#Age-accellerated

[ferbracket]

Perry Polls

Act Your Age

Age-accellerated. ''Perry the Platypus, just- just look at yourself. You really let yourself go.''

[5a-alf]

I was thinking that, had neil been a raven, jean wouldn't have joined the lineaup early, and broke my own heart.

Hear me out: Neil tried out for the Ravens at 10. If he hadn't run, he'd have started living with Riko and Kevin (11/12 at the time), but i think he wouldn't have been hidden away in the nest all the time the way jean was for his first 2 years there. He'd be more likely brought along on trips ecc so he'd be somewhat in the public eye, and at that age i doubt 1) Tetsuji would have thought of faking his age 2) even if he thought of it, it would be hard to believe, 2 years make a big difference in kids/preteens, so i doubt he'd risk it.

If the public knows Neil to be younger, once the moriyamas acquire Jean too they'd have no reason to lie about his age, as they'd still have Neil out of the team because of his (widely known) age, so 1 person existing in the nest without being officially a raven: having two would make no difference. Also why would they separate them, when the buddy system is so important? You're right, they wouldn't.

I guess they could accellerate them by like..1 year? But not 2, idek if there's age-related rules surrounding being a college athletes but still.

Does this make much of a difference? Idk. But for all the torture Jean endured, at least like this he wouldn't have to deal with the power struggle of the lineup until he's of age. He'd already be big and tall, he'd have to deal with people 4 or 5 years older instead of 7.

[avkizi]

streamer dr intro!!!

"chat, that's wild. anyway, hi y'all, welcome to the stream!!!"

BASICS ೀ⋆｡˚ --------------------------------------------------------------

🦇 name: mikita kishi

🦇 age: 20

🦇 birthday: 06/04

🦇 home: grew up in houston (tx) but moved to seattle (wa) at 15

APPEARENCE + MOODBOARD ೀ⋆｡˚ -----------------------------------

♡~⋆.˚🎧───────────────────────────────────💿༘⋆๋࣭

🦇 faceclaim: shocker it is a mix once again (mikayla campinos + kinsale hueston + kiawentiio tarbell)

🦇 voiceclaims: gabbie hanna (english) & akina nakamori (japanese)

🦇 ethnicity/nationality: 1/2 japanese, 1/2 cherokee

🦇 height: 5'2 (157 cm)

🦇 features: double lobe piercing, dimples, heart birthmark on my neck, hazel eyes, wavyish dark hair

🦇 clothes aesthetic:

♡~⋆.˚🎧───────────────────────────────────💿༘⋆๋࣭

CAREER ೀ⋆｡˚ ----------------------------------------

🦇 uni/college student:

-biology major (master's) -i was in a really accellerated program man -also did D1 volleyball (don't ask me how) -asian parent final boss ig

🦇 singer:

-started making/releasing music at 16 -blew up online around a year later -eventually opened for the olivia rodrigo guts tour at 19 (north america) and sabrinas short & sweet tour at 20 -might make a outfit and setlist post ab opening for them laterrr

🦇 online shit:

- my username on all my platforms is @/kōmiki - my average viewer count on twitch is like 10-20k - i mostly stream minecraft, roblox, or horror/multiplayer games, but will also do just chatting, q&a, cooking, or other irl streams - was on the osmp, qsmp, and the end bits of the dsmp -general bat theme/brand

MISC/TRIVIA ೀ⋆｡˚ --------------------------------------------------------

🦇 i've done 3 guest episodes on chuckle sandwich

🦇 i collect calico critters/sylvanian families and my background and room are literally so full of them omg

🦇 me n my s/o have a dog, 2 cats, and a snake <333

🦇 i have a specific instagram account for posting about walking around in the woods/just being in like nature and shit bc we live in this bigass old house with a couple other ppl and theres a big creek and shit back there and you can find fossils and all sorts of old or cool shit (think @/cynfyre_ on insta type content)

🦇 really really good at snowboarding, can't ski for shit

🦇 i love driving sm, and own a jeep wrangler bc it can also go off road and we love that around here i take that bitch everywhere

🦇 i have one older sister and one younger sister, but i grew up really close with my cousins and a lot of other kids my age so it feels like i have a lot more siblings than i do

♡~⋆.˚🎧───────────────���───────────────────💿༘⋆๋࣭

[morningstar-chronicles]

bio - camp half-blood DR - book-accurate

name: eliana jackson

nickname(s): eli, ellie

age: 10

birthday: october 31st, 2005

gender: genderfluid

pronouns: she/they/he

sexuality: bisexual

height: 5'3

ethnicity: chinese

race: demigod

nationality: american

accent: american

languages: english, ancient greek, latin

hometown: new york city, NY

personality traits: sarcastic, even-tempered (usually), witty, clear-headed

strengths: powerful, extremely smart, resourceful

weaknesses: only has two braincells and has to share them with percy

likes: cherries, pineapple, tortilla chips, being mean to people

dislikes: collaboration

powers: earth manipulation, water manipulation, accellerated healing in water, never gets dehyadrated

[miraculous-multiverse]

Miraculous Multiverse: The story 2

Beginnings Part 2

Movieverse

The heroes confront Volpina and ask her who she is and the Fox Miraculous wielder, after the initial shock, presents herself as an hero from a Paris infested by Akumas that came to this universe in order to stop them from invading other universes. The heroes are excited to meet another hero from another universe that knows how to stop these Akumas and are willing to let her join their team.

The heroes come to regret it because she’s more interested in being a celebrity and telling tales of her fights against the Akumas than telling them how to actually defeat them or solve this whole multiverse crisis.

Eventually a group of Akumas appears from a portal and try to take over the city. The four heroes and Volpina go to fight them with some success, only for a mysterious Akuma aging a building Ladybug was fighting on so much that it starts to collapse. Lady Noire saves her at the last minute, only for the Akuma using his powers on himself to accellerate his own speed and sucker punch her. When the dust settles, Volpina realizes who the Akuma is and runs away, leaving Mr Bug and Chat Noire alone to fight Ephemeral.

The two remaining heroes are disappointed that Volpina abandoned them, only for Ephemeral to tell them that's typical of her to abandon her allies when things get bad. Chat Noir decides to distract Ephemeral by asking him how he and the rest of the Akumas got in his universe in order to give Mr Bug the chance to sneak attack him and Ephemeral starts to talk...

Akumaverse (flashback)

A weird crack opened near the Tour Eiffel, leading the army to quarantine the zone in order to check what it is. After a week they discovered that’s a portal to other universes and it cycles between certain universes in a specific order. They decided to put more security measures in order to prevent anyone or anything to get close to it.

Princess Justice decided to send her strongest Akumas and Ephemeral to take control of the quarantine zone in order to use the portal to find a universe where the Akumas can live without being hunted down.

While the Akumas battle the army the “heroes” Crimson Bug, Ashera, Volpina, Hamelin, Flairmidable and Ryuko arrive and try to stop them but thanks to some poor teamwork and Volpina’s poorly timed attempt at one upping her “teammates” the Gargoyle went berserk and ended up dragging himself and Volpina thru the portal, stranding them in different dimensions and making the portal bigger and more unstable than before.

The “heroes”, following their disastrous attempt at stopping the Akumas, were forced to retreat, leaving the Akumas in control of the unstable portal. Eventually, thanks to the combination of powers of multiple Akumas, they managed to stabilize the portal and use it to sent various scouts to search for the Gargoyle and a world where they can live in peace.

Movieverse (present day)

As Ephemeral finishes talking Mr Bug sneak attacks him, but while it works it makes the Akuma angrier. As the battle continues Volpina detransforms into Lila and realizes that her plan to get close to the heroes of this world in order to let them lower their guard and steal their Miraculous went down the drain thanks to Ephemeral. Trixx then manipulates her into transforming and going back to the battle because if Ladybug and Lady Noire are down then she'll be able to seize their Miraculous without any issue. As she goes back to the battle, a mysterious figure holding a jar with a butterfly in it start following her...

<<Previous|Next>>

[faolonfiendrender]

one year, you were supposed to ship aboard for one year, of course when you have inertialess accelleration to 99% c that is seven years before your partner would see you again, seven years to wait, seven years to not know if you live or die since the tight beam is only for official communications. And sure there's money in it, and what they don't tell you is that one year is only out, and not back, apparently policy changed and the contract with the union was renegotiated. So that is another year, another seven years. Except the return ship is newer, faster, the extra nine that joins the other two, and your term of service is still a minimum of six months, and you can't pay for a way back unless you work for two years. so that is another 43 years, but at least you told him with the planetary communication, told him to move on, told him that you might be back in time to bury him, but for you it's only been 3 years. 3 years and you are burying the love of your life soon, and the money is all gone, much into your partner's medical bills, from when he was in his twenties, the reason you took the goddamned job in the first place. So you find home, you meet your partner and his husband of 30 years. It's only been three years, but it's been 50 years. Your older brother, who was 30 when you left died of old age five years ago, but it's been three years. Both your parents died a few days over 40 years ago, before the first of your three years was done. The only family you have is a great nephew, born a year after you left, he is less than a year younger than you. Desperation, the medical industry that behaves as though it had invented a single thing in the last century with its own money, the realities of working in interstellar shipping. You had missed 50 years and it was their fault. The advance on your pay had covered your boyfriends first treatment, and the rest had payed for enough to cure him from that cancer, but you may only share the end of his life with him, and you must share him, you told him yourself to move on. It was 50 years, he waited 15 years, and yet, for you, it was three years, three years of longing to return, three years half expecting to find him only three years older.

The rich never face this problem, some live on their ships, most can afford to become near immortal, they travel for decades, and return to their loved ones to find both parties near unchanged.

[firefly-fez]

ok this might sound like a really stupid question for a hardcore star wars fan like me but i see so many ‘pretending the clones dont have accelerated aging after they remove the chips’ type posts and like. where is the actual evidence in canon that clones don’t age at a normal rate once they’ve grown up? Like doesn’t Hardcase reference a growth acceleration chamber in the umbara arc? I understand that the clones undergo accelerated aging, but i always interpreted it as an externally enforced thing; they are subjected to a specifoc treatment - a growth acceleration chamber - that makes them age faster. Once you take them out of that environmet, there’s no reason that their growth would continue at an accelerated rate, right? Rex doesn’t look like he’s aging at an accelerated rate in Rebels. It is 15 years after the clone wars, I’d say he looks about 15 years + the stress of Order 66 and hiding from the empire older. like….. people seem to be of the opinion that accelerated aging is a part if their genetic code as opposed to a treatment regimen they were put through up until a certain point but that’s….not the way i interpreted it? Sure you could look to 99 and say that he’s proof of accelerated aging being the norm…but that’s not consistent? Rex is a generation 1 clone, so??? Wouldn’t he be just as old as 99 if it were a genetic thing? I could be wrong I’m not exactly sure what they mean by generation 1 clone but it means he’s one of the oldest, right? It could be that 99 was a failed experiment and they just put him on maintenance so he was useful, they don’t actually explain why he’s older, do they? Like…. I mean Hardcase mentions a growth accelleration chamber (and that a leak in his made him ‘hyperactive’ so Hardcase canonically has ADHD i guess, hey I don’t make the rules, but he totally does)

Like, I always interpreted the accelerated aging as a treatment program the clones are put through, but once they reach their age of maturity (probably around 18/20 years, optimising for a healthy young man fit for war, based on the age of draftees in WWI / WWII) then there’s no reason they wouldn’t age normally after that point, right?

