#<- this is a whinge brought to you by the fact that it's been really annoying today to deal with

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

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[neetily]

↳ EVENT 45. Sebastian (Jealousy Sex & Incest)

— ✧ warnings: Jealousy Issues, jealousy sex, Incest, stepcest, Pseudo-Incest, Manipulation, clueless!reader, dubcon, Cheating, Creampie — ✧ word count: 3,197

— ✧ A/N: reposting from my old account since i was asked to! formatting might be off, but it's still readable.

There are many perks that come with being the eldest sibling. For one, his word is final. Always has been, really. Even when you were half his size and sporting those baby fat chubby little cheeks, cute little pout on your lips; didn't matter what he said, he knew you would always listen to him regardless. Because that's what little sisters do, right? They listen well to their big brothers, always relying on him to know exactly what you should do at any given moment.

It's not his fault that you're gullible to a T.

Another benefit is that he's always right too. So even if you whinge and complain at his bossing around, he knows just how easy you are to tire out, because you know just how right he really is. He hasn't failed you yet, has he? No matter the circumstances, you can trust him to be right when it comes to you. No you shouldn't wear that skirt to that party, promise I'm not looking at you any kind of way, you should probably pick up some more panties now that we're out. Always, always, Sebastian is right. Like he always says to you: Big brothers intuition. And you never seem to fight him too hard on it, which is good. It's preferred. It's easier that way, for you too, right? There's no need to use that empty little head of yours when he's around!

Perhaps his favourite perk of being your big brother, however, is how much he's trusted with you. Not just from how much trust you personally put in him, though to know that you depend on him for daily life things is sweet enough as it is. It's even better when his mom and your dad leave you all alone with him for an extended weekend, as is usually the case at least once a month. Date night or whatever, he never cared too much for the reasons, too focused on the fact that he has free reign access to you completely for a few days. Yeah, yeah. I'll babysit her— even in your adulthood. Ignorant to his real intentions, all involved remain blissfully unaware of just how degenerate he truly is— especially when it comes to you.

If they did, he'd never be allowed near you again.

He'd hoped to have waited a little bit longer, though. Sweetened you up some more, have you perched right on the edge of confession before enacting his perverted fantasies upon you; and yet here you are, laying under him so pliantly, submissively sniffing up at him as he lines his red hot leaking tip up to your sopping little hole as if it were natural to do so, and not some forced plotline from the plenty incest pornos he's watched. If only y'hadn't brought your boyfriend over last night, yeah? Taking the prime opportunity your parents have offered you and running with it— a free house, of course you had to invite him over. You might be dumb, but you're not stupid, he expected as much. Encouraged it, even. Wanted you to enjoy yourself before charming you for a night, letting you mess around before making you all his. What you didn't have to do was get plowed by your boyfriend so hard all night long, and keep your loving, doting, wanting brother awake with a fist pumping away frantically at his rock hard cock, listening intently to the forced moans you let out from your locked room.

That, might make you stupid.

Don't you think he deserves a go, too? After all, he's your big brother. You should be wanting to offer him up some hole too, yeah?

It's not difficult to see just how jealous he is deep down. He's not trying to hide it very well, his muscles tight as he looms above, eyes squinting down at you. Sure, he knew that you had a boyfriend, but that's just a little play time, right? Deep down, you know exactly who you belong to. You should have known better than to disrespect him in his house by moaning so prettily for another man, so it's only fair that you suffer some consequences. Don't you know just how long he's been waiting, planning, scheming to make you his? He doesn't so much mind that you aren't a virgin, but rather than you chose to fuck some other guy in his house. Makes his tummy turn with upset.

"Um... You're like, absolutely sure that this isn't cheating, Sebby?" Your body quivers with your shaky words, batting your eyelashes up at him so prettily like that, he's forced to take a moment to collect himself before giving you an answer. Poor baby, is big brother being mean to you? He's only giving you what you deserve, afterall.

With his cock head still slipping between your folds, smearing precum all over your puffy little sister clit, he offers you a faux sweet sigh of relief. "Promise, silly," He lightly scolds you, flashing you a playful smile to hopefully break you in, wear you down enough so that it's easier for you to give him what he wants. It's all he has to do at the end of the day, dupe you onto his side. "I'm your big brother, right? We're just playing. That's all! You aren't doing anything wrong, okay?"

It takes you a moment to fully comprehend his words, but the meek little nod up at his lies fills him with so much joy immediately, lust pooling in his tummy upon earning your coerced consent. Bad big brother, isn't he? Taking advantage of your innocence, letting his tip drool precum all over your cute little sister cunt with corrupting intent; fuck, such a pretty pussy you've got, it's a shame he's had to wait so long to fuck it.

"If big brother says so..."

"'Zactly, you got it," He coos down at you softly, extending a hand to help fluff up the pillow under your head for you to be as comfortable as possible, his chest tight at the sound of your cute giggled thanks to contrast the way that his cock still twitches against your slit. Just playing, just a little play time with your beloved big bro, that's all! "You trust me, don't you?" he preys on your people pleasing tendencies, fist squeezing tight at the base of his cock just to tap his tip against your clit a few times. An action that earns a gasp from you, and himself at the heated connection, precum string keeping him connected to you as he sucks in some air through his teeth. "Don't you love me?"

Rotten to the core, he figures that he'd never be able to express to you just how much he adores that look of absolute worry on your pretty face, flustering to reassure him that yes, you do love him! yes, you do trust him! After all, he's taken such good care of you thus far, right? It's just— there's that big brother itch, y'know? Forever gnawing at him, body begging for him to indulge, to satisfy you better than your boyfriend could ever, to have you relying him for even this. God, he can imagine it even now as he hovers above you, one hand lightly stroking at his cock, the other stabilising himself next to your head. Images of having you wander into his room late at night, tugging sheepishly at your shirt, rubbing your legs together with blushy cheeks. Can you help me, big brother? That's the fucking dream, y'know?

"Then, you want to play too, right?" He cocks his head at you, clearly seeking an obvious answer; of which you give almost immediately with a quick head nod, shyly chewing on your bottom lip as he smiles down at you lovingly. You're so easy to manipulate, he thinks. Serving yourself up on a silver platter for his selfish desires. Dirty wants, lewd wishes. So pretty when you're being such a shy baby too, his shy little sister, on her back for him with your legs hiked up to allow him space between them. You're prettiest when you're unwittingly submitting to him, he thinks.

And it's nice to know that this was all your idea, right? Wasn't it? He could have swore...

Sighing deeply, he lets his cock drag down to your hole instinctively, tip catching on it slowly, showing you restraint only because he doesn't want to scare you off too much. If he had it his way, he'd have you folded in half already, turning you into some sort of squeaky toy from how many hiccups he'd like to fuck outta ya. But alas, he genuinely treasures you too— even if he has a funny way of showing it. Giving you a quick plain look once he's properly situated between your legs, an eyebrow raised at the way you immediately tense up under his gaze, but the glassy eyes and trembling lips that greet him back provide enough consent for him to just— push. Just a little, popping his tip into your tight little sister cunt for the first time ever and God, he— "Fuck me," He whispers to himself, voice all trembly and caught in his throat at the sheer tightness of your cunt, jealousy burrowing deeper in his tummy at the way he can finally feel that your boyfriend hasn't been fucking you right; so not only have you been messing around with someone unworthy behind his back, but the guy hasn't even been taking care of you properly? Dummy, big brother was here the whole time— He'll just have to fuck you well enough to force you into requiring his dirty touch instead, yeah? Get you away from your pathetic play thing and back into big brothers loving arms and twitching cock, leaking precum to collect at your hole, can you feel the way it gushes out around his cock as he pushes further in? Unable to keep holding back for you, driven to claim you as his own by the way your face scrunches up cutely as he makes you feel the burn of every. Single. Inch.

"Tight cunt, shit—" He heaves above you, not missing the way you mewl and whine pitifully for him, struggling to accept the stretch his fat cock offers you, but doing so well, doing your best to impress big brother, aren't you? "Shh, it's okay. Gonna look after you, like always, yeah?" He hushes your feeble sounds, little baby babbles that only make his cock harder, to be honest. "Jus' gotta trust big brother, all y'gotta do is sit there and look pretty— easy."

And though he's doing his best to reassure you, pushing his hips all the way until they rest against your ass, balls deep in the one hole he's supposed to avoid, he can't help but to shiver himself at the amount of hedonistic pleasure that comes with taking you like this. Under false pretence, soothing his own self indulgent jealousy by way of letting his precum stain your insides sticky, his eyes rolling to the back of his head at the way your cunt is so warm and soft for him, walls squirming around his fat cock so nicely, like your body just knows how much better he can treat you as compared to your boyfriend.

Pinned under him, at the mercy of his restraint, he gives you a barely audible "Gonna move now, kay?" through gritted teeth. Doesn't even wait for your response before moving, far too lost in the reality of dragging his hips back, only to push them back gently inside of his baby sister, into your little cunt, gasping loudly at the way she squelches for him, fuckin' soaked for big brother, yeah? Pretty body is just begging for him to look after you, sucking his cock off so well already— better than anything he's ever experienced before; which is why you're his little sister, right? It makes sense, he thinks, settling into a comfortable enough pace to have you gripping at his arms for grounding, his eyes glued to your pretty tits as they bounce with every easy thrust of his hips; nice and easy, for now. You're his sister, so you're made perfect for him, yeah? Cock slotting inside of your cute cunt so easily, wrapped around him so tightly that it's almost a little winding if he's honest. But that's a good thing, huffing above you with furrowed brows at the subtle sounds he rocks out of you, every thrust intent on winning you over, back where you belong— on the end of his cock. A squirming, moaning, little sister mess for him to fully enjoy in the privacy of the empty house.

Which is disgusting, right? How much he yearns for you, deciding himself who you belong to, simply because he can. Gross how every single thrust of his pervert cock into your squishy little cunt is purposeful, precise as he picks up the pace as soon as you're settled, stroking himself off as if you were his favourite onahole, dirtying your insides like it was a practiced routine, a natural conclusion to his relationship with you. And you look so cute taking your big brothers cock, you can't expect him to resist those soft sounds, right? Coaxing him into fucking you harder with the pretty pout you give him, convincing him to grip one hand at your waist to help bounce you back down his cock with tandem movements, a sly smirk tugging on his lips at the increased volume of your moans, breaking out into breathless laughter above you when you arch your back into his touch.

"Feelin' good?" He slurs for you, balls slapping against your ass with the quicker pace he humps you into, wet skin on skin echoing in his room to match the sweet suck of your cunt, gushing slick around the base of his cock every time he bullies his way to the hilt. Tiny fucking cunt, making him feel so good, shivering into you with every heavy fuck forward, trembling with you every time he drags your cunt back down his length. He'll fuck you into his shape if it's the last thing he ever does, completely and utterly in love with how good you make him feel, and you aren't even doing any of the work. "C'mon, tell big brother how it feels— fuck, got s'tight baby," He breaks out into a genuine smile, immediately clocking on to the fact that you're getting off to hearing his voice, like a fucking degenerate. Just like him, yeah? Two peas in a filthy, perverted, cock dribbling, cunt squirming, sibling fucking pod. "Better than your boyfriend, right? S'okay, y'can be— shit, please be honest with me—" He can't help but to want to hear you stroke his ego, pounding you into his bed sheets like it was any other normal weekend. The springs in his bed squeaking under his fast fucks, you should be thankful that he's pinning you in place, effectively locked you in under him as he ruts against you unfairly, hand on your hip as your legs cling to has waist for dear life.

And it's difficult to hear you through the babbled moans he fucks out of you, high pitched sobs of enjoyment for his cock to twitch at, cute little cunt clenching around him every time he tugs you down his girth. And then when he buries himself aaaall the way inside, tip kissing against your sweet spot almost on purpose as if to make the act of talking itself difficult for you, your words get cut off with a pretty silent gasp. He can't help himself, you're just too cute when you're acting so helpless for him. "It's— Seb—! Better, promise— so good." You eventually choke out, interrupted by sweet hiccups and sniffles, doing so well not only by taking his cock, but by calming his unjust jealousy with such simple words. Because he fucking believes you when you say it too, how can he not? The bright blush you wear on your cheeks, eyes squeezed tightly shut as your back arches so prettily for him, voice all strained and interrupted by whines and sighs with every little jerk of his cock deep inside of you. He knew he could fuck you better, because big brothers are always right, remember?

"Bigger too, yeah? Fuckin' you so deep, feel that?" He urges you, hand on your tummy to apply the smallest amount of pressure, but it's enough to have you fucking sobbing on his cock. Little cunt gripping him so tightly that he can barely move for a second or two, in awe of how pretty you look when creaming his cock for the first time ever as your hole starts to convulse around the base of it, and he's caught unaware. Like a deer in headlights, his eyes wide open and blown black with lust, trying to imprint in his mind the cute face of bliss you wear when jerking his cock off with your orgasm for use later tonight, he's never felt so honestly good before; it's so fucking unfair.

He'd liked to have fucked you for longer, fold you in half like he's always wanted to. But as he's quickly following suit, triggered by your intense wave of pleasure, his own orgasm takes hold of him and he's gripping your waist with both hands so harshly. Digging his nails into your soft skin, bucking sloppily, messy little sounds reaching his ears as you writhe and whine for him, your name falling from his lips in a soft sigh of sheer desperation. Still yet fucking you full as he shoots his big brother cum into your tiny cunt, wincing at the way his load seeps out around his cock to stain his sheets all sticky; just like your insides.

And he doesn't stop fucking you, only slows down. Even when he's done and fully milked, he continues to rut into you, trying to prolong how good he feels in a vain effort to quell the bubbling jealousy in his heart.

Because even now, after he's fucked you thoroughly, promised you that he'd take care of you, he can't help but to indulge a little further. You've yet to answer his question, so like a good big brother, he reminds you of it while you catch your breath.

"Bigger too, right?" He laughs without pause, head hanging low to try and collecting himself after exerting so much energy into making you cum on his cock, trying to reconcile with how fucking pretty you looked just moments ago, and how he just knows (big brother intuition) that you've ruined him for anyone else now. "Should jus' start using me instead—" He heaves, cringing as he inevitably has to pull out of your warm little cunt and some of his seed spills down your ass with him. But fuck if it isn't the prettiest thing he's ever seen either, all sloppy with seed, so cute.

"Promise I'll always be there to help y'out always. Like a good big brother."

[greekmythcomix]

Fantasy Odyssey cast

I’m working on the choose-your-own-path Odyssey book/game today, and I thought a good way of trying to write a bit faster (and stop being distracted by the fact that I have a day off from the world to do with as I like and I’m spending it stuck to the computer) would be to visualise the characters as actors I like. Or at least work out whom I have been visualising all this time. I’ll add to this list as I write other sections.

NB: I live in the UK, was a child in the 90s, and like comedies and dramas, so these are probably going to end up all British and aren’t necessarily going to be very exciting choices! Please feel free to make your own suggestions.

PS: I know there’s a film coming out with Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope coming out in a year or so, but that casting is just too serious for me (and Binoche is forever Antigone to me after using her NT run to teach the play for coursework, so…)

--------------------

Odysseus:

Michael Sheen

Odysseus is complicated. Apparently he looks like a country boob, but has a voice that commands all and speaks words like falling snowflakes. He can lie at a second’s notice, but is also loyal and magnetic enough for his wife to have wanted to wait for him all this time. The role needs Sheen: the sheer *range* of the man, who can be sweet *and* prickly inside one sentence. His Nero is terrifying yet also somehow vulnerable. He also looks excellently the part - stocky, sturdy, with a woolly beard and hair (perfect streak of weathered white through the front). He’d be captivating.

Telemachus:

Alex Lawther

I’m a bit sick of portrayals of Telemachus making him a total one-note whinge bag (you know which portrayal I mean in particular) and in the text he’s angry yet well-behaved and does a lot of growing up. He’s been brought up by only his clever mother and her loyal servants/enslaved people so he should be a little soft but sharp around the edges (the suitors are almost all the same age as him give or take a handful of years), and he also takes after his father - Homer really paints that comparison on thick - so he should be clever too.

That’s Lawther in a nutshell.

And, if you look at photos of a younger Michael Sheen, there’s a lot of similarity there, so that works too. (And they’ve both played Hamlet, so that would be fun to talk about)

Menelaus

Brendan Gleeson/ Brian Gleeson

The film Troy rather ruined this one, as Brendan Gleeson played Menelaus rather perfectly for me. Only I’m imagining he gets a lot nicer once he gets Helen back. However, he's rather aged out of the part, but his son Brian is almost old enough to play him (yes, nepotism). In Frank of Ireland he’s a lil bit daft and that’s how I’m seeing Menelaus in Book 4, all memories and wrapped around his wife’s littlest finger.

Helen

Right now, possibly Emilia Clarke, but I’m not certain (see below)

Helen is a confident trickster. She’s effectively been abused her whole life, treated as a prize and a sexual object since childhood, can’t trust anyone, and is now leaning into it (see Book 3). But all she wants is stability. It’s probably a choice a little influenced by Clarke’s former roles, but her apple-cheeked visage and winning smile suggest she can get herself out of trouble by getting men to fight eachother for the privilege.

EDIT: wait wait wait... let's go left-field and get Natasia Demetriou. Her Helen would be manipulative, dismissive, sometimes incredibly sweet and naive but only on the surface. She'll dope you to make sure you don't ruin a good time. She's in charge. Oh yes.

Penelope

Nina Sosanya/Olivia Colman

Our Penelope is so sassy, totally on it (Odysseus-in-disguise praises her as a ‘king’, the highest era-appropriate compliment on her rule he can give), but willing to make way for her son. She’s clever, no-nonsense, totally in love but also a realist. I couldn’t pick between these two brilliant actors so I’m picking bits of them: Sosanya’s needliness and Colman’s ability to dismiss you kindly and both of their wit.

Athene

Ruth Wilson

Calculating, sexy, kind of ruthless. Enough said.

Diomedes

Kayvan Novak

He’s not in it for long, though there’s potential for plenty of flashbacks. Diomedes is pretty serious, businesslike, a bit meat-headed, deadly as a sword between your ribs, and while Novak is a lot funnier than that I think he could pull off the character without being unlikeable.

