering he had been splashed across the front pages of the Prophet a few years previous to the hearing. Harry knew that news had spread slowly amongst the pureblood families, especially the ones that had seats in Wizengamot and were part of the hearing, but he never imagined that they would tell their children. He gritted his teeth. _Fuck you, Lucius Malfoy._

"Fine," he heard his brother say, "the winner takes the Remembrall." His brother was such an angry little child. There was never just a moment where he would just calm the fuck down and be content with everything he had. And he had had _everything_.

Harry stood up and grabbed his broom, his fingers curling like a vice around the rough wood.

"No!" Granger shouted, "Madam Hooch told us not to move—you'll get all of us into trouble."

"Take the stick out of your ass, Granger," he honestly didn't care anymore about maintaining a "nice" image of himself. He was thoroughly socially exhausted and his mental vault that contained more polite phrases such as "shut the fuck up" and "I hope you die in poverty" was down to nil. "And stop trying to run everyone's lives."

With that quip and a stunned look from the bushy-haired Gryffindor, he swung a leg over his broom and shot upwards to hover opposite his brother. "I'm going to throw it on three," Malfoy told them, hovering only a little above them. "Three, two, one!"

Harry zoomed off before Kieran did, years of experience of getting his ass kicked by the vampires because of his slow human reflexes kicking into gear. Wind hurtled in his ears as he flew, watching the shiny, reflective ball soar gracefully in an arc and hurtle downwards. _Gravity is annoying._ Sensing his brother still quite a way behind him, he pushed the school-issued broom harder until he curled his fingers around the ball and touched the ground.

"Here," he said shortly, tossing the Remembrall at Elena. She caught it deftly as it tried to soar pass her and beamed at him. Weasley looked between both of them, visibly gaping at their exchange. "Your _friend _needs it more than I do, since he forgot to bring his brain to class today."

"Thanks," she said as she left it in the large pocket of her robes. _Leonardo's going to be so jealous._ Harry rolled his eyes. Vampires and their fascination with shiny objects gave him a headache. Kieran touched down behind him, his face flushed and, yet again, angry.

"You cheated; I know you did," he raged, "you were hopeless when you were fi-" He stopped talking immediately, his eyes wide. Harry smiled at his discomfort, though some part of him _hurt _at the accusation; some part of him bled.

"When I was five, Kieran?" he asked sweetly, "do you want to know why?" His twin made no move, just staring at him. "It was because I was _five_," he snapped, the last vestiges of the Potter temper in him rising to battle. "You underestimated me, little brother, and we're not five-years-old anymore." Harry paused for a moment, then shook his head. He wasn't a preacher, so he didn't preach. He began to hear murmurs containing "brother" and "look nothing alike", but he wasn't in the mood to care.

"Kieran Potter, Hadrius Black!" So tired. And the itching in his back had begun again; it had started when he was up in the sky, but he had pushed it out of his mind. And it actually began to seriously hurt. _What the fuck is happening to me?_ And it seemed his luck had run out, because Professor McGonagoll was on the war path. "How dare you; you might have broken your neck!"

"But we didn't, Professor," he drawled in a bored tone. "Our necks are perfectly safe."

"Be quiet Mr. Black," McGonagoll snapped angrily, "this is a very serious matter."

"Flying on a broom is a very serious matter? Someone needs to tell those quidditch teams…" Elena shot him a warning look. _Don't go too far,_ her mind warned, and he nodded. McGonagoll glared at him for a full moment before ushering them both back into the castle. Kieran trailed miserably behind him, his head drooping like a puppy's. _Pathetic._

He noticed they were heading down to the dungeons instead and he smirked. _Snape? Disciplining me?_ His smirk widened, his mind eagerly providing him with images of Snape being held up by knives.

Being the sadistic bastard he was, he laughed.

* * *

"I'll make Potter's life miserable."

"You already do that."

"I'll make Weasley's life miserable."

"Again, you already do that."

A pause, as he watched Snape consider his options. _Is the quidditch team so important to him? _The moment the sallow-faced man had found out that he had beat his brother on a broom, he had been persuaded, cajoled, even _threatened _into joining the Slytherin team. Sadly, Snape found out the hard way that threats didn't work on him. Now, it was down to bargains. Bargains, Harry could take.

"I'll make Granger's life miserable," the potion master offered. It was a good deal, Harry decided. The bushy-haired bookworm had demanded to know all his "studying secrets" and how he managed to beat her even though he didn't camp out in the library as she did. If she was swamped with detentions… _Wonderful. _However, he presented a thoughtful face to Snape, waiting for the man to add onto his offer. He didn't have to wait long.

"I'll get human blood instead of animal blood for your _friends._" Harry raised an eyebrow but made no comment. In his mind, the deal was already made, but Snape didn't have to know that, did he?

"Convince me," he purred, a smirk lingering on his face. "After all, if you want me to devote both _time _and _effort_-"

"That's enough, Black," Snape snapped, his dark eyes coolly appraising him. "I've offered enough and you know it."

Harry shrugged. The man had his limits, or he wouldn't be head of Slytherin. "Out of the kindness of my _heart,_ then. Pleasure doing business with you." Smiling at the potions master, he glided out of the room, his mind satisfied. Elena's calm turquoise eyes greeted him with none of her usual warmth; in it's place was cool, hard _anger. _Unconsciously, Harry slid into a defensive stance.

"I wonder, Harry-beauty," Elena murmured, her voice emotionless and detached, "why you still feel hurt at your parents' abandonment." She looked hard into his eyes, making him wince, but he stood his ground. _I will not submit to you. _

"Choose, Hadrius Black," she said quietly. "Either you allow me to cut the ties between you and your mortal family once and for all or," her eyes flashed dangerously, "I cut the ties between you and _us._"

* * *

"_Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues."_

_-Ambrose Bierce_

* * *

TL;DR: Read it.  
Note: I am not making Snape pathetic, for all the Snape admirers out there. You'll see why next chapter. :)  
If you could offer tips for revenge, I'll love you forever, since I don't know much about Snape's mindset.  
Critique is much appreciated. (:


	6. Pebble

"_**Beauty**__ and __**grace**__ command the world"_

_-Park Benjamin_

* * *

"_Choose, Hadrius Black," she said quietly. "Either you allow me to cut the ties between you and your mortal family once and for all or," her eyes flashed dangerously, "I cut the ties between you and us._

* * *

Harry stood there for a moment, watching as Elena folded her arms. _An ultimatum. I don't like ultimatums. _"Why the sudden demand, Elena dear?" he asked lightly, though the atmosphere was anything but. "Was it something I said?" His lips curved upwards and he made his eyes become half-lidded, looking mockingly at her. But he was more than a little scared. Elena had lived inside his bloody head for god's sake. She had once told him she could predict everything he said and the way he reacted, and he believed her.

Elena smiled back, thought it was a cruel and derisive smile she displayed to her _enemies_. Not her_ friends._ Harry stayed rooted to the spot, his lips still twisted upwards. But he felt cold- he didn't want to be a vampire's enemy."I don't like to be second-rate to mortals," she said, her tone just as falsely light as his. "Your decision?"

His eyes hardened. _I __**don't like **__ultimatums. _The choice was relatively easy to make, but he didn't want her to be able to walk all over him.

"This isn't a _macho showdown, _Harry," she said dryly, rolling her eyes. "I would think less of you if you didn't answer quickly."

He grinned crookedly at her, and tilted his head. "No contest,' he told the vampire girl, smiling privately as the tension lifted immediately. "You over them." As Elena smirked, he couldn't help but feel as if he'd signed Lily and James Potter's death warrant.

Elena regarded him for a moment, her expression thoughtful, then drew what appeared to be a large book from her robes.

"A dossier on everyone in our year," she explained. "Add on notes of your own onto them. Leonardo has one; he's doing the Ravenclaws, and I'm doing the Gryffindors."

"Protected?" he asked as he flipped through the pages, his mind instantly absorbing and permanently committing the information to memory. The information was rather basic, by Elena's usual standards: Name, date of birth, family standing, occasionally punctuated with interesting comments here and there. Plus, he found himself quietly laughing at, how much they were worth, in monetary terms. He wondered where she had gotten such information, then quickly dismissed the thought from his mind. "And why do you want this anyway?

"Yes, it's protected," Elena said, and Harry didn't think to question her. When the vampire girl said that something was protected, it was. She hesitated when she went on to answer her second question, though. She couldn't very well tell Harry that her _master _wanted it, could she? "It might come in handy, later." Harry nodded, satisfied with the rather vague answer. The vamp had been in his _head_, and if he didn't trust her after that, then he couldn't trust anybody.

He felt Elena touch his shoulder lightly, and felt her lean her lips close to his ear.

"I'm not sorry, dear Harry. Obliviate."

* * *

'My dear Court, I want someone _dead._ Green eyes and red hair, adept at charms and a failure at being a parent."

"Yes."

A pregnant pause.

"That'd be wonderful, thanks!"

Elena curved upwards as she absently twirled a lock of her hair around a finger. .

_I'm not sorry, Harry-beauty. _

* * *

_Next morning._

"Where's Kieran?" Elena asked Ron as she sat next to him on the Gryffindor table. "Morning Gred, Forge," she grinned at the freckled twins. They grinned back. "Found any good tunnels lately?"

They merely winked at her and told her not to touch the tea in a whisper. Elena's smile brightened. _Contaminating the food source… That means they've read the note on page 52 on making good with house elves. _She was impressed, and decided to ignore the possibilities that attacked her, showing what was going to, or could happen. Ron looked miserable, she noted.

"What's wrong? Where's Kieran?"

"I don't know," the redhead replied, stabbing moodily at his sausage. Elena raised an eyebrow; the redhead's appetite had actually diminished? Quite a feat. "But McGonagall took him away while we were getting here, and she looked really worried."

Elena shrugged and sat down, reaching for a bread roll as she did every morning. She _had _experimented with other food, but as Leonardo said, it was worse than disgusting. "Don't worry about it," she advised as she broke it apart, inhaling the divine scent of the freshly-baked bread, "probably something to do with the Quidditch thing you're all so obsessed with."

_That _snapped the redhead's depression.

"the Quidditch thing? You don't know what you're talking about; quidditch is the best…"

Elena tuned him out as he ranted on about the wondrous, life-enlightening properties of the mundane sport. Harry had given her a brief one-minute introduction, and she was happy with that; she couldn't understand why the Gryffindor had to go on and _on _about it.

She put a piece of bread in her mouth thoughtfully, nodding as if she was seriously listening to Ron.

"Mr. Weasley? Miss Skarab?"

Elena dropped the roll and turned to look at the stern figure of Professor McGonagall, _her _Harry flanking the elderly witch's side. "I think it would be best if you two came with me as well."