Am I missing some part of canon / legends lore here?

[theoriginalladya]

OC Profiles - Kristofer Shepard

(Gorgeous art of Kristofer Shepard by @rosenkow)

GENERAL-

Name: Kristofer Aaron Shepard

Alias(es): Kris

Gender: Male

Age: standard ages as in games

Birthdate: April 11, 2154

Place of birth: Arcturus Station

Hometown: N/A

Spoken language(s): English

Sexual preference: Demisexual

Occupation: Spectre/Alliance Officer

APPEARANCE-

Eye color: light green

Hair color: Black

Height: 6'2"

Scars: he has a scar across his forehead from Elysium (War Hero)

Favorite-

Color: gunmetal grey (I don't know, ask him lol)

Hair color: None

Song: None

Food: He's not picky, so whatever Kaidan likes

Drink: Kristofer isn't a drinker (if he IS drinking alcohol, you know something is very wrong)

HAVE THEY-

Passed university: yes, accellerated classes in his high school years and focused his post high school studies on engineering

Had sex: Kaidan only

Had sex in public: no

Gotten pregnant: no

Kissed a boy: Kaidan only

Kissed a girl: no

Gotten tattoos: not sure (probably not?)

Gotten piercings: no

Been in love: only with Kaidan

Stayed up for more than 24 hours: yes

ARE THEY-

A virgin: no (not after ME1, anyway)

A cuddler: Only with Kaidan

A kisser: yes

Scared easily: No

Jealous easily: no

Dominant: no

Submissive: no

In love: Yes

Single: No

RANDOM QUESTIONS (TW FOR SELF HARM/SUICIDE MENTION)-

Have they harmed themselves: No

Thought of suicide: No

Attempted suicide: No

Wanted to kill someone: no

Have / had a job: he'd help out with any engineering things he could get access to in order to learn and feed his curiosity

Have any fears: only when it comes to Kaidan

FAMILY

Sibling(s): Sister: Sofia (three years older than him) - she serves in the Alliance, made it as far as N5 before washing out

Parent(s): Mum: Hannah, Dad: Daniel - both serve in the Alliance

Children: (haven't quite decided what happens for them after they're reunited post war)

Significant other: Kaidan

Pet(s): probably a dog at least, but beyond that I'm not sure.

also this picture of them commissioned from the fabulous @xla-hainex

[henstomper]

hey check this shit out *begins to age at a severely accellerated rate until i die and rapidly decay*

[ferbracket]

Perry Polls

A poll tournament to find the best alternate version of Perry the Platypus. AUs, disguises, transformations, Perry-themed objects, guys who just have a similar name...

Full searchable list of Perrys can be found under the cut.

Dr Lloyd Wexler Lawn Gnome Platypus Plumber Temp Banjo-playing platypus Evil scientist Nemesis Toy Poor little regular platypus Perry the Platyborg Perry the Platyborg

Reformed Platyborg

Reformed Platyborg

Pretendy the Practice-pus

Underwear

Bobble-head Perry the Platypus

Platyp-inator

The Amazing Perry

Chez Platypus

Parade balloon

Perrytronic 3000

Platy-posterior

Candace (Mom suit)

Platypult

Trojan Platypus

Perry the Toolbox

Perry the Tool-a-Rack

Fabulous

Mechanical platypus suit

Candace in Perry's Body

Perry In Candace's Body

Ferb Suit

Lawrence Robot

Evil Platypus Clones

Platypus Monster

Igor

Parts Dealer

Adventure Hat

A kid in a sheet

Dog

Magpie

Bianca Dijon Hologram

Director Dipthong Hologram

Footabll player Hologram

Lulu Jones Hologram

Egyptian

Explorer

Swordfighter

Domestic

Act Your Age

Age-accellerated

Future

Bad Future

Baby

Bartholomew

Sweary the Swan

Lost in Danville

Carl

Misperceived Monotreme

Doof n Puss

The Platypus and his girlfriend

Harry the Contractor

Pinky the Chihuahua

Cavenpuss

Parry Gripp

Fedora

Fedora

Astronaut Helmet

Carmen Miranda Fruit Hat

Cowboy Hat

Devil horns hat

Firefighter Hat

Irish

Rastacap

Rasta-Warthogapus

Perry the Mustachioed Tool Spokespus

Ten Gallon Hat

1914

Fez

Totally Tools Pirate

Welding mask

Jerry the Platypus

Larry the Platypus

Platy-proliferator-inator

Terry the Platypus

Inaction Figure

Atomic Super Platypus

Secret Agent

The Mad Marauding Marsupial of Death

Butler

De-Volitionator

Dancing

Dehydrated

Just a top

Just a bottom

Kinderlumper

Ugly

Mindless Animal

Deformed Turquoise Man

Steven the Platypus

A metaphor

Superhero

Ducky Momo

Parable the Dragonpus

Giant Dragonpus

Cave Platypus

Bird

Fly

Triceratops

Big Brain

Dino Bird

Bunka da Bunkaquan

Castaway

Master Perry

Master Perry

Norm

Collared

Mobile Mammal

Opera Singer

Latin Chacha-gram

Gorilla Hologram

Live Action

Baseball Cap

Real platypi under UV light

Dipper

Perry the Rebelpus

Bearded

Tissue box

Baljeet's Decoy

[ohh-baekhyun]

Nothing Like Us | 02

✨ Summary: Rich, charming and undeniably good-looking, Byun Baekhyun is used to women falling on their knees for him. You are an exception though. Quiet, reserved and indifferent, you are never afraid to put him in his place if you need to. That’s probably why he is quite besotted with you. No woman has ever challenged him the way you do. Thus when he has the chance to spend three weeks under the same roof as you, he makes it his sole mission to win your heart.

✨ Genre: Arranged Marriage-ish!AU, romance, fluff, smut in future chapter.:,

You’ve been here for ten days and you’re starting to think staying here isn’t as bad as you thought it would be. Your books, and the maids keep you company when Baekhyun isn’t home. When he’s home, he’s either purposely rattling your cage to annoy you, flirt with you at every turn, or instigate the Truth or Dare game. It is true that the two of you have bonded through this game. Although lately, the questions he threw have been all over the place, ranging from trivial to inappropriate.

What’s your favorite movie? (Shrek)

Do you believe in Aliens? (Nope)

What do you like about me? (Nothing)

You were lying of course. You just didn’t want him to get a big head about it.

Do you have a Daddy kink? (What do you think?)

As for you, there were times when you put little thought into your question because you just want to get it over with, and times when you are genuinely curious about what you asked. Through this game, although silly, you get to learn so much about Baekhyun. Something serious like him giving up his career as an architect to be the heir to his father’s company, to something unimportant like how his ex-girlfriend dumped him because he pours his milk first before his cereal.

If ten days ago he was merely an acquaintance, today he has graduated to a friend. The kind you get annoyed at so often, but can’t stay mad at for long.

It is a Friday morning and you’re in the dining room all by yourself. Baekhyun has left to work after having a quick breakfast with you. It has become a daily occurence since the start of your stay here. He’ll also be back in the evening for dinner.

You take a sip of your tea and stare at your phone as the screen lights up. There’s a message from your Dad that says, ‘The lawyer will get in touch with you soon. If there’s anything you’d like to add to the contract, please don’t hesitate to let him know.’

Apparently, your Dad has summoned a lawyer to help you draft a prenuptial agreement. You don’t understand what’s the hurry. To be honest, you haven’t given much thought to what happens when three weeks are over, but you are not one to go against your Dad’s order. So with a sigh, you lift your phone off the table reply to his message with an Okay and a Thank you Dad.

Later that night, you’ve finally come up with a few demands you’d like to negotiate. You’ve typed them out in the notes section of your iPad. But now you’re debating if you should discuss about it with Baekhyun before emailing the file to your lawyer. After a moment of quiet consideration, you look for your phone to text him.

You: My room, now.

Byun.B: You think I'm your dog?

You: Can you see me in my room please? :)

Byun.B: What for?

You: There's something I want to show you.

Byun.B: You, naked?

You: Maybe.

Almost immediately, you hear the echo of his door opening and closing, followed by the sound of his footsteps, and lastly, the door to your room swing open. Baekhyun appears wearing a plain white tee and black shorts, his disheveled hair falling slightly over his eyes, they look so soft it makes you want to run your fingers through them.

His eyes found you and you giggle at the dissapoinment raining on his feature when he sees you, not naked.

Baekhyun grunts and mutters something inaudible under his breath.

"Come sit with me," you say before glancing down at your iPad. The door closes and he walks over to you.

He stops by your side, shoving his hands in the pocket of his shorts as he stares down at you. “Why did you invite me to your room?” He asks. “Please tell me we finally doing the deed? Because I am so fucking ready.”

You roll your eyes. “Why do you have to relate everything to sex?”

“If you didn’t invite me here for naughty purposes, what for then?” He asks once he is seated next to you on the ottoman.

"My father has hired a lawyer for me," you told him. "You know, to help me out with the marriage contract and stuff.”

His eyes go round like saucers. "Fuck, we're getting married for real?"

"Oh, I wouldn't hold your breath," You dismiss. His eyes narrowed at you. "But," You carry on. "If I do agree to this arrangement, there are demands that must be fulfilled." You pass him your iPad. "Take a look, I thought it'd be good to review this with you before I email it to my lawyer."

On your ipad is a list of negotiations you've typed out in bulletpoints. They’re not written in legalese but that’s not your job to mind, but the lawyer’s.

I get to finish my studies and find a job of my choosing here.

We move to a new place (preferably a villa and NOT haunted)

I want a pet pig.

He stops reading to stare blankly at you, like he thinks you are crazy.

“What? Pigs are smart okay?”

“Where do you think you're living in? FarmVille?" He says sarcastically.

"We can get a teacup pig!” You protest. “Have you seen them? They’re so small and cute.”

"There’s no such thing as teacup pigs. They are just piglets and will eventually grow into a motherfucking pig. On top of that, they stink and poop like it’s no one’s business.”

You raise your chin at him. ”How are you so sure?”

”I know someone who’s a pig breeder,” He says.

You take a moment to think before reluctantly accepting that Baekhyun is right. You can’t have a fully grown pig in the house, they easily weigh 300kg.

“Fine...I’ll cross that out,” You say, relenting.

Baekhyun notices a slight pout on your lips, and the way your face falls in dissappointment. Feeling bad for letting you down, his heart aches a little.