Antinous and Eurymachus

Timothee Chalamet and… TBD

Ok so technically Chalamet is a teensy bit younger than Lawther rather than older, but it’s within tolerance. I think he could pull off older and haughtier, full of insouciance knowing how much he’s worth compared to the rest of them, and properly intimidating and manipulative. The murder plot the suitors attempt against Telemachus becomes a bit of a dark peer prank, with Chalamet as the leader of a group of obnoxious rich boys who only have one impediment between them as suitors and one of them as king, and I can see a face-off between Chalamet-Antinous and Lawther-Telemachus with Ruth Wilson’s delighted Athene bobbing between them.

Eurylochus and Polites

Simon Farnaby and Jim Howick (Ghosts, Horrible Histories)

Obviously these two need bigger roles than in the original text, so they pop up in the alternate storylines. Eurylochus is smarmy and annoying, and Polites is an adorable yes-man. At one point Odysseus wonders whether or not he should actually cut Eurylochus’ head off, and I can see Farnaby and Sheen facing off in my head. And there have to be some comedic characters in here to relieve the tension.

More like 20 years, amirite?

Eumaeus

Not sure yet. Eumaeus is such an important and underrated character, earnest and loyal to the last, but with the bearing of a prince (as he once was before becoming enslaved). I’m fluctuating between Idris Elba, Riz Ahmed and David Tennant, which is a bit mad, but I’m getting back to writing this bit soon and I may have a better idea after they’ve sat down for an interminable amount of time to eat roast piglet. But, now I've seen Good Omens 2, maybe just Michael Tennant with heart-eyes for Odysseus is pretty accurate.

I am desperate to get Matt Berry in here somewhere. I think he’s going to be Medon the herald, who has covered himself in an ox-hide and is hiding under a chair during the suitor-slaughter. BUT WOULDN'T HE BE BRILLIANT AS AGAMEMNON???

Proteus, god of the Sea

Proteus is both king of Memphis in mythology, but also a sea-god (like Nereus) who shepherds seals and cannot lie. I've made them different characters, but I think they could pull off being played by the same actor. Proteus of the sea is a shape-changer, changing into a lion, snake, water and fire (!), but is often thought of as being half-man-half-seasnake.

Hello Sir Derek Jacobi, I love you but am also very cross with you right now, be a seasnake-seal-shepherd.

I’ll edit this post when I think of more.

[cosmicdanger]

personal whinging lol

idk man like given the state of everything i know i probably have longer than a year to find a new place, but my roomie just offhandedly mentioning "so me and my bf wanna live alone in about a year, year and a half" as a passing comment in the middle of a conversation about other things a few months ago has been haunting me this whole time. and she hasn't brought it up since. and i dont really want to bring it up because i'll cry. like. i'm not sure what i'm going to do. rent in this area is obscene; people are renting out "private rooms" in their houses for 950. you can't have animals, you still have to "contribute to household expenses". 300 sq ft studio apartments are 1k a month, if you're LUCKY. people are renting out RVs as "guest cottages" for just as much, if not more. i've seen multiple adds where people were renting out their lawns (no utilities, no structure, literally just.... their lawn..) for 800 a month. and that's not even including the fact that on top of paying for moving, I'd have to put down hundreds of dollars in deposit, first and last rent, and pass a financial check. like. i've been looking for a job that can pay me decently enough that i can scrape by but the competition is so fierce. :") i've been trying not to think about it while thinking about it nonstop

[hunxi-after-hours]

Hunxi ive a question please. Re: your twt book vaguing post tags-using diacritcs for transliterated Chinese names is bad. i fully accept that as you said its Othering and for sure we need to not do that. But like for they help give an idea of pronunciation so im wondering if theres something else i should be doing for that now....like how exactly should i work out how things should sound instead??

hey anon! sorry, should clarify — I'm not against the use of diacritics to denote pronunciation of Mandarin characters at all! I was specifically whinging about the use of diacritics for a Chinese name in an English novel that never otherwise 1) brought up any other Chinese names or 2) used diacritics or any other foreign language markers/scripts elsewhere in the (checks notes) 300+ pages despite its ostensibly "international" scope (I mean there was some French in there but there are so many English loanwords from French that a ç really doesn't count okay)

my particular beef with the use of diacritics to denote names in Chinese emerges wholly from the context I usually see it in: predominantly, a text where the language surrounding the transliterated diacritics is uncritically in English. it's like. So why are you putting diacritics on the obviously Chinese name? What authenticity do you think it lends you? Who are you performing it for? Not a native Chinese speaker, that's for sure — for starters, most native Chinese speakers don't bother with diacritics in script (in fact, much of fan/internet culture deliberately leans on the ambiguity of meaning by using homophonously interchangeable words, or the pinyin without any sort of identifying markers beyond just context). secondly, diacritics are plain annoying to type, so most bilingual speakers I've seen who want to denote tone just place a number after the pinyin, like 妈 ma1 麻 ma2 马 ma3 骂 ma4

and heck, I spent a few years in the Anglophone side of Sinology, and it's not even academic standard to use diacritics when rendering the pinyin of relevant Chinese characters, so like. what is a dark academia fantasy novel that otherwise never brings up anything remotely Chinese trying to prove with its usage of diacritics, beyond accidentally but undeniably participating in the ongoing practice of othering Chinese language, culture, and bodies?

because I feel like it must be said, I have nothing against AO3's tagging system that occasionally uses diacritics in character names/tags on Chinese-language fandoms. those diacritics are there and remain there for reasons beyond what I'm complaining about in this post, including but not limited to site infrastructure and fandom linguistic drift. this post is NOT about that particular corner of AO3 discourse, and please don't take it as such

I guess I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to engage with Chinese as a language and Chinese-ness as a nebulous element in English-language fiction and fanwork. for example, we can look at fandom's increasing vocabulary of untranslated, transliterated Chinese terms. people often leave honorifics like 宗主 zongzhu / sect leader or 公子 gongzi / young master untranslated now, which was most certainly not the case, hm, two years ago. heck, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I had a direct hand in increasing the proliferation of casual untranslated/transliterated Chinese in Anglophone fandom. at the same time, I do wonder about the motives of style and when/why certain terms are chosen to remain untranslated. for me, it's always been a matter of language and rhythm — again, I watch all of these shows in Chinese with Chinese subs, so quite frankly I don't even know what an English translation should sound like until I scribble one out. the sounds and rhythms of the language are so fundamental to how I engage with these texts that I occasionally find myself writing fic or dialogue or even meta bilingually, to get the cadence and tone of what I'm trying to say right in my head, before I go back and re-translate those words, phrases, even entire sentences into English

this is not to say that the rhythms and sounds of voice and language are unimportant to the viewer who isn't fluent in Chinese — they certainly are, which is precisely why watching these shows can be such a powerful language-learning supplement. but the fact remains that a Chinese-fluent viewer engages with the linguistic fabric of these texts in a different manner than a non-fluent viewer. this isn't a flex, or judgment, or a bid for superiority — merely a critical acknowledgement of a difference in perspectives

where it gets really interesting and thorny, though, is the production of non-Chinese fanwork for a Chinese text. I'm thinking primarily of the points brought up in this phenomenally thoughtful meta on chinoiserie and international MXTX fan production that I'll never forgive for beating me to the punch of using chinoiserie as a theoretical framework for engaging with contemporary Chinese media BUT I'm getting distracted. these are the lines that feel particularly relevant:

... as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people?

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

and of course, the line that haunts my most liminal, linguistically-porous hours:

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese?

neither I nor the author of this meta intend for our posts to be call-outs for Anglophone fandom, but both of us are definitely interested in how and why Anglophone creators engage with the essentially Chinese elements of these texts. I think about the many months during which people asked me to come up with personal names, courtesy names, titles, alternate names for at least half the cast of CQL. it was, I concede, fun at first — like a scavenger hunt, a logic puzzle, and trivia rolled into one. how could I leverage my proficiency in language and paltry knowledge of literature (and somewhat better knowledge of literary databases on the internet) to scheme my way into a richly-textured name based on a specific set of circumstances laid down by an anonymous ask in my inbox? but as time went on, the whole process felt more tedious and exploitative than anything, so I stopped doing it. even now, I still take emotional/psychic damage from whenever someone, even a friend, especially a friend, asks me to help them with Chinese naming. if your fanfiction is written in English, and is intended for an English-speaking audience, what does it matter if this title or courtesy name or personal name has an actual, translated equivalent in Chinese? how and why has this name-based ornamentalism become the unspoken standard for a nebulous kind of 'authenticity' in Anglophone fanfiction?

perhaps it is because language, with our electronic dictionaries and language-learning apps and the ever-present Google Translate, often ends up becoming the most accessible aspect of Chineseness — easier to look up a word or several than it is to try and track down a Real Live Chinese Person who can answer questions about cultural norms and etiquettes, histories and values. at the same time, when a writer’s research begins and ends at this superficial level, I can’t help but read it as tokenization, as ornamentalism, a way of telegraphing an authenticity that nevertheless feels cheap and flimsy in my hands

and that’s another crucial aspect of it — in my hands. I, as a person who operates at the particular nexus of privileges, experiences, and expertise that I do, have particular standards. as a reader, I cannot be mollified or hoodwinked by a cursory paragraph generalizing the principles of “Eastern thought” (I’m back to vagueing this book again), because I know this shit and I absolutely will be the reader to point out the fact that this erases the plethora and diversity of the manifold schools of Chinese thought alone, which doesn’t even get into Japanese philosophy or the mind-bending acrobatics of Buddhist reception, and this paragraph leaned on the most basic, essentialized, Orientalized understanding of a singular principle of something that one might be able to identify as Daoism, if all one knew about Daoism was the yin-yang symbol. what I’m TRYING to say in this already overlong post is that I recognize that I am a single, subjective person with extremely personal preferences, and I hardly believe that my preferences should be generalized outwards into fandom norms or cultural practices. I mean, it’d be neat if they were, but I don’t pretend I’m infallible enough for that to occur unproblematically. I just think that we could all stand to think about the complex crosscurrents of modernity and history, (neo)imperialism and (post/de)colonialism, language and engagement, fandom and fan production, ornamentalism and Orientalism

I've wandered very, very far afield from where this post started, which was vagueing a book that has little to nothing to do with cnovel/cdrama fandom, but tl;dr anon there's absolutely nothing wrong with diacritics in language learning, I just get real touchy when I suspect the usage of diacritics as an exoticized linguistic ornament in Anglophone texts

[kstewdeux]

@inukagfluffweek

August 14, 2021 - Family

Sure

Summary: Inuyasha & Kagome discuss starting a family

“Knee,” Kagome whined softly as her foot prodded her husband’s leg so it would go where she wanted, “Knee Inuyasha.”

With a tired sigh, Inuyasha slid his foot up until it rested comfortably against his thigh and adjusted his hips so falling asleep in that position wouldn’t make him lock up. It was a tried and true ritual. One that he didn’t mean to perpetuate but Kagome was always the last one to go to bed. Always. So by the time she changed and brushed her hair and washed her face and did whatever else she felt inclined to do, he was typically asleep in a position he found comfortable. Kagome told him he slept like a vampire but having met and fought vampires Inuyasha had no idea what she was talking about. Besides, he didn’t know why it had always seemed to matter how he slept. Sitting up had just been how he’d done it for over a hundred years and even though three years had gone by, he still wasn’t used to those while laying down business. Having a body trained not to move wasn’t ideal for laying down and he usually woke up stiff. His muscles locking up for absolutely no reason out of habit. Sitting up, having muscles that locked was useful. Not so for how the rest of the world went down for the night.

Still, Kagome slept laying down. Always had. Always would. And he planned on sleeping next to her for the rest of her hopefully long life. Which killed the monk. Even occasional overnight exorcisms were out of the question. Sunup to sundown only.

“That better?” he yawned and Kagome nodded against the arm she was using as a pillow while Inuyasha’s hand absently played with tendrils of her hair.

One of the things he liked best was that in this position he could feel her ribs expand with each breath and the steady rhythm was soothing. Every couple found a sleeping position that worked for them it would seem and with his primary issue being hardwired survival anxiety, a cuddling position where no backs were being exposed worked best.

Problem with this position was that it’d make co-sleeping with an infant dangerous. Not that…that they were trying or even planning on having brats. Hell, they’d never spoken about it but by some unspoken understanding, they’d been careful. Kinda. Sometimes. Okay, fine, mainly they’d been whinging it and been lucky as hell.

But…you know…maybe one day…

Lips twitching upward, Inuyasha allowed himself to imagine what their own puffy blob of flesh would look like. Newborn babies…well they weren’t exactly the cutest things in the planet. More they looked like boiled prunes - both in color and looks. And the screams. But once they hit a few months old they definitely started looking more like tiny people and you could start seeing the parents. From a strangers perspective anyway. Miroku’s twins had always looked identical but they went through phases and who they favored depended on which parent was standing closest….

God he hoped whatever they had one day - not that he was even sure they’d have babies - was a girl. He’d make a decent looking boy or girl. After all, minus the coloring, he looked just like his mother who had been very pretty. Kagome…Kagome would only make a pretty girl. Sota sure as hell didn’t look like her though so maybe there were some okay looking boy genes in there but Inuyasha for the life of him could not imagine what a Kagome-looking boy would even be.

Nah. If they did one day have a…

“Why you purring?” Kagome hummed bemusedly in such a way that left him powerless to stop said noise. A noise that he’d only discovered he made since she fell back into his life. At first it bothered him that she called the chest growl thing a ‘purr’ but seeing as how he didn’t have a better name, he just rolled with it.

“Dunno,” he laughed softly.

“What were you thinking about?” Kagome hummed as she slowly and awkwardly began trying to roll towards him - something which had the purring noise stop immediately. It didn’t matter that his brain knew they were safe and there was no need to worry about being exposed. His body though….was hard wired to worry.

She froze.

“I didn’t…”

“S’not the question. It’s the stupid back thing,” Inuyasha reassured her wearily before running one hand over his face, “Look, I was thinking about us having kids, alright?”

The slow smile that bloomed on her lips as she sat up brought the soft purring sound back.

“And what were your initial thoughts?” Kagome asked curiously and the purring sound intensified.

“How newborns look like meat sacks,” he offered as he stretched his legs out and yawned, “And how they’re loud. And obnoxious. And how they shit everywhere…”

“Ah but said things made you happy,” Kagome observed and shrugging, Inuyasha didn’t deny it. Couldn’t anyway given the vibrations rumbling from his chest. Well, that was what they assumed it meant anyway. Could be he was dying or something. Wouldn’t that be the final kick in the balls.

“Thinking about it and living it are two different things. Reality is I’d fuck them up,” Inuyasha countered with an ill-checked half-grin, “You’d have to go around fixing them all the time.”

“You’d be a good daddy,” Kagome soothed as she lay back down and stared up at the ceiling - allowing Inuyasha to fully relax by covering her back. She never really thought of Inuyasha as the anxious type but apparently that was his secret to surviving so long and once they’d figured it out and pinned down his triggers to better avoid them, he’d actually been significantly less…grumpy. In fact, he could be downright pleasant most of the time.

Miroku and Sango had told her on more than one occasion that Inuyasha seemed, at times, like a completely new person. In public, he was still by and large snippy and obstinate but among friends and in private, his natural state of being sans anxiety was much more Kagome-like than any of them previously believed. Looking back, he had always seemed to find comfort in being around others but he was never what anyone would call sensitive or attune to emotional needs of others. In recent months, however, he’d been surprisingly observant, kind and gentle.

Well, actually it wasn’t all that surprising. The gentleness yes but the rest of it? No. Every time one of them lost it during the quest, Inuyasha was always the one who stepped up and did exactly the right thing to bring his friends’ minds back to center. In fact, his brand of abrasive encouragement was what saved their souls from being devoured by the moth demon’s trap. Whenever any of them felt like giving up, Inuyasha had been the one to encourage them to keep going. In some ways Inuyasha was so forgiving it was beyond understanding. For all his insults and for all his aggression, Inuyasha could be…damningly gracious. Kikyo being, well, Kikyo. Sango stealing his sword. Miroku trying to kill him. Shippo pulling trick after trick. None of those things ever drove him away.

That wasn’t to say Inuyasha didn’t get irritable or react poorly when said things happened but he did tend to let things go eventually and truly act like nothing happened. And his brand of love was protection and providing so there was that too.

So maybe it wasn’t all that surprising that being kind and gentle was his calm state of being. Now that he was more comfortable and no one was in imminent danger of dying a horrible, painful death; now that Kagome had been returned to him and everything worked out, how his natural being manifested was different was all.

But his anxiety still did rear it’s ugly head on occasion. New things. Unexpected things. Any slightly uncomfortable thing and he’d instantly snap his abrasive behavior back into place. There were also his triggers of course but those could be negated.

For example, he never slept with his back exposed and now that Kagome was, sorta, an extension of himself, his body decided to make him skittish at night if she too was left ‘open to attack.’ Not fun for anyone involved - the amount of twitching alone had kept them both awake until they figured out the issue.

“Don’t know how to be a father,” he sighed sadly - the purring sound grounding to halt, “So maybe…maybe kids isn’t something we should do. What…what if I hurt them? They won’t be like me. They’ll be mostly human. I’ll be too rough.”

“No because of that fear, I imagine you’d treat them like they might shatter,” Kagome pointed out and with that, Inuyasha reached over to intertwine their fingers.

“I could turn one day. You…or they might get hurt and I’ll make it worse,” he offered in a small voice, “I’m dangerous. I shouldn’t…and what if they can’t control what I give them? What if they’re born and…and they’re just like that all the time?”

Turning her head to look at his defeated face, Kagome sighed and waited for him to look at her. When he did, the worry mixed with longing made her heart ache. He wanted kids. That much was clear from his expression as was the fact that he didn’t trust himself.

“Inuyasha, I always bring you back, don’t I?” she pointed out and with a faint nod of acknowledgment, her statement seemed to soothe some of the anxiety that needed checking, “And our baby will be part me too. So it’ll have both….”

“It could purify itself. Hurt itself,” he countered shakily, “And we’re happy just the two of us. What if I’m a bad father and you end up hating me? What if it ends up being a mistake? Ruins everything?”

“I will never abandon you,” Kagome promised as she brought his hand up to her lips and gave his thumb a quick kiss, “Never.”

A nod and a relieved sigh. Like he knew that to be the case but wanted to hear it anyway. There was still some tension though which meant his fears hadn’t been addressed completely and so Kagome waited for him to continue. It had taken a few months but anymore he discussed everything with her. From feelings to fears to his past. The only thing off the table was Kikyo but that was more her hang up than his.