Nodding, she slipped off the bench and followed, her eyes sliding to Harry, studying his deliciously blank face and clutching at his thoughts. She would see what he would think when he got the news, and base her future decisions upon that. _Yes, _she decided, as McGonagall led them to a stone gargoyle, _that would be the best course of action._

"Blood pops," Professor McGonagall said clearly, and the gargoyle spun around to reveal a flight of stairs. _What an interesting choice of password. _The blood lollipops were delicious, Elena thought with a fond smile. Harry had intended it as a joke when he first offered one to her, but he bought her five more when she closed her eyes in delight after tasting that first vision of candy heaven. The professor ushered all three of them up the stairs, Ron walking behind her after a mumbled comment on not trusting walking in front of "slimy Slytherins".

"Come now, the Headmaster's waiting."

Elena steeled her mind and began throwing up additional barriers around Harry's mind as well. She could _not _have lax defenses around the manipulative, powerful old mortal; that meant suicide. Dumbledore was a mortal, yes, but he was as powerful as one of the greatest ones of their immortals. Also, he was her brother. A much more worrying reason. The mind bubble that she had first used against him wouldn't succeed at such close quarters as well.

"Hello, Mr. Black, Mr. Weasley and…" she watched the headmaster pause for a moment, his twinkling blue eyes resting on her. She hid a wince as what seemed like a battering ram hammered her mind. _Fuck you, _she thought viciously at the seemingly benevolent man. "Miss Skarab," he finished.

Dumbledore rose, his robes not flashing or luridly-coloured, but a somber midnight blue. _Dressed to suit the occasion, hmm? _"I wish I could call you here on happier circumstances but…" the old man sighed and shook his head, his expression sorrowful.

"Excuse me, Headmaster Dumbledore, but is this for educational purposes?" Harry punctuated the imposed silence with a bored-sounding question. _Rude, _Elena couldn't help admonishing. "The restraining order indicates that you are to approach me for _educational purposes only._"

Elena couldn't help but admire his nerve as she watched Dumbledore try to smooth things over with his grandfatherly persona, and Ron gaped at Harry. "I assure you, Mr. Black, that you will indeed be _educated _by what I have to say. Your mother has very sadly passed away."

_Way to break it to him, old man. _Elena leapt quickly at Harry's mind. His first thoughts were of utter confusion. "I never knew Sirius had a wife," he remarked, raising an eyebrow. "Is he alright?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I meant your _biological _mother, Mr. Black."

Then the fog of confusion cleared, replaced by blankness. Elena frowned. Harry didn't feel happy about it, nor did he feel unhappy. It seemed like it was a compromise. She watched him nod briefly at the Headmaster.

"I offer my condolences," he said curtly, as if they were discussing the death of a stranger. "If that is all…" Without waiting for a dismissal, the dark-haired beauty left, his impassion trailing after him.

"I'll go after him," Elena offered, and like Harry, she left the office quickly before Dumbledore could say anything and walked quickly after her beautiful child's disappearing figure as he turned a sharp corner. She began to run quickly, but just as she turned, she slammed hard into someone and frowned.

"Can't you do _anything _right, Granger?" she sighed as she felt Harry's mind leave her immediate vicinity. The offending bookworm looked up at her from her sprawled position on the polished floor and glared.

"You don't have to be so _mean_," the bushy-haired girl spat as she began picking up her books that lay scattered around her. "Beauty isn't _everything, _and people aren't as obsessed by looks outside this school." As Granger gathered up the last of her books and straightened up, she shot Elena one last nasty look.

"Sometimes, having a _heart _is more important than prettiness."

Elena rolled her eyes; the girl was obviously deluded, but the bookworm's words began to form an annoying niggling feeling at the back of her mind. _Beauty isn't everything? _The vampire shook her head as she leant against the wall, feeling the cool concrete through her clothes. _It is everything. _But if one person, specifically one of the more intelligent mortals in this school thought it wasn't, then how many others thought so as well?

And if they thought so, could it be that she was... _wrong?_

She couldn't be wrong. If she was wrong then _everything _was wrong. The Court of the Strange would be wrong. Skarab-papa would have been wrong. Harry would be wrong.

"_Some time in the future, demon child, you'd grow out of your sire's fascination with beauty. And what that would do to you, I hope I would be there to see."_

And Regulus would be right.

But seriously… having a heart was more important than beauty?

Elena laughed bitterly and tilted her head towards the high ceiling. "Why are you mortals so obsessed with your internal organs?"

There was no time to speculate, however. She had to find Harry and stop him from filling the lake with transfigured grass.

Dumbledore knew that the student he called "Elena Skarab" was Ariana Dumbledore. He could feel it in his aging bones and sense it with his sharp mind. Only Ariana would run after a grieving- yes, _grieving _Slytherin while wearing Gryffindor robes. His sister was the most compassionate being he knew, despite her recent… condition. He frowned.

_That _was yet another inconsistency. Elena Skarab appeared infinitely normal, despite the fact that her mind was simply blank. It disturbed him, that blankness; did she not think of anything at all?

And the most glaring inconsistency was her _age. _Ariana was fourteen when she was dead- _assumed _so, but Elena was twelve and looked it.

There was no magic in the world that could reverse a person's age. Sighing, Dumbledore sank bank into his high-backed chair and pulled out a large sheaf of notes that was labeled simply as 'Project Ariana', and pulled out the last page, which had one name inked over in block capitals and circled hundreds of times.

The name was Cinzia Ceriani, and she had visited the Dumbledore cottage twenty-seven times, the exact number of magical explosions that Ariana had. The first time she had met Ariana was when his sister was two-years-old, and the two had gone out alone for a "shopping spree". When Ariana returned laden with gifts, she had become much more vacant and much less inclined to talk, preferring to look out of windows and draw. Until suddenly, when she had just turned six, she began to chatter and became much more like Ariana. Three days later, Cinzia Ceriani had visited, bearing birthday gifts.

One day after the beautiful Italian lady had left, Ariana had been attacked by the muggle boys and lost control of her magic.

After that, Cinzia Ceriani had never visited his family ever again.

Dumbledore reached out for a sheet of parchment and summoned a quill, penning 'ELENA SKARAB' in block capitals at the top of the parchment. After a few seconds of staring at the name, he wrote "92 years after death, 106 years old...?"

"When you become a necromancer," Harry heard Elena say conversationally, "you must kill some part of yourself, even if you are already dead. A sacrifice of yourself to the deceased, if you will."

He decided not to reply, transfiguring more blades of grass into stones and skipping them into the lake. He wondered if the Giant Squid would appreciate the stones, and wondered if Elena would appreciate his imminent betrayal. Maybe not.

"You can become a necromancer now," Elena offered as she watched the stones skid across the rippling surface of the lake. "She was part of you, being your mother."

He gave her a look. "What part of _you _did you sacrifice, Elena dear?"

"My love for my brother," she replied, smiling at him. She was lying to him again. Just a year ago, she could count the number of times she had lied to him on the fingers of one hand. Now, she was running out of toes.

"Congratulations," he said as snidely as he could. He honestly couldn't bring himself to care, not with the recent developments. _Get rid of the silver. _

"Most of the time I feel as you do now," he let the vampire girl continue, moodily throwing stone after stone into the lake. "Blank."

"And you're telling me this, _why_?" he said quietly. "I'm not upset by what you did," oh, he _knew _she had orchestrated Lily Potter's death. Coincidences did not exist in his world. Having the woman dead the morning after admitting that he didn't care for her was not a coincidence, it was poor planning, and that poor planning and the subsequent actions had reminded him of something; something that could save him from her.

Elena tilted his head and looked at him, with that infuriating knowing expression of hers. "Just thought you'd like to know. Anyway, how have you two got on with the dog?"

"We know enough that we don't stand a chance against it," he said, frowning as he thought back to the vague descriptions of the three-headed dog. "Unless you want to be seriously injured."

Elena shrugged. "You're fascinated by those Greek stories. What did Orpheus do?"

"He played music to make it sleep!" Harry smiled, forgetting entirely about the death of Lily Potter. He couldn't believe that he was so stupid, forgetting entirely about the supposed origin of the dog. It was entirely uncharacteristic of him, skipping that aspect of the research, instead searching through the Hogwart's library for unhelpful descriptions of the Class-B magical creature. He blamed the silver threads that wound through his mind. Stupid Elena; stupid influence she had on him and his mind.

"We'll go there tonight, at ten. Bring your pitchforks and your violins," Elena winked and apparated away, the distinctive crack still ringing in his ears a few moments later. Finally, _finally, _he let go of the hasty barriers that he had thrown up around his mind to prevent Elena from sensing his emotions. Of course, the seer hadn't had cause to root deeper in his mind.

Harry smirked, letting go of the blankness that protected his mind and allowing a barrage of thoughts to hammer him.

_Never trust a Slytherin._

He found him thoughts surprisingly angry. He had given a warning to Elena not to play with what was his; what she did had crossed a line. _Unforgivable, _he thought. _Really, Elena, you're just an immortal child obsessed with superficiality. You're not as powerful as everyone thinks you are. _After a few more minutes, he realized that he wasn't really angry over Lily Potter's death, and let the grass tumble from his fingers as he smiled. _I love her as a mother, _he couldn't help thinking dejectedly. _I love her, but I don't love what she's doing to me._

Harry pressed a hand to his head and breathed in, his thoughts turning inwards, into his own mind, searching, feeling. Elena's influence was silver, he had noticed when he was six, silver strands that wound around his mind like a coiling snake. He stepped into his seaside mindscape, with its meager stretch of sand and the infinitely large sea and inhaled the salty air. It was so real and clear.

It had taken him four painstaking years to extract the silver strands as delicately as he could manage, and even so, a few were so deeply embedded in his thought centers that he had to leave them to be. His mindscape still wasn't clear of the silver influence, despite his efforts. He had locked them away, but they were _still there, _whispering to him as he slept, spoiling his mind.

_Tainted, _a reddish-orange thought whizzed by him. _Tainted by her. _

_No more, _he smiled, and he watched a royal purple burst of thought that erupted from his palm. Elena had controlled him for too long, foisting her twisted beliefs- _beauty is power- _onto him. Harry gazed out towards the sea of his thoughts and smirked, raised out a hand and sharply flicked his wrist, making a writhing monstrous orb of silver that blotted out the sunset of his mindscape.

_Off with her head. _

With just a single thought, the orb disappeared, leaving him to the breathtaking view of the dying sun, his mind sharper, clearer and faster than before. _She was dulling my mind, the manipulative little bitch. Did she really think I wouldn't notice when Leonardo taught me occlumency? _He had hid the thought of ridding Elena's influence from his mind years ago, but he had hidden it so deeply he had forgotten it himself. _Never thought it'd be Lily Potter's death that would set the ball rolling. Shows what I know._

Back in reality, Hadrius Black opened his eyes and Saw. The intricate magic of the school, the layers upon layers of wards; the secrets laid out bare for him. _No more mysteries, hmm?_ Shrugging, he walked back towards the school, his eyes tracking, memorizing, feeding him truckloads of useless information for his mind to classify quickly, letting him absorb facts that he really didn't want to know, like what the fifth-year Hufflepuffs got up to in their spare time.