“Is there any other pet you’d like to have?” He asks softly before adding, “Anything that doesn’t belong on a farm...or a jungle.”

You gaze up at him with hopeful round eyes. “Can we get a kitten or a puppy then?” You ask.

Baekhyun smiles. “That we can,” He agrees before shifting his eyes back to your iPad.

In the event of extramarital affair, I have the right to leave the marriage. We get a divorce with no contest.

Baekhyun looks at you again, this time his expression unreadable. “You think I’m going to cheat on you?”

You honestly have no answer to that. Having being abandon at such a young age, you’ve grown up to be distrustful of the people around you. You grew up believing that everyone will eventually get bored and leave. Like your parents did.

“I hope you don’t take it personally,” you assure him. “I’m not saying you’re untrustworthy, it’s just, I don’t know you well enough to trust you.”

Understanding dawns on his feature and he nods. “Fair enough," He says, fixing his attention to the screen again. His lips pucker in concentration as he stares at the bulletpoints. You peer over his shoulder and watch as he taps on the edit icon on the bottom right of the screen. The keyboard appears and his fingers start moving.

In the event of extramarital affair (never going to happen), I have the right to leave the marriage. As a penalty, 100% of Byun Baekhyun’s assets will be handed over to me.

You read and re-read the part he has just edited. “Are you serious?” You look at him wide-eyed. “You’re giving me full ownership of your property?

He nods easily like it’s no big deal to him. “Anyway, whether or not I have an affair, you’ll still get fifty percent of everything I acquire from the moment you say yes.”

If he’s trying to lure you, then it is partly working. You are not going to lie, his proposal is indeed very appealing. Baekhyun’s assets are staggering, and with that much money, you could finally start up a literacy organization and open up free schools like you always wanted to.

“I’ll have my lawyer draft the prenup agreement as soon as you come up with a decision,” He says.

“Oh, okay...” You mutter, still feeling in complete disbelief.

“What’s next?” He mutters to himself, reverting his attention to the screen.

I want babies and I get to name all of them.

You’ve thought long and hard whether or not you should include that clause in the list. You know Baekhyun is going to tease you upon reading it, but you have to shove your embarrassment under the rug. You’ve always wanted kids and it is important that he is onboard with the idea before you make up your mind about the marriage.

He raised an amused brow at you, one corner of his lips curling up. “Babies huh?”

You feel your cheek heating up. “Why? Do you not want babies?”

He shakes his head and twists around to set the iPad away on the mattress behind him. When he glances back at you, you give him a quizzical stare.

“What does–” you shake your head to imitate his action earlier. “mean?”

“It means if you want babies, I’ll give you babies...But there’s a problem,” He says, folding his arms over his chest. The muscle in his biceps bulge. It's very distracting. 

Damn him.

Stop ogling! you chide yourself. Look up!  

You glance up at him. “What’s the problem?”

“How are we going to make babies if you always run everytime I come near you?” He asks. “You won’t even let me touch you.”

“I’m not going to run,” You say, averting your eyes.

“I don’t believe you.”

Feeling the need to prove him wrong, you lift your chin and will yourself to meet his eyes. “Try me.”

There is a lull of silence that caused the air to grow tense. His gaze dark, intense, hinting at something sexual. “Come sit on my lap,” he finally speaks.

Your eyes descend to his thighs and you gulp nervously. Slowly, you rise from your seat and move to stand before him. You look between him and his lap, hesitating.

Baekhyun watches you, his own heartbeat accellerating when you finally lower yourself on his lap. Once you are seated, he slid a hand over your back, resting his palm on the curve of your waist to hold you just in case you move and fall. This is the closest you two have ever been and he doesn't want to let go.

There's a stretched silence where Baekhyun continues studying your profile closely. You stare down at your fingers, your thumbs twiddling with each other.

“What now?” You say, trying to defuse the awkwardness.

“Put your arms around me, sweetheart,” he whispers slowly into your ears. Goosebumps prickle along the back of your neck at the sound his low voice. Under normal circumstances, you would be chiding him for calling your sweetheart. You don't like it, it's patronising as hell. But this is no normal circumstances, and you are too nervous to even speak. Instead, you take a long shaky breath and soldier on.

When your arms are circled around Baekhyun’s shoulders, he looks straight into your eyes. If you are any other woman in this situation, he would have pulled you in for a kiss already. But you are not just any woman. And it doesn't help that he has no fucking idea whether you're attracted to him or not. He studies you for a moment, his own gaze is twitchy, showing slight hesitation. “Am I making you uncomfortable?” He whispers.

“A little,” you voice out softly. “but not in a bad way.”

He keeps his eyes interlock with yours as he draws in a breath. “And If I touch you, will you push me away?”

“Depends where you touch,” you reply, your voice sounding small.

Looking at how tense you are, Baekhyun doesn’t know where or how to start. The last thing he wants it to scare you away with his advances, but the urge to kiss you is so fucking strong. He keeps his eyes on you. Slowly, almost tentatively, he lifts his hand and smooths his fingertips along your jawline, cupping your face. “Is this okay?” He asks, looking into your eyes.

His hand feels warm against your skin and he’s surprisingly gentle. You sigh and nod. “It’s okay.”

Baekhyun's lips tilt up into a smile, as though he is relieved. “You have such a tiny face,” he wonders as he strokes the back of his thumb over your cheek. “it fits in my hand perfectly.”

Hearing that, you scoff. “You know any guy would say something like you have such a beautiful face or eyes or things like that.”

"You know I am not like any guy,”

“You’re right,” you say with a soft smile. "I've never met anyone like you."

It is only now that you’re realizing how close your face is to his face. There’s a strange tenderness and intimacy in the way he looks at you, and to you own disbelief, you like it. You like him doting on your like this.

“If you keep staring at me like that,” He says to your semi-dazed self. You blink out of it, only to find yourself chained under the intensity of his gaze. “I’m afraid I can’t hold it much longer.”

“H-how do I stare at you?”

Gingerly, he swipes his thumb over your lower lip. “Like you want me to kiss you,” He murmurs. 

You heart misses a beat, and your pale cheek is slowly growing rosy.

Then, he is leaning closer and closer.

Your mind starts to spin like a carousel. You know the right thing to do is to push him away, tell him no. But you can't move. It's as if he has just casted a spell on you to render you paralyzed. Thus, the last thing you see before you close your eyes is how close his face is to yours, and then the light went out and you feel the softness of his lips brushing against yours. You are stiff as a board and it surprises you that he is just as tensed as you are. None of you are moving your lips. This isn't how you expected kissing Baekhyun to feel like. It almost feels like a first kiss all over again because you really don't know what to do. Do you open your mouth? Pull him closer? Or what?

A few seconds passed and Baekhyun eventually pulls away. You open your eyes to meet his eyes, but his gaze is unfathomable. Your brows pulled together into a frown as you try to decipher the look on his face. Is he dissapointed? Oh God, does he think you're a bad kisser? Must be...

"It's late," He says somewhat coldly, looking anywhere but you. "I should go now."

"Oh...Okay," You say, immediately unclasping your arms around his neck and slid off his lap. You turn your back to him once you rise to your feet, too embarrassed to face him after what has just happened.

The two of you exchange a brief goodnight without looking at each other.

And then he is gone.

Fast forward three days later...

The last few days have been hectic for Baekhyun. Ever since his father announced his retirement, Baekhyun has to step in to take over his role as the CEO of the company. Which means, more meetings, more engagements that he needs to attend. In fact he is currently on his way to his third meeting of the day. It sucks because he doesn’t get to spend time with you as much as he would like to.

Good news is, things have been progressing steadily between you two. And Baekhyun realized that for the first time since you arrived here, it felt not so much like you were arguing with him because you despised him but more like you did it because it was fun. 

However, he still doesn’t know where you stand at this point. What happens when three weeks are up? Will you pack your bag and leave, or will you stay?

Fuck.

The thought of you leaving kicks him hard in the gut. He admits he has grown to like you. A hell, hell lot. It is silly because you’ve only been here for two weeks but you’ve became the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up, and the last thing in his mind before he goes to sleep. Maybe it has to do with the fact that you’re slowly letting your guard down around him, and now he gets to see more of the real you.

He knows you had a complicated relationship with your parents. You were abandoned at a very young age and will forever be nursing a broken heart. He couldn’t begin to imagine the pain you went through, to be left behind by your own mother and have your own father sent you away. He knows all of that have left you feeling rejected, unwanted, and often, inadequate about yourself. That’s why you are always shy and reserved around everyone.

Everyone except him.

Whether you like him or not, he doesn’t know. One thing he knows is, you’re never afraid to voice out your opinion or tell him off when you need to, he guess that’s why he loves provoking you so much.

It’s only been a few days but he really missed all the playful banters and bickerings he had with you. He misses the wicked gleam in your eyes when you are firing something back at him. He misses the sweet sound of your laughter when he makes you laugh. He misses the way he feels when he makes you laugh, as if he has just won a grand prize. But more than anything, he misses you.

The last time he talked you was on the night he kissed you. And he fucking ruined everything. He had no idea what the hell happened to him. He has never been that nervous around a girl before. He is a damn good kisser and he knows that. But the moment he pressed his lips against yours, it felt as if he has never kissed all his life. Yet, it didn't stop his heartrate from going overdrive whenever he thinks about how your lips felt against his.

He could've done so much better, but there's no point dwelling on the past. All he knows is, the next time chances like that arise, he swears to kiss the hell out of you and make sure it's the best damn kiss you’ll ever have.

And that next time better be soon because time is running out between you and him. 

Next Chapter

[the-ghost-of-jason-todd]

Dark Klaus Fic Summary/Synopsis

So this is going to be long and Weird and I’m writing fast so I’m sorry about the quality, rip.  Anyway, basically it’s an exploration of Klaus’s powers and how he might cause an apocalypse.  It starts the night of the rave with Luther, after Klaus dies for the first time, when Klaus tells Ben that he died and came back.  Then it jumps to the main story, which is canon-divergent from S1E10 onward, and specifically splits off at the bowling alley where the commission agents are shooting at them.  Klaus is shot.  He gets in the way of Luther and Diego when they’re going to attack Vanya.  Vanya and Allison have their moment.  The shooters come.  Vanya protects them, and then finishes the concert and passes out, the world still intact.  But Klaus is still shot--he dies.  But he’ll come back, right?

Yes.  But because the bullet has to work it’s way out of his body first, he doesn’t come back before they autopsy him and bury him.  He comes back in his casket--which is iron, because [spoilers] daddy dearest suspected this power and specified that he be burried in an iron casket.  So there’s Klaus, buried alive.

Meanwhile the family is trying to deal with everything.  Pogo is dead, Grace is offline (though Five is trying to fix her), Klaus is dead, and Vanya is unconscious.  The house gets rebuilt, and they all use it as a sort of home base, sticking close.  Five is obsessive.  Tensions run high a lot.  It’s not good.