From his perspective, he found himself much lighter when he heard her opinion rather than just imaging what she was thinking. His inner monologue was usually depressing and rather cruel. Always assuming everyone hated him or was upset with him in some way. That everyone thought the worst. How he needed to receive love was verbal affirmations. Kagome would’ve thought it was touch but she discovered words were much more effective. What would’ve happened if she just told him back then how deeply he was loved? But, alas, she didn’t and it didn’t matter. In fact, that would’ve been worse. What if he achieved this and then had her taken away?

“I mean, do you want kids? You’ve never really said…” Inuyasha asked wearily and Kagome knew if she said yes, he’d do whatever she wanted. Even if it terrified him.

No. This needed to be his choice. His decision.

“What do you want?”

For a long moment, he was quiet before he swallowed and closed his eyes.

“I think you want them,” he answered evasively before pulling up one knee and fidgeting slightly, “And I don’t know. I want…I want, you know, the type of things Sango and Miroku have with their brats. And what I had with my mother before she got sick. I want someone to…to…you know, there’s just some type of connection. I…I wouldn’t mind being a brat’s person.”

“Their person?” Kagome asked curiously and Inuyasha let out a long sigh as he swayed his knee.

“Like…like you know they’ll take care of you. You scrape your knee. They fix it. You get hungry, they give you snacks. You get sad and just…just they….,” Inuyasha floundered before seemingly choosing a word to describe what he meant, “A helper. I wouldn’t mind being their helper.”

“You’d be the best helper,” Kagome sighed affectionately and Inuyasha eyes fluttered open.

“You really think so? I don’t have the…the warm thing going…”

Nodding, Kagome gently rolled onto her side and scooted her back against his torso. Like clockwork, he assumed their former position and sighed contentedly.

“You…” she belatedly started to address his comment but he was already off to the races.

“I could work on that though. You know, with the twins,” Inuyasha opined hopefully - like he was trying to convince her that he could be a good father and encourage her to say yes, “See…see if I could get better at the whole…whole warm thing. I bet I could get the hang of it in a month or two. I mean look at how fast I mastered Tessaiga. You wouldn’t have to worry about…about me scarring the kid.”

“That has never been a concern,” Kagome chided affectionately earning a frustrated grunt. Oh yeah, he was trying to get her to just make the decision or convince her to just agree with his decision. A decision he’d clearly already made.

“Inuyasha, I know you’d be a great daddy,” Kagome finally yawned - earning a faint blush, “But don’t push yourself just because you think I want this. I only want babies if you do too. I’m honestly okay either way.”

She felt him inhale deeply.

“I think…I think I’ll see if…if I can do the warm thing then we can decide,” Inuyasha hummed before adding hesistantly, “I think I can do it but I wanna be sure.”

“I…”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure I could do it,” Inuyasha continued to think out loud, “But I just want to be sure, ya know? And I want you to be sure I’m good for it.”

At this, Kagome laughed softly despite herself - the hand by her head sliding up to cup his. Curling her fingers between his fingers, she pressed her fingertips against his palm.

“I know you can do…”

“J-just think about it,” Inuyasha interrupted shakily as he gave her hand a light squeeze “A-and I’ll think about it. And we can…talk about it when we’re sure.”

The miko grinned and replied with a soft laugh, “Sure.”

“Will you be mad if I…I think about it and say no?” he asked hesitantly and Kagome shook her head - making some of the tension seep out of him. For a long time, he was quiet and Kagome was just about to pass out when she heard his voice - small and timid - whisper those three little words he didn’t say that often.

“I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know. You show me all the time,” she affirmed and with a timid half-smile, Inuyasha flexed his hand ever so.

“Just want to make sure you know…”

“I do.”

“And you still love me, right?”

“Always.”

“Okay. Just want to make sure…”

[sunsetcurvecuddles]

If you're still doing the prompts you should do the gang (alex, julie, luke, reggie) and (platonic) cuddles!!! (I'm so soft for them and have read every jatp fic tagged platonic cuddles KFKZKDKD)

you know what ask and you shall receive. i wanted to write core4/juke cuddles today so here’s a mindless piece with cuddles and nothing else.

sit tight like bookends // 1.5k words // ao3 link in reblogs!

--

Luke’s kind of having a terrible day.

It’s not terrible for any reason. He’s just grouchy. For starters, he misses being alive. It’s nice to be able to touch Julie now, and to occasionally be visible to people with her help, but it’s not the same. On a day like this in the past, he might have gone for a hard run, just to sweat and feel his heart race. Or maybe taken a nap. Or eaten a bunch. He knows ghosts don’t get hungry, but he misses being able to eat just for the sake of it sometimes, for the comfort of warm food on a cold day.

Not that he can feel the cold anymore either. But whatever. You get the point.

So he's having this terrible, grouchy day, and he ends up spread-eagled on Julie's bed, even though he knows he's not meant to be in her room. It just sucks how long she's gone at school every day, and he knows he's not supposed to visit her at school even more than he's not supposed to be in her room. He's not even prying through her stuff this time! He's just innocently feeling sorry for himself.

Even with his eyes closed, he can feel and hear the presence of someone else poofing into the room. Then he hears Alex's voice, "Dude, you know you're not supposed to be in here when Julie's not home."

Luke cracks open one eye. Alex is standing with his hands in his pockets, but his shoulders aren't all up against his ears like they get when he's anxious. More than anything, he looks that particular, Alex-brand mixture of irritated and concerned, eyebrows raised, lips pressed together, eyebrows furrowed. "C'mon, man. What gives?"

Luke sighs, long and dramatic, and snaps, "I don't know, okay?!" mostly just because in the moment, it feels good to be a little terse. Then the moment ends, and he feels bad, his stomach turning all tight and guilty. "Sorry, Lex," he groans, dragging his hands over his own face and then keeping them there, so he doesn't have to see Alex's expression melt into that other Alex-brand look, the one where he's halfway between knowing and affectionate. Somehow, that face is worse than the irritated-concerned one. "I'm just... I dunno. I don't wanna be a ghost any more. And I miss food. And Julie's still not home. Today sucks."

"That's fair enough," says Alex, like he always has when Luke is whinging for no reason, because Alex only ever tells him to shut up or be reasonable or quit whining when he's really being ridiculous, and Luke appreciates that, that Alex knows when to let him ramble but knows when enough is enough. Luke feels the mattress move as Alex sits on the end of the bed. "Like, you shouldn't be such an asshole about it—" Luke can't help but smile at that, knows Alex is grinning too without even looking "—but it's still fair." A moment of silence. In his mind's eye, Luke can see Alex staring into the carpet like it holds some answers for him, thinking hard enough it basically counts as a workout. "Is there anything I can do to help?" Alex asks eventually, soft. He means it.

Luke shrugs. It's nice in this dark little cave he's created with his hands. "I don't know, man."

"Okay," says Alex. The mattress shifts more under Luke. Then, Luke feels his right side glow with warmth as Alex lies down beside him. Sometimes he wonders if since they became ghosts, he can actually feel his boys' auras, or something, because he's sure this sense of care and steadiness didn't radiate off Alex quite like this when they were alive. Maybe it's been since the Orpheum, actually. Luke can't really remember. "C'mere," Alex encourages him. "I'm good for hugs today, if you want some."

Maybe once upon a time Luke would have pretended not to be eager, but even then, he would have done a bad job, and now he doesn't even bother with the act. Immediately, he takes his hands off his face, blinking against the return of the light as he turns to Alex, flings an arm across Alex's chest and a leg over Alex's hip, snuggling up tight until he's plastered to the side of Alex's body. Alex just laughs, quiet, extends his arm out so Luke can pillow his head on Alex's shoulder, one hand coming up to mess up Luke's hair even more than it already was.

For a moment, they lie there together, Luke relaxing until he feels more and more like his body and Alex's body are synced, breaths coming in and out at a similar pace. The bitter, jittery feeling in his spine eases back, lets go of his tongue, so he feels less likely to bite at whoever comes close.

Which is good timing, because there's another whoosh, and this weight lands behind him, on the bed as soon as they arrive.

"You guys are cuddling without me?" Reggie says, but he doesn't sound upset. In fact, he sounds delighted that there's cuddling happening, period. There's scuffling, and then two thuds, because Reggie knows better than to let his shoes touch Julie's bed, and then Luke feels a different warmth, sweeter than Alex's, more caramelised, and Reggie spoons against Luke's back, his nose burying into Luke's neck and one arm laying all the way over him to rest on Alex's chest.

"We were cuddling without you, because Luke was being a miserable grouch, but we've been interrupted," Alex says primly, and as Luke manages a mildly offended hey!, Reggie laughs, not phased at all. Luke can feel it as it vibrates from Reggie's chest to his own back, the tangibility of his joy making Luke feel warm from the inside. Reggie and Alex start bickering over the top of his head, and he doesn't really pay attention to them. Some part of him is trying to string some lyrics together, about being warm, about being able to feel someone else laughing because they're pressed so closely to you that their happiness feels just as much your own. But he's not quite sure what he's trying to say, yet.

They're still there when Julie gets home from school. Luke hears the door open and close, feels Reggie go tense, like he's worried they're going to get yelled at. But Julie only sounds kind of exasperated when she says, "Seriously, guys? Boundaries?"

"Luke's having a bad day," Reggie explains right away.

"Not anything serious," Alex corrects him, "just in a bad mood."

Luke nods and wriggles a bit between his boys, sits up so he can look at Julie properly.

The feeling of his heart in his mouth when he sees her will apparently never stop. She looks tired and ruffled from her day at school, hair a cloud around her face where he can see she was running her fingers through it as she thought in class, skirt crumpled at the hem where she would have wrinkled it in her fist, rubbed the fabric between her fingers. She dumps her backpack on the carpet and offers him a grin, and he can't remember what in the world he could have been grumpy about. If being a ghost brought him to her, being a ghost is awesome.

He looks around at the bed and realises they're going to have to rearrange, but Alex and Reggie seem on the same page at the same time, because they're his favourites and he loves them and he wants them close to him always. They move, adjusting and shuffling around, until a spot for Julie appears in between Alex and Luke. With a relieved sigh, she flops down, and Luke might be fooling himself, but he thinks he feels her energy, too. It's softer than Alex or Reggie, enveloping, like warm water scented with something beautiful.

She leans over Luke to kiss Reggie's forehead hello, then kisses Luke on the mouth (she tastes like the cherry bubblegum Flynn always carries around), then she turns to kiss Alex on the cheek. "I have homework to do later," she says, but it comes out a little garbled as she surprises herself with a yawn. Luke, Alex and Reggie exchange a fond look over the top of her head — she'll be asleep before she knows it. Alex nods his head at the clock on her desk and mouths I'll wake her up, because Luke and Reggie both have absolutely zero time perception.

Luke wraps his arms around Julie's waist and holds her close to him, and she settles in, Alex curling up to hold her from behind while Reggie moves up a bit, so he can press himself to Luke and run his hands gently through Julie's hair at the same time. Their different kinds of warm all stitch themselves together, weaving over Luke's body like a blanket, like a shield. All that's wrong with the world is on the other side, kept away from him by Alex's fingers rubbing little circles into Luke's side, by the feeling of Julie's chest rising and falling with her breaths, by the movement of Reggie's arms over his head. By all of them curled as close to him as they can be.

Luke's day isn't so terrible after all.

--

jatp taglist (lmk if you want to be added or removed!!): @queenmolina @nickalicious @bi-reginald @malecacidd @burntchromas @jughead-is-canonically-aroace @cinnamonstickrayofsunlight @chickwiththepurpleguitar @fairylightsandrainydays @joyandthephantoms @fighttoshine @michelangelinda @queenofthequillandink @random-nerd-3 @silent-silver-slip @apolo81 @evashmz @bagoffriedrice @thedeathdeelers

[imaginejamesandsirius]

hello! can you write prongsfoot one where James is injured. Maybe after one of Snape's special hexes. Or maybe a potion which has bad influence on James and it takes a while to recognize it. He frays out day by day (hope i used the right word lol) and finally Sirius is the one who recognizes it more than anyone. so thanks in advance

If you don't that's cool too. and i hope you have a good day

"Are you okay?" Sirius asked, looking concerned. He didn't do that very often. He worried about James pretty damn often-- James knew that for a fact-- but he usually didn't show it. He nudged and teased, and he stared quite a bit, but that could be because they were dating, and not because he was worried. It was pretty even odds, he thought. Right now, Sirius looked out and out concerned for him, and that wasn't normal. It wasn't how they operated.

Even though James felt fine, Sirius looking at him like that made him feel as if there was something wrong with him. "I'm fine," he said, because he was.

"Are you sure?"

"Do I have a reason not to be?"

"You've seemed really tired, lately."

"Everyone's tired; it's last minute studying for NEWT's."

Sirius hesitated. Another uncharacteristic thing.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm worried about you," he said. Just like that, he said it. He didn't hide it behind false confidence or pretend that he was thinking about something else. "You've been off lately, and it's like you don't even know that something's going on with you."

"If you already think that something's wrong with me, then why'd you bother asking?"

"I was hoping you'd talk to me, but now I'm not convinced you noticed. I mean, really, studying? We're barely studying, and you're more exhausted than Moony the day after a full moon."

"That's not true," he replied, frowning. "We spend all our time outside of class getting ready."

"No, we spend all of our time thinking that we should be studying, but we end up fooling around and only working for like an hour."

James's frown deepened. What Sirius said was true, so why was he so tired? He knew that everyone was worried about exams, so he'd assumed that that's why he felt this way. But Sirius was right, and they weren't spending near as much time on that as everyone else was. "I dunno. Maybe I'm feeling stressed about it anyways. You know, Wormtail was talking about people can be effected by stress without realising it? That's gotta be what this is."

"Since when do you feel stressed?"

"It happens," James said defensively.

"When?"

"Sixth year comes to mind, a month before winter hols."

Sirius didn't flinch because he didn't do obvious tells like that, but he withdrew.

James chewed on the inside of his cheek, feeling guilty. It was a low blow to bring that up, and he knew it. Unfortunately, it was the only example he could think of for a time when he was stressed, because Sirius was right: he didn't get stressed. That time had been unique, a single spike in an otherwise straight line.

"Nothing like that has happened recently. But fine, you want to wear yourself out because you don't trust me, then that's your business," he said, turning his attention back to his textbook.

"Sirius," James said, pleading.

Sirius didn't so much as twitch an eyelid. He was a lot better at this ignoring thing than James had ever been.

"You know I trust you, but I don't think there's anything wrong. There's nothing for me to be stressing over, so maybe I'm just tired. Nothing else going on."

"People don't get tired for no reason," Sirius said in his usual bored tone. His usual for other people, not James.

But James deserved it, so he wasn't going to get mad about it. Also because it took a hell of a lot to get him mad at Sirius. This didn't even come close to doing it, a fact Sirius was well aware of. "You got tired last year."

"Yeah, and that wasn't for no reason."

"You told me it was for no reason."

"I did not."

"Yes, you did. I'd remember if you told me that something was wrong."

"It was implied."

"You can't imply things to me. We've been over this. You have to say it flat out to my face, in as many words, or I'm not going to get it."

"At the time, I didn't want you to get it. Don't worry, I moved past it by the time we started snogging."

"Dating," James corrected.

"Whatever," he said flippantly, but it was the sort of flippant he usually was, so James figured that they were fine.

*

He'd thought that would be the end of it. After all, Sirius hadn't said anything more about it that day. Evidently, Sirius was biding his time, because two days later, he brought it up again.

"Are you sure you're okay? You look a bit peaky."

"Wow thanks," James said flatly, but the truth was that he wasn't feeling great. Until Sirius had mentioned it initially, he hadn't noticed that anything was wrong. He'd felt tired, yes, but he hadn't noticed that it was every single day until it was brought to his attention. Once that happened though, he felt like he was getting worse. At first, he'd thought it was just a cold, but a cold had never hit him this hard.

Not to mention the nightmares. He hadn't connected them to his exhaustion before. It might seem obvious, but he didn't wake up in the middle of the night from them. Besides, they were less nightmares and more... odd dreams. They weren't frightening. They left him feeling uncomfortable, not necessarily scared. He didn't even remember them when he woke up. Honestly, if Sirius hadn't said that he noticed something was wrong, James wasn't sure he ever would have been aware of them. All the same, he didn't think they were related.

"I dunno. I think it's getting worse."

"What's getting worse?"

"Whatever's making me this tired. I barely got out of bed this morning."

"I noticed." Sirius looked at him, worry clear on his face. Evidently, he thought that if James was admitting something was wrong, it was horrible. Which was a little unfair, in his opinion. "I'll walk you to the Hospital Wing."

"I'm capable of walking there by myself."

"Please?" Sirius said, blinking over at him innocently.

He played so sodding dirty. He knew that James couldn't resist it when he did that.

"Fine, but you don't get to whinge if Madame Pomfrey tells you to leave without me."

"Request denied," he said, grabbing James's hand as they started to walk down the corridor. "I will most certainly whinge about it, and there's nothing you can do to stop me. Besides, maybe she'll just give you a Pepper-Up and then we can be on our way. Go for a quick fly about the pitch before we go to the library, yeah?"

"You're encouraging us going to the library?"

"Maybe I want to snog you in a dark corner," Sirius admitted with a grin.

"We could just snog in our room."

Sirius waved him off. "We always do that. We're graduating soon. Do you really want to look back on this time and realise that we didn't fool around in every possible place in this castle?"

"I don't think it would bother me as much as it bothers you," James teased.

Things continued in that vein as they walked. Teasing and shoving, then talking about what they'd do when they graduated. Most of the walk was spent arguing over what kind of couch they wanted in their flat. Sirius said they should have a yellow couch, James thought it should be red. They hadn't come to an agreement by the time they reached the Hospital Wing.

James explained his persistent exhaustion, and Madame Pomfrey said that it was probably nothing to worry about and blamed the same thing that he had: exams. All the same, she cast a diagnostic spell, "Just to be sure, dear."

Then she frowned.

And that was when James got worried. "What?"

"What is it? What's wrong?" Sirius asked. Since Madame Pomfrey thought it hadn't been anything, she'd let Sirius stay.

"It appears to be a curse, but it's not one that I've ever seen."

James's first thought was to blame Snape. Then he thought that might be unfair. After all, the two of them hadn't crossed wands in over a month; they both had better things to do with their time. Then he remembered that this had been going on for a while, long enough that Snape very well might be the cause.