_This isn't normal, _a little voice in the back of his head mused, but he ignored it. He had had enough of _those _kind of voices, and he'd be quite happy not to deal with them for another eternity or so.

Everything felt more _real _all of a sudden. He could taste the magic in the air- light- a fluffy composition of something passably sweet, and dark; slow and curling, something savory. The sky looked bluer and the grass so fluorescent that that it was lurid green. _The same colour as one of Dumbledore's robes, _Harry remembered with a grimace. He could even smell the greasy remains of yesterday's gravy that Zabini had 'accidentally' spilt on him, despite the _scourgify _that followed just a second later.

He wondered how big a headache he'd get from the sensory overload as he walked back into the magical school, then smiled, shaking his head.

_Hadrius Black is back in action._ But a small part of him grieved at the loss: _I love her like a mother. _

Unfortunately, that small part was very, very loud.

_Equilibrium, _Elena mused. _Balance. _She propped up a hand on her chin and looked across the library at Leonardo, wondering how long it would take for him to stiffen and look up at her.

_Seer, _she twisted a pen in her hand instead of a quill, declaring that using feathers as a writing utensil was "barbaric". She had told no one that her handwriting was _atrocious _when she used a quill, and hopefully, no one would find out.

_Seer, servant of equilibrium. _

Perhaps she would practice writing over the Christmas break, or maybe she'd learn how to rig non-magical explosives instead. Muggle things fascinated her, even if she never really got the hang of things. And so many boring text books to read just to do one insignificant little thing!

She wondered how Harry would feel if she told him that he had been created for the sole purpose of equilibrium. She imagined the look on his face when she would tell him that if it hadn't been forseen that his brother would destroy the Dark Lord, he would never have come into existence. _Harry-beauty is a balance. Two dark wizards against two light wizards. Equi-libri-um. _

Fate has giveth him life, so no one could take it away.

Her long eyelashes touched her skin once, twice, and Leonardo finally decided to look up irritably at her. Elena merely waved at him, smiling, as she sensed Kieran look up.

"You're smitten with that Ravenclaw," the Boy-Who-Lived joked, a smirk on his face. "Isn't he like, your cousin or something?"

Elena rolled her eyes once at Leonardo and turned back to her supposed 'best friend', a smile forced onto her face. "He is not my cousin," she told him, sticking her nose up into the air for maximum comical effect. "And I am _not _smitten with him." Sticking her tongue out at the Gryffindor boy in a fit of childishness, she began to doodle Harry's unexpressive green eyes on a blank piece of parchment.

_Harry-beauty has stunning eyes, _she thought, just a little jealously, adding a few thick pen strokes in the dark runny ink and finishing the sketch of the almond-shaped eyes. She sighed and began to sketch Leonardo's nose under the eyes. And just to make herself smile, she added Dumbledore's beard to the face-less picture.

"That's pretty weird," Ron observed, peering over her shoulder to glance at the mindless doodle. Frowning, she drew the top of Ron's lips at the top of the beard, adding a daisy dangling from it. "Now, that is _seriously _weird."

"You wouldn't know art if it hit you in the face with a cauldron," she retorted, gesturing with her pen back to his parchment. "Transfiguration essay."

The redhead rolled his eyes and reluctantly went back to the assigned homework, grumbling about how she could help them with it. Kieran mumbled his agreement beside him, but Elena didn't really care.

"You have a quidditch match coming up soon," she said conversationally, discretely crushing the parchment in her palm. "Better do your homework."

"Gryffindor's going to win," Kieran told her matter-of-factly, before going back to his homework. "I'm a pretty decent on a broom, to be honest with you." Elena raised an eyebrow, couldn't help thinking that Harry was so much better. Harry-beauty beat Kieran during their impromptu match, but the brunette boy was simply pretending it didn't happen. Still, the boy was born with the talent and didn't have much training, while Harry had to spent _ages _under Leo's unimpressed eyes training his little butt off.

She suddenly froze as she felt her neck and her back feel as if they had burst into flame, and bit her lip tightly in pain. Elena felt a few impolite word spring to her lips but she bit them down.

"Well, good luck with that," she offered, her chair scraping forcibly against the ground as she stood. She winced at the sound; she _hated _scraping sounds. "I need to get something. I'll be right back."

Without waiting for a response, she ran out of the library and apparated away, the burning on her neck getting stronger.

"Tell me something, Leonardo," she had said, swinging her legs back and forth, "is beauty everything?" She marveled at the equal strength of her legs, and the balance of it. One leg in front, one leg behind, one leg in front. Repeat.

The muggle born had told her that having a… **heart **was more important. It sounded stupid, and it was. Still, Elena had to ask.

Leonardo arched a brow and shot her an are-you-joking look. "Of course not," he said gently, "if I cut off your nose and gouged out your eyes, you wouldn't be beautiful anymore. I'd still love you though, and so would Harry. Something that's so easily taken away could be regarded as precious, but of course it wouldn't be everything."

Elena nodded blankly, beginning to understand. That, she thought, is something to think about for the next half a century or so. "Then… what is everything?"

Leonardo shrugged, the physical gesture making her feel a little irritated. "Nothing is everything. Everything is made up of trillions of tiny pieces of _somethings_."

He smiled at her.

"But you make up most of my everything."

"Elena," she heard a velvet voice said curtly in acknowledgement. "So you've finally come to crawl back to your master like the _puppy _you are." She kept her eyes blank and subservient, feeling the creeping crawl of the Master's magic go closer to her. Elena still felt she was more of a kitten than a puppy to be honest, but she kept her mouth shut.

"How is the young Archon doing?"

"He is close to finding the philosopher's stone," she said with difficulty as she fought the urge to flee the room, _hating _herself for being so vulnerable, hating Skarab for putting her in this position. "Leonardo is with him."

"Adequate."

That sharp word rang through the room, increasing her self-loathing. She _feared _this man. No, her lord wasn't a man, he was a dragonist. And dragonists were vicious; brutal; cruel, everything that he had molded her to be. Her lips quirked up briefly. _Harry would fit right in. He will be the archon. _She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the floor, not daring to incite the dragonist's anger by looking directly into his eyes.

_How pathetic I am. _

"You will go back to Hogwarts, but you will not aid the archon in his… _quest,_" the mocking derision was evident in his tone. "Acquire an invitation to the Chosen One's home, and plant some muggle spy devices. Try the blood-traitor's as well, if you can."

Elena grimaced as a searing pain shot through her head.

"Yes, my lord."

"Oh, and greet my dearest daughter for me," her lord said, chuckling as he reached out a hand to grip her face tightly, tight enough to bruise an ordinary human's face. "Tell her to come home for Christmas."

"I will inform her of your decision," Elena said quietly.

"And make good with Severus Snape," her master added as he kissed her softly. She tried not to cringe backwards out of his crushing grip. "He might not be the best of men, but if the Malfoy lord complains to me about his complaints anymore, _you'll _be the one who suffers. The man can whine like a champion."

"Yes," she whispered, her voice suddenly failing as he let go of her. She fell back to the floor, her head clattering with the cold tiles beneath as she closed her eyes. Her hair fluttered artlessly into her face as she fell, just the way he liked it. "My Lord _Greengrass._"

It had been years since he had called her so consistently, so _insistently. _As she felt his unwelcome hot breath on her neck, she felt the icy coldness seep back into her bones; an unnatural iciness that settled in her veins. She welcomed the numbness and let it become part of her once more, silencing the warmth that had been there before.

Then her lord sank his elongated teeth into her neck and drank.

Severus Snape never let _anyone _get one over him. He relished in the fact that he had managed to get revenge on everyone and everything that had crushed him, however temporarily. The Dark Lord, for going against his promises, had been reduced to almost nothing. Lily Potter, for not marrying him, had been killed.

Elena Skarab, Leonardo Lamar and Hadrius Black… They would _suffer. _Hadrius Black was a Slytherin, that was true, but before being clad in green and silver, he was James Potter's son.

That, in itself, was unforgiveable.

He could see James Potter's arrogance and aura of untouchability around the dark-haired boy who, admittedly, didn't look much like his father at all. _Lily's eyes, _he found himself thinking. _The last living proof of her existence._

Perhaps he would cut out Hadrius Black's eyes before he killed him, because if he couldn't kill the two… _creatures, _he could at least kill the child, Dumbledore be damned, Lily's eyes be damned. He picked up a book of explicit poisons and laughed softly, his beady black eyes darting over the words and illustrated ingredients.

_What am I thinking, trying to kill a __**child**__? _Snape blinked, dropping the book as if it was a hot potato. _This isn't my anger I am feeling. What-_

"Snape." The potion master turned quickly, his robes shielding the book of poisons. His irritation and- he couldn't deny it, _fear _returned. The demonic un-child _thing _was standing in his dungeon, swaying gently as if she was drunk. She was holding something indiscernible in her hands.

The thing collapsed but managed to grab onto the side of the table, the thing cradled to her chest.

"Miss Skarab," he said curtly, his eyes looking at her in disdain. The fear was there, but it was eclipsed by the _thing_'s pathetic display of balance. "Why are you here?"

"Truce," the un-child said, holding out the object she had been concealing. Snape looked, unimpressed, at the dark liquid swishing around in the small glass vial. It appeared to resemble ink.

"Royal vampire blood," she explained, and his eyes widened imperceptibly. _Where did she get that? People would pay thousands of galleons… _"And… apologies for my disrespect."

She left the small vial on the corner of his cluttered desk and, with eyes cast down to the ground and still slightly shaky, she made her way out of his dungeon.

Well, she tried to.

"Do you want a potion for that?" The child was exhibiting all the signs of cruciatus, and despite everything… He knew how _that _felt. "No one will know." Snape really didn't want to know what the Gryffindor girl had done to get that cruciatus- that was her business if she wanted to tell him.

The un-child hesitated for a moment, pausing in her steps, before turning around and offering him a slight smile. "That would be nice. Thank you."

She seemed quieter somehow. Sadder. And honestly, he'd rather not know what had happened, out of self-preservation. If someone could do something to _it, _then imagine what it would do to _him. _Shaking his head, Snape reached for a dusty purple bottle that had been untouched for years and handed it to her.

"Thank you, Professor Snape."

On a whim- or maybe it was the giddiness that came with acquiring one of the most coveted potion ingredients in the history of potion-making, he decided to add one last thing.

"If you ever require it, I have more of the potion."

But the un-child merely turned a little, not quite facing him, and shook her head. He could spy an indulgent smile on her face. "That won't be necessary," she said politely. "Mind over matter; it's just a little pain." She nodded slightly at the vial perched on the corner of his desk. "I hope it will be satisfactory. Thank you for the potion."

His fear of her shivered; cracks appearing in its armour. After a fashion, it shattered and disappeared, replaced with a grudging respect. It wasn't everyday that he heard someone call the aftershocks of the Cruciatus "a little pain", after all.