Then there’s Ben.  He’s still sticking around, and he’s not quite sure why.  Five figures out that the cold spot in the house is Ben and they develop a sort of twenty questions system, with yes or no answers.  And then, one day... Ben feels Klaus come back, his powers (which always emanate a spectral energy, when he’s alive and not high) coming back online.  And Ben is like FUCK and tries to get Five to help, but Five just isn’t asking the right questions.  He can’t figure it out.  So Klaus is stuck in the ground for... a while.  

He talks to god a lot, and comes back a lot, and dies a lot.  Like a LOT.  It’s gruesome and not fun, and also god is an ass who won’t let him see Dave.  But eventually, he manages to astral project out of his casket, scaring the shit out of Diego.  The family realizes that Klaus is still alive and dig him out, and they have their brother back, hooray!

Cue Klaus realizing that he’s... a little different now.  He has better control of his powers, but his temperature is colder and his body is different and he feels divorced from life.  He doesn’t know what to make of that yet.

And then... enter Daniel.  The reincarnation of Dave.  He’s been having dreams about Klaus calling him Dave for a year now (coinciding with the date that klaus travelled back in time to vietnam) and he’s finally like fuck it, I’m talking to this guy I keep dreaming about.  And so he does.  And it’s weird, because Klaus is different than his dreams but he’s also the same and Klaus is like thirty/thirty-one but Dave is only twenty-two, and if god brought him back why did she do it like this?

Klaus meanwhile is having nightmares.  He has a really bad one where his powers go to MAX and he basically opens a portal into the afterlife through his own body, and the ghosts on the other side are crowding through trying to get out.  The house nearly freezes.  It’s bad.  So the family (and Dave) starts looking through what’s left of Dad’s notebooks, finding all kinds of shit.  Like stuff about Reggie’s theories about all the kids and the mausoleum and stuff.  Klaus finds one about contingencies about what to do if Klaus went off the rails.  He steals it and shows no one.

From there it’s a slow slide off the deep end.  He and Dave have a fight.  Klaus has a lot of nightmares and a few meltdowns, and he starts to feel this distant pain and he knows he’s going to die again, he feels it coming, but he doesn’t do anything to stop it.  He doesn’t want to fight anymore.  

But he doesn’t die.  The others realize something is up--it’s his appendix, and they save his life.  Diego realizes something is wrong and brings his concerns to Five, who is just like ‘I’ll look into it’.  

Klaus takes a few days off, and then he approaches Diego like I know you still go out on vigilante missions.  And Diego is like SO?  And Klaus is like take me with you.  Me and Ben.  And because Five is preoccupied and Diego thinks having a purpose might help Klaus, he lets him.  But then he realizes that Klaus has no regard for his own life, like he LETS himself get in the way of attacks and dies and comes back.  And Diego doesn’t know what to do.

Ben, though... Ben has figured out about Dad’s journal.  And he’s like Klaus, tell the others or I will.  And Klaus is like nah, and stops corporealizing Ben to talk to the others.  So Ben goes back to twenty questions with Five, and this is the second time that someone has come to Five with concerns about Klaus and he’s starting to put the pieces together.  Klaus is causing a cold spot on the map, one that he suspects might turn into an ice age as ghosts cross over from the other side, more ghosts than living people, the channel between the afterlife and the human world wide open.  Klaus will literally freeze the world in a cold, awful death.

So he calls a family meeting and they all go, including Klaus and Dave, and they figure out that Klaus’s powers are like... a rot, a cancer, inside of him.  The very first time he died, it took root.  And the kicker?  He died as a baby.  Stillbirth.  He’s always been like this.  It just accellerated after the casket incident.  So they have dear old dad to thank for that.

So they’re trying to figure out something to do.  And Five is like okay... what if I use time travel to rewind your body back before you first died?  And the family is like that is... not ideal.  They have no idea what that will do to his mental state if he’s trapped as an infant.  So they make a compromise--they reverse him in time to before his second death, an OD that happened when he was 19.  And he’s back, babey!  Just a little colder than average, a little touch of death, you know how it is.  And he and Dave are now only three years apart, look how that worked out.  

[darkobsidianquill]

Harry Potter and the descent into Darkness.

Chapter Fifteenth. 

Harry's shaking hand stretched out and offered the bloodied dagger to the small skeletal grip of the Dark Lord.

"On your knees, Potter," the cold hard voice of Voldemort ordered.

Harry instantly acquiesced to the order, and had to bite his lip to hold back the whimper from the pain the movement caused. It really wasn't anywhere even remotely as painful as the accellerant potion had been, and as Voldemort had watched the entire process of Harry carving into his own flesh, the Dark Lord's excitement had grown. With that excitement, had come a powerful welling of Voldemort's magic, and Harry had eagerly fed off that energy, letting the euphoria of it cloud his mind and dull his pain. Still, the sudden movement of falling to his knees had cleared his haze enough to remember that he was currently bleeding – a lot – and that the raw, open wounds were not pleasant in any way.

Harry felt the Dark Lord's magic surge in another wave of eager excitement and he grabbed hold of that feeling and wrapped it around himself like a blanket. The feeling of the Dark Lord's magic was so indescribably familiar and comfortable, not to mention the dark inebriation it induced. He wondered for a moment how Barty and Wormtail didn't seem to be effected by it at all. Did they not feel it? Maybe they couldn't?

A tiny startled noise escaped Harry's throat when the blade first pierced his back, between his shoulder blades, but he managed to squash any further sound. It hurt, but he wasn't going to disgrace himself by crying out. The cuts were shallow and the runes were not all the complicated. What little understanding he had gleaned about dark ritualistic magic like this told him that things should have been much more convoluted and complicated than they were. The relative simplicity of the ritual was truly a comment on just how much of a magical genius the Dark Lord was.

The arithmancy calculations and planning alone that would have been necessary to construct a ritual this optimized and efficient was incredible, and the fact that the Dark Lord had done it in under a week, truly spoke volumes. Harry was mildly surprised that the man had gone to so much trouble to minimize the suffering Harry was having to endure. A little less effort would have resulted in much more complicated runes, and a lot more of them, but the effect on the end product of the ceremony would have been unchanged. Voldemort's body would have been resurrected the same either way. The extra effort had gone in solely and entirely for Harry's benefit, and he knew it.

Still... he wasn't stupid enough to say anything about it aloud when others were present. Perhaps if he had the opportunity to speak to the Dark Lord without an audience he would thank him.

Harry breathed a quiet sigh of relief as he felt the last rune completed and the blade leave his skin for the last time.

He was now kneeling in a mess of his own blood. Not quite a pool of blood, but it was still a considerable amount of blood. He also noticed that all of the blood seemed to be magically drawn to a spot two feet in front of him where a crystal bowl sat on top of one of the runes on the floor. He supposed that was why he wasn't sitting in a pool of his own blood – the blood was being drawn to that point and getting magicked into the bowl. He decided that, if nothing else, he could slip into the hospital wing when he got back to school and nick a blood replenishment potion. Hopefully Madam Pomfrey would have some in stock.

Harry's mind was clouded by the combined forces of his loss of blood, light-headedness, and pain, and then all of that was compounded by his own intentional hold on the Dark Lord's magic in the air. Letting the magic wrap around and encase him helped numb the pain, but it also left him rather out of it. He could feel his body swaying precariously while he knelt on the floor in front of the large cauldron.

He was vaguely aware of some magical words being spoken, and of Wormtail dropping a few things into the cauldron, including the bowl of his blood. Next thing he knew the Dark Lord's magic suddenly pulled back and its absence snapped his mind to attention. Harry's head shot straight up and his eyes opened wide. He watched as Wormtail cut off his own hand, dropped it into the potion with a strangled whimper, and then as Barty carried the Dark Lord's tiny homunculus body into the circle, over the cauldron, and then dropped him inside it.

The sudden and intense surge of magical energy was enough that it nearly knocked Harry out. As it was, it took almost all of his strength and concentration to stay upright on his knees.

The cauldron frothed and bubbled violently while plumes of steam and swirling colored smoke shot out from the top of it. Then the cauldron itself was melting away as if it were made of chocolate, until it was a dark liquid pool that bubbled and vanished on the ground a moment later. Rising from where the cauldron and it's contents had been was a twisted pale form that looked mildly humanoid as it grew and expanded and jerked rather violently.

Harry could feel the Dark Lord's magic swirling powerfully around the new vessel as it continued to form and morph. Slowly, it began to look more and more human. The body filled out and grew defined. The limbs reached the proper lengths as the bones grew to their correct sizes and stopped bending and twisted into place. The muscle groups and tendons formed properly and the skin stretched and came to rest along it in a smooth, flawless surface.

The tone started out whitish and pale, as the homunculus had been, but as the body began to look more and more human, the white-gray pallor began to pinken and turned to a more natural flesh tone. The face grew to the proper size of a human skull, but it was gradually loosing the serpentine quality that the smaller incarnation had suffered from. The cheekbones sharpened and the nose grew from the flat plane where there had once only been two slits for nostrils. The eyes remained closed, but above them where once there had been a hairless plane, grew in two black, shapely eyebrows. Equally black hair began to sprout from the scalp and lengthen. It continued to grow, very slowly, while the rest of the body finished forming.

When all of the smoke and steam and melted cauldron had settled, there, standing directly before Harry, was a very naked, and very impressive looking man. Harry felt his breath catch as he took in the sight before him before he quickly diverted his eyes.

Barty was hurrying forward now with an elegant black robe with silver embroidered trim. The man-Voldemort, reached out an arm and allowed Barty to slip it over his shoulder, and then maneuvered around to slip it around Voldemort's other arm. Voldemort completed wrapping himself up loosely in the robe and took a few steps forward, clearing himself of the mess that remained where he and the cauldron had been only moments before.

Barty quickly took several steps back before falling to one knee and bowing his head reverently. Harry could see enough of the man's face to see the wide, insane smile that graced Barty's face, and suddenly realized he was sporting much the same look, despite his light-headedness and pain.

He looked back up at the Dark Lord who he had just helped to resurrect. It was not what he had been expecting; not with the serpentine quality that his homunculus had featured so strongly. This man looked... like a man. Human. A lean, lithe body, lightly muscled with long shapely limbs, a slender neck and a striking face. Harry realized that he could see the same features that he had seen on the shade of a 16-year old Tom Riddle, from his second year; now aged to adulthood.

What stood before him was a tall, powerful, and if Harry was being honest with himself, incredibly attractive man. He appeared to be no older than thirty, although he could probably pass for a bit younger – which again, Harry was quite startled by. His lips were thin, his nose was long and refined, but rounded a bit on the end. His eyes were the same piercing ruby red slits that Harry had become accustomed to, and he found himself glad that they hadn't changed to something more human with the rest of him.

His hair was a bit of a mess, but Harry suspected the man would waste no time in trimming it and cleaning himself up. It looked like it hadn't all grown in at the same rate, so it was rather uneven in some parts. The longest it got was just above shoulder length, and it had a gentle wave to it.