"How long has this been effecting you?"

"I dunno," James said.

"Six weeks," Sirius answered.

James looked over at him, but he was still looking at Madame Pomfrey.

"You really should've come to me sooner," she said, bustling away to her potions cabinet.

"I was just a bit tired; I didn't think it meant anything," James protested. It's not like he was hopeless. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. If this had been a bigger problem, he would've noticed. It's not like he was bleeding from his eyes or summat; it was just a little sleep.

"Much longer of this, and you would've never woken up!"

He blinked at her, hand clenching around Sirius's reflexively.

"My word, you students throwing curses at each other without caring about the consequences! I swear," she said.

James thought it was probably for the best that he not correct her and say that they were thinking about the consequences, but they wouldn't be consequences she approved of them wanting. He kept it to himself, but he knew that Sirius was thinking along the same lines.

"Fortunately," Madame Pomfrey continued, "it seems fixable. Drink this." She pressed a white bottle into his hands. He'd never seen a potion in a white bottle, and he was suspicious to say the least. "Drink," she insisted.

James shot Sirius a look. "If this kills me, say something pleasant at my funeral, yeah?"

"Don't be so bloody dramatic," he said, which was rich, coming from him. "You'll be fine."

"Easy to say when you're not the one drinking a potion of questionable origin." Then, because he didn't want for Madame Pomfrey to glare at him or send Sirius out of the room, he drank it. It tasted like goat's milk. He hated it. "Am I fixed?" he asked her.

"I wouldn't count on it," she said. "That was to prevent it from getting worse. Come back and see me tomorrow after breakfast but before classes start. Curses aren't broken so easily by potions, a fact you should both be well aware of."

They were, but he'd been hopeful. Merlin, it's like she wanted to berate him for getting himself cursed. And, he wanted to add, this time hadn't even been his fault. He'd (mostly) behaved himself all this term, doing nothing to deserve this. Arguably, he deserved it as some sort of back payment for what he'd done over the years, but he'd rather thought that Snape was as tired of it as he was.

James promised to be back in the morning, and they left.

"I can't believe that tosser cursed you. Just wait until I get my hands on him. I'll-"

"You'll do absolutely nothing," James interrupted. "We're only in classes for two more weeks."

"It could've killed you!"

"Didn't, and then we'll never have to see him again. It's a pretty big country."

"Big country, small Wizarding World," Sirius argued. He was getting more upset the more time past, so James did what he usually did when he didn't know how to make him feel better: kissed him.

"I don't want revenge. Let's keep working on our final prank, our NEWT's, and enjoying the rest of our time at Hogwarts. That's all I want." He kissed him again for good measure.

"And getting into my pants doesn't factor into this at all?" Sirius asked, his mood already turning from bad to good.

"Hm? Me?" James said, feigning innocence. "I would never."

"Liar."

"Just be glad that I'm getting back to normal," James said with a grin. Already, he wasn't feeling as tired. He hadn't realised how much it was draining him until it started to alleviate.

"Yeah, you were so hard to deal with. Always lying around, not doing anything exccept looking at me adoringly. However did I survive?"

"It's a miracle, Padfoot, it really is."

[dwellordream]

the best laid plans

day 1 for @wayhavensummer because this is the only prompt I'll have time to do this week!

T Rating (for one brief mention of sex and one brief reference to emotional abuse) Felix x Detective Esme Kingston, 2300 words

The migraine cuts her to her core, and Esme can’t even manage the usual dose of guilt and hesitance she’d feel about canceling plans with Tina. They were supposed to go away this weekend, and Esme hasn’t been on a vacation since uni, but right now she couldn’t even make her way out of her flat, never mind into a car for a seven hour drive down the coast. 

She feels like vomiting, the pain is so intense, as if she’d been concussed. Migraines have been a constant for her since puberty; she has a vivid memory of her first one, when she was thirteen, and the long wait in the nurse’s office at the private school her mother paid so much money for. The same mother who eventually sent someone else to pick her up, ninety minutes after the first phone call. 

Esme doesn’t even remember who it was; some Agency intern? A vampire? A demon? Whoever it was, they brought her home, gave her some painkillers, and told her to sleep it off. She woke up hours later, in the middle of the night, to a still empty house. Rebecca had come home briefly to leave a note for her about some leftovers in the fridge and another one excusing her from school the next day if need be, and then gone straight back to work. 

Maybe Esme should have been outraged or hurt by this, but she doesn’t recall feeling much of anything at the time beyond hunger, when the pain had finally receded enough to think straight. She ate the leftovers cold in their sterile, silent kitchen, and put herself back to bed.

The migraines had intensified through high school, to the point where her mother considered putting her on permanent medication, before receding just before she went away to university. After that they were far more infrequent, which was both a blessing and a curse- it was easy to forget what the pain felt like, and to feel like it was weak, lazy of her to let it get the best of her. 

Bobby certainly didn’t help matters; the first one Esme had during their relationship came around shortly after they’d had sex for the first few times, and Bobby quickly became convinced this was her version of ‘not tonight, dear, I have a headache-’. That she was, for some ludicrous reason, exaggerating her migraines. 

If she didn’t want to have sex with him, she’d never had much of an issue saying as much, bluntly, clinically. Another thing he despaired of- her lack of social graces, her insistence on saying exactly what she meant, in her usual ‘ice queen’ manner. Now he had reason to call her frigid in more ways than one. 

Esme still isn’t sure how things between them ever lasted as long as seven torturous months. She assumes they both had a private masochistic streak- why else would two people who made one another so blatantly unhappy stay together? 

Bobby isn’t here now, of course, to whinge and moan about her ignoring him, but there’s still a little voice in her head telling her to get up and stop acting like a baby when the evening rolls around. The pain has greatly lessened, thankfully, and she’s hungry, which is usually a good sign, but she’s also exhausted and cranky and generally miserable, feeling as though an entire day was wasted, one she could have spent with her best friend, on her way to a vacation. 

Now, again, she is alone in a dark room. She slowly rolls over onto her side, bracing for a wave of pain or nausea, then pushes herself up onto her elbows and gropes at her night table for her phone. She has several missed calls and texts. Two from Tina, one from her mother, and one from Felix, which is the most recent, about thirty minutes ago. 

Felix H: omw over to drop stuff off. 30 min???

She checks the time, then jumps, almost bashing her head into the headboard, when she hears a quiet knock at her door. For a moment Esme considers lying back down and not answering it; Felix can be persistent but he would never try to break her door down, especially when he knows she’s ill. 

Then she clambers out of bed, some instinct driving her, a desperate kind of loneliness- for an instant tears spring to her eyes, as if she were a child again, terrified of being left alone, that she will just miss him, that she will pull open the door and he will already be gone-

“Ez?”

He’s right there when she yanks open the door, the chain still in place. Esme undoes it and pulls the door open all the way. Felix is staring at her, a small bag of groceries in hand. Vampires have far better temperature regulation than humans but it’s obvious he is feeling the heat; for once he’s not wearing a beanie or any kind of hat or cap at all. 

He’s gotten his hair braided recently; Esme looks at him for a moment, staggered by the fact, as always, that even in the harsh fluorescent lighting of her narrow hallway. Felix’s dark skin has a sheen all its own, magnified by his golden eyes. 

He prods her shoulder gently with the pad of his thumb. “If you faint on me, I’m gonna drop your gifts.”

“My gifts?” Esme shakes her head, leading the way back into her darkened flat. It’s much more cluttered than usual; she never finished packing for the trip she was supposed to take today. 

Felix does not reach for a light switch; he has perfect vision in the dark, and light from the parking lot is spilling through her blinds. Instead he sets the bag on her counter and sorts through it as enthusiastically as Santa Claus on Christmas, or a child sorting through their Halloween candy. 

“Min tea,” he says, “cold packs, squash, sweet potatoes, brown rice, dried cranberries…”

“Did you just look up ‘what to eat and drink for a migraine’?” Esme manages to ask, bemused. 

He looks up, a sheepish smile quirking at his soft lips. “If I say yes…”

“I’m impressed,” she says. “And.. thank you. Very much. You didn’t have to do this.”

“I didn’t have to supply my ailing girlfriend with nutritious food and drink?” he waves the bottle of mint teat in her face vigorously. 

“Ailing? I’m not eighty five years old, Felix.”

“That’s right, I’m the old man here,’ he cackles, then amends, “Or, will be. Technically we’re not that far apart in age but eventually when you start decaying-,”

“Decaying?” As usual, his word choice both horrifies and amuses her. 

Felix has even less of a filter than her, but with the opposite effect. She comes across as cold and controlling. He comes across as… well, ‘space cadet’ has been used a few times, but Esme likens it to a time traveler. Only, not from the past, and not quite from the future. A parallel visitor. Something out of the Twilight Zone, only… warm and colorful and eager to please. That’s Felix.

He shrugs. “Succumbing to the elements?”

“I’m not a castle,” she mutters, but pours herself a cup of cold mint tea. Will it be as good as if she’d brewed it herself here at home, no, but at the moment she doesn’t care. 

He puts the rest away in her small fridge while she drinks, leaving out the cranberries, then circles warily, as if approaching a wild animal, when she finishes off her cup. “Can I-,” his fingers ghost along the back of her neck. The hairs there raise and she shivers violently, but not in fear or pain. 

“Yes,” she murmurs, then leans back into his embrace as he wraps his arms around her. 

They scuttle over to the sofa like that, and ease down together. Felix is not terribly tall, and she is average height, so there’s scarcely a few inches between them. Esme has always liked that. All the others she’s been with had towered over her, and it made her feel spoilt and delicate in an undesirable, bratty kind of way, as if she were childish, some little princess to be coddled and indulged. Or maybe that’s just her projecting onto everything else that makes up a relationship besides height differences. 

For now, she is content to lie back so her head rests against Felix’s, cheek to cheek. His is silken smooth; she knows he is fastidious about shaving, the same as her. 

“You’re feeling better, though?” he murmurs, and snakes a hand under her pyjama top as if to check. Splayed warm against her belly, it tickles for an instant and she smiles. 

“Yes. It’s mostly passed. I’m just tired. And annoyed. Tina was really looking forward to this trip. She’ll still have fun by herself, but it was supposed to be the two of us, and I’m always canceling plans.”

“You are not,” says Felix, reasonably. “You’re just busy. And you couldn’t help it this time, you were sick. She knows that.”

Esme nods; for all his jokes and quips, Felix is always sensible in a manner that she finds comforting- stating the obvious isn’t such a bad thing when dealing with someone like her. 

“I hate being sick,” she murmurs, rolling onto her side so she can rest her cheek on his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her more securely, even intertwines their legs. Felix sleeps like this too, though at this point he’s only spent the night a few times. 

Esme is taking things as slowly as she dares, given all the other factors at play- her mother, their work, the rest of the team, the fact that he is a vampire from another dimension and she is the human equivalent of dry toast… 

“I kind of like it,” Felix confesses, with just enough lilt in his voice that she knows he’s half teasing.

Esme grumbles vengefully into his shirt. He smells like coconut butter and vanilla. She doesn’t know if that’s his aftershave or just the essence of Felix, refined to the purest degree. Sometimes he smells like cinnamon to her, or lavender and honeysuckle. 

Felix tolerates these assessments but likes to claim that it’s him producing some kind of super pheromones perfectly designed for luring in unsuspecting human prey. Or his girlfriend. Or both. 

Esme has not been anyone’s girlfriend in a long time. Years. It feels very strange. Before him, it’d been so long since she’d even touched anyone, besides Tina or her mother or shaking hands. That absence did not hurt Esme. But being with Felix is like an unexpected delight. Free dessert. Extra sprinkles on your sundae. Any number of juvenile metaphors she should be above, but isn’t. 

“You’re not going to ask why I like it?” He is winding his fingers through her hair, which she let down from its usual tight ponytail to ease the tension on her scalp.

“Because you like to mock me?” she ventures.

“No,” says Felix. “Because you would have gone away with Tina, and now I get to see you. And hold you.” He presses an astoundingly gentle kiss to her brow, like a feather.

Esme feels a queer stab of guilt. “I didn’t know you’d minded so much.”

“I don’t mind,” he says quickly. “I was happy for you to get away for once. I’m not going to third wheel you and your best friend.”

“I think the terms refers to the opposite-,”

“Hush hush,” he interrupts, which gets a giggle out of her. “But this is like… an unexpected delight.”

The back of her neck prickles. “Can you read minds?” she asks, half serious.

“Not yet,” he sounds smug. “I have great intuition.”

“Because you’re a vampire?”

“No, because I’m me,” he boasts. “Look at Ava’s intuition. Terrible.”

Esme laughs again. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“She’s always expecting the worse. And Nat swings in the other direction. Always wants to play nice and hug it out.”

“And Mason?” Esme teases, feeling energetic enough not to raise her head so her chin is on his chest. Their noses are almost touching.

“Eh… he’s alright,” Felix breathes, and then closes the gap with a kiss. 

Esme kisses him back, more passionately than she’d meant to, and only stops it when he starts to sit up so she is straddling his lap. 

“I don’t think I can…”

“Eat some cranberries?” He grins impishly and hands her the bag from the coffee table.

Esme smiles and bumps her forehead against his, something she did impulsively after their first kiss and which he never let her live down. 

“What are we, cats?” he says, on cue, but brushes his nose and lips down her cheek and onto her neck, as if to nuzzle her in turn. “Eat some fruit before your migraine comes back. Do you want me to put some of this stuff away?”

“No,” she says, pushing him back down on the sofa. “Just- stay with me, please?”

“Alright,” he agrees, amiable as ever, and reaches for the remote. “This can be like our vacation, yeah? The Felix and Esme Show. The Fezme Show-,”

“No,” she groans, but wriggles off him to curl up beside him instead, a handful of cranberries rising to her mouth as he flips through the channels.

He settles on an episode of Columbo. Felix hasn’t really seen much in the way of TV, and so reruns mean nothing to him. But it means everything to her. They keep the volume on very low, and he gets up at one point to open the windows more, even as the faint sounds of the parking lot outside drift in- the buzz of the lights, doors opening and closing, the crunch of gravel. 

Esme falls asleep sagging onto him, cranberries in her lap, mouth half open while Felix watches, riveted in the light of the screen, as the detective closes the case.

[silverhallow]

I'm gonna have a little bit of a moan and whinge here so i'm gonna put it below the cut cause i need to get this off my chest especially as its not the first time it's been brought up...

and i am soooooo fucking close to just walking away from the Fandom.

So...

I love writing but lately it's becoming more and more of a chore... and i'm enjoying it less and less.

I work two jobs, I work 70+ hours a week and yet i still try to churn out the work for you guys and lately it's been a HUGE struggle and not cause of the writing...

but the readers.

yes, you read that right. You guys, not all of your, 99% of you are fucking wonderful and I LOVE YOU from the bottom of my heart but that 1% is ruining it.

i've had hurtful and rude comments on work that i've deleted, some i've left but having people complaining about my tags, about the fact i've included other characters in a story, or complaining about my headcanons... MY FUCKING HEADCANONS... like for fuck sake...

I try to make my tags as clear as possible, i like to include characters that i know and write something I wanna write and create. Yes fair enough if you've asked for a prompt and i've randomly thrown in another character you weren't expecting then by all means, fucking call me out, but my big stories, they're MY stories, they were written for me and if you want to read them, expect to see my faves appearing, having an important role.

it is fucking clear as fucking day who my main ship is, if you don't fucking know that, and you can't see that and understand that then maybe stop reading my work.

I love the dynamics between Kate/Sophie/Benedict/Anthony and love writing the four of them.

i am sure most of you will have noticed that i have recently not posted much in the way of Kanthony fics, despite the fact I have ideas...

I have another What If Au idea but it's a story that combines Kate and Sophie but after the utter SHIT i have had these last few weeks, that i've mostly deleted rather than responding to...

But I am at my tipping point... I am at the edge of my nerves and tether for what I can take...

I am seriously considering finishing writing In Another Life, Wildest Dreams, In The End and From the Ashes, finish off Smut Mas and just... go.

How many people have we lost in the last few weeks because of absolute COCKS?

How many more people do we have to lose from the fandom... not to blow my own trumpet but by the time i'm done with Smut Mas... i'll have probably written 200 Bridgerton Stories... do you really want me to go? cause if people don't want me here then I'll fucking happily go...

Like I said, I work so many fucking hours and I spend what little free time I have to myself writing and not just for me, i write for you guys, yet that 1% of you... is making me fucking hate it.

it's setting my anxiety off, it makes me feel sick and its why I am struggling. Smut is easy... and i wanted to do something nice for Xmas for my lovely followers, as I know how much you all like my Smut... and I get repaid by getting shit in my inbox.

its not on.

its fucking christmas.

Seriously guys I am so fucking close to just walking away. and the only reason I have not gone already is because I hate leaving shit unfinished.

I mean Colin and Penelope's Baby Bridgerton story, I can't bring myself to write any more of it at the moment cause of the HORRIBLE message I got from someone who decided to remain anonymous. it fucking hurt and I can't bring myself to write it even though I know how I want it to go and it's got like 4 more chapters...

I want to write more Kanthony and just Kanthony stuff but honestly... I am so fucking worried about it because I get shit now and i never used to. you guys used to love it, you guys might still do but I just don't get the feedback, i don't get the comments or the love like I used to and its like

what did I do wrong?

what am I doing wrong?

I know there are much better writers out there, I know that and I am not naive enough to think I am the best or even one of the best but it's... it's hard and i'm not gonna lie.

even the comments i am getting when its shit isn't even constructive. its just... shitting on my HC's

like being asked why I only post Benophie ones but then shitting on my ship... but the reason I only post Benophie ones... ITS ALL I GET ASKED...

if you want to know HCs for another pairing FUCKING ASK ME!!!!!!

don't just give me shit. dont just give me fucking horrible comments and asks... i'd switch them off but most people aren't complete wankers and I love interacting

but I am so fucking done with the shit.

You guys know the fucking rules of the Fandoms... yet people still chose to be complete and utter fucking cunts and I am sorry for the language but there is literally no other way to describe it.

If you follow me, you know I am a fucking Benophie Stan,

You know I am a Kanthony stan but Benophie is my main...

if you don't like that, then you're on the wrong blog so just fuck off and stop giving me shit.