"How dare you," was the first thing he said to her as she leant against the wall of the third floor. It was a quiet question-statement; an acknowledgement of what she had done and an enquiry of why she had done it at the same time. Elena looked at him unflinchingly with those damned turquoise eyes of hers, and he couldn't help but feel that she looked like the corpse that she was. _Those ugly, dead eyes. _

He looked away.

_How dare you kill her, _he wanted to say, _how dare you mess with my mind? _There were millions of how dare yous, all culminated in those three words. _How dare you. _But he didn't have time to ask her again, because he could see she was _hurt. _And he loved her like a _mother, _his mind told him.

"Are you alright?" Harry asked gently.

"I'm fine," she said matter-of-factly. He disagreed, looking sharply at her. _You're hurt. _She ignored him. "Where's Leonardo?"

"Being mobbed by 'claws. Our thief master is a _very _popular Ravenclaw," Harry smiled faintly as he remembered the house of blue and bronze mobbing the vampire in the library. It had been pretty funny to him at the time. To the guild master, not so much. "He'll be here any moment."

"He wouldn't want to miss putting the Cerberus out of action," Elena agreed. "We can afford to wait."

He bit back a groan as he realized that she had successfully diverted his attention. "You look like crap," he told her bluntly. "We told McGonagall that Kraven was seriously ill and you visited him; so why are _you _the one looking like you spent a day in Azkaban?"

Elena laughed shortly, but it was so insincere he wondered why she even tried. Everything about her was so forced; at times he thought she was just a mask herself. Despite all her shortcomings, his mind still insisted that he loved her the way he had never loved Lily.

"Is this another thing you and Leonardo share?" he asked bitterly, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he gazed at the door that held the Cerberus back. "Something that the mortal couldn't possibly understand?"

Elena turned away from him, feeling slightly hurt by his words. Harry had to find out by himself: those were the rules of equilibrium, and she had broken so many that she couldn't break that one.

"You wouldn't want to know," she simply said.

Before he could make a comment, Leonardo appeared, his gloved hand on Harry's shoulder. "Problems?" the guildmaster asked, steering Harry to the door. A cheery smile was on the vampire's pale face, also forced, as he beckoned Elena forward. "No? Well let's get the show on the road."

Taking a deep breath, Harry watched Leonardo tap the door lightly, hearing the soft _click _as it swung inwards. _Hey, I didn't even get to write my will, _he complained.

Armed with three knives in each hand, Harry prepared to attack the monstrous dog as Leonardo transfigured something into a musical instrument, but Elena beat him to it. She leapt up and flung knives into the six eyes of the snarling dog, each one hitting its target. The dog howled and shook his head fiercely as if trying to fling the knives out of its eyeballs.

She looked so detached.

"What?" she snapped at him, "are youjust going to stand there?" Biting back a retort, he drew out an innocent-looking wire from the 'bag of tricks' Leonardo had given him on his 11th birthday.

"Yolanda's treacherous tripwire," he explained, as he tossed the wire at the Cerberus, his index finger directing the way it looped around the dog's neck. His hands clenched into fists, and the wire _squeezed. _Comically, the Cerberus' eyes bulged and its vicious claws slashed uselessly in the air inches away from Elena's exposed neck. She smiled.

Suddenly, Beethoven's fifth symphony began to play, the dramatic opening of music oddly fitting before lightening to a sweet tune and back.

"You could've played some earsplitting crap and it would've still fallen asleep," Harry noted as the dog's head fell onto its paws, its heavy eyelids resting on the little daggers that still stuck out of its eyes. _That could have been funny, but some animal-protectors would have gotten on my case. _"It has no taste in music."

"It is a _dog, _Harry," Leonardo deadpanned. "It's weird that it falls asleep when it hears music so quickly. Okay, where do we go from here?" They looked around the room for some kind of door until Harry smacked his head.

"Please, _please _don't tell me-"

"It's under the dog," Elena said quietly, pointing to a rusty circular handle that the dog's paws were resting on. Harry studied it for a moment, before rubbing his scar distractedly. _Stop itching, you uncooperative shit. _

"Well that's _fucking wonderful_," Leonardo snapped.

"_Wingardium leviosa." _

Harry held his breath as the dog was raised an inch above the ground. A quick flick of his wrist later, it slammed into the wall opposite, exposing the trap door it had been concealing. It didn't even wake up.

"Smart," Leonardo quipped as he lifted the trapdoor up. "I _was _going to just banish it somewhere, but brownie points to you."

They crowded around the dark hole that the trap door revealed, and looked at each other. None of them really wanted to go down there. Harry looked at Leonardo, expecting a summary of what they were going to face.

"Slimy, plant-based… Soil…" Leonardo frowned as he sniffed delicately. "Seriously gross." He winked at Harry. "After you, mortal."

"At least shine some light down, genius," Harry said witheringly. "Slytherins don't leap blindly into the unknown."

"Hmm, true," Leonardo agreed. "_Solaris._" Harry ducked and covered his eyes as what appeared to be a miniature sun erupted from the vampire's fingertips and went through the trapdoor. Curiously, small crackling sounds came from below. _The __**fuck**__._

"Heh, that was a bit overpowered," Leonardo said as he looked at Harry. "Corneas all right?"

"Fried," he answered sarcastically. There were annoying bright spots everywhere he looked, courtesy of the mini sun. "Merci beaucoup, _bastard._"

Leonardo shrugged. "The grossness seems to have gone, for some reason. Off you go, then." Harry eyed the hole skeptically, but shook his head and resigned himself to his fate. _So melodramatic, _he laughed at himself.

"If I die, tell Leonardo he's a total jerk," he told Elena. She smiled at him and nodded. _What's wrong with you, _he thought at her. He would've expected her to roll her eyes and push him down the hole herself, but she just stood there docilely. Harry sighed. _Not my problem._

"All aboard the moron express," he muttered as he leapt into the hole, throwing himself forwards into a roll as he soundlessly hit the ground. It was cold and the air smelt musty, much to his distaste, but it was safe. "All clear." Elena and Leonardo appeared beside him immediately.

"That was rather… _anticlimactic,_" Leonardo said, frowning. "I was hoping that a wall of fire would jump you. Or alligators. Yeah, 'gators would have been pretty cool."

"Jerk," Harry said under his breath as they headed down the stone passageway. "Fuck you Leonardo, I don't know why we're friends." The tall vampire merely laughed at him, not taking it to heart in the slightest. He stopped suddenly.

"You hear that?"

Harry paused in his steps and listened. There was something fluttery, birds, he guessed. But for some reason, it clinked as well. _Something metal. _They continued to walk until they reached the end of the passageway.

"Well," he deadpanned, "_there's _something you don't see everyday."

It was a small room full of glittery, winged objects- he could clearly see he hadn't heard birds, but they moved around so fast he felt a little dizzy. He checked on Leonardo and Elena- predictably, they were standing stock-still, absolutely distracted by the flying things.

"Keys," Elena murmured.

She reached up a hand and caught one quickly as it almost zoomed past her. She held it out to Harry. It was gold, with pink wings. It fluttered feebly in his hands as if it was too tired to fly. "The key would be silver," she told him. He didn't bother asking her how she knew, instead heading for the broomstick at the center of the room.

Irrationally, he wondered if he could take the broom and beat her over the head with it. She was _moping, _for the love of God. It was the most pathetic thing he had ever seen her do, and his ally couldn't be _pathetic. _He hated to be blunt, but he hoped she would get over herself soon. He sighed softly.

"Can't I just- _accio silver key_?" he looked around for any signs of said silver key zooming into his hand. There were no signs.

Elena shook her head and sat on the ground, patting the space next to her. Harry raised an eyebrow, thinking that the notion was really retarded and wondered if she had finally gone nuts. He told her that in no less blunt terms, but sat down anyway, watching the fluttering keys.

"Dumbledore set this up as a test for your brother," she said quietly, her eyes tracking one single bejeweled key. It was quite large and silver with crumpled blue wings, struggling to remain aerodynamic. "It is twisted, even by my standards. Dumbledore's original plan was to subtly influence Kieran, Ron and Granger to form their golden gang."

"With legilimency?" Harry asked, frowning as Elena nodded. He felt something twist inside him as he realized that his idiotic little brother could've been reduced to nothing less than Dumbledore's puppet. It was _disgusting. _Kieran was _his _brother, damn it! He didn't care if his brother cold-shouldered him or vowed and declared to severe all ties, Kieran _was his brother._

Elena laid a hand on his arm. "I am shielding his mind," she said simply, to his relief. There was a chance that Dumbledore could find out what he did during Kieran's childhood years, then there would be hell to pay. At least now, Dumbledore couldn't know. "Anyway, the original plan was to have Kieran fly on the broom, since James Potter boasted of his son's exceptional flying skills."

Harry snorted softly.

"In the next challenge, Ron was supposed to play his way through the chess set, and eventually sacrifice himself." Elena shook her head hastily as she caught the incredulous look on Harry's face. _He thinks the worst of the old man, _she mused. But Alby- _Dumbledore, _she quickly corrected herself, wasn't all that bad. "Not his _life,_" she explained, "just his place next to Kieran." She smiled as Harry shot her a _'Yeah, such a big sacrifice,' _amused look.

"After the chess play, Granger was to debut in a logic puzzle."

It would have worked too if _they _hadn't discovered the monstrous dog first. And that she had made Granger into an outcast and taken her place. Dumbledore tended to overlook the little details; but the old wizard had forgotten that it were the little details that made up the big picture.

"And you're telling me this because…?"

Elena smirked viciously as she stood, the slow anger that had been building up since Lord Greengrass had… _talked _to her finally exploding outwards. She reached up once more and trapped the silver key between her hands. Its crumpled blue wings beat feebly once, twice, before it lay still in her palm. Her smirk widened as she met Harry's eyes.

"Because we're going to _fuck that future up._"

"Welcome back," Harry greeted her, his eyes flashing imperceptibly as she happily smashed the entire row of glass bottles holding numerous potions. _Every action in this world will bear a consequence, _she thought bitterly as she laughed, a harsh sound that sounded nothing like her usual little-girl giggle. _Then where is __**his **__consequence? _Her jaw tightened as she breathed quickly, glaring at the shattered glass on the floor.

_I hate you, equilibrium. _

But she couldn't bring herself to cut out equilibrium from her life.

"What do you mean, welcome back?"

"Well, since I'm going to spare us all and pretend that the whiny little girl I had seen before was someone else, _welcome back._" Elena rolled her eyes, declining to comment. _Look happy even if you feel suicidal, _she told herself.

She turned to Leonardo, arching a brow, but he merely shrugged. "Hey, he has a point, y'know."

_Traitor._

She nodded- she _had _been a little pathetic, hadn't she? "Have any more potion bombs?" Her eyes slid to the dark ring of fire and her lips turned up on one corner. _We are __**all **__going in there, whether Dumbledore likes it or not. _

Harry shook his head regretfully as he looked in his Bag of tricks. There were tons of tiny things, but no brightly coloured balls. "Nope, we've got to order more. We went crazy with them in the chess room and the troll room." He chuckled as he remembered the sheer _carnage. _It had been the best moment in his relatively short life.