Harry watched, transfixed, as a hand, with long slender fingers came up and ran through the hair, pushing it back behind his ear. The man grinned. Voldemort grinned. Harry found himself smiling again. This man was his new Lord. This beautiful, powerful, man...

"Wormtail – my wand," the man spoke and the voice startled Harry. It was deeper than he had expected. Smooth yet whispery. Like warm melted chocolate.

Wormtail was still cradling his handless arm and he whimpered and cowered as he quickly shuffled forward and pulled out Voldemort's wand and handed it over.

Voldemort smiled mildly at him and then turned away, and took two steps until he was standing directly before Harry and looking down on him. Harry's breath caught as he looked up at the other man. He could feel tremendous waves of magic radiating from him, and it was intoxicating. Part of Harry wanted to close his eyes, fall back onto the floor, and just fall asleep while basking in the feel of the magic washing over him like waves. But he held himself together and kept his eyes open.

Voldemort brought his wand down and pointed it directly at him. Harry didn't feel the slightest bit of apprehension at the sight, and simply waited. Whatever spell it was that Voldemort cast, it was non-verbal, so Harry never heard it. But he felt the magic focus through the wand and then assault him in a powerful rush that seemed to course through his entire body, and dance across his skin.

He gasped at the intensity and felt himself waver from side to side before he managed to regain control of his balance.

A small keening sound escaped his throat, but he made no other noise while the magic did it's work. When it did finally leave him, he suddenly found that all of the burning, stinging, pain, that had been dancing at the back of his consciousness, was now gone. He glanced down at his bare chest to find the skin there unmarred. He looked to his right bicep and found it equally lacking any evidence of the rune he had carved into it, earlier that hour. He was even clean now. The blood had been removed from his skin, and his pants were no longer stained with it.

He looked back up and smiled. "Thank you, my Lord," Harry breathed.

The corner of Voldemort's mouth turned up slightly and he gave a curt nod. He then turned his attention on Wormtail and asked for his arm. A moment later, Wormtail's missing hand had been replaced with a chrome-finished hand that apparently worked just as good as the old one had. Wormtail cowered and bowed, and sniveled while profusely thanking his master.

Barty seemed disgusted by the Wormtail's sniveling, but his face instantly turned awed reverence when he looked upon Voldemort.

"Will you be summoning the others tonight, my Lord?" Barty asked as he bowed his head.

"Not tonight, Barty. In light of recent events, I have decided to rework some of my plans and wish to complete a few tasks before calling my followers back to me," Voldemort said easily as he began to stride out of the ritual circle and towards the doors that Harry had come in through. "Return Potter's wand to him, Barty."

"Yes, my Lord," Barty said as he quickly reached into the pocket where he had stored Harry's wand.

"Potter, collect your things and come with me," Voldemort said without even bothering to look back.

Harry blinked in surprise and quickly stood to his feet. He staggered a bit and felt a rush of dizziness. He shook himself, trying to sort himself out, but was pretty sure that even though he'd been healed, he was still probably pretty low on blood.

"Ah yes. Wormtail, I believe I told you to have a blood restorative ready?" Voldemort said as he collected a pile of parchment from the side table.

Wormtail squeaked and fumbled into his pocket for a moment before pulling out a vial and making his way towards the still unsteady Harry. Barty was now standing beside him, offering Harry his wand. Harry quickly grabbed both offered items, slipped his wand into the back pocket of his pants, uncorked the bottle and downed the potion in a single quick movement. He handed the empty bottle back to Wormtail, trying not to glare at the man too much.

He nodded his head at Barty and offered the other man a grin, which he returned. It was a strange sense of camaraderie, that he felt with this man who had been masquerading as his teacher all year. The intense suspicion that had always filled Barty's eyes, or rather, 'Moody's' eye, seemed to have disappeared now, replaced by respect.

"Thanks," Harry said quickly to Barty before turning and jogging to the side of the room where he had left his folded shirt and robe. Voldemort seemed to have collected his things now and was waiting impatiently by the door. As soon as Harry had picked up the bundle, the Dark Lord was turning and walking out into the hall.

Seeing that he didn't have time to put the clothes back on, he simply darted after the other man, carrying the bundle under his arm. He caught up quickly, but had to walk fast to keep up with the other man's long confident strides.

Harry followed in silence as Voldemort went down several corridors, back to the entry hall, up the stairs to the second floor, and then directly towards the study that Harry remembered clearly from his visions.

Upon entering the room, Voldemort walked over to a large wooden desk, pulled out his wand, and summoned an ornately carved and finely upholstered wooden and leather chair that had been shoved towards the back of the room against the wall, and placed it directly behind the desk. He smirked down at it with a look of triumph on his face. Harry had a feeling the man was gloating to himself that he could now make use of the chair, rather than relying on the tiny floating seat he had been using prior to the resurrection of his proper body.

"Sit," Voldemort said dismissively as he flicked his wand again, and another chair zoomed across the floor from where it had been shoved up against the wall in a corner somewhere. It came to rest directly opposite the desk and the seat that Voldemort himself was now sitting down in.

Harry quickly made his way over to the offered chair and sat while he shifted his bundle of clothes onto his lap. Before anything else, he shifted and unwrapped his robes until he found the inner pocket where he had placed his shrunken trunk and pulled it out.

"I brought more books," Harry said as he did all this and he glanced over just in time to see the lights of interest flicker in the other man's eyes. He grinned and bent over to place the trunk on the floor in front of him. He reached behind him and pulled his wand free of his back pocket. He tapped the trunk simply and it instantly expanded.

Harry glanced up then, silently asking for permission before opening it. Voldemort smirked and nodded his head while giving a tiny wave of his fingers in approval.

A moment later and Harry had hissed the password, opened his third compartment, and had begun pulling out more books. As he worked, Voldemort sat back in his chair and ran his long fingers over the carved wooden armrests and the soft fabric tops and another small triumphant look crossed his face.

Harry glanced up and smirked. "I can't even imagine how much of a relief that must be... finally having a proper body back," Harry said before ducking his head and continuing to pull out books.

Voldemort narrowed his eyes slightly and rose an eyebrow at him, making Harry wonder if he should have just kept his mouth shut. After all, it was still entirely within reason for Voldemort to blame him for the loss of his last body.

Part of him wanted to apologize for the loss of the Dark Lord's last body, but he refused to let himself do that because it would be admitting fault, and Harry was still convinced that whatever had resulted in the Dark Lord's last fall, was in no way directly caused by his fifteen month old self. His mum, perhaps, but he could find no logical, fathomable excuse as to how he could have done it.

Unless he had been born with some inexplicable resistance to the killing curse. While that would be exceedingly handy, Harry had no intention of testing out that theory, only to be proved wrong... and end up dead.

"You've brought me quite a lot of books," Voldemort mused as he watched Harry continue to pull them out.

Harry grinned up at him. "I've been busy. I've gotten really quick at copying books, actually. It was really slow in the beginning, but I think I've got it down to a science now. Goes real fast. I've been trying to copy every book in Slytherin's study that looks strong enough to survive the spell. The real fragile and crumbly ones would take more effort, and I'm afraid I might damage them in the process."

"I can show you a variation on the spell that I used to restore the ones I worked on."

Harry's eyes lit up. "Really? That would be great. I saw the big pile that looked like they'd been worked on. I figured you probably did that when you were at Hogwarts fifty years ago, but didn't know how exactly you did it. I tried looking up some spells, but the books all seemed too delicate and I was afraid I would just screw them up."

"It is not a complicated spell. I'm sure you can manage just fine. I believe that you were also hoping to learn the way to prevent someone from casting the affinitatem reveleo spell on you?"

Harry blinked once in confusion before his mind went over the name of the spell and realized that it was pretty obvious what it probably was. "The spell that will tell someone that my magic is Dark?" Harry asked, and Voldemort nodded. "Yes, that would definitely be something I should learn."

"Yes it probably is. The counter to it has two levels of proficiency. The first will simply nullify the spell and return no response at all, however with practice, you can cause the spell to return a false response of your choosing. It is more difficult, but would it would probably be best if you learned to do it, since getting no response from the spell will likely make whoever cast it, suspicious."

Harry nodded.

"We can go over these things, and a few other matters I wish to discuss the next time you come. Until then, I have a task for you."

Harry's eyes lit up and he sat up straighter. "Yes?" he asked with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.

"All of the books you have brought me so far were all lost to me after my sixth year. By that time, Dumbledore had managed to speak with the ghost of a certain person and began to suspect that whatever it was that I was up to, it was connected with the girls bathroom on the second floor. I had very few opportunities after that point to go down there.

"At the end of each school year, Dumbledore would always come up with some subtle excuse to have my things searched," Voldemort continued, making a sneering face. "Because of this, I was forced to find an alternative location to... hide certain objects. Even at the end of my seventh year, I was still being watched annoyingly closely and was forced to leave behind a great deal of my possessions. I would like for you to retrieve them for me."

"Alright," Harry said eagerly.

"Most of these objects are in fact objects, however some are books. You are not to make copies of the books for yourself before hand."

Voldemort could see a flicker of disappointment flash through Harry's eyes for a moment, but Harry quickly nodded. "That's fine. Where do I find these things?"

"There is a magical room that you can access from the seventh floor corridor. The room only appears when properly summoned. There is a tapestry of a wizard that is trying to teach a group of trolls in tutus how to dance ballet," Voldemort made a disgusted face and rolled his eyes before continuing. "Walk past the wall opposite the tapestry three times while repeating in your mind, 'I need the room where things are hidden'. After the third pass, the door will appear."

Harry's eyes went wide and he grinned. "That's brilliant. How'd you find something like that?"

"I will admit that it was something of a fluke. Knowledge of the room seemed to have been lost to all else and I could only find one document that made reference to it. The room was considered 'legendary' and as such, assumed to not exist," he smirked and made a scoffing noise. "It is referred to as the Room of Requirement. Anyway, when you enter the room it will likely look like a giant junk heap. The room is quite vast and it would seem to be very easy to loose track of things inside it. The items I hid there are all contained within a single box with a space expansion charm on it and it is locked. However my magical signature is likely still on the box and it is entirely possible that if you remove it from the box the school's wards will detect it. You will need to extract the objects from the box and put them in your trunk. The password is parseltongue. A simple open will do the trick.

"To locate the box, enter the room, immediately turn left and follow the wall until you reach the corner. Look for a very large, broken, marble statue. The box is dark green. It may take some digging to find it."

Harry nodded his head. "Okay. Is there any chance that a simple 'accio Tom Riddle's box' might work, or do I need to actually go searching through the junk to find it?"

Voldemort stiffened and Harry felt the magic in the room grow cold and still. Harry instantly knew he must have made a mistake.

"How... do you know that name?" the man hissed as he looked up at Harry through narrowed eyes.

Harry swallowed a thick lump in his throat.

"Was it the old man? Is he going around telling people that name?" Voldemort said, and spat the last two words like they were filthy.

Harry's mouth floundered for a second before he took a deep breath and tried to regain his courage.