[rae-gar-targaryen]

Your sleepover idea is AMAZING! Such a great and fun idea ❤ Would it be possible to request 82: I dont get paid enough for this shit! With Max Phillips or Pero Tovar 😊❤ Thank you 😊 💓

A/N: Thank you for this request! I have never written for Tovar before, and I think he’s a criminally underrated character. I hope I do him justice. Let’s try it, because quite honestly i don’t even know what this is.  

--

“A Job Less Ordinary” (Pero Tovar x Reader) 

Pero Tovar’s life was just a comedy of errors. Or, at least, he thought so. But then again, he had always thought the worst.

Then again, he knew if you were by his side now to hear him grouse, you would just smile and roll your eyes playfully at him. 

“Always so grumpy,” you would chide. “Maybe you should have chosen a less-complicated profession?”

It was true-- mercenary work was a complicated profession. Even the simplest of smash-and-grab jobs always had a way of turning into more. Honestly, it pissed him off. If his fiery temper didn’t already abut a short fuse, this job would just be the little push he needs to send him over the edge. 

He hears your voice again.

“So dramatic, Pero,” you would sigh prettily, dreamily, playing with his fingers as they intertwine with yours.

Pero loved that about you-- you would never hesitate to help ground him when he was in a mood. If anyone else tried, he thinks he’d kill them. His fiery nature often got the better of him, but you’d never seemed to mind. Especially if said fiery temper benefitted you. Specifically, if it benefitted you for hours at a time.

Yet, here Pero was, sitting around a campfire with these faceless idiots who couldn’t keep quiet long enough to hear whether something was sneaking up on them in the dark, which, he thinks, is sort of important if you’re going to survive as a sellsword. 

This job was just getting worse and worse all the time. If this merry band of accompanying idiots wasn’t bad enough, he’d been hired to escort a kidnapped prince back to his kingdom, by flash of steel and under pain of death, if necessary. The king’s spoiled son had been taken by the less-than-savory lords of a neighboring kingdom. It seems he had a bit of a gambling problem and stopped repaying his debts. 

The king had brought in mercenaries from around the Spanish main to recover his erstwhile heir. 

Honestly, Pero thought, I hope they take the brat’s kneecaps. T’would serve him right.

He had barely slept in a few days, the harsh summer heat, even overnight, pressing his leathers and armour into his skin rather uncomfortably, and his group had already been attacked twice. Twice! Once by a merry little bandit of pickpockets he’d been quick to chase away, and once by the lords’ men, hoping to deter the king’s sellswords from recouping their prize.

You’d think a king would dispense better coin if he really cared about his son. But no. Pero had taken the job for far less than he probably should have. Especially if he had known what a pain in the ass this whole thing would be.

But still, though he harbored no desire to return there, he had survived the Tao Tei of the far East, he could survive this idiot boy. 

You’d seemed to think so, pressing a warm kiss to the corner of his mouth and wishing him a speedy return, whispering in his ear the promises of riches he was far more interested in upon his return. 

The morning came, and Pero and the others trudged on, reaching the manor where the lords were keeping the king’s son. Of course it was heavily guarded, Pero sighed. Of course. 

As the idiots around him charged in with no though to strategy, Pero rolled his eyes before joining the fray, swinging his longsword with both hands. He was doing fine, up until a particularly pesky faceless guard swinging a mace nearly clipped him in the arm with said winding weapon. 

Pero snarled at him after being knocked off his feet by said faceless guard. Blocking a blow from the ground with his sword, Pero grunted, heaved the man away from him before righting himself upon his own two feet. He’d had enough!

“I don’t get paid enough for this shit,” Pero grunted, swinging his sword cleanly through a gap in the man’s armor, felling him swiftly. 

He stormed the manor, grabbing the spoiled prince by the arm with a, “Come, boy. Your king-father awaits.” 

And with their group significantly smaller than the group they’d begun with, they commenced their return journey home, the princeling riding atop the back of a neighboring sellsword’s horse, whining loudly about the accommodations.

Another night, another camp and fire. This time, with a loudmouth prince as his company. It would be so much more pleasant if he could just lose himself in his thoughts of you, as he sharpened his axe before the fire. But the boy’s voice was an obnoxious trill hammering a headache behind his eyes. 

“Say, how’d you get that scar anyhow, sellsword?” The prince asked, gesturing at his eye to Pero. 

Pero grunts in response. “Got it from a warrior king,” he huffed. “I murdered his heir who would not cease his yammering,” Pero uttered harshly. He looked up from his axe to fix a deep glare from his dark eyes into the boy’s. 

“What, really?” The prince asked. 

Could this boy be any denser? Pero thought. But now he was beginning to enjoy chiding this idiot. 

“Churlish, Pero,” you would admonish him. “I do so adore when you are sweeter,” you’d croon, batting your eyelashes at him. 

But you weren’t here. And what you did not know, would not harm you. 

“Of course not, idiot boy,” Pero snarled. “I got it from a Queen. Your mother, in fact. She should really watch where she wields her taloned grip in the throes of passion,” he laid on his accent extra thick with his last few words. 

The prince jumped to his feet, angry now that Pero had dared insinuate he’d fucked his mother. 

“How dare you, mercenary!” He shouted. “I- I could have you killed, you know!” 

“By whom, boy?” Pero drawled, getting up and gripping the hilt of his sword at his side. “Your king-father? Who do you think is paying me now? Hmm? Sit down and eat your food in silence before I contemplate regicide as applies to a certain prince before mine eyes any further.” 

The prince sighed in defeat, before sitting again. Pero barked a laugh at the boy before following suit from across the flames, resuming his sharpening. His thoughts turning to you again. 

I don’t get paid enough for this shit, Pero thought again. 

The days passed and Pero had effectively delivered his whinging, spoiled quarry into the hands of a grateful, but taciturn, king. Collecting his measly winnings, Pero turned on his heel and left the king’s great hall, eager to return to your arms.

You were awaiting Pero at the doorstep of your small home, long dress blowing in the breeze. You ran to greet him, flinging your arms around his neck and peppering his face with soft kisses. Pero grunted at the impact of your body leaping onto his, but quickly wound his arms around to catch you, hands going instantly to cup your bum through your full skirt and lifting you into a spin. 

You giggled as Pero spun you around once, twice, three times before putting you back on your swaying feet, and leaning down to kiss you deeply. 

“I am pleased to see you have returned to me in one piece, fair, brave wayfarer,” you gasped through your breathlessness. “I hope your rewards were plentiful to compensate you for such peril.”

Pero growled teasingly at you before scooping you up again and carrying you across the threshold, dropping you onto the bed in the corner of your cozy little room where an evening of passion was sure to await. 

He leans over you and cups the sides of your face with his large hands, tracing your lips with this thumbs. There is a swirling danger behind your eyes, and Pero aims to play on it. Until all of your secrets are uncovered, even if it takes all night. What a task.

“My dove, you are the only reward of any value.” 

[fanfictionaries]

Oh So Many Years: Ch. 17 - Chasing Pirates

Pairing: Hermione Granger x Fred Weasley

Summary:

Fred receives another letter from Angelina and must face some tough questions from George. 

Hermione struggles with her want to keep Harry informed, but is happy things are finally back to normal with Ron and Fred -- but are they really? And how will she cope with some unsettling news?

Warnings: Swearing, Death, Smut/18+ NSFW

Author’s Note:

We’ve got internet babies!!! 

As always, please, please, please feel free to like, comment, and reblog. I LOVE interacting with you all!!

Masterlist

<<<Chapter 16

                           In your message you said, you were goin' to bed,

But I'm not done with the night. So I stayed up and read, but your words in my head, Got me mixed up so I turned out the light.

And I, don't know how, to slow it down. My mind's racing from chasing pirates.

Fred figured it was just his luck that in the confusion of everyone running from his mother, he ended up in his bedroom with George and Hermione. He also figured it was just his luck he was too angry with his twin brother to censor his words.

“Are you fucking kidding me George?” Fred seethed, trying to keep his voice down as they were in fact still hiding from their mother.

“Oh lighten—”

“No! No, I will not just lighten up! Why?! What was going on in that evil little skull of yours?” Fred’s hand tightened on the towel around his waist as he paced back and forth. He was angry. Angrier than he had ever been at his brother, which was saying something because he’d never actually been cross with George before. Sure, he’d been miffed and on the odd occasion annoyed by his twin brother, and vice versa of course, but never like this. No, he was well and truly pissed off. Which meant this was entirely new territory for the both of them as Fred tried to manage his emotional tirade and George tried to manage Fred.

“Well, I—”

“You know how things are with Angelina right now and you knew how I felt and then you had to go and do this? I mean, why would you—they—”

“Fred—”

“—especially after what I told you this morning. I mean, I know we’re in it for a laugh and all most of the time, and to be fair this was quite funny. If it were anyone else, it would’ve been a real gut buster. But come on. This was just cheap!”

“Fred—”

“And to include Ginny in it? What? Did you tell her?”

“FRED!” George whispered harshly, putting a stop to Fred’s pacing, and clamping his hand over his brother’s mouth. At first, Fred’s instinct was to rip George’s hand off of his mouth and continue his rant. He was upset. Therefore, he was entitled to as much whinging and scolding as he pleased.

But then he saw George’s eyes flicker to a very confused and sheepish looking Hermione sitting on the edge of George’s bed and that instinct vanished. His eyes grew wide, realizing only then that he’d been freely ranting about Hermione and himself with the girl in question sitting right there. Fucking arsing balls, Fred cursed in his head. How much had he said? Enough to give anything away or only enough to make himself seem like a raving lunatic? He thought about subtly asking George but didn’t get the chance.

Their mother’s angry footsteps sounded from the top of the stairs followed by her equally angry voice, “Someone had better come out here and face me or I’ll be knocking down every single door in this hallway.”

Fred’s head swung from his brother to the door and back. “You have to go out!” Fred whispered in a panic.

“Me? Why me?” asked George.

Fred looked down at his towel-clad body pointedly and then to Hermione who was still sans shirt. “First of all, you owe us. Second, I wonder how mum will feel when she finds Hermione in here with us like this,” said Fred.

George’s face contorted in conflict as the pros and cons of taking the blame for waking up Walburga once again, or having their mother find a half-naked girl in their room. Finally he gave a sort of whiny sigh.

He was just shy of opening their bedroom door when he turned and pointed a finger in Fred and Hermione’s direction. “I want you two to know that I’m doing this out of the kindness of my heart and that by going out here I’m fully proving my remorse for this afternoon’s prank.”

“Just go!” Hermione squeaked, shifting uncomfortably, and holding her arms tightly across her chest.

George took a deep breath and squared his shoulders before opening the heavy oak door with flourish and slamming it behind him quickly. “Mum! You’re looking lovely this afternoon,” said George, his voice muffled as he now stood in the hallway.

“I should have known—” she sounded aggravated and slightly defeated, thought Fred “—let’s go. You’re going to help me shut that old bag up and then I think the basement closet needs de-spidering, George Weasley.”

“Come now mum, surely by now you’d be able to tell that I’m Fred.”

Fred sighed, shaking his head, and smiling against his better judgement. Leave it to George to have the last laugh. “Wanker…” Fred mumbled as he crossed the room to his dresser. He dug into one of the drawers and pulled out an old shirt. Throwing it in Hermione’s direction, he politely averted his eyes and began to grab clothes for himself.

“I didn’t know you were a Puddlemere United fan.”

“What?” Fred turned, her comment catching him off guard. While it was a Puddlemere United shirt, you couldn’t know that unless you were familiar with the navy-blue colour and golden crossed bulrushes.

“Puddlemere United,” Hermione repeated, staring strangely at his hand, and then looking away with a slight blush. Fred look to his hand to find that he was still grasping a pair of striped, blue pants. He turned around again, grabbing a pair of trousers – a brand of muggle jeans Lee had turned him and George onto – before grabbing a clean white shirt.

“Yeah. George is a bit more of a Falmouth Falcons fan, but I’ve always preferred Puddlemere. I didn’t know you knew anything about quidditch.”

Hermione let out a snort that while rude, Fred found to be quite endearing. “Please, you can’t be friends with Ron and Harry and not know at least a little bit about quidditch. I’ve read Quidditch Through the Ages at least five times.”

“Never would have guessed it from the vacant expression you get on your face every time it’s brought up,” Fred laughed, pulling his shirt over his head. The cotton material felt nice and light in the warm room.

“That’s because it’s usually Ron going on and on about the Chudley Cannons or how much the Slytherin house team sucks. The same story gets a bit boring over time. Now, if he wanted to talk about the history of quidditch rules and legislature, or the statistical odds of certain teams winning or losing, I might chime in.

“Just when I thought I had you figured out, ‘Mione.” Fred turned but paused, looking between the clothes in his hand and Hermione staring at him once again. While he certainly wasn’t shy, he didn’t really fancy Hermione getting a full view of his…full frontal for a second time that day. Especially when she hadn’t seemed all too cheery about it the first time. “Do you mind?”

“Oh! Um, of course—” Hermione turned, covering her eyes with her hands “—sorry.”

“S’alright,” Fred laughed. Something about Hermione’s embarrassment made him feel a whole lot better about the situation. “You know, I guess I was right.”

“About what?” asked Hermione, still facing the other way as Fred zipped up his trousers.

“Last summer when I guessed you were trying to see me and George naked.”

“Oh piss off!” Hermione cried, the tremor of a laugh in the back of her throat.

If Fred weren’t trying to tease her to make himself feel more comfortable, he probably would have gaped in pure delight that Hermione Granger had just told him to piss off. But, he was, so instead he continued, “You know if you really wanted to get a look, you just had to ask. I’m taken, but George would probably say yes…and Ron,” Fred hesitated to say the last part. The words had come to the tip of his tongue without him even trying, giving him pause to wonder why his brain was at all interested in what Hermione thought of seeing Ron naked. Because you fancy her, you daft git, scoffed the little voice in his head. Ah yes, there was that he supposed.

Hermione made a disgruntled sound, “Yes, I suppose that’s why Ginny was involved. She probably told George all about how she thinks Ron has a crush on me.”

“You can uncover your eyes now. I’m all decent.” Fred crossed the room and settled himself onto his bed, crossing his arms behind his head.

“Are you sure?” asked Hermione in a teasing manner. “I’ve been burned twice already today. I’m not quite sure I’m ready for a third time.”

“Shut up. You’re fine,” Fred laughed, throwing a pillow at the bookish girl.

“Oof,” Hermione grunted, the pillow knocking her to the side but making her laugh all the same. She brought her hands down, hugging the pillow to her chest.

“And how do you feel about that?” Fred asked Hermione, trying to make his voice sound as casual as possible.

“About what?” she questioned, running her hands over her mussed hair.

“You know, about Ron liking you or whatever.”

“Honestly?” Hermione asked, sounding like it was a topic she was entirely tired of talking about.

Fred perked up at this, watching Hermione crawl up George’s bed until she was parallel with him.

“I’d rather he didn’t,” sighed Hermione, tucking her legs underneath her and scrunching her nose in the way that made Fred’s stomach flip. He watched as his shirt hung on her frame, engulfing her upper half and the top part of her legs. If he didn’t know already that she was wearing shorts, he could have easily assumed she was in nothing but her knickers and his shirt. Merlin, he really needed to stop giving her his clothes if this was the direction his brain was going to go every time. He looked away, down at his hands that he’d moved to his lap, now laced together by the fingers.

“Why? Holding out for someone else?” It was more of a joke than a serious question really – a call back to her hesitancy to accept Viktor Krum’s invitation to the Yule ball. In fact when Fred said it, it was in such a sardonic tone that he never even considered that he might be hitting the nail directly on the head. Fred’s heart gave a sort of leap in his chest when she didn’t answer right away. He expected her to tell him off, or throw a pillow at his head, but instead there was silence.

Looking up he was surprised to see Hermione had gone slightly pale, mouth open and eyes wide in panic. “I—”

Before the girl could answer a tap at the window pulled their attention. Fred hopped off his bed and walked to the window where the same stately owl he’d seen a few days prior sat on the ledge. His stomach gave a strange pull as he realized who the owl was most likely for and from. He wasn’t prepared for the harsh wave of heat that washed over him when he opened the window. It felt like it had gotten at least five degrees hotter outside. How could it possibly be any hotter? Fred wondered, taking the letter from the owl, and closing the old window tightly as it flew off into the sun-hazed sky.

He held the letter addressed to himself in sweat-slicked hands. Glancing at Hermione who now looked curiously in his direction, Fred thought for a moment that he should perhaps open it later. That way he wouldn’t have any questioning looks, or expectant faces. On the other hand though, the curiosity was killing him. He had not written Angelina back since the last time she wrote. Truthfully, the letter didn’t feel like it warranted a response and of course he’d been quite busy with the troublesome distraction that currently sat in the room with him. He’d picked up a quill a few times since but staring at the blank page he felt at a loss for words. What should he write? All things currently of interest in his life felt quite shady and untoward and everything else felt inconsequential. Finally, he decided to just get it over with quickly.

The envelope only tore a little as he opened it carefully before sliding out a letter that was pleasantly longer than the last one he’d received from his girlfriend.

Dear Fred,

I finally got to reading the rest of your letters. I’m sorry to hear that your summer isn’t going as fun as you’d hoped. Where exactly are you anyways? From your letters it sounds like you’re in London. Why didn’t you tell me you had family there, you wanker? I would have made you visit them one of these past summers and we could have hung out. London has a lot of cool spots – wish I were there to show you around, but camp lasts all summer long. I guess the only upside to that, is I don’t have to listen to my mother whing on and on about my chores or my clothes or whatever else she’s decided to have a go at for the week.

Fred laughed lightly at the mention of Mrs. Johnson. Angelina had been in a tense war with her mother for the past two years. She swore up and down that her mother was unhappy with anything she did, no matter what. Fred could relate to that. The two of them often swapped stories about their mothers’ disapproval and the wild things they’d done to stir up trouble in their families. He remembered the amount of begging Angelina had had to do that past spring in order to convince her mother to let her go to the summer-long camp. Mrs. Johnson wasn’t too pleased with how athletically inclined Angelina was – convinced that her daughter should be a bit more proper. Secretly, Fred figured Mrs. Johnson finally relented to Angelina’s request just to have an end to the constant badgering.

Have you thought about taking the day off? You’re 17 now and you’ve got all those galleons from Harry (lucky bastard). Surely you and George could sneak off to Diagon Alley for the day or even muggle London! I can give you a list of places if you’d like.

Things are still busy here.