"Where do you think the stone's going to be?" He smiled as he imagined a pebble resting on a velvet cushion complete with gold tassels. _That's just stupid, _he scolded. The stone was quite a bit larger than a shrugged.

"I don't know about that part. I'm not supposed to, I think." The three faced the ring of dark fire, not quite sure how they could go on. Leonardo fidgeted. "We could try just walking through the fire," he offered.

Harry exchanged a glance with Elena, not sure how to respond to the retarded suggestion. _Wimp, _Elena's voice rang in his mind. "I'll try."

Elena wasn't sure what had possessed her to offer, but Leonardo had looked so hopeful she couldn't bring herself to crush him like she usually would. _Sometimes, having a heart is more important than prettiness. Isn't that right, Granger? _Smiling at herself for quoting a muggleborn, she discretely cast a few intensive shield charms before approaching the dark fire. She eyed it dubiously; it wasn't dark magic like its colour suggested, more of a neutral magic. It had been cast by Severus Snape, but it was a bit substandard. It couldn't even inform the potion master if someone had passed through it.

That kind of weak magic, Elena decided, couldn't harm Harry.

_If _he had read pages 236 to 372 of _Diary of a Duelist _as she had told him to.

_Here goes me. _Moving through the dark flames without the appropriate potion was, she thought, not pleasant. It was like moving through frozen mud while being assaulted by fire from all sides. After a moment, the unpleasantness ceased and she walked into a fire-free environment, her eyes snapping open and scanning her surroundings. It was just a stone chamber with a giant mirror. _Disappointing. _Leonardo joined her a moment after, then Harry. Oh, she was proud. _So you did read the pages after all. _

"Where's the stone?" Harry sounded as disappointed as she felt as he took a few steps forward.

"The stone, Mr. Black, is safely out of your reach. As it should be."

Three pairs of eyes flicked to the left of the chamber, three pairs simultaneously widening slightly as they recognized the tall figure walking towards them. Leonardo reacted first, earning his title as the thief guildmaster as his stance shifted from casual to predatory. He took three long strides forward, long knives sliding down his sleeve to his hands as he eyed the man with a sense of arrogance.

"You," Dumbledore said simply, "shouldn't be here."


	7. Cards

"_It doesn't matter if you lie, as long as you lie __**elegantly**__."_

_

* * *

_

_Legerdemain: Lightness of hand_

Smoke curled lazily in the confined air of the tent, sending several less acclimatised people out in a hasty coughing fit. The main attraction smiled, her lips curving elegantly upwards as she laid both of her hands delicately on the green table.

On the table were two gold-embossed cards, one a deep, attractive red, the other royal purple. They looked faded from their constant use. At the very front of the table, lying at the halfway point between her and her client, lay a small set of golden scales.

The red card had 'LIFE' stamped onto it in gold, whereas the purple had 'DEATH' instead.

But it didn't matter; neither could save the man sitting opposite her.

With a flourish, she turned both of the cards over, both of them displaying the same thing. There were gasps; the regulars, as Elena liked to refer to them, understood the scythe. _Marked for execution, _she heard someone whisper sympathetically as they backed away from the stranger.

"I am afraid," Elena said sweetly, "that someone close to you may die soon. Or who knows- _you _might be the unlucky one."

With that, she burst into giggles, and the rest of the tent joined her in her laughter uneasily. There was a whispered saying: "when death laughs, laugh with her". She batted her eyes at the rather dashing man with auburn hair and piercing blue eyes coquettishly as he turned pale and got up to leave. Before he could flee the tent, she caught hold of his robe with a light tug.

"You can't leave," she cooed at him, internally smiling at his disturbed face, "you haven't made your _payment _yet." The young man blushed- _oh how __**adorable**__, _she couldn't help thinking, as he dug his hands deep in his pockets to retrieve some item to pay her. She felt a little cheapened, asking for payment for her seer abilities, but it couldn't be helped.

She ran a small pink tongue over her lower lip and winked saucily at him, just as her mother, Cinzia Ceriani had taught her. It embarrassed some clients, which made them throw as much money as they could at her just so they could flee, or she aroused the client... Which meant they were going to be beaten up by the circus strongmen for being a pedophile.

Either way, they prospered.

"_Grazie mille, signor,_" she smiled as the young man threw his entire sack of gold onto her golden scales, laughing as it sank to the bottom. As an added trick, she placed both the cards onto the entire end, earning gasps as they balanced perfectly. "An adequate payment," she decided, and it was much more than the young man had been planning to pay.

Ah, the gift of an embarrassed conscience.

Elena looked at the rest of the people in the crowded tent through smoldering eyes, removing the gold and the cards from the scales by sleight of hand and placing the cards face-down on the table.

"Who will be next?"

Through the sounds of the worn chair scraping against the roughly laid wooden planks, she could hear the conversation that was ensuing outside. The man… he was familiar to her, somehow, but she didn't dare to enquire. Cinzia mama would beat her black and blue if she called out to him now. What was her past had better be left there.

"_That attraction is very popular, Mr. Dumbledore; did it please you?"_

"_I must say that it was very interesting, Mr. Oldani. I greatly admire the magical Italian culture. It is very… unique."_

Elena smiled her secretive smile, unintentionally terrifying her client. To soothe the frazzled nerves of the man who, she found to her twisted pleasure, had a deathly fear of letting his family die out, she tilted her head to one side comically and rested the tips of her fingers on the two different coloured cards, as faded as ever.

"What is your name?"

"Mathias Potter."

"What can the Lady do for you today,Mathias Potter_?_"

Before the young man could answer, she lifted the front part of the red card representing life with her thumb, the rest of her fingers holding it down. For a brief moment, she saw a beautiful, aristocratic face with almond-shaped green eyes and silky dark hair, and smiled.

"Don't worry about the son," she advised, the man before her widening his eyes. His mouth opened in a little 'o', as if to ask her how she knew, but his mouth closed quickly. _Just like a fish, _Elena giggled to herself.

She flipped the red card over fully.

"He's going to be so handsome," she sighed, and a small smile appeared on the man's face. She flipped the purple card over, and saw a girl of fourteen years of age there. Blonde hair, blue eyes, she was very pretty. _So familiar, somehow. _

"But for your son to appear, you must first kill this girl," the man's eyes widened. "This is the year 1898. Next year, on the 21st of June, go to the Dumbledore residence. You will see three wizards dueling, but do not interfere. Instead, kill her with a heart-stopping curse."

Mathias Potter stared at her in horror. The Dumbledore residence? No… _No!_

"It is for the continuation of your line," she reminded him cheerfully. "It isn't as if I'm asking you to slaughter a whole village."

Pale faced and shaky, the man threw a hefty bag of gold on the table before exiting quickly. Elena smiled and looked around the tent, seeing the occupants shaking their heads.

"The girl is a killer," she said softly. "She killed her mother, and if she was to live, she would've killed the man's son as well, before he is born."

_I am that girl._

_

* * *

_

_Present day_

"Mr. Lamar and Mr. Black, you may go. Miss Skarab. I trust that you are the main culprit, yes?" Dumbledore's blue eyes twinkled at them both, exuding both his inner benevolence and his legilimency. Both hit blank walls.

"I'm not going," Harry told him, the exact same time Ari- _Elena _muttered some profanities under her breath. He wrinkled his nose at both of them and frowned at the Ravenclaw boy that was still standing there. Children were so willful these days, to Dumbledore's annoyance. He was going to have to reign them in, but his legilimency had unexpectedly begun to fail him.

He smiled at the tall Ravenclaw boy- Leonardo Lamar; _honestly_, he never realized how tall an eleven-year-old would be even if he was some kind of _veela_, and gestured with his hand to the door at the side. The Ravenclaw regarded him insolently for a moment, his eyes half-lidded and his lips curved upwards as if it was all amusing to him, before exiting with an almost predatory grace.

"Walk with me," Dumbledore said simply as soon as the Lamar boy had left. "You have both shown impressive skills tonight; _very impressive skills that I would not expect from any first year. _I wonder who taught you them."

* * *

_Flashback, 9 years old._

Harry could feel Elena's eyes on him as he kicked, punched and stabbed the golem she had raised. Every punch he threw was measured; enough strength to snap the golem's head back with a sickening crunch without wasting his limited physical reserves. A few minutes later, the golem degenerated into mindless rubble. He turned to look at her, a pleased smile on his face. Harry knew he had outdone himself.

His heart fell as he saw that her eyes were coldly unimpressed.

"I thought I trained a commander, but you're merely the foul-tongued princelet that Leonardo described you as," she said quietly, her turquoise eyes accusing. For some inexplicable reason, he felt _crushed_ and he bit his lip. Something festered in the pit of the stomach, dragging him down and making the small smile he had worn slip off his face. "That was unsatisfactory," she told him as the pile of stone got up once more, "don't disappoint me again."

_Oh don't worry, _he thought viciously, the last embers of the infamous Potter temper smoldering, _I won't __**disappoint **__you ever again. _He drew the sharpest knife he had in his arsenal and threw his fist straight through the stone.

"That is what I expect of you," he heard Elena say, but he found that he didn't really care anymore. Harry glanced at his knuckles dispassionately as they turned from red to purple. "After this, we're going to study. I am allowing you five minutes."

_Thanks so much, _he thought sarcastically in his mind, but aloud, he merely answered meekly. He always did, he realised.

"Okay."

_End flashback._

_

* * *

_

_Present day_

"Keep wondering, Professor Dumbledore," Harry said, his expression indicating the epitome of boredom, "because no one taught us anything." He paused- that wasn't entirely true. "Except maybe McGonagall who taught us that transfiguring Longbottom's toad into a pink lampshade was a bad idea." He could almost see the faint outline of Dumbledore's thoughts swirling around his head like a whirlwind, and he was almost impressed by the sheer amount of the Headmaster's angry thoughts that flashed a stereotypical red.

Elena snickered softly on the other side of Dumbledore. The irritation practically radiated off the old man at Harry's statement in swirls of green, and wondered at his strange ability to easily annoy the heck out of people. Maybe it was a gift from James Potter. God knows, the man had that ability mastered.

_Don't go too far, _she reminded Harry mentally. Dumbledore was dangerous, despite his grandfatherly appearance. _Don't be distracted by the mask._

"It certainly is heartening to know that you're interested in Transfiguration. Minerva is an excellent teacher," Dumbledore said agreeably. His calm could not be disrupted, he admonished himself. He was the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he thought sternly. He led his two students through the passageway that led directly to his office, and conjured up two straight-backed chairs, not at all designed to be comfortable.

He watched Hadrius Black exchange a glance with Arian- _Elena _as he sat down at his desk and tried to touch his mind again with legilimency. Again, like all those times, there was nothing. Just blankness, some kind of never ending space. He frowned. It was like no occlumency technique he had ever gone against- mostly he met barriers and legilimency counterattacks.