"Actually... you sort of told it to me."

Voldemort sat up and eyed Harry through narrowed eyes. "One of those instances where you were in my head? I seriously doubt that to be the case, since I have not even thought that name, even to myself, in quite a while."

"Er, no. Not exactly. It was in my second year. I sort of spoke with your um... 16-year old self on two separate occasions. There was this old magical artifact that found its way into the school. It possessed a girl and she opened the Chamber of Secrets and let the basilisk out. That was the year I discovered the chamber and –"

"HOW!"

"Huh?"

"How did the diary get to the school!" Voldemort yelled and the powerful anger in the magic was swirling all around the pair of them like a hurricane. Although it was apparently invisible to all the world except Harry, who seemed inexplicably tuned into it. He visibly shivered, and yet it was agood kind of shiver, as the powerful dark anger blew through him.

He took a deep breath, pulling himself back together.

"Uh.. Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy did it. He – He was trying to ruin Arthur Weasley, and stop this bill Mr. Weasley was sponsoring. It was a muggle protection act or something, and it was gaining ground in the Wizengamot. Lucius figured if he managed to cause some horrible incident at Hogwarts and connect Weasley's name to it, it would ruin him and stop the bill. So he slipped the diary into the cauldron of Weasley's daughter, Ginny, while they were shopping in Flourish and Blott's the summer before school started. She started writing in it and ended up possessed. At one point, she got scared and started to suspect that she was the one causing students to get petrified so she tossed the diary into a toilet. I found it..."

Voldemort's anger seemed to be simmering now and he sat back in his chair, giving Harry a curious look. "Did you now? What happened when you found it?"

"Well... I wrote in it. But only once. You... or.. you're younger self, I suppose? He wrote back. He told me his name was Tom Riddle, but at that time I had no idea that he was you. Then he sucked me into the diary, almost like a pensieve memory. I watched the memory of you finding Hagrid with his acromantula and accusing him of having set the creature on the students on accident. The whole thing was just to lead me down the wrong trail, of course. Anyway, I kept the book in my trunk, but sometime later, Ginny heard me and my er... friends talking about it and she panicked when she realized that I had it, and that you might reveal all her secrets to me. Oh, she had a crush on me, and she had apparently been writing about that a lot in the diary. Um... long story short, she broke into my dorm, ransacked my stuff, and stole it back. End of the school year, the diary possessed her enough to lure her down into the Chamber alone and tried to drain her of all her magic so that the shade could gain corporeal form."

"What happened then?" Voldemort said, his face growing harder. Harry swallowed and then sighed.

"Er... nothing good. I mean... well, I was twelve!" Harry exclaimed defensively, all of a sudden. "I was still the very definition of a good Gryffindor. You know... hero complex and all. Ginny was my best mate's sister, and I figured out where the entrance to the Chamber was and that I – as a parselmouth – was the only one who could go down and save her. So I did. I didn't realize that Tom Riddle was behind it, or that Tom Riddle was you until I got down there and found this sort of non-corporeal version of him standing there in the chamber, over Ginny's unconscious body. After a bit of banter, he showed me the way his... er, your full name was mixed around to become the anagram I am Lord Voldemort. It was after that that I had to kill the basilisk, while trying to save Ginny, and escape."

"You, as a twelve year old, really killed the basilisk! How!" Voldemort hissed, with far more curiosity and disbelief than the anger he had shown only a moment earlier.

"A sword, actually. The basilisk bit my arm, and I had the sword in my hand. The blade went straight through the upper pallet of it's mouth and through it's brain. One of it's fangs went right into my upper arm, though, and broke off."

"The basilisk bit you?"

"Yeah... the sixteen-year old shade of your younger self was almost corporeal at that moment and he was basically just standing there and mocking me while I slowly died. I figured, if I was going to die, I was going to take him with me, so I pulled the fang out of my arm and stabbed the diary with it."

Voldemort's eyes narrowed and his lips thinned with anger.

"Basilisk venom. How ironic..."

"Huh?"

"There are extremely few things that can destroy what that artifact was..."

Harry hung his head. "I... I apologize... I'm sure it was an important artifact to you. I mean... I'm not sorry I didn't end up dead, but in retrospect, if I could have gotten out of there alive without destroying the book, I would now. At the time I was rather desperate though, since they were threatening to close the school if the attacks didn't stop. If Hogwarts closed... well, I'd have to go back to those muggles for good and... yeah. I was desperate. I'm sorry."

Voldemort was deathly silent for a long moment and Harry could feel the icy anger of his magic floating through the air like a deadly mist. Suddenly it began to dissipate and Voldemort actually sighed. Harry looked up and blinked, in surprise.

"I will not direct all of my anger towards you. You were a young, ignorant child, and you had no idea of what it was you were doing. Lucius, however, knew entirely too well how important that item was to me and will learn how serious of an infraction he has committed," Voldemort finished with an angry hiss and his ruby red eyes glowed in anger.

"So... how is it that you are not dead?" Voldemort asked flatly after a moment.

"Hm?"

"The basilisk. It bit you. Why aren't you dead?"

"Oh! That."

Voldemort rolled his red eyes and waved his hand for Harry to continue.

"Right... well, Dumbledore's phoenix flew down there and it cried it's tears onto the wound and healed it."

"Dumbledore's bird? That's curious..."

"Is it?"

"Why would it suddenly appear down in the chamber? How would it know to find you there? For that matter, how would it even get in?"

"Well, when I went down into the chamber, I didn't close the door behind me. Didn't think to, honestly. Afterwards, Dumbledore said that I had to have shown true loyalty to him to have called Fawkes to me," Harry mumbled, feeling entirely idiotic for ever having been so loyal to such a lying, manipulative old bastard.

"I doubt that. It is far more likely that the old fool sent the bird after you. I suspected for a long time that Dumbledore had not only figured out where the entrance to the chamber was, but had a pretty good idea that Slytherin's creature was a basilisk. He had no proof, of course, and had no way of getting down there himself without a parseltongue to open the way."

Harry sat up straighter and felt renewed anger boiling inside him. "So you're saying he knew I was down there. He let me go down there and battle a fifty-foot basilisk, alone, knowing it was going to happen, and the only assistance he lent me was his filthy bird? I didn't close the entrance so if he seriously knew I was down there, he could have come down after me..."

"He led you to come down after me to get the stone in first year, did he not? He has allowed you to stay in this ridiculous tournament, knowing that it was most likely a plot to kill you; has he not? Honestly, I am often unsure if he is perhaps trying to get you killed, but that just doesn't make any sense..."

Harry clenched his fists and teeth as he boiled in his own rage. "We need to know what that damn prophecy says," he growled out.

Voldemort's head flew up and he looked at Harry with surprise for a moment before it shifted to curiosity. "You know of the prophecy?"

"Only of it. I don't know any of what it says. My er... companion told me that even you don't know the whole thing."

"It spoke to you of the prophecy?" Voldemort said, and he scowled a bit for reasons Harry was unsure of.

"Only after I asked him about it. I remembered you thinking about it, during a few of my visions. I asked him if he knew what the prophecy said and he said that he only retained impressions of knowledge from you, but not always specifics. He knew of the prophecy, but not the exact wording of it. He also knew that even you did not have the entire thing."

Voldemort looked both thoughtful and irritated for a few long minutes.

"You are to never tell anyone else of the prophecy's existence," he said finally, in short, clipped tones.

"Of course," Harry said instantly. "Not like I can tell anyone anything though, since I don't even know what it says." Harry grumbled under his breath and ran his hand through his messy hair, feeling rather frustrated. "Look..." he began after a long moment, "If you don't want to tell me what it says, then I certainly can't make you, but I'll still ask, at least this once. Can you tell me anything about it? I mean... it is basically the reason my entire life has been one giant crazy mess. Some prophecy, made by some unnamed seer, basically set the most powerful Dark Lord in half a millennium after me, and then resulted in the craziest, most manipulative old bastard alive, to target me and make my life a living hell. I would really like to know what the hell brought all of this down on my head."

Voldemort eyed Harry with cold, calculating eyes for a long, uncomfortable moment before the corner of his mouth turned up the slightest bit in amusement.

"Alright Potter. The prophecy was not made by some nameless seer, but non other than the pathetic excuse for a divination teacher, currently stationed at your school."

"Trelawney!" Harry shrieked and nearly choked on his own shock. "That batty old loon! But she's a total fraud! You cannot seriously mean that my whole life has been fucked to hell and back because of HER!"

Voldemort actually cackled at this point and looked decidedly amused as he propped his left elbow on the armrest, and rested his hand in his long curling fingers. "Yes, her. But apparently, this was one of her exceedingly few real prophecies."

"Are you sure? I mean, she prophesizes my death every week in class. It's like clockwork. Every week she has some new and creative way in which I'm going to die a horrible nasty death. What if the whole thing is bull? What if there really is no prophecy?"

"I have seen the memory of my spy who witnessed it being prophesied. I am sure that it was authentic, Potter. I would not still be seeking it, or paying it any attention, if I had my doubts about whether or not it was legitimate."

Harry expelled a great breath of air and fell back into his chair. He sat there for a long second, processing the mindblowing idea that bloody Trelawney had been the one who made the prophecy, when a memory flickered in the back of his mind.

"Her second true prophecy..." Harry whispered and Voldemort looked at him curiously.

"Pardon?"

"Dumbledore told me once..." Harry hesitated and then looked up, meeting the Dark Lord's eyes. "At the end of 3rd year, just before I found out about Wormtail and my godfather, I was in the Divination classroom, a bit after class and Trelawney suddenly went into a sort of trance. She said something like 'the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was.' I didn't know what to make of it at the time, but then, that night, everything with Wormtail was revealed, and he escaped. I told Dumbledore about what Trelawney said and he told me that it was probably her second real prophecy. Bloody hell! Why didn't I ever ask what the first one was? I had the perfect opportunity..." Harry paused and then scowled. "Not that he would have actually told me, of course."

Voldemort snorted. "Of course he wouldn't have. That old man holds onto his secrets with all his strength," he paused and looked at the scowling boy opposite him and smirked. "Well, would you like to hear what of it I do know?"

Harry's head jerked up and his eyes were wide and suddenly filled with hope and excitement. "Yes! Please, my Lord."

Voldemort's smirk widened. "Fine. The Death Eater who overhead the prophecy was there for the majority of the meeting the two had – it was apparently a job interview for the Divination position. About half way through, Trelawney went into a trance and said 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... '. At that point, the innkeeper of the Hogshead interrupted my spy, and prevented him from hearing whatever came after."

Harry looked deeply focused at this point. "Can you say it again?" he asked, without really looking back up at the Dark Lord.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... " Voldemort repeated with a bored air of disinterest.