A large drop of smeared ink painted the parchment after the last sentence, as if she’d spent a long time contemplating on what to say next, allowing the ink to drop from her quill before messily attempting to clean it up.

Oliver’s been helping me a lot these past few weeks and it’s actually been pretty great! I know what you’re thinking, how can I possibly be surviving? Don’t get me wrong, he’s still obsessed with the game in that overly intense way, but he’s not nearly as bad as he was in school. Turns out when he’s not consumed by winning the house cup, he’s quite a cool bloke.

I’m making a lot of new friends as well! There are some guys from Ilvermorny here, the American school. They’re quite loud and brash – it reminds me of you.

Anyway, I should probably wrap this up. Oliver’s promised to show me and a couple other people some defensive techniques he’s learned from Puddlemere.

Best,

Angelina

P.S. – There’s something I need to tell you once we’re back at Hogwarts.

Fred was left with a sour taste in his mouth. What could Angelina possibly have to tell him that she couldn’t have written in a letter? And what was this whole business with Oliver being a ‘cool bloke’? Up until that point he’d only ever heard Angelina talk about how much she hated him. He was a crazy, obsessive, misogynistic pig – she’d said it at least a thousand times over. Especially in the times that Oliver disregarded the women on the team and referred to them all as ‘men’ or ‘guys’. And what about those guys from Ilvermorny? What were a bunch of Americans doing in England anyways? Didn’t they have quidditch camps in the states? Lastly, there was the fact that she’d signed it ‘best’ and not ‘yours’. It was a small thing, but she always wrote ‘yours’, even when they weren’t dating.

“Who’s it from?”

Hermione’s voice startled Fred. So immersed in the letter and his thoughts of Angelina and Oliver and guys from Ilvermorny, he’d completely forgotten she was still there.

Fred cleared his throat, “Angelina.”

“Is everything alright?” asked Hermione, furrowing her brow, and staring hard at the letter in his hand.

“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?” Fred’s voice came out high and crackly, making him feel foolish and completely invalidating his statement that everything was alright.

“Well…it’s just that you’ve been frowning at that letter for about five minutes now and earlier—” she took a deep breath “—earlier you said something to George about Angelina. It sounded a bit like it was something unpleasant.”

“Oh…you caught that?” Hermione Granger had to be the most annoyingly astute witch he’d ever met.

Hermione nodded and stood from the bed, crossing the room to stand before him. She looked nervous, like she was using all her courage to say her next words, “Do you want to—”

“Hey!” The door to the room opened and Ginny and Ron came barrelling through. “The coast is clear. Mum’s got George cleaning out spiders in the basement,” said Ron, now fully clothed and looking a bit pink around the ears as he avoided looking directly at Hermione.

“I just know he’s going to lord that over my head,” sighed Ginny, leaning against the wall and crossing her legs at the ankle. “The whole thing was his idea anyways. Seems fair that he should take the brunt of the punishment.”

“You still haven’t dealt with the punishment you’ll be getting from me Ginevra,” bit Hermione, sending a disapproving look at the younger girl.

“Oh come on, Hermione. You know I only had the best intentions. S’not my fault George mucked it up and you had to see Fred’s bits as well,” said Ginny, pulling a face.

“I very much would have preferred to see no one’s bits.”

“Can you please stop calling them ‘bits’?” asked Ron, frowning. Fred had to agree with his little brother. There was something incredibly emasculating about the word.

“Men—” Ginny rolled her eyes “—such fragile egos. Come on, I think there’s some lemonade in the kitchen and I’m parched. It’s so bloody hot!”

Ginny pushed off the wall and sauntered out of the room followed closely by Ron. Hermione hesitated for a moment, looking up at Fred and then back down at the letter in his hand. Fred quickly folded the letter and shoved it in his pocket. It probably wasn’t the best moment to get into him and Angelina anyways.

“Come on, best not to keep them waiting,” he said and made his way out of the room and down towards the kitchen.

Fred didn’t see George again until dinner. His twin had emerged from the basement closet looking incredibly tired and slightly squeamish. This pleased Fred immensely as he still felt like George’s full punishment hadn’t been served. When everyone had sat themselves down at the long table for their meal, Fred made sure to put as much space between them and Hermione as possible. He needed to have a proper conversation with his brother about that afternoon. Thankfully, they had a few extra guests from the Order and so it was easy to do.

“So, you didn’t tell Ginny about me liking Hermione then?” Fred whispered as he piled potatoes onto his plate.

“Oh so now you’re ready to have a civil conversation?” asked George tiredly, taking the potatoes from him and serving himself as well.

“Oi, don’t get cheeky with me. You’re still the yob who started this.”

“You’re right, sorry—” George passed the bowl of potatoes to the wizard beside him who was currently in a deep conversation about transportation restrictions with their father “—no. I didn’t tell her. I thought she already knew but turns out she was talking about Ron. Classic case of miscommunication.”

Fred nodded. “Mmm, well that’s good at least. What were you thinking though mate? You couldn’t possibly think locking me in the bathroom with Hermione was a good idea.”

“I just thought it would be good to get you two alone together. You know, force you to actually have an open and honest conversation about how you feel,” mumbled George, cutting his ham into little pieces.

“And me being naked was supposed to aid in that?” Fred raised an eyebrow, reaching across the table and snagging a roll.

George looked down at his plate, suppressing a very pleased expression. “Thought it couldn’t hurt. You two looked very cosy this morning. Figured all you needed was a bit of provocation to get the subject flowing,” George admitted.

“You’re an idiot,” Fred whispered, laughing lightly, and shaking his head. While still quite displeased with his twin, he couldn’t dismiss the humour of the situation. “What makes you think Hermione and I don’t talk already?”

The question seemed to catch George off guard.

“What? You thought all those times we were working in our classroom and reading in the library, we were sitting there in silence?” Fred questioned hypothetically.

“Well, you certainly couldn’t have been saying anything of substance. Otherwise you’d both have finally admitted your feelings for each other.”

Fred let out a long breath. “Georgie, you know you’re my favourite person in the whole world—” Fred started.

“I’m touched, Freddie.” George brought a hand up to his heart.

“—some would say I even love you like a brother,” Fred went on.

“Not sure I could say the same, sorry.”

“But, at the end of the day I am in a relationship with Angelina. It wouldn’t be fair to her if I were to go behind her back with Hermione. And Hermione—”

“You can’t still tell me you think she likes Ron—”

“No. Actually she told me the exact opposite earlier this afternoon,” Fred confessed, trying not to focus on the way his heart lifted a little at the thought. “But it doesn’t mean she likes me either. Hermione is a nice girl. She deserves a hell of a lot better than me and even if she did like me, well like I said. That wouldn’t be fair to Angelina.”

“Is it fair to Angelina though for you to keep going out with her when you fancy someone else?” challenged George, bringing his voice to barely a whisper as they both leaned in to make their conversation more private.

“I… —” Fred struggled with the words “—it’s complicated. I still fancy Angelina too. It’s not like I’m dating her for nothing. She’s great. She’s one of my best friends, she’s tough, she’s fit, she loves quidditch, and we’ve known each other forever. I can’t just…I can’t just give that up because I also fancy someone else.”

“Do you fancy Angelina though?”

“What?”

“Do you actually fancy Angelina.”

“I just said I did, didn’t I?” Fred felt lost. What was George getting at?

“Yes, but you just listed things you like about her. Things most blokes like about her. Bloody hell, things I like about her – no offence. But, and correct me if I’m wrong, aren’t relationships supposed to be a bit deeper or some emotional crap like that? You know, something a bit more than just ‘we’re mates, and she lets me shag her’?”

“I…well on that logic then how do you know it’s not just the same thing with Hermione?”

“Are you shagging Hermione?” George asked, eyebrows raising high.

“No, but the idea doesn’t sound half bad. What if it’s more of a ‘we’re mates, and I want to shag her’ situation?” Fred took a large bite of his dinner roll and reached forward to grab his glass of pumpkin juice.

“Honestly, Freddie? That’s a bit out of my wheelhouse. But you should probably figure that out. Sooner rather than later,” said George lightly before taking a mouthful of stewed carrots.

Fred swallowed the bite of roll and scoffed into his glass. “Thanks for that. Great advice,” he said sarcastically before drinking deeply from his cup.

George grabbed his own glass and raised it lightly before answering, “Better advice than you get anywhere else. Cheers, mate.”

  Dear Harry,

How’s your summer going? I hope your aunt and uncle aren’t being too horrible.

I really wish you were here. Maybe then Ron would have someone else to play chess with. You know how horrible I am at it…

I’m sure you’ve been reading the Daily Prophet and by now you’re aware of what they’re saying about you. I’m not really supposed to say anything but, I feel like you should

Dear Harry,

I hope your summer’s going better than mine. I know I haven’t said much in my last couple of letters but it’s only because I’m not allowed.

I really wish that I

Harry,

I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but I think that’s rubbish. I think you deserve to know that you’re not alone. Despite the lack of action from the ministry, I want you to know that there are people out there taking this seriously.

When you get here, you’ll understand.

Hermione crossed out her third attempt at writing Harry before crumpling the parchment and throwing it angrily in the bin beside her. This is impossible, she thought forlornly. She’d been having an internal battle for the past two weeks on whether she should follow Dumbledore’s instructions or go with her gut. Every fibre of her being wanted to tell Harry what was going on, to let him know that he wasn’t alone in this fight. But her foolish and incessant need to follow directions and stay out of trouble stopped her every time. Professor Dumbledore was a wise man. He was smart. Most importantly, he knew a lot more about what was going on than she did. So, it would make sense for her to keep her nose out of all of this and simply follow his lead. But despite her headmaster’s in-depth knowledge on most things, Hermione knew one thing to be true. He didn’t know Harry Potter nearly as well as she did.

Professor Dumbledore had insisted that they needn’t worry Harry on the comings and going of the Order and the efforts being put in place against a now fully risen dark lord. He needed time to heal from what happened the previous year with Cedric Diggory. That was all well and nice except that if you knew Harry at all, then you knew that he never stopped worrying. He was definitely the suffer in silence, woe is me, martyr type and usually the only thing that did stop him from worrying and obsessing was action. Harry Potter needed control, or he’d go insane. Usually this control came in two different forms. The first was distraction. If he couldn’t have direct control of a situation he’d resort to quidditch or flying or something else physical to take his mind off whatever it was. The second was involvement. Harry wouldn’t stop until he’d solved the mystery, and everything was put right in his mind. That’s why they hadn’t ceased their research first year until they figured out the secret to the philosopher’s stone. Or why their second year had ended in Harry fighting a basilisk underneath the school. Or why he’d declared to kill Sirius Black himself when he’d found out what he thought to be the truth of his parent’s deaths.

But Hermione knew that Harry, currently locked in the confines of his aunt and uncle’s muggle neighbourhood, was unable to do either and so she was certain the only thing he’d been doing the past month was stewing in internal misery. The fact that he’d neglected to respond to her and Ron’s letters thus far, not even their birthday wishes, only proved her theory right.

Dumbledore may be an expert on the innerworkings of the ministry, but Hermione was an expert on the innerworkings of Harry Potter. So, surely it would be best if she told him something. She had to be able to get some sort of message to him that wouldn’t reveal too much if intercepted by the ministry or Voldemort’s people. Just something that would quell the frustration that was surely rising in her best friend.

However, the right words simply were not coming to her yet, so she rested her quill back down on the table and corked her ink bottle firmly, before moving to her bed and sitting down huffily. She needed to focus on something else or before she knew it she’d turn into Harry.

Picking up the small ball of yarn and worn wooden knitting needles on her bed, Hermione started in on her practice. Recently she’d taken up knitting as both a hobby and a way to further her work with the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. This came entirely from an event that took place a week prior when she’d simultaneously met Kreacher and seen the horror that was the Black family’s legacy of house elves.

“What ARE those?!” Hermione screamed, jumping back, and toppling into Ron who had been following her into the fourth-floor study.

They had been tasked with cleaning out the old Black patriarch’s study.

“Bloody hell, Hermione. What?!” yelled Ron, catching her in his arms and putting her right on her feet.

But Hermione ignored his question, too overwhelmed by the sickening sight before her. On the wall, sitting above the bookshelves opposite the stately mahogany desk were the heads of house elves mounted to the wall. They hung stuffed, pale, and lifeless like common animals on display. It made her sick.

“Oh that is twisted,” said Ron, having now entered the room and seen what had made Hermione scream.

“I—why—who would do something like this?” Hermione asked, torn between her inability to stomach the sight of the house elves’ severed heads, and the sheer shock of it keeping her eyes glued to them.

“That would be my dear mother again, I’m afraid,” came Sirius’ voice. Hermione imagined he must have been nearby, most likely visiting Buckbeak in the attic, heard her scream, and came to investigate.

“This is disgusting…this is barbaric. How could anyone do something like this?” she asked, feeling tears begin to well in her eyes.

“You’d be surprised. It’s an old practice in pureblood families, not really done anymore, but at one time house elves saw it as a badge of honour to have themselves commemorated like this after they died—” Sirius strolled into the room, looking up at the mounted heads, hands casually in his pockets “—I never cared for it though. Absolutely refuse to do it for Kreacher when he finally croaks.”

“Kreacher?—” Hermione was finally able to pull her gaze away from the elves to look at Sirius “—you mean there’s a house elf here?”

“Course there is!” cried Sirius in surprise, tone laced with a bitter edge.

“Don’t worry Hermione. He doesn’t do any of the cooking or cleaning or anything like that,” interjected Ron in a reassuring manner that did very little to actually reassure her.

“How did I not know about this?” she asked, feeling overwhelmed and dazed.

“Well, my mum always said a good house elf was one that got the job done but was rarely seen. Can’t say that’s very true of Kreacher though. He clearly only holds up half of that statement. In fact—” Sirius, turned looking about the empty study around him “—Kreacher!”

With a pop, a small little house elf popped into existence before him. He was different than the house elves Hermione had seen before. He seemed older, more haggard, and dirty. His nose was long and droopy, and the cloth he wore for clothes was so dirty, it looked to be more filth than it was material. Kreacher sneered nastily up at his master and then around the room, spotting Ron and Hermione. Hermione didn’t think it was possible, but his expression turned even nastier once he saw them.

“Filthy mudblood, blood-traitors alike. Tarnishing my mistress’s house like this,” mumbled the little house elf and catching Hermione completely off guard. You’d think the words would hurt less after hearing them so much in the last four years, but they held a fresh sting every time. The only thing that had changed was her ability to better mask the hurt she felt.

“Give it a rest you vile little thing,” grimaced Sirius, surprising Hermione even more than Kreacher’s words.

Ever since she’d arrived at Grimmauld Place, she’d acknowledged that Sirius held a certain disdain to his childhood home. However, she had yet to experience the level of contempt the older wizard held for the house elf before him.

“Of course Master Black. Kreacher is sorry. What can Kreacher do for you?” responded Kreacher in a mocking tone. The words, while objectively respectful, held no trace of true respect whatsoever.

“Yes, I’m sure you are,” said Sirius sarcastically. “I need you to dispose of these disgusting relics immediately.” Sirius pointed up at the row of heads, looking as disgusted as Hermione still felt about both them, and the behaviour of the two individuals before her.

“No! Those are mistress’s! Kreacher refuses,” cried the old house elf in outrage.

“It was not a request, you disgusting beast. I am your master, and I am ordering you to take those vile things down and throw them away. Do you understand me?” spat Sirius, crossing his arms, and glaring down at Kreacher.

“Yes master Black. Of course.”

Hermione had been in such a shock after that that she had left the room and retreated to the kitchen. While she truly needed a cup of tea to calm her nerves, it was still too hot and so she’d allowed Ron to pour her a glass of pumpkin juice as she processed the event. Sure, the things Kreacher said were horrible and hurtful, but look at the way Sirius treated him! Maybe if Kreacher was met with a little kindness, he wouldn’t feel the need to be so mean. And the heads…she didn’t even know where to begin with the heads…

It was at that moment, that Hermione formulated a plan. The house elves clearly needed a way out, whether they knew it or not. So, that afternoon she’d gone to Mrs. Weasley to borrow knitting supplies and get a few lessons.

“Hey Hermione, have you seen Fred and George?” Ron’s voice from the doorway, brought Hermione’s attention away from the complicated mess of yarn in her hands. She’d gotten her knit and purl stitches confused and was currently trying to figure out which direction her yarn was supposed to be facing. Looks like she needed more practice.

“Why would I know where they are?” she asked, frowning back down at her work, and cursing under her breath. A few of her stitches had slipped off her needles.

Ron gave a short laugh, snorting through his nose. “Come on Hermione. You spend more time with them these days than anyone else.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t give me that ‘I’m helping them with their schoolwork’ excuse, Hermione. I’m not thick. You’re helping them with their inventions aren’t you,” said Ron, crossing the room and leaning against one of the posts of Ginny’s bed.

“Just a little,” Hermione admitted sheepishly. There was no point in lying to Ron about it now.

“I knew it!” Ron cried enthusiastically. “Are you also helping fund them? They seem to have a lot more money these days than not.”

“No, I’m not, but I’ve actually been wondering the same thing!” said Hermione with equal fervour. The last she’d heard, the two of them were still trying to get their money back from Ludo Bagman. Perhaps her suggestion of blackmail the previous year had finally worked. Though if it did, she didn’t want to know anything about it.

“Hmm, strange,” Ron commented, staring down at the heap of yarn in her hands in confusion. He was probably wondering what she could possibly be making, but thankfully he was kind enough to not make any comments. “You know helping those two is going to become a conflict of interest when you become a Prefect, right?”

“What makes you think I’m going to make Prefect?”

Ron snorted once again. “Come on Hermione, are you telling me you’ve thought there was any other alternative.”

Hermione felt her cheeks heat up in embarrassment. As much as she tried to keep a level of humility to her, she had to admit that the notion that any other Gryffindor girl in their year would be chosen for Prefect felt preposterous. This was something she’d been working towards since first year.

“I don’t help them that much. Mostly it’s just a bunch of reading their notes and telling them where their magic is wrong. Nothing wrong with that – it’s educational really,” she half lied.

“Oh yeah. Educational,” Ron snickered, pushing off from the bedpost and walking towards the door. “Well if you do see them, tell them mum’s looking for them.”

“Will do—” Hermione went to return to her knitting but stopped, looking up at his retreating figure “—wait, where are you off to then?”

Ron turned, leaning in the doorframe now. “Professor Lupin’s downstairs. I convinced him to teach me how to play chess.”