_Who are you, Hadrius Black, or, should I say… Harry Potter?_

"Are you happy?" He found himself on the receiving ends of two pairs of raised eyebrows and frowned. Normally, non-Slytherin students liked to push all of their problems onto him, thinking that their great Headmaster would solve all of them. _Obviously not these two. _"I know that your mother died today, Harry, so that might explain your reckless behavior. But Miss Skarab? Is anything wrong at home?"

Silence.

Albus Dumbledore was an infinitely patient man, but these two appeared to be trying their hardest to push that limit. He smiled in his grandfatherly way at the two, his eyes twinkling as he drove his legilimency deep into the blankness of their minds. Before a second could pass, he felt himself forcibly slammed back into the wall and his mind ruthlessly thrust out.

"Don't go too far, _Professor _Dumbledore," Harry said mildly, one hand going to his head. The room was starting to swirl just a little bit, and he felt seasick. "We aren't the puppets that you usually play with." The boy's emerald eyes flashed for a moment, an indiscernible emotion flitting quickly past. "While we're on that subject… Please leave Kieran out of whatever plans you have."

"I was under the impression that you weren't on good terms with your brother, but it's very nice to see that you two have reunited," Dumbledore replied lightly, but his head was still reeling from the vicious mind assault. His ejection had been so fast and viciously, it disturbed him. "And I know that you might be jealous, Harry my boy, but Kieran is the _Boy-Who-Lived. _I need to train him to become the weapon-"

"A weapon," Harry deadpanned, his eyes locking on Dumbledore's damnable blue orbs. To him, they were clouded. Clouded with _senility._ He needed to get to the clinic for a checkup."You want to turn an eleven-year-old into a weapon. And you call yourself the light side…?"

Dumbledore breathed in sharply. True, he had done some things he hadn't proud of some of the things he had done in his vast lifetime, but they were for the greater good. Everyone would benefit in the future, but some people just refused to see it. "Sometimes, to maintain the peace and the Light, you must sacrifice-"

"What do you know about sacrifice, _Professor _Dumbledore?" Arianna, no, _Elena _made the title sound more like a deadly insult. She had stood up, her eyes cold and her voice eerily quiet. "You play your little mind games and treat everyone as a chess piece. At least, in the dark side of magic, they don't like to play at being _God._"

"I don't care that you look at a child and see a weapon," Elena continued, her eyes becoming calmer, "but what irks me is that you act so _holy _afterwards. Great Dumbledore, oh _please _solve all my problems and let me have your children," she mocked him, a sadistic smile on her pretty face. "At least have the guts to admit you're a sick fuck."

_What yanked your chain? _Harry thought at her, reluctantly impressed at her cutting words. _This old man, he's dangerously annoying, yeah, but I didn't see that coming. Not from you._ And Elena wasn't usually as crude as she was being at that moment. Pure garbage was spat from the lips faster than a bullet train and with as much force.

Dumbledore mentally reeled, not entirely sure what to say in return. He was almost certain that Elena Skarab was in fact Arianna Dumbledore, but he still wasn't going to allow a student of his to talk to him like _that. _What she had said was grounds for expulsion. Or at least, exclusion. But there was something in her unnatural eyes that he had seen so long before…

"Mr. Black, we will continue this conversation tomorrow morning, at nine-thirty," the young student who would have happily driven him into a headache shrugged and rose from his seat. "Miss Skarab, I'd like to have a little chat with you."

He watched the heir of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black exchange the briefest of glance with Elena before nodding and leaving. He found it troubling, the way the two seemed to look to each other for confirmation, and it troubled him that he hadn't realized that _she _was a spy that had wormed her way to Kieran Potter's side. Dumbledore had to admit that the person who had orchestrated the entire thing was ingenious. _Using a pretty veela girl… _There was no doubt in his mind that there was someone behind all of the current events; a higher force that he had never reckoned with.

"It doesn't have to be like this, Arianna," he said softly, as he looked at her down his half-moon glasses. "I can protect you."

Arianna shook her head, the dark red locks that reached the small of her back flying in all directions. She smiled bitterly.

"If you let me taste your blood, maybe I will call you brother," she suggested.

"I'm afraid that isn't possible, Arianna."

"Then, good night, Mister Dumbledore."

* * *

Harry tried not to flinch as the itching in his back began; it had turned from a mild irritant into a constant annoyance. Strangely, now it focused on two places: the areas below his left and right shoulderblade.

_Whatever it is, it's __**annoying.**_

"Do you think she'll be alright?"

He looked at Leonardo for a moment, wondering a little about the vampire's sudden insecurity. "When isn't she," he said with a small grin. He couldn't imagine Elena _not_ being alright. "I was just wondering… do you have to ability to do a full body diagnosis?"

Leonardo suddenly stopped walking and turned to him, looking at him strangely. "Why?"

"I think there's something wrong with me," he said bluntly, running a hand through his hair tiredly. "There's this _itching _in my back and it won't. Fucking. _Stop._"

Harry's eyes slid to watch Leonardo's expression, but it had morphed into a blank mask. "I _did _read a book once," she said thoughtfully, "but that was a long time ago. I could try." A smile appeared on his face, for some reason. It wasn't the usual lazy, you-amuse-me look, but it appeared almost indulgent.

_Or maybe I'm reading too much into this, _Harry rolled his eyes. _Note to self: stop psychoanalyzing people. Too much work._

"Is it here," Leonardo put one hand right on top of one part of the itching, "and here?" Harry almost sighed in relief at the pressure he applied to his back and resisted the urge to rub against his hands.

"Bingo," he managed to choke out as she rubbed. "How do I get rid of it?"

"You don't," Leonardo said, the strange indulgent smile on his face again. _Don't yell at him… Don't yell at him… _"They're just… _growing pains_. I'll give you a list of anesthetic spells tomorrow," he paused, as if considering something. "_Archon._"

"One more thing," he added quickly, "we're not giving up on the stone. Try and meet tomorrow, third floor during lunch time."

"I'll try." Why he wanted it so much was another question for another time.

_Growing pains, _he repeated numbly in his head as she walked away from him, disappearing with a soft _crack _after a few steps. _Seriously?_

Harry apparated directly into his dorm room, wincing at the loud sound his apparition made. Learning house-elf apparition was all very well, but the sound was so _annoying. _He climbed into bed and drew the curtains around him with a lazy flick of his wrist, sinking his head back into the soft, soft pillow.

_Growing pains, _he found himself thinking again as he tossed in his bed, thanking the gods as the itching began to subside. _Sometimes, I want to kill that man. _Then a thought occurred to him as he played the moment of her last words to him over and over again in his sleep-deprived mind.

_What's an 'archon'?_

_

* * *

_

_Morning_

"What's an archon?" he whispered to Elena as he brushed against her on their way to the breakfast. The startled look on her face was quickly replaced with a calm smile, but Harry couldn't help but feel a small victory in unsettling her.

A smile and a small shake of her head was a big _'Not answering', _from Elena, and he found himself wondering if the Hogwarts library had anything on it. Granger seemed to act as if the library was a temple; full of knowledge of everything and anything. He wondered if she would throw herself at the feet of the so-called destroyed Library of Alexandria if she could find it. Maybe she would live in it.

Harry smirked.

"Greengrass, Zabini," he murmured, "Do you know a library that's more private than Hogwarts', but also easily accessible? Without compromising quality, of course."

Zabini looked at him for a moment with his slanting dark brown eyes, and shook his head, but Greengrass nodded.

"My father's library is about twice the size of Hogwarts' library," she explained quietly as they headed to the Slytherin table. "If you want, I could invite you and Zabini there. _If _Father wants me home for Christmas."

Zabini shot her an inquisitive glance. "What do you mean, want you home for Christmas?"

"Father is busy most of the time," Greengrass replied, lifting her head up a little as they approached the table. Zabini similarly altered his posture to a more alert one, Harry noticed, so he decided to simply appear relaxed. _Note to self: Reading deeply into people is fun. Do it more often. _"Sometimes he doesn't want me to go to the main house, sometimes he does."

Harry sometimes found dark families' pureblood habits a little strange, and this was just one of them. But he found from the information that the clone that had gleaned from studying accounting, finance, economics and politics in his stead that this was quite normal, at least for the patriarchic dark families. It was more than a little sad, Harry couldn't help thinking. He remembered every Christmas he shared with his family. His parents pretended they had more than one child and gave him lots of presents and attention. But now his mother was dead _(killed by the one he loved like a mother) _and his father had quit his job _(and was drinking himself to death)_.

But still… Christmas was still a few months away.

"Thanks, Greengrass," he smiled at her as he took his place, his mind still mulling over the strange word. He hadn't come across it before, either in reading or by word of mouth, and that was strange. It was almost as if…

He looked discretely from the Slytherin table across the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff to catch a glimpse of Elena's dark red hair.

It was almost as if someone had _deliberately hidden it from him_.

_Or I'm getting paranoid, _he thought. He placed a piece of fresh bread on his plate and toyed with it, eventually breaking off a small piece and eating it. _Tasteless, _he found himself thinking. _How tasteless. _He didn't think he was thinking about the bread anymore.

"Black," he heard someone say, and he broke out of his self-induced trance and looked up sharply. _Theodore Nott, _his mind told him, _pure-blood, dark father, deceased mother, above average intelligence. _That, the dossier had told him. He felt an inordinate sense of pride as he recounted his own personal notes: _Slightly anti-social, avoids power-plays. Stays away from Draco and I._

"Nott," he returned coolly with a brief smile. The childishness of the Slytherins made him roll his eyes as Malfoy shot him several daggers for speaking above the normal half-whispers that his house seemed to speak in. "Yes?"

"Could I talk with you for a second?"

Harry looked down at his almost-untouched bread roll for a moment then back up at Nott, adopting Elena's lazy smile on his face. The bread was really tasteless anyway, so no loss. He could spare some time. "Sure."

He deliberated the option of asking Zabini and Greengrass to accompany them, but decided against it. Malfoy was always seen with his goons flanking him, and he didn't want Zabini and Greengrass regarded as 'goons' to discredit him or themselves. He strolled out of the Great Hall in front of Nott, not willing to let the boy walk in front of him.

_Everything with this house, _he mused, _is a huge power-play. _

"Malfoy is targeting me," Nott said bluntly as soon as they were out of the Great Hall. Harry discretely set up a few basic privacy wards, not willing to let any potential eavesdroppers listen in. In blunt terms, Nott was a loner. His decision to approach Harry would have come as a great blow to his own self-respect, and Harry respected that. "He's trying to coerce me into joining his..." he frowned, "_gang._"

Harry raised an eyebrow. A gang. _That sounds pretty significant. _As if he could read Harry's thoughts, Nott shook his head.

"What you don't understand, Black, is that most Slytherins from pureblood families aren't here to _learn. _I've studied up to third year, and everyone else is probably doing second year material." Harry filed away the information so he could write it in his dossier. This was new to him, and interesting.