Harry nodded his head slowly and finally looked back up, making eye contact. "So as far as we know, it never actually says anything about me being the one who 'vanquishes' you, simply that I supposedly have the power to do so... which really doesn't make sense. In reality, it's more like, I have the power to prevent anyone else from 'vanquishing' you... Or perhaps you already invalidated the prophecy, by coming after me? Like, maybe at some point in the distant future I could have grown strong enough to 'vanquish you', but by you interfering when I was a baby, and getting a piece of your soul lodged in me, you've made the prophecy null. Or maybe prophecies don't even work that way... I really don't understand this seer shite nearly enough. I hate divination," Harry grumbled and scowled.

"There has to be something more significant to the prophecy," he continued. "More that might explain some things if we knew the whole prophecy. It really doesn't make sense from just that... Was I really the only child born at the end of July who had parents who had er... thrice defied you?"

"There was one other."

Harry sat straighter as curiosity took over. "There was?"

"Yes. The Longbottom's had thrice defied me, and also had a son born at the end of July. You were born on the 31st, while he was born on the 30th."

"Neville!" Harry choked. "Bloody hell!" he gasped and then laughed. "Wow... now that's hard to imagine. I can't fathom Neville Longbottom vanquishing anyone, least of all you." Harry shook his head and chuckled.

"Yes..." Voldemort drawled.

Harry sighed and looked deep in thought again. "So the only people who know about the prophecy at all, as far as we know, is you, me, Dumbledore, your spy, and Trelawney – but the only ones we know who know the full prophecy are Dumbledore and Trelawney?"

"It is unlikely that Trelawney actually knows it. My understanding is that she is somehow completely ignorant of her own prophetic visions."

"Ah. Yes. She was that way after that prophecy about Wormtail... Once she came out of her trance, she had no idea that she had said anything odd." Harry paused again for a moment before speaking. "Do you think it might still be in her sub-conscious, even if she isn't consciously aware of it?"

Voldemort's brows rose slightly and he sat forward. "That seems plausible."

"Do you think Trelawney knows occlumency? I mean... she's such an idiot, I don't see her as having the propensity for it..."

"Are you suggesting that someone use legilimency on her? I only have a few followers capable of such a thing, none of them currently aware of my return, and none of them in a proper position to use the technique against her. There is, theoretically one, however I am unsure as to his allegiances at the moment and am not yet willing to expose myself to him."

"I could do it," Harry said eagerly. "Use legilimency against Trelawney, I mean. And I'm in her class every week, so I get loads of opportunities. She's always focused on me, and frequently stares right at me to try and make her predictions seem that much more ominous."

"You? You can perform legilimency?" Voldemort asked with an amused air of disbelief.

"Yeah. I mean, when I started doing it in the fall, I had no idea what it was even called, I just sort of did it."

"You just sort of did one of the most advanced and complicated forms of mind magic?" Voldemort echoed with sarcastic disbelief.

Harry blinked. "Erm... yes? It was one of those things that I kind of just knew how to do one morning when I woke up. It was like the morning that I woke up and just knew that certain breeds of dragons could understand parseltongue. I had a problem, and was stressing over how to find a solution to it, and... I think I spent that night sort of bemoaning my problems to my c-companion... and uh... well, in retrospect, he probably gave me the knowledge as a solution."

"It gave you the knowledge?" Voldemort repeated incredulously. "A piece of my soul just gave you the knowledge of how to use legilimency?"

"I think it was more of a really solid foundation, and an understanding of how it was theoretically supposed to work. It took several tries for me to really get the hang of just what to do and how to do it."

"Has it just given you any other bits of knowledge like that?" Voldemort asked, incredulously.

Harry twisted up his face as he thought it over. Had it? He really wasn't sure...

"I think he put the idea into my head to go back down to the chamber when I was trying to come up with somewhere private that no one else could get to. I just sort of woke up one morning knowing that it would be the perfect place for me to go to endure the hells of the accellerant potion. I'm pretty sure that he also 'inspired' me to explore the chamber further to see if there was more to it than just the anti-chamber where the basilisk corpse was. However, at the same time, I don't think he told me where the entrance to Slytherin's study was, I found that on my own."

"That is not the same thing as having given you the ability to use an extraordinarily complex bit of magic," Voldemort pointed out airily.

Harry shrugged, "No, but it was the only other instance I could really come up with of my having just known something that I shouldn't have. I wonder though, if maybe me having such an easy time with the legilimency might be another part of that magical power I gained through my connection with you. You know, like how I can perform parselmagic, even though there's no history of it in the Potter line."

"I suppose that is plausible... how good are you at it?"

"Parselmagic?"

"No, fool. Legilimency."

"Oh, right. Well... I think I'm pretty good at it. I've used it on several students, and a bit on Professor McGonagall."

"You used legilimency on McGonagall?" Voldemort asked with an air of surprise mixed with amusement.

"Yeah, I wanted to test it out. I only scanned surface thoughts with her because I didn't know if she'd be able to sense it or not. When I used legilimency on Viktor Krum, he seemed to sense that something was off, but didn't quite know what it was."

"Krum? Isn't he the champion from Durmstrang?"

"That's right."

"Hmm... it is not terribly surprising that he would notice, and others wouldn't. They don't shy away from teaching the dark arts at Durmstrang, so he has probably been exposed to some mind magics during his education." Voldemort seemed to contemplate something for a moment before refocusing on Harry. "I highly doubt that Trelawney of all people would even be capable of mastering occlumency, even if she tried. However, despite her lack of mental shields, the information may be buried deeply in her subconscious. It may not be a simple matter to find it. More specifically, it may take you quite a bit of time to search for it."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "Well... I'll look for an opportunity to discreetly go digging around in her head. See if I can come up with anything. If an opportunity presents itself, I'll slip in and take a look around. If it doesn't... perhaps I'll find a way to make an opportunity present itself. At least I'm in her class, so if I go pay her a visit, no one will question me doing it."

"Good Potter. Do that. Also, before you leave tonight, I have one more thing to give you," he said as he reached forward and pulled a drawer out of the desk. Harry straightened his back and waited, wondering what it could be.

A moment later, Voldemort retracted his hand with something clasped in it. He stood and Harry instantly stood as well. This action caused the bundle of shirt and robes in his lap to fall to the floor, thus reminding him that he hadn't actually put his shirt back on the entire time he was sitting there. He suddenly felt a little stupid and very exposed.

His embarrassment was pushed to the side as the Dark Lord came to stand directly in front of him and held out his hand, presenting Harry with what looked like leather cuff, with loose leather strips for tying it closed.

Harry blinked at it in mild confusion.

"You cannot be marked. Not yet, at least. There is too great a risk of exposure, and keeping your allegiance to me secret is of great importance," Voldemort began to say in response to the confused look on Harry's face. Voldemort brought his wand hand up and tapped the leather cuff while saying "morsmordre". A small version of his mark; the skull with the snake coming out of it's mouth – appeared as if it had been branded into the leather all along.

"Wear it. It will warm up whenever I use the mark to summon my Death Eaters. I can also use it to summon you specifically, and it will also serve as a portkey that will send you directly to my entry hall."

Harry's face lit up with excited understanding as he reached out and was handed the leather cuff. "Brilliant..." he whispered, reverently. "How do I activate the portkey?"

"Parseltongue," Voldemort said dismissively. "Simply say §morsmordre§ while holding it and it will activate. Speaking the word in English will make the mark appear or disappear. Speak it in parseltongue and it will activate the portkey. Obviously, you should keep the mark cleared when at school."

Harry nodded his head to show that he understood. It was strange hearing another person slip in and out of parseltongue so easily, but Harry realized he could actually tell the difference between the two now. Even though the switch had been subtle. Parseltongue still sounded like English to him, it just had an extra something to it... as well as sounding sort in innately hissy.

Harry quickly began to attach the cuff to his left arm. When he went to tie the loose leather pieces, they actually tied themselves to the perfect tightness and he grinned. Once it was properly in place he looked up at Voldemort and smiled. "Thank you, my Lord."

The corner of Voldemort's mouth pulled up and Harry could see the pleased approval reach the man's eyes.

"You may get dressed," Voldemort said dismissively and Harry felt his cheeks warm up and he quickly grabbed his button-down shirt and slipped it on. "I want you to inform me immediately if you have one of these visions of yours. I want to see if I can detect when you are in my mind."

"Yes, of course," Harry said as he finished up the last of the buttons and began to slip his robes on.

"You may visit the library now. I need to speak with Barty, but you will need to use his portkey to return to the castle. I will send him to fetch you there once he and I are done."

Harry nodded his head and bent down to tap his wand on his trunk and shrink it back down. He snatched it up, slipped it into his inner pocket and did a quick bow. "Sounds fine. I can wait however long you need. Um... one more question though."

"Yesss?" Voldemort drawled while raising a single brow.

"Er... when is it okay for me to come via the portkey, and when is it not? I... I don't want to show up uninvited and anger you by interrupting something..."

"You may come at anytime that is convenient to you Potter. I will not be angered as long as you do not interrupt me personally while I am specifically doing something else. If I am busy, wait in the library, or in the entry hall. I will get to you when I am able."

"Alright. Thank you, sir. I'll go to the Room of Requirement as soon as I'm able tomorrow and locate the box. If I can slip out again tomorrow night, I'll bring the box then."

"Good. You are dismissed."

Harry did a quick bow of his head and turned and left the room. As he closed the door behind him, he saw Barty climbing the stairs and heading his way. The two nodded at each other in passing as Harry went down the hall towards the library.

He entered the oddly familiar and comfortable room and couldn't help but smile. He sat down in one of the stuffed arm chairs, unshrunk his trunk, grabbed one of the books he'd been reading recently and resumed where he had last left off. About twenty minutes later, the door to the library opened and 'Moody's' head popped through. Harry did a small double-take at seeing the auror's old scarred and pot-marked face, instead of Barty's, but quickly recovered and packed up his things.

The two quickly made their way to the entry hall, and then used Barty's portkey to return to the secret tunnel they had left from.

Another fifteen minutes and Harry was slipping in through the portrait hole and into the Gryffindor common room. He was absolutely exhausted and was eagerly looking forward to his bed. Despite the blood replenishment potion, he was still feeling rather lightheaded and weak on his feet. A good sleep would do him a lot of good.

He was also feeling rather overwhelmed by the events of the night. But it wasn't a bad sort of overwhelmed. He just felt like there had been so much that had happened, and yet here he was, back in Gryffindor tower, and to everyone else, nothing had changed at all. It would be weird to act like the world was the same tomorrow as it had been yesterday.

No one else knew it yet, but that night, the whole world had changed.

And Harry had helped it happen.

– –

Harry slept through breakfast the next day, and was only up about a half hour before it was time for lunch. He spent a bit of time in the common room immediately after lunch with Hermione, while the two of them worked together on some of the book translation, while Ron played chess against some third-year. After Ron had thoroughly trounced the younger student in three games, he came over and Hermione decided that was the perfect time to switch to homework.

Harry had spent the time utterly distracted by the events of the previous night, but had managed to keep himself moving forward by the interesting puzzle the book presented. Now that he had switched over to his transfiguration essay, he was finding himself entirely unable to stay focused.