“But you already know how to play chess…” Hermione gave him a wry smile.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that. I’ve bet Sirius ten sickles I can go at least four games before he realizes I’m hustling him,” said Ron, a large grin spreading across his freckled face.

Hermione let out a small laugh and shook her head before saying, “I swear, you get more and more like Fred and George every day.”

“Those wankers? Absolutely not.”

And with that, Ron disappeared into the hallway, a little more pep in his step than usual. A smile remained plastered on Hermione’s face for long after Ron had left. She felt warm and content in the way only a cheerful and easy encounter with a friend could leave you feeling. Her and Ron had settled into an unspoken understanding after the mortifying bathroom encounter. Of course neither of them spoke of it, both choosing to act as though it had never happened. In a strange way, it was almost as if they needed the uncomfortable situation to become comfortable with each other again. Ron seemed less dopey and more relaxed around her, and as a result Ginny stopped talking about Ron’s feelings for her.

The same sentiment went for twins. It was as if the little bit of chaos was all the group needed to fall back once again into the comfortable friendships that had existed before. Hermione still felt her stomach flip and heartrate increase every time Fred entered a room or brushed past her too closely in the hallway, but she tried to ignore that as much as possible. That was her problem after all, not anyone else’s. And most of all she didn’t want to ruin her friendship with Fred over her stupid crush.

They had grown closer than ever over the past two weeks. Most likely due to their new tradition of late nights in the library of Grimmauld Place. When everyone had retired for the night, tucked in snuggly in their beds, Hermione and Fred would slip from their sheets and reconvene on the old couch of the library, till late in the night. They discussed Fred’s inventions, their interests, and their lives. It usually ended in some kind of debate, but Hermione always found herself laughing in the end. She’d never been able to talk so freely with anyone. It was both a blessing and a curse.

When her yarn had tangled for the fifth time, Hermione sighed and gave up. Instead, she opted to make her way down to the kitchen for a snack. Dinner was soon, but she’d missed tea that afternoon and was feeling too peckish to wait.

“Checkmate,” said Ron proudly as he stared smugly at the rumpled wizard sitting across from him at the kitchen table.

“Hi Professor,” Hermione greeted, eyeing a plate of Chelsea buns on the kitchen counter.

“Hello Hermione,” said Professor Lupin tiredly, his head balanced in his hands as he stared in bewilderment at the chess board in front of him. Sirius sat beside his old friend, snickering silently into his hand.

Hermione suppressed her negative emotions towards the suave, long-haired wizard. Seeing the way he treated Kreacher had left her less than pleased with him.

“You swear you’ve never played before?” Professor Lupin questioned Ron suspiciously.

Ron shook his head in mock innocence and Hermione had to turn away in hide her smile.

She grabbed a bun, taking a large bite out of it and sitting down at the table beside Ron to watch him square off with their old teacher again. The pair had gotten through exactly five and a half games before Professor Lupin had declared in frustration that there was no way Ron had never played wizard’s chess before.

Everyone in the room burst into laughter at that point, the twins and Ginny having wandered into the kitchen and joined in on the fun knowing full well that Ron was better at wizard’s chess than anyone they’d ever met. After that Professor Lupin refused to play anymore games, but Sirius and George stepped up to try and beat Ron in a combined effort.

Ron had just managed to corner their queen when Mr. Weasley came striding into the room with purpose.

“Hey dad!” Ginny greeted cheerfully. But her good humour melted away when her father ignored her greeting.

Arthur Weasley looked worried. Worried and frantic. Hermione had only ever seen that expression on his face once before – at the Quidditch World Cup.

“Remus, Sirius, emergency Order meeting now. Where’s Molly?”

“She’s upstairs I think, shall I go get her?” asked Sirius.

“No, I’ll go. Other members should be arriving soon, have them meet in the dining room.”

Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George were all ushered out of the kitchen shortly after that. None of their pleas to stay or questions were acquiesced or answered of course. So instead, they opted to sit at the top of the stairs and gleam as much information as they could from the members that entered headquarters. Hermione assumed it must be serious. Ron told her that they had never had an emergency meeting like this before. This fact was only solidified in her mind when Dumbledore arrived looking quite grave, his long robes billowing behind him as he stormed down the entry hall and disappeared through the doorway to the dining room. Professor Snape was with him, a fact that caught Hermione by surprise.

“Professor Snape is in the Order?” she asked George sitting next to her.

He nodded and whispered back, “Unfortunately. The slimy git only comes around every once in a while. Always thought he’d be on the other side, but if Dumbledore trusts him, then he must know something we don’t.”

“It’s clear he knows a lot of things we don’t,” said Hermione, beginning to worry the inside of her bottom lip. It had to be Harry. Something this serious and this panicked always had to do with Harry.

That suspicion was confirmed a few hours later at dinner when Mr. Weasley told them that Harry had been accused of underage magic by the ministry earlier that night. Apparently, the ministry had tried to expel him outright, but Professor Dumbledore had insisted on a trial before they went to such extreme punishment. Hermione was more concerned as to why Harry needed to use magic at all than the thought of him being expelled. Apparently he had produced a patronus in front of a muggle. There was only one reason Harry would produce a patronus – dementors. Dementors in a muggle suburb? Now that was cause for concern on many levels.

Hermione ate very little at dinner, too consumed by the problem at hand. The ministry had complete control of the dementors. Only they could dispatch dementors away from Azkaban. Was this the Minister’s way of getting rid of Harry? To easily solve their problem of him? If this didn’t work, what else would they do? What lengths would they go to silence Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter?

A little voice in the back of her head proposed that perhaps Harry had gone looking for trouble that night. Or worked himself up so much that he imagined the dementors and tried to play the hero. Guiltily she thought of the half-finished unsent letters in the garbage bin in her room and wondered if this would have happened if she hadn’t been too meek to break the rules and give her best friend a glimmer of hope.

All these thoughts and questions stuck with her well into the night. Lying in bed, staring up at the darkness of the ceiling above, sleep evaded her worse than ever before. Sitting up, Hermione peaked over at Ginny’s snoring form in the bed beside hers and slipped from the covers. She padded silently out of the room, down the hall, and down the stairs to the library. While the days events had been out of the ordinary, Hermione hoped that her and Fred’s tradition would remain, and she would find him in the library. The urge to talk to him itched at the back of her head fervently.

However, when she got to library, she found the door cracked and the whispered voices of Professor Lupin and Sirius drifted out. Hermione held her breath, turning away from the door and tiptoeing back towards the stairs. She didn’t need to listen in on their conversation to know they were most like talking about Harry. Once back on the third floor, Hermione found herself at a standstill. She should go back to bed. It was no use wandering the dark and grim house at night when she was already out of sorts. However, instead of making her way to her own bed, Hermione found herself walking not to her door, but Fred and George’s. Like an invisible pull at her centre, she gravitated towards it like a planet in orbit.

Not bothering to knock considering the late hour, Hermione quietly opened the door and slipped inside. She walked silently to Fred’s bed and found him sound asleep. She’d never seen him asleep before – up until that point she didn’t think she could be any more handsome than he already was, but up until that point she’d never seen him blissfully gone to the world.

As if sensing her presence, his eyes opened, blinking slowly as he took in her presence.

“’Mione? I thought you’d gone to bed. Went looking for you earlier but Black and Lupin were in the library,” he whispered, his voice low and gravelly.

“I can’t sleep…”

They stared at each other in the dark for what felt like ages. It was as if they were experiencing group thought, both of them teetering on the edge of a decision they were both unsure of. Hermione should go back to her own room. She shouldn’t be sneaking into the room of a boy who had a girlfriend. She should be—

“Get in,” Fred whispered, lifting the covers, and pushing them both of the edge.

Hermione didn’t need to be told twice. She slipped into the covers, burying herself deeply into their warmth. It had been a heatwave for the past two weeks, but the house felt colder that night than it ever had.

“Merlin, your feet are freezing,” Fred whispered when Hermione’s feet accidentally brushed his own.

Hermione moved them away quickly. “Sorry,” she whispered back in embarrassment.

Fred surprised her by reaching down and hook his hand around the back of her leg and pulling her feet flush with his own. “Give ‘em here,” he grumbled before releasing her leg and settling back into the mattress with a deep sigh.

Hermione smiled into the darkness and rolled over onto her side. She kept a safe distance of propriety between them, making sure the only thing touching was their feet. Her head fell heavy on the pillow and for the first time that night she was able to relax.

“Fred?” she whispered tentatively.

“What?” came the soft sound of Fred’s voice back.

“Thank you.”

Fred didn’t answer, instead he shifted, and Hermione felt his hand fall atop hers, gripping it tightly. It took barely minutes for Hermione to fall asleep to the firm and grounding feel of Fred’s thumb rubbing the delicate skin on the back of her hand.

Chapter 18>>>

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TLTNL- DUDLEY DEMENTED

The graveyard appeared in a haze around him, and the tombstones were the good features. The memory resurfacing in his mind's eye as he relived the moment again and again, Voldemort's ghastly white face, the threats and promises of his death, and always lingering in the background, Cedric-

"Harry, Harry love, wake up."

A gentle hand was brushing the bangs away from his face, only twitching slightly over the scar but continuing the methodic pattern. Squinting past the gray haze of sleep, he caught a glimpse of red, and for a moment was sure it was Ginny, but that faded absently from his mind without even fully registering why she'd be there.

Then he kept blinking, and instead of the wide brown eyes of Mrs. Weasley promising a hug whenever he did, or didn't, need one, his own green were staring down at him.

"Mum?"

For a moment Harry wasn't entirely sure if he was even awake...but his eyes were already closing again, her soft voice whispering reassurances, "it's alright dear, you're safe here."

Real or not, Harry felt himself relaxing under that touch, and soon faded back into a restless rem of a long dark corridor...

    Lily was cooking breakfast with an absent minded look on her face. She wasn't churning on the book they'd most recently finished though, if she lingered on that to long she was likely to start crying into the pot below her. No she was instead worrying over the fact that they had an Order meeting tonight, and the four of them would be unable to attend. Once she'd served breakfast and brought this to the attention of the others, Sirius brushed her off at once.

"Quit fretting Lil's, so we miss one meeting, they won't go flying off the handle for that."

"Besides, I think it's for the best," Remus grumbled towards his bowl without looking at anyone. "Doubt some of us could walk in there without executing a murder we couldn't fully explain." He took an extra hard bite at his spoon at the end, nearly ripping the metal off.

James's hand twitched on the way to his mouth, spilling porridge over his nose instead, and only after he'd carefully wiped it up did he say, "it's not like we can do anything about it. If someone comes around here asking questions, we'll do the same as we did before and pretend like nothing's wrong. It's none of their business if we're being extra cautious of late and didn't attend this one meeting."

Lily was stirring her food absently in the bowl, she hadn't touched a bite. She was too busy straining over the fact that they could honestly use the Order's help with this. They should know that there was a traitor among them before any more secrets were spilled, and she couldn't help the deep longing she had just to see them all. So many were going to die in the coming year.

Harry watched them all with a deep ache, again feeling personally responsible he was putting them in such a hard spot all because of his presence. No one was eating much anymore, and when Harry went to put his finished bowl away and began collecting the others no one protested.

Despite the fact that they all knew full well this stupid book was as likely as the last ones going to start with the Dursleys, Remus kept the baby almost hopefully in his lap. He felt safer with his little cub in his arms while hearing about them than having to picture this very infant around those people. Harry in particular couldn't help but smile when he saw this. Aside from his own parents, there was just something adorable about Remus holding a baby he couldn't put into words.

It was a somber group that flopped down into their spots in the living room and Sirius who started without much enthusiasm, and the book he had to grab wasn't helping. It was solid black, only the faint purple five on the spine barely catching the light showed it was next. Sirius tried to pretend that wasn't a bad omen as he cleared his throat.

Privet Drive was coming to the close of another heated day.

Sirius had never believed he could say a street name with as much hatred as he hurled that out with.

All cars were parked, and the once green lawns seemed to be withering on sight for the use of hosepipes had been banned due to drought.

"Huh?" James asked in confusion. He'd admit he was also trying to delay a bit until he had to hear about the inside of one particular house.

"Hosepipes are used to pump water out," Lily grumbled more than explained, at this point she'd pay Sirius just to skip these parts until Harry could escape to the Burrow, but she also knew that wouldn't do any good. In some perverse way she wanted to know every terrible thing Petunia and Vernon had done to her son, that way she could kill them with a much more clear conscious knowing everything. "Sometimes in very hot summers, the city puts restrictions up so the residents have limited use."

James couldn't even imagine the idea, but then again, he'd never thought to question where the water came when he used a spell.

Without their usual aquatic uses to keep them busy outdoors, the inhabitants of Little Whinging were now more seen inside with all windows thrown open in attempts to coax a nonexistent breeze. The only person left outside was a boy in the flowerbeds of number four.

"Please tell me they don't have you out there pruning in that weather," Remus forced out between gritted teeth.

"Nope," Harry murmured. His memories of the summer were still murky, the last clear thing he remembered was getting off the train into Vernon's car, but he already had a bad feeling about how this summer had gone. Not that any of his summers at that place were ever really considered pleasant, so maybe he was just getting this one confused with a previous one? He hoped so, because the bad feelings bubbling up in him now weren't proving a good omen.

Very skinny, with black wild hair and spectacles covering green eyes, he looked even more unhealthy than usual laying in the dying plants.

"That comes from too little nourishment," Lily sneered, thinking back to the new levels of starving they'd been putting her boy through that past summer.

Harry Potter's appearance was an unwelcome sight to the sort of people in this town who thought scruffiness should be punishable by law,

"Well I think how you treat him is punishable by law!" James snapped, "and I can't bleeding wait to act on it."

Harry got the sense he wasn't going to be reporting the Dursleys to anyone, but his father would be facing his own law somewhere in there, causing Harry to inch away from him just a bit in fear. He really wasn't looking forward to what would happen to his muggle relatives when they got out of here.

but Harry had hidden himself behind some hydrangea bushes and so was currently invisible to anyone who would glare.

"Why were you hiding yourself?" Sirius asked, infusing some mischief into his voice Harry quickly shot away with an exasperated look. He had no more clue than them, yet. Besides that, Harry had always strived to keep himself out of trouble at the Dursleys, though hardly ever exceeding that wasn't the point.

The only way he could be spotted was if someone stuck their head out the window of the living room and looked directly down on him. Harry felt he should be congratulated for finding this spot.

"Well congratulations then," James nodded somberly. He really couldn't find any of his normal enthusiasm while having to hear about Harry there. He was half waiting any moment for Voldemort to pop up all over again and start trying to curse his son where he lay, though hopefully he'd at least hit Vernon first.

It may not have been comfortable, but it was far better than trying to sit in the living room where Vernon kept grinding his teeth so loud and snapping accusing questions at Harry, he couldn't hear the news.

Now Harry could feel the soft melding beginning on the edges of his mind as a memory was being returned, and he was more confident than ever his first impulse had been right, he'd found a new level of hate for his summer holidays. He was utterly confident it had something to do with watching the news, or perhaps a lack of news-

"I know you're not going to answer," Remus sighed as he watched baby Harry begin gumming on the sleeve of his robes, "but I really am curious why you're trying to spend time with them like that."

"Enjoying their company is not my reason for being in there," Harry at once said with conviction, "but I'm getting a bad feeling of why I am there."

"I get a bad feeling any time you're there," Lily sniffed, though everyone felt themselves tensing up even more at Harry's proclamation. What a way for this book to start, in such an already tense and uneasy atmosphere.

As if these thoughts had been spoken aloud, Vernon chose that moment to speak up and demand to know where their miscreant nephew was?

Petunia returned carelessly not in the house.

Vernon grunted this was a good thing, demanding of no one what that boy was really up to, he did not buy his story of watching the news.

Harry could feel the soft pressure it caused for his memories to be returned, his listening in on this conversation had finally given him a timeline of where in the summer he was, and the heavy sigh he released relieved no one of their worries. It managed to increase the look of agitation on Harry's face as he realized he'd been left to stew in nothing for a solid month with no useful contact from anyone. He threw Sirius in particular a disgruntled look for his letters he remembered from his godfather, then he sat there and really looked at him for a moment with some monster of a feeling telling him he should be valuing any letter Sirius sent him...

The others had noticed Harry, but they figured if he wasn't sharing it was best not to ask as that had only caused him pain in the past.

No normal boy should even be interested in such a thing, Dudley didn't have a clue who the Prime Minister was.

"He says that like it's a good thing," Remus cocked his head to the side in, well more disbelief than usual for Vernon's mental health.

"It does explain a bit about them though," Sirius curled his lip in disgust. "They enjoy their son being as daft as a stick like they are, they hate Harry for not conforming to that."

Vernon continued even louder in disbelief it's not as if his lot would be on the news-

Sirius rolled his eyes in disbelief at such a statement, he'd been on there only two years ago, and now Vernon even knew who he was. It wasn't actually possible for someone to be that dense was it?

"As if he doesn't know better," James snorted in disgust, thinking back to that first book which seemed like a kindness now, and all of their odd mentionings he'd tried to make a comment to Petunia about. He supposed Vernon had simply blocked that from his mind though, puny as it was, he needed the space for all his insults.

but Petunia quickly shushed him as she reminded the window was open.

"These people have far to much concern with being spied on," Lily scoffed in disgust, but she already knew how self important they found themselves.

"Petunia does enough of it," Remus forced something resembling a smile, "I'm sure she's just expecting retribution."

Vernon quickly agreed and silenced himself as another commercial started in their room. Out on the street, Harry was watching Mrs. Figg amble along apparently muttering to herself.

Harry's eyes narrowed in on this, he'd been far too shy when this had first been brought up, and far too out of it when Dumbledore had mentioned it in the last book, but now taking any excuse to not speak of the Dursley's for a moment Harry confirmed, "you said there was a Figg in the Order?"

"Yes," Remus confirmed, "but I'm still not convinced it's not the same one we know. Surely if she's been looking after you all these years, she'd have told Dumbledore about your err, living arrangements in your younger years." His face was murderous by the end at having to phrase a child living in a cupboard in that light, but if he'd actually said the words they'd come out more as a growl.

"I never told her that though," Harry shrugged, "never told anyone."