"Why do they come here, then?"

Nott smiled faintly. "To make contacts. _Everything _about how our house is run according to how the government is run. People from wealthiest and influential families, like _yours_, are upper echelon. You can do anything you want and get away with it," he laughed bitterly. "Smaller families like mine desperately scramble for positions and good contacts."

"You don't seem desperately trying to make contacts to me," Harry noted. Nott nodded.

"To be honest, Malfoy's offer for me to join him is a lifeline," he admitted, "I could get an appropiately high-ranking job when I leave school, with his father's help."

Harry wondered why Nott didn't accept Malfoy's offer, and asked as such. "Malfoy is an idiot," Nott explained wryly, "nothing like his father. His mother coddles him, and he's nothing but a rich, spoiled princelet. If I join him, I'll get the job for about a week but get fired when he makes a political blunder."

Harry couldn't argue with that, but he wasn't interested in Malfoy's personal life. "What do you want me for?"

"Protection," Nott said abruptly. "If you take me on like you've done with Zabini and Greengrass, Malfoy will stop bothering me."

Harry considered his options. Zabini and Greengrass were his pre-established contacts- people that had been chosen by Elena for him to target. The only other person she had wanted him to 'ally' with was Malfoy. _Like that's going to happen, _Harry thought privately. Nott could never be held as high as Zabini and Greengrass in his mind, but he had considerable merits on his own.

"I couldn't even get you a job sweeping the floors in the Ministry," Harry confessed, studying Nott's reactions carefully. To his credit, the boy merely nodded. "But if I do give you protection, what'll you give me in return?"

"Information," Nott said quietly. "I'm a social recluse; people tend to say things around me that they wouldn't say around others. I can readily supply with you information," he looked down at the ground. "And the government job… If Greengrass becomes my ally, I don't have to worry about not getting one."

The offer was acceptable. Harry could update his dossier regularly, learning more about what he dubbed as the Slytherin 'underground'. But the comment Nott had made about Greengrass interested him.

"What do you mean, the thing you said about Greengrass?" he asked. Nott smiled briefly.

"That was another part of the reason I came to you," Nott said, his eyes going from the floor to Harry. _He's nervous, _Harry realized, by the golden strands that flickered around him. _Very nervous. _"If I give you this information…"

Harry made a quick decision. "Information once every two weeks, general report once a month of what happened during it. I want _explicit _detail of everything that happened, and I'll teach you a few shield charms to keep it secret."

Nott nodded quickly, a relieved smile flitting across his face. "I don't want information after this one, but an in-depth report about Greengrass. _Everything,_" Harry said sharply. "If she's allergic to eggs, I want to know. If anyone had said anything about her, I want to know. I want _everything _you know about her written in that report."

"She's allergic to strawberries, not eggs," Nott said automatically. "Do you want the information I was going to give you now or-"

"Now."

"The Godfather is after you, Black," Nott said, his eyes darting around the outside of the hall, checking if anyone was there. "That's what some people have been saying."

Harry compared 'the Godfather' with his mental database, coming up with a muggle film made in 1972. The Godfather in the film had been the head of an organized crime dynasty. Was this Godfather the same? "Don't do the report on Greengrass," he decided, "I want it on the Godfather."

"That's dangerous information, Black," Nott said, looking worried. "Are you-"

"I want it by next Monday."

* * *

_Next Monday, 30__th__ September_

"Nott is a good information gatherer," Elena murmured as they pored over the neatly written 10-page report on the man he called 'the Godfather'. The report was blunt and to-the-point, painting a grim picture of a powerful entity who shadowed the Slytherin underworld. Harry mulled over it, flipping the mental pages of the report in his mind.

Leonardo whistled admiringly as he flipped through the pages. "This could be higher than our standard of information gathering. The boy has a talent."

"It _is _impressive," Harry murmured, not minding in the slightest lying on the cold concrete of the out-of-bounds third floor. The door leading to the monstrous Cerberus lay behind time, and they barely twitched as she growled every so often in her slumber. "But it's surprising that no one knows who he actually is, just that Lord Greengrass is the man they usually contact to get to him." He could've sworn that both Elena and Leonardo jumped slightly as soon as he mentioned the Greengrass' name, but he dismissed it is a trick of the eye.

"It's disturbing to see how far the Godfather's influence stretches," Elena frowned. "If he has access to growing magical students that will be the future, then, in a way, he could control it."

Harry nodded. "Nott mentioned that the Godfather was _after me_… For what, I don't know."

"The Black family more money than God," Leonardo pointed out, "the Godfather could access those funds if he had you."

"But the Godfather's operations are continental, according to Nott. I don't think he would need the Black funds."

"Whoever this Godfather person is, he's dangerous," Elena said, flipping a lock of her dark red hair out of her eyes. Harry watched her study a few pages intently before pulling them out to show them. They were the pages that listed the people who had previously been 'hunted' by the Godfather; the ones he paid special attention to 'acquiring'. Of the eight listed, five were dead, one was missing, presumed dead, and the remaining two were rumoured to be high up in the Underground society. "And we have to be more careful from now on," she added, a tiny smile on her face. "We aren't infallible after all."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and a bunch of second-year Slytherins will be our downfall."

"Careful, Harry," Leonardo warned, a smirk spreading across his face, "I knew a person who once thought like you did."

"Yup. His name was Ferrin," Elena's eyes twinkled happily, uncomfortably reminding him of Dumbledore's eyes. He shuddered at the comparison. "He is now dead."

Both vampires laughed quietly at their little joke while Harry rolled his eyes again. "You think you're so funny," he smirked as he scanned the pages of the report again. "But you aren't."

Elena shrugged and pulled out a piece of parchment with her neat, muggle-pen written words covering every inch. "The anesthetic spells for your back. Leonardo told me about it," she explained as he looked over the parchment. Most of the spells he hadn't seen before, which came as a surprise. He had read quite a number of books which taught basic healing spells that came in useful from time to time, and he could recognize some of the spells on the sheet. _The difficulty isn't absorbing the knowledge, its applying it._

_They care_, he realised, and felt a sudden warmth towards them. Sappy, yes, but whatever.

"Thanks," he smiled slightly, but Elena waved it away, a small smile on her amused face.

"Thanks are worth less when they're spoken," she explained. He thought on the sentence for a moment and smirked, realizing she had just coerced him into owing them a favour. He shrugged. He had expected as much, when he had thanked them.

Leonardo began gathering the papers, binding them with an invisible magical thread. They floated to Elena who promptly sat on them, a smile on her face.

"Me first," she smirked. "Dumbledore says that love will defeat Voldemort."

Harry blinked as he shifted into a more comfortable cross-legged position. "Really?" he said in a faux excited voice, "what are they going to do? Have a massive orgy in front of the Dark Lord?"

The thief guildmaster rolled his eyes at Harry, unimpressed by the younger boy's antics. The mental picture Leonardo conjured was absolutely disgusting as well: imagine Snape, Dumbledore and McGonagall… _ugh_. He made a face. "That's sensitive information, Elena. Source?"

"Kieran. Dumbledore has been having little talks with him," she explained. "He's all puffed up and proud when he talks about them to us." She tapped a finger against her chin and half-smiled. "It's almost cute."

"Cute," Harry echoed, his eyes narrowing. "I never realized you felt that way, Elena. Perhaps -"

"Hadrius Black," Elena cut across his words quietly, her quiet tone more terrifying than an entire army armed to the teeth, "I don't _like_ Kieran Potter in _that_ way."

Wordlessly, Harry held out a hand and Elena tapped it gently. The gesture was worth more than a hundred heartfelt 'sorry's to her, and she smiled.

"Kieran may become a problem in the future, especially with _you, _Harry. He's powerful." Her eyes widened briefly as she muttered a _tempus. _"I have to go. We were going to practice flying for the game," she winced and nodded at both of them before apparating away, without waiting for a reply.

"Now that she's gone…" Leonardo smirked. Harry knew what was going to happen for a split second before Leonardo moved, and neatly sidestepped away. True to form, the guildmaster changed direction and managed to pin Harry into a wall, grasping his wrist and slamming it into the hard concrete. _He noticed._

"Something about you has changed," Leonardo murmured. "I smelt it two days ago." Sapphire eye bore into emerald ones. "You've grown far, far stronger. Elena might not have noticed it, but I have. Are you going to be a threat, Harry?"

Harry shrugged. "No," he said simply, not willing to advertise and parade around the fact that he was _finally fucking __**free **_of Elena's , she was just as bad as the Headmaster with meddling where she wasn't exactly wanted. Still, he loved her like a mother. "It won't affect _us_," he said lowly, knowing that would at least half-placate the agitated thief guildmaster.

It appeared to, because the swirling mass of red anger around Leonardo's head vanished. Not for the first time, Harry felt a surge of jealousy at Leonardo's complete control over himself and his emotions, but he brushed that feeling away. The man was part of the military, and military people were really creepy. "Then…" Leonardo smiled sheepishly and held out a hand for Harry to tap, backing off.

_All is forgiven again._

"Elena doesn't need to know," the guildmaster assured Harry as he extracted himself from the wall. Surprisingly, he was unhurt, except for a few superficial surface wounds. Leonardo caught hold of his arm and ripped the sleeve of his robe away, revealing several long cuts from a stray piece of concrete, blood oozing rapidly from them. His eyes strayed to the wall and he winced. _Worse shape than I'm in. _

Without warning, Leonardo's long tongue slid across the cuts, lapping up the blood gently. He even cut his finger with a thumbnail, allowing a drop of blood to land on Harry's arm. He caught Harry's startled look as he straightened up, watching the cuts heal themselves. "Let no blood go wasted, a wise vampire once said," Leonardo grinned. "Especially when yours is so _delicious._"

Harry shivered and, despite not being religious, crossed himself.

_Protect me from evil, _he smiled. _Does that mean protect me from __**myself**__?_

_

* * *

_

Elena didn't have flying practice with anyone, but she did have a brilliant ability to lie through her teeth. She apparated far, far away from Hogwarts to the Greengrass manor, where she knelt down immediately, her glossy auburn hair brushing the floor lightly. She found herself slightly missing her old blonde hair, but she had less superficial things to worry about.

"My Lord Greengrass," Elena said quietly. She hoped he wouldn't make a habit out of calling her away during her times with Harry and Leonardo, even if their research was currently embarking on a rather... _sore _subject.

"Elena," her master acknowledged, walking over to her and tilting her chin up with his shoe. Obediently, she held her head up as he withdrew his foot. "How have you been?"

Elena averted her eyes to the ground. She had been expecting something along those lines. "I am well, my lord," she answered meekly.

"Have you remembered to inform my daughter of the arrangements for this Christmas?" Elena's eyes widened in horror when she realised that she hadn't, and braced herself as she shook her head. Luckily, Lord Greengrass was in a good mood. She felt no immediate blasting pain, and she didn't fall over heavily on her side.

"Then remember to do so. However, I am pleased that Lucius no longer complains to me about Severus' whining." Elena breathed out a sign of relief. "It is_ most_ refreshing to go one day without hearing complaints."