His mind kept wandering to the tasks he knew he needed to start working on. First was to find this hidden room that Voldemort had told him about, and recover the Dark Lord's things.

Next, he needed to try using legilimency on Trelawney and see if he can recover any of the prophecy from her mind. He had divination on Mondays, so at least he wouldn't have to wait all week to start working on it.

Going over the tasks he needed to work on was the only thing that could keep his mind from spinning away in circles over the insanity of what he'd taken part in the previous night. He was still indescribably jubilant that everything had gone so smoothly and that it had really, truly worked.

Everything would change now, but it would be behind the scenes for quite a while now. No one else would know. It was so strange to be in on such an enormous secret. Such a reality shattering, profound, huge thing. And no one else knew...

"Harry?"

"Huh?" Harry said, as his head shot up and he blinked at Hermione in mild confusion.

"Are you alright? You seem awfully distracted."

"Oh, yeah... I'm fine. I'm just a bit out of it. I'm probably going to run to the library a bit later. I need to return a couple books."

"I could go with you," she instantly offered, and she had that hopeful glow in her eyes.

"No, it's okay, Hermione. I'm probably going to go for a walk around the castle afterwards," Harry said, trying to give her an innocent, and apologetic smile.

Hermione's eyes narrowed for a split second, before they shifted to dejection and she sighed in defeat. "Alright, Harry. Fine."

An hour and a half later, Harry was standing in the seventh floor corridor with his back to a large tapestry featuring trolls in tutus trying to do ballet. He looked at the blank stone wall slightly dubious. Finally he shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes and began chanting in his mind 'I need the room where things are hidden', while walking back and forth in front of the wall.

After the third pass, he opened his eyes just in time to see a large door materializing out of nothing.

His eyes widened, and his smile spread across his face. He quickly walked over, pulled the door open and entered. The room on the other side was enormous, and looked to all the world to be a graveyard for broken junk. The ceilings were incredibly high, and the room seemed to go on forever. Harry couldn't actually see any sign of the back wall from where he was standing at the head of the room.

The room was filled with a mountain of broken and damaged furniture, thousands upon thousands of books, many of which looked to be banned; chipped bottles of congealed potions, several rusting swords, and even a bloodstained axe.

Harry walked forward slowly and looked around the room with wide, curious eyes. He lingered at several piles of books, making note to come back with his trunk again later to sift through the room's treasures. As it were, he was on a timetable so he had to force himself to hurry up and went straight for his goal.

He turned back to the wall, followed it all the way down to the corner and looked for the large broken statue. He went ahead and tried to 'accio' the box, but it hadn't worked. Instead, he spent the next ten minutes digging through a mountain of junk until he finally uncovered a green box that fit the description Voldemort had given him.

He knew for a fact it was the correct box when it opened up the second he spoke the parseltongue password.

He cleared himself an open space to work, enlarged his own trunk, and set about the task of removing everything from the box and moving it into his trunk instead. He had to use his first compartment, since it had a space expansion charm on it that provided more room for the wide array of strange and unidentifiable magical objects. A lot of the things in the box wouldn't properly fit inside either of his book storage compartments, so it was the only option.

In the end, he came to realize that there was a lot of stuff inside that seemingly small box, and it took him quite a while to get it all moved over.

Finally, he shrunk his trunk back down, returned it to his pocket, and left for the common room.

–

Despite his efforts and desires, Harry found it impossible to leave that evening to return to Voldemort. Ron and Hermione were on him like leaches, and by night fall, he was exhausted.

Sunday passed very much the same as Saturday, and Harry was equally distracted. He finished up all of his homework from the previous school week, and spent another hour with Hermione on translating the book. Shortly after 10 o'clock that night, he claimed exhaustion, slipped into the dorm room, transfigured his pillow into another dummy, slipped on his invisibility cloak, made sure his trunk was in his pocket, and flew out the window on his Firebolt. Harry flew low to the ground, so that no one looking up would be able to see him under the cloak, but instead of slipping back into the school and using one of the tunnels, he simply flew on his broom towards Hogsmeade until he felt himself pass through the wards.

This was going to be his first time entering Voldemort's manor house without 'Moody' escorting him. He was both eager and wary. He wished he had a way of letting the Dark Lord know he was coming so that, if it were a bad time, the man could tell him not to. But Voldemort had said he could come any time, and Harry could only hope that were true.

He landed, shrunk his broom and pocketed it. He pulled up his robes and exposed the leather cuff on his arm. He had discovered that it had a waterproof charm on when he had not wanted to remove it during his morning showers. He just didn't feel right allowing it out of his sight, for even a few minutes. Not to mention that he just didn't want to ever take the thing off.

He... liked having it. Wearing it. It was a physical reminder that it had all really happened. A physical symbol of his connection to the Dark Lord.

He tapped it with his wand and whispered "Morsmordre" and the mark appeared on it. It sent a crazed thrill through him and he almost chuckled at how absolutely insane he was for finding this exciting. Fundamentally, this was the mark that symbolized everything that his parents and their allies had dedicated their lives to fighting against. But he had come to realize that that really meant nothing to him. He wasn't indebted to dedicating his life to follow the ideals of people who he never knew. It was his life now, and he was going to chose his path.

And this was his path. He had chosen it, dedicated himself to it, he enjoyed it, and was utterly fucking thrilled that it was really working so far.

He sighed, and did a finite to clear the mark from the cuff. He shifted to parseltongue and said the password again, this time activating the portkey instead. A quiet pop, and a tug behind the navel later and he was landing, unsteadily, in the entry hall of the manor..

[theorenwulf]

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (Wayfarer Series 1)

Again not a Hugo nominee, but one that is kind of on the way to one, since the third book of this series is on the shortlist this year. I actually picked this book up ages ago and never finished it, which is not at all an indictment of this books quality, I just sometimes lose intrest in things. 

This book is about the Wayfarer a tunnelling vessel, that drills artificial wormholes through space. Those wormholes are the common travelling method in the galaxy that Becky Chambers has crafted and tunnelling is a pretty routine task. 

In Chambers galaxy humans had to flee from a enviromentally devastated Earth and are now split in two factions. One of those factions lives on Mars and consist of former rich people establishing a colony on Mars, that through bleeding out massive amounts of resources, accellerated the destruction of Earth. The other faction are the Exodans, survivors of Earths downfall, that fled from Earth in a giant fleet of spaceships. 

The Exodans got taken in as refugees by the Galactic Commons, a kind of multi-species galatic UN and settled on several colonies throughout the galaxy. Some of them still consider themselves Exodan, others are fringe colonies not recognizing anyones authority. The fleet despite not really having a purpose anymore is also still around. And by the time of the book Humans have actually become members of the GC, which has forced a reconciliation between Exodans and Solans, since a species can only join united.

The Wayfarer which has a multispecies crew with a majority of Human crewmembers is one of the best tunnelling ships operated by a Human captain, but apart from that not really affected by big galactic politics. Until they get send out for the biggest job of their lives, drilling a tunnel from the space of the Toremi, a formerly extremmely hostile species that the Humans have brokered an alliance with, to the capital of the GC. Since the space around the Toremi planet is very volatile they take nearly a year to get there, on a long way to a small, angry planet, one of several claimed by a constantly infighting unstable species divided in countless clans, only one of which made an alliance with the humans.

This book is as the titel indicates more about the journey, than the destination, even though what happens there, is also important. This book is a slow, pondering read, consisting more of vignettes that in the end tell a whole story and showing of the incredible, beautiful galaxy Chambers has crafted piece by piece and also showing off the characters and developing them in a slow and measured way. Kind of similar to a TV show, only the last pretty short part can actually be descried as action packed. Which I think is fantastic since I love slow, pondering, thoughtful reads like this, you just have to know what you get yourself into, when you pick this up.

I especially loved the characters and the character development in this one. From the first to the last crewmember I really got a feel for everyone of them and they felt like whole developed people, with real, fascinating relationships. So I can really wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone, that likes this kind of book. It is an amazing and really touching piece abou love, friendship, loss and space.

I would have really loved to pick up with those characters again and see how they continue their journey. Unfortunatelly the name of the series is kind of a misnomer, probably the publishers fault, because the second and third books are not actually about the crew of the Wayfarer at all. The second book picks up some minor characters from the first one and tells their story and the third book picks up with a wholly different cast of characters again, judging from the blurb. I didn’t know this when I started reading the second book earlier and was pretty diasppointed, so I thought I’ll put in a word of warning here. The themes and characters of the second book are not really my cup of tea, so I’m not exactly shuffed about it, but so far I’m only two or three chapters in, so I migt still fall in love with it. You’ll certainly be reading about my thoughts on the second book here, once I’ve finished it.

PS:

Favorite scene: The final Kizzy and Jenks scene is just incredibly emotional and resounding, absolutely loved that one. It is a tie though with Ashby in front of the committee. That scene was just gold.

Favorite character: Dr. Chef is just a wonderfully kind and loving character with a heartrending story to boot. And being both a cook and a doctor is just amazing, so I’ll definetely go with him.

[sfmuniverse]

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a spending plan on how The City’s transportation agency will spend some of the “windfall” money from the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund.

Of the sudden $415 million influx, $38 million went to the SFMTA. The agency had made plans to use the full amount to accelerate replacement of the aging and unreliable Breda-built trains.

But the Board of Supervisors had other plans for the money. $5 million will go into a merchant bailout fund, much of the rest will go towards installing solar panels on Muni facility roofs.

Mayor London Breed was not happy to see transit funding redirected.

“Unfortunately, those funds were significantly reduced in the budget committee by $19 million so that the Muni yards can have solar panels. Now I fully support energy efficiency and energy independence, solar panels with an unreliable transit system will not help us reach other climate goals.”

SFMTA had estimated it would cost over $80 million more to maintain the existing fleet over the final 8 years of their lives than to replace them ahead of schedule with the new Siemens-built trains.

In order to continue with the accellerated replacement schedule, SFMTA will need to quickly find another $19 million to replace the lost funding.

Because the new trains are critical, we expect accelerated replacement will be pushed forward, but borrowing funding from elsewhere means other imporportant projects will likely be delayed.

[firefly-fez]

My theory is that the ‘accellerated aging’ process is a treatment regimen they are put under, not a genetic condition

So they get given a drug or something in childhood (see the ‘growth acceleration chamber’ that Hardcase mentions) that ages them to a full adult, but when they’re fully grown - at the prime for a soldier, around 18-20 years old - they age normally after that point. (99 was an early experiment to test the growth accerleration chamber that pushed the process too far and caused premature aging).

…but this works too. Anyway the clones ar happy healthy and alive in MY star wars universe

Okay I have a new headcanon for how the clones age

For the first 10 years of their lives, they age twice as fast, so by the time they are mentally and physically 20, they're still 10, time wise

BUT!! From that point on, their ageing slows down to keep them in their prime longer!!

So by the time they're 30, they start ageing normally

AKA how I get around canon and clones dying with unrealistic headcanons!!!!