She heard a rustle of robes as her master sank down to her level, not grasping her face tightly like he usually did, but instead cradling her tenderly with both hands. "We are different from the rest of them, you and I," he murmured, his voice faraway. "We do what we are ordered, or we die. We are strong, or we die. No one desperately hopes that we are good enough, strong enough or intelligent enough, because we **are.**"

"It's strangely refreshing," Lord Greengrass said, smirking, "knowing that there is someone like I." His smirk widened a fraction. "And having that _someone_ under my _complete and utter control._"

Elena clenched her teeth, her eyes boring holes in the ground as her Lord rose and laughed; a rich sound that made her want to snap the necks of everything alive in sight. After he finally stopped laughing, he smiled cruelly at her.

"Oh yes, dear _pet_, how is the Archon faring?"

"He has another ally- Theodore Nott."

Lord Greengrass nodded slightly in recognition of the Slytherin boy's name. "Hmm, that is good. Nott can be very intelligent, though his decision to steer clear of the Godfather makes me want to revise that statement."

Elena stored that information away in her mind. What wasn't important was that Lord Greengrass thought that Nott was intelligent, but it was important that he thought that Nott's decision to avoid the Underground was unintelligent. _Always read between the lines, _an echo of her sire, Skarab, reminded her. _But Skarab-papa, how can I still believe anything you say when it is __**you **__who forced this mess on me?_

"Also, it seems you haven't managed to acquire the Philosopher's stone yet," Elena froze at the light tone that her master had adopted, cringing at the sore subject. "I await your explanation."

"Our efforts were diverted by Dumbledore," Elena said lowly, wincing. It sounded as bad as it was in her head. Lord Greengrass didn't want to hear about Dumbledore and failures- he wanted success. "We were close."

"Dumbledore," Lord Greengrass mused. "Well, I suppose that is a valid excuse. Still…"

Elena tried her best not to scream as what felt like dull needles began to shoot through her eyes and her skin felt as if it was being repeatedly stabbed by burning hot spears. She tried to scream, but no sound came out but a weak gurgle and she fell heavily on her side, her immortal body going into spasms.

"Redouble your efforts," she heard Lord Greengrass say distantly, "or you'll realise that _this _is just a taster."

Nothing, not even the Cruciatus curse could hurt as much as what pain her master could inflict on people. She would shield Harry from this as much as she could, and Leonardo, but she doubted it was enough.

_This is all spiraling out of control…_

_**Good, **_another side of her thought viciously, _we've seen control at its worst. Let the world be wild and uncontrollable because the alternative is __**so much worse. **_

Elena smiled despite the pain and opened her eyes.

_I don't want to be controlled anymore._

A trickle of blood dripped from her mouth onto the floor as she started screaming again, the harsh shrill sounds reverberating off the walls until all you could hear was soft, laboured pants and low crooning laughter.

* * *

"Brother mine…"

A barely restrained gaps and a quick rustle of midnight-blue robes. Elena grinned at him, just a tad fondly as her long fingers gripped his robes. She heard murmurs of "dear god" and "Arianna" and "please don't close your eyes".

"Help me, brother. _Give me your blood._"

And Dumbledore looked at her helplessly as she sank to the ground, her pale fingers scrabbling against the floor. She was Arianna. She was his_ little sister_.

But he would not give her blood.

* * *

**A/N: **Been a while, hasn't it? :) Sorry for the delays, and thanks all of you for the amazing reviews and insane amounts of favourites and alerts! :D You're all amazing :] I'll update faster, now that I know which direction Masks is going. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it. [:


	8. God

There was only one thing she found troubling when she was so close to death. Elena found herself dwelling obsessively on it, and it pained her as she realised that there was absolutely nothing that she could do.

It was that if she died, then Leonardo would die with her.

Elena raised a shaky hand to wipe at her dry eyes, eyes that burned and degenerated from the pure magic she saw. It was her fault, all her own stupid fault, for going to a brother whose action was to let the Hogwarts wards devour her alive. Vampires were creatures almost made up of pure magic, and as such, were excellent power sources. But she had once trusted her brother beyond all other and loved him. She was so stupid.

Elena suspected her magic would be slowly drained away from her over centuries, keeping her in a state of incomprehensible pain while she was suspended in a plane between life and death. She thought of Harry after a long while. The king of dragons. No matter how hard she tried to protect him from his own people, she could see the dragonist in him. He was on occasion thoughtlessly cruel, and people weren't people in his eyes anymore, more of chess figures to manipulate to suit himself. Elena's smile waned as she thought back to when they had first left for the vampire city. How eager Harry had been, that he thought nothing of leaving his loved ones behind. He hadn't even shed a tear for the mother that Elena had killed.

Unattached, as dragonists are, to life on the earth.

Her lip curled in disgust as she thought of the dying dragonist who locked himself up in his decaying fort. Lord Alpheus Greengrass. Only the touch of the Archon, the dragon-king could save him from losing his mind and shifting permanently into his form of a primal dragon, and Elena had tried her best to steer Harry away from Lord Greengrass, yes, but was her best even close to enough?

No, she decided. She could not prevent him from becoming what he was on track to become. Elena shut her eyes briefly against the pain, her thoughts unscrambling. Only one thought survived:

She was going to die.

* * *

"I'm dying, Harry," Leonardo said bluntly, grasping weakly at Harry's numb hand.

"Hush, Mr. Lamar, you most certainly are _not_ dying!" Madam Pomfrey tutted at him, but the stressed and worried expression on her face did not escape Harry. He slanted his green eyes over to Leonardo, noting the gauntness of his pale face, his unnatural stiffness, and that peaceful expression that couldn't quite mask the deep pain that the vampire was trying to hide.

"Will my blood help?" Harry asked quietly as the mediwitch sprinted out of the medical wing, keeping his face blank. He couldn't break down and sob all over Leonardo- that achieved absolutely nothing, so he forced his brain to search through his extensive memory for something, anything, that would help. Blood was the first thing he seized upon, but that was scratched off the list as Leonardo smiled pathetically and shook his head.

"There's nothing that you can do to save me," Leonardo said softly, with that sense of great _finality_ that was so unsuited to the vampire that Harry called his best friend. It scared him, Leonardo's tone, because death had never seemed so _touchable_. Harry disentangled his fingers from Leonardo's with alacrity.

Harry betrayed none of his thoughts in his measured tone. "Where's Elena? She can find a way out of this mess," he said, his words taking on that childlike desperation that made him dig his fingernails into the side of Leonardo's bed. _Death bed_, he couldn't help thinking, and he mentally slapped himself for it.

Leonardo's eyes darkened and his voice become softer. "She's dying," he said bluntly, with no apparent sympathy in his voice. "She is very, very close to death, and I'm contract-bound to follow her there. And that'll be that, I suppose." His cracked lips curved up into a serene smile. "We die."

"Bullshit," Harry snapped, his anger rising with this knowledge. He felt almost sick as he looked at Leonardo's chilling smile, a churning nausea that had him gripping the bed all the more tightly. What he was saying was impossible. "You can't die- not like this."

"You can believe what you like," Leonardo said diplomatically, still wearing that horrible smile. "You can either resign yourself to this fact: that Elena and I are going to die, or," his smile stretched into a smirk, "decide alternatively."

"There is an alternative?"

"There is always an alternative," Leonardo said simply.

"What would you have me do, then?" Harry asked, his green eyes pained as Leonardo began to cough, the effort shaking his frail frame. It sounded like a death rattle.

"There is a man who calls himself the Godfather," the vampire replied once he had composed himself, "there is a chance that he could be able to help, but it's highly unlikely. You could try."

"Him?" Harry spat viciously, his composure fleeing as he recalled those ten pages strung together by Nott on the man. Most of the information he'd absorbed hadn't been favourable, particularly when he remembered the statistics of those who had survived the Godfather. His lips thinned to a displeasured line when he recalled exactly what Nott had said to him:

"The Godfather is after me," he repeated aloud, tilting his head to one side as he considered the old information in a new light. A terribly tired smile stretched itself across his handsome face, some of that weariness reflected in his eyes as he looked straight at Leonardo.

"You know, I almost think that this is some absurd test that you and Elena have contrived to test my loyalty," he told the dying vampire, a brow cocked in mockery of the question.

"It is not," Leonardo replied.

"That's what I'm afraid of," Harry told him, as Madam Pomfrey returned with Flitwick in tow. "I won't let you die- you know that, right?"

Leonardo merely smiled at Harry again and shut his eyes as Pomfrey ushered him to morning lessons. He let her.

* * *

"Daphne," Harry said in an uncharacteristically soft voice, "could I speak with you for a moment?" His eyes flicked to Zabini, then back to her, "privately, if that's alright."

Zabini nodded and took a step back as Harry quickly cast some privacy charms. The Slytherin was too used to Harry's ways to take offence at the request, and Harry was grateful for that.

"Do you know a way for me to speak with the Godfather?" Harry asked, his voice cautious and low. "And quickly; my time is running out, I'm afraid."

Daphne looked at him for a moment, with an eerie, calm sort of intelligence that looked out of place on her childish face. It wasn't the first time that Harry wondered to himself if he underestimated his chosen friends, but this wasn't the time to wonder about it.

"No," Daphne replied, "whatever it is you want, let me tell you now- it isn't worth it."

Harry's lips thinned to a sharp, vicious line at her refusal, his eyes hardening as he digested her words. "You can't tell me that when you don't even know what I want," he said in a calm voice. "And I think that if I do get what I want, whatever he wants in return will be worth it."

"It won't," she said simply, "but it isn't really my policy to refuse someone. I've said no to you as a friend, but I'm saying yes to you now, as his agent." She bit her lip and looked away from him, the action making her look all of eleven years old again. Harry's anger dimmed and he had an urge to turn away too as she rubbed hard at her eyes. "But I have to ask you as a friend- please don't ask me to do this."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, and in a sense, he was sorry to have caused her this distress, but he wasn't sorry at all if this Godfather could save his friends.

"Then I'll arrange it," Daphne replied, her voice shaky as she ended in a small sob.

"Thanks," he said gently, and he didn't really know what else to say. "Don't cry. Slytherin girls are tough, remember?"

"As if I'm going to just stop crying just because you said so," Daphne retorted, "I'm Slytherin, but I'm human as well. Isn't it human to grieve and cry because your friend is going to die?"

"I'm not going to die," Harry said dismissively, putting an arm around her shoulders in an effort to calm her.

Daphne looked at him with those wise, tired grey eyes that made him a little unsure of himself.

"I certainly hope not," she replied, "but matters of life and death are not for either of us to decide."

* * *

A/N: Originally one massively long chapter, split it into two. It's been ages since I've updated... To be honest, I've been considering abandoing the story :[ It has way too many plotholes and is beginning to spin out of control. Then I thought- oh well, we'll see how it goes. ;)


End file.

Harry Potter, Adventure, Friendship