Lily narrowed her eyes on her son for that, but she blamed the Dursleys more than Harry for that. More than likely he'd been warned with a harsher punishment than no meals, she shuddered slightly at even the thought of that man putting his hands on her son and quickly cut off her train of thought while answering, "yes, well there's still the other things. Those ratty clothes and your very clear malnourishment plus never taking you anywhere while they spoiled Dudley rotten. Surely she'd at least mention that to Dumbledore who would have investigated further."

Harry wasn't as sure, the Dursley's had often spread around he was a sickly kid to excuse his looks and how they couldn't find any clothes to fit him properly, and there really was something nagging at his mind of Mrs. Figg and Dumbledore...but he let the matter go nonetheless.

Harry was more pleased than ever for his concealment, as Mrs. Figg had taken to inviting him round her place for tea when she caught sight of him recently.

Lily gave a soft little sigh of pity for the poor old thing, she probably got lonely especially since Harry hadn't stayed around anymore.

Vernon piped up in the living room again, asking if Dudders was out for tea?

Remus spluttered in shock as he looked at Sirius like he'd spoken Norwegian.

Sirius looked just as disbelieving as he rolled his eyes at what he'd said. "I'll believe Dudley's out having tea with friends when Harry dates Malfoy."

Harry retched at the idea theatrically while laughing along with the others, privately thinking to himself all that he'd already caught Dudley doing that summer when he was supposedly 'out.' His parents really were blind.

Petunia responded with fondness at once of which friend's house he was at tonight, cooing over how many of his little play mates he had.

James scoffed in disgust, he had more reasons than he'd ever dream of hating these stupid in laws of his, but their continued ignorance still chafed him for just how purposefully stupid they were being.

Harry suppressed a snort with difficulty. The Dursleys really were astonishingly stupid about their son, Dudley.

"Yet I'm not even surprised," Remus rolled his eyes.

Harry's cousin wasn't out having tea with anyone, but was instead out with his gang terrorizing all the children of the neighborhood and vandalizing whatever they pleased.

They were all muttering in frustration at this little delinquent, but honestly it was just a nice change of pace to hear he wasn't tormenting Harry as much as he'd seemed to before they weren't putting too much effort into it.

Harry had witnessed it himself while scavenging the streets looking for newspapers.

Sirius finished that a bit sadly, his mind flickering back to his having done the same in Hogsmeade and not appreciating the similarities to him and his godson in these lights. Harry was probably getting just as much food as a few rats at that place as well.

"Why were you scavenging for newspapers?" James asked with a wince, trying to deny he'd been picturing the same thing as Sirius.

Harry chewed on that for a moment, debating whether to tell them and get it over with or let the book tell as it most likely would, but it didn't take much to decide on the first as he explained the lackluster mail he'd been getting from his friends.

There was a moment of shocked silence before Remus shook his head sadly at Harry and said, "I think you're putting a little too much stock into your friends with that. What exactly do you think they're not telling you, Voldemort walking up the street? No, he's in hiding, they can't offer up anymore."

It was clear as day the anger in Harry's tone as he'd explained it, but this explanation didn't simmer him any. "I don't understand why they had to be so cryptic about it though, it made it sound like they knew something I didn't." This usually happened every time he was at the Dursley's, as old feelings never failed to pop up of his years of isolation there and it somehow felt so much worse that summer.

"Is that really safe?" Lily tried to change the subject into something she found far more important. "The only reason you're at that bleeding place is because you're somehow protected at that house, is wandering the streets a good idea?"

"I couldn't be locked up in that house all the time," Harry scowled, "I'd go mad and beg Ron to come get me again. It's Dumbledore's fault for not explaining that to me." He felt a little bad for his petulant tone when he watched everyone around him flinch, clearly they were all fearing some coming attack by Death Eaters now. Harry wasn't afraid of that, if it hadn't happened by now he didn't see why Voldemort's return would suddenly cause it. That wasn't entirely accurate though...had Death Eaters ever shown up in Private Drive? He was getting some interesting feelings trying to flip across his mind. He was in some kind of danger this summer, and he would be getting guests at his house...but then Sirius had kept going and he stopped thinking about it.

Finally the opening music for the local news began, and Harry was instantly on alert. His stomach clenched with anticipation, as hopefully tonight, after all this time...

"What are you hoping to find anyways?" James asked.

"Strange deaths, disappearances, anything indicating what Voldemort's doing," Harry said like he thought that was obvious.

"While I get what you're going for," Sirius shook his head at him, "I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself. If that's the kind of stuff you were hoping Ron and Hermione would send you, then it's no wonder you're disappointed. Voldemort tries his hardest to keep himself in the shadows as often as possible, it's certainly scarier that way."

"Didn't you notice the pattern last year," James agreed. "Of the people we know he killed, they were all fairly insignificant and wouldn't have taken much notice. The only reason Bertha did was because most likely Crouch, and he had his own reasons to find her and his own secrets to protect, she was sloppy." No one could miss how haggard his face looked in the end as they all remembered who's sloppy kill that was.

"But someone must have some idea of what he is doing," Harry insisted, already realizing he was going to feel bad for the way he'd been thinking of his friends this summer once he'd had this explained.

"Well yes," Remus agreed, "but that's not something you'd put in a letter." Privately he also agreed he wasn't entirely sure if anyone in the Order would tell Harry even if they could. Sirius was the most likely, and they weren't even sure where he was right now. Remus seemed to have just fallen off the face of the earth and wouldn't be telling anyone anything, and clearly Dumbledore was trying to keep Harry out of the loop by having him at the Dursleys for as long as he was.

Harry grumbled a bit more but sighed in agreement.

It started with stranded holidaymakers because of a Spanish baggage-handler strike- but was cut off by Vernon muttering he hoped they enjoyed their siesta.

Lily was fighting back the urge of a few nasty insults she'd like to throw Vernon's way, she wanted Harry to leave this news venture just so she wouldn't have to hear his commentary on every little thing.

Hardly any of that registered with Harry though as he seemed to deflate with disappointment. Bigger news like deaths and destructions would have trumped stranded holidayers.

"While true," Remus agreed, "I'm not sure I understand your disappointment with that."

"Better to know what's going on than this constant wondering and worrying," Harry grumbled.

They wanted to argue the point, but what could they say. They couldn't tell Harry to at least try to enjoy his summer while he could, not where he was. He had nothing to take his mind off these things, and they could already feel the frustration rolling off of him in waves.

Harry forced himself to keep listening anyways, the same pattern as the rest of this summer. Waiting, tension building and expectations running wild until he sat down and heard the nothing, and the questions began again of why nothing had happened yet.

Lily sighed as she wrapped a tight arm around Harry, remembering back to his early days of discovering the wizarding world and how he'd spent his summer days longing to go back to school. She'd rather hear about that than his desire to go chasing after Voldemort.

The rest of the stories held no more intrigue for him, nor Vernon's commentary on it all. Especially the escalation of the drought story and Vernon's waspish comments as he hopped his neighbor heard this one, him with his sprinklers on at three in the morning.

"As if he's not doing the exact same thing," Remus scoffed.

"Actually he wasn't," Harry shrugged, "he treated us all to a lengthy dinner speech about the importance of upholding such laws and he found it befouling anyone would do otherwise."

"Yet another reason I intend on murdering him," James sneered, "torturing you with his arrogant attitude like that."

"Still as pompous an arse as ever then," Sirius rolled his eyes, though honestly he wouldn't be surprised if the man was still a hypocrite and did it without Harry's even noticing.

A helicopter had almost crashed in a field in Surrey,

"That counts as a little strange," Lily offered just to see her son stop looking like that for a moment, though she really didn't think it had anything to do with Voldemort.

"It was because they were training a new pilot though," Harry sighed, "I definitely found that believable enough."

then onto a story of some actresses divorce which Petunia stated shouldn't even be in here, though she'd put her bony hands on every scrap of news she could find.

"So she is a hypocrite," Lily sniffed, though she was well aware by this point.

Finally Harry lost his patience as Bungy the budgie had been trained to water ski!

"That's actually quite talented," Sirius snickered a bit at training a bird to do that.

"Muggle's have the strangest news," James had his head cocked to the side as he heard all of this.

If this had made it in there was no more point in listening, so Harry carefully rolled onto his front and was preparing himself to crawl far enough away from the window before he could stand again.

He hadn't made it an inch when a crack broke the street like a gunshot,

Sirius had never really gotten to a carefree mode of reading, Harry being around these people just made him too uneasy, but now he was reading as tense and upset as if Harry had been around that troll all over again. Anything that sounded like a gunshot couldn't be a good thing.

Even if James hadn't remembered what a gunshot was he would have instantly been as tense and upset as the others just from the way they all were.

a cat streaked out from under a parked car and flew out of sight;

Harry was too busy feeling the echo of adrenaline trying to jump him even if he didn't feel it now to wonder on why he should be thinking of that.

a shriek of fright echoed inside the house, and Harry was on his feet in the same second, unsheathing his wand for a fight.

Remus was far too concerned with the vision of Death Eater's really attacking Harry there to congratulate him on those reflexes.

He hadn't gained his full height yet when his head crashed into something.

Harry hissed and went cross eyed in pain as he rubbed the top of his head, but that still didn't drop the determined look on his face nor how his hand stayed tight around his wand. If he looked like this now with just a delayed after effect while trying not to do anything about it, they could all easily imagine how fierce he looked on the actual situation. It didn't do much to make any of them feel better as they all remembered just how alone he was there.

Harry tried to stagger away and keep his eyes focused on everything, to understand where that noise had come from, but before he'd got his bearings back two hands entrapped his throat from the open window.

For a moment Sirius was convinced someone was squeezing their hands around his throat, his vision blurred out as he saw red then black from what he'd just forced out in shock. There was just no way possible that monster was actually squeezing his godson's throat!

Then a monstrous noise registered, and Sirius wasn't allowed to act on whatever his impulse had been leading him to break because he was flying into action.

"Let me GO!" James continued to thrash no matter how tight the hold on him was. "I don't care if I get knocked out, I'll kill him before I do!"

Remus nearly fell back down the stairs, he'd bolted up there and put the baby down in his crib the moment he realized what all was happening and only just came back in time to try and stop his friend as well. "Think about what your saying Prongs," Remus begged, trying to stay in his face while avoiding the thrashing limbs. "You won't get a foot when Harry's going to have to drag your arse back here, and what if it's worse this time-"

"I don't care!" James howled, his elbow now slamming repeatedly into Sirius' ribs as he kept trying to make his way to that bleeding door.

Harry watched with horror at this reaction, which finally wore off when his fingers started grasping at the handle, so he darted forward to try and say his part, "Dad, please, it-"

"AND YOU!" James snarled, his face the deepest shade of red as his wild eyes flashed between the door and his son now. "You lied to me! You said they never put hands on you!"

"I said they never left a bruise," Harry quickly corrected.

He blinked as all three of them froze in what they were doing and just stared at him, Sirius arms even went slack and James clearly didn't notice.

James stood there, vibrating in place as he snarled, "lying by omission is still a lie Harry! The bloody hell, how many times had he done this!?"

Harry was frowning in concern, rocking on his feet as he watched him with unease, but when he failed to answer James made a guttural, maddening sound as he stormed away, at least in the opposite direction up the stairs. He shoved a vase off a stand on the way, though as Lily noted when she darted after him it had been a gift from Petunia so it seemed fitting.

The last thing the three at the bottom of the stairs herd was a few more objects breaking and Lily crying, "no, James, not that one!"

Harry's face was stark white in shock as he whispered, "he's really mad at me."

Remus and Sirius exchanged a broken look. Neither of them were feeling much calmer than their friend, but the terror now written on Harry was doing a pretty good job of reminding them they shouldn't try and mimic his actions.

"Not you," Remus sighed,

"-by much," Sirius muttered.

"but Harry, what were you thinking?" Remus quickly moved past that sense it only made Harry look even more upset.

"I just," he threw his hands up in the air in frustration, his mind scrambling as he tried to come up with a way to make them see. "You guys have to understand I never told anyone about this, anyone. Not Ron, it just-" he sighed and flattened his hair onto his head for a moment, starting to pace and still throwing panicked eyes at the stairs where now no noise at all could be heard.

Sirius sucked in a deep breath, watching Harry pad back and forth for several more beats before saying, "I get that. It took me ages to tell James what my mum did to me."

Harry paused then, watching Sirius with dark weary eyes. Sirius leaned back against the stairs banister, trying for all the world to look casual as he said, "I grew up a nosy little child, always asking one to many questions, and my mum hated that. She always said I was never a proper Black, and she tended to curse me for it, a lot. Her favorite was to use the Transmogrifian Torture, it popped a limb out of socket and she'd leave it like that until I properly apologized and said I'd do better and stuff. That never left a bruise either," he finished with a mutter, rubbing absently at his shoulder.

He looked over to see Harry had a new kind of horrified look on his face, and Sirius nodded solemnly as he kept going, "things didn't get any better for me once I started school. My first morning there when she'd found out I was in Gryffindor, she sent me a howler so bad it made what Neville's Gran and Ron's mum sent look like a love letters. I ran out of there trying my damndest not to cry, and James caught up to me and demanded to know what that was about. I didn't tell him, not really, just kind of fudged around it and we ended up missing our first Transfiguration class, though for some reason McGonagall didn't say anything to me," he added with a rueful smile. "Then Remus let us borrow his notes so that we could do our homework, so it was never even brought up. He wasn't even technically our friend yet."

"I think I just somehow knew I'd better get used to it," Remus said with a roll of his eyes, taking a seat on the steps anyways and propping his head in his hands like he was trying to pretend this was all casual stuff.

Sirius gave him a nudge with his foot before rounding up, "I didn't go home for that Christmas or Easter holiday, but my summer there wasn't pretty. She basically disowned me, swearing up and down I could never make up for this terrible mistake I made." He gave a tragic look to the ceiling, then smirked at Harry before finishing, "a memory I look back on quite fondly now."

They watched Harry for another second, and this time he did open his mouth before quickly closing it, clearly still dithering, so Remus instead said, "my parents are afraid of me."

Sirius had to bite back the instant feeling he had of correcting Remus, he'd only met his parents twice and he'd never gotten that impression, but Remus seemed to feel anyone who wasn't an Animagus was afraid of him no matter what they said. It was one of the reasons he avoided his own dad now.

"What?" He squawked in surprise, looking Remus in the eye to make sure that wasn't some cruel joke.

He just shrugged however, though his fingers fidgeting with the hem of his robes showed his careless tone wasn't really all there as he explained, "well, they certainly never look me in the eye. They asked me if I could even try to stay at Hogwarts over summer break because they realized the school was much better equipped to handle me. During my full moons, they'd shut me up in a room, sort of like they had to do here, and then leave the house for twenty four hours, just to make sure they weren't around for any part of the cycle."

Harry's mouth was actually hanging open in shock now, which only made Remus give a not at all amused smile. "Oh they took care of me after the fact, bandaged me up and all that. I never knew if it was shame, or fear, or something else, but I do know I stopped going around my parents place not long after I left school, and they've never asked me over since. Last time I saw them was when my Mum passed away and I honestly thought when I was asked up to the hospital it was a joke."

Harry seemed to realize he was staring then, and quickly closed his mouth, but at least this time he didn't turn away from them and instead ran his hand through his hair some more as he said haplessly, "I, don't know what you want me to say. He throttled me sometimes, but only when I was much younger, when my magic was really obvious. He only did it till I went slack, and I learned to do that pretty fast, then he'd lock me in my cupboard until he'd decided I'd learned my lesson. It never did leave a bruise," he emphasized, now rubbing absently at his throat in remembrance.

"How come you never went to the police, told someone," Remus asked gently.

Harry rolled his eyes at what he felt was an absurd question. "Even if I'd had the gall to, which I didn't as Vernon terrified me through most of my younger years, I had no proof, which he'd occasionally point out whenever someone looked at me on the street to long. You think I didn't notice that Dudley and I were clearly so different from each other. But Vernon always said that if I ever said a word about how they'd dealt with any of my weirdness, I couldn't prove it. They'd say that Dudley's second bedroom was mine, and they really only did take food away from me whenever my magic was acting up, never so much I was malnourished."

He paused then, a calculating look on his face as he added, "I don't really think Petunia or Dudley knew, or if they did they didn't care. Petunia was certainly all for the food part though, so I may not put it past them."

Harry looked back to see that a nerve was thumping in both of their jaws, and he was quick to tack on, "he really did stop after I turned eleven though. He was definitely to afraid of my magic, and it really wasn't that frequent."

"And your twelfth birthday," Sirius managed to get out in a steel tone.

Harry flattened his hair with nerves, but at this point recognized there was no reason not to tell them. "Okay, yeah, he did it then until I did pass out. Woke up in the bathroom and they wouldn't let me out until Vernon had put those bars on my window. They've got their own bathroom in their bedroom, so it hardly put them out."

He crossed his arms defensively when they just kept staring at him. "What? What I just said isn't nearly as bad as what you two had."

While they weren't exactly going to argue with him over such a topic it hardly made what he did say feel better.

Up the stairs in their room, Lily watched James collapse on the bed. He'd taken his glasses off first, so that he could press his hands so hard into his face, his palms digging into his eyes, he looked like he was trying to gouge them out.

"James," she whispered, sinking down beside him, but completely at a loss for words.

"I can't stop seeing it," he got out through a restricted throat. "The cupboard, Pettigrew, Harry watching Cedric get murdered right in front of him, now this. I'm fighting this war to try and save my only child, and at this rate my dying feels about as useful as my life."

"Don't-" she begged at once, her hands latching onto his, trying to pull them away, but he still managed to keep going, "I couldn't even save you. You're the one who saved Harry, I just got tossed aside like the useless thing I am-"

"James, please, you can't be thinking like that." She cut him off, nearly begging to try and get him to stop. She had to tug hard for a moment, but finally his hands slid away to reveal bloodshot eyes. She stayed leaning over him, hazel matching green as she whispered, "don't you think I'm feeling the same way. She was my sister James, and she's doing this to my baby, but don't you start talking like that now. We will find a way to fix this, make it so that Harry never has to be without us again."

James gave a derisive snort, his eyes still vacant as he whispered, "some dad I'd turned out to be anyways, Harry's been lying his arse off since he got here, and did you see that look on his face. Now I've scared him senseless, I'll be lucky if he doesn't look at me the way he does Vernon now. Should probably just hand him over to Sirius already and be done with it for all the-"

Lily popped him on the forehead, and when he only winced but kept at his insane mutterings, she smacked him, hard.

"James, listen to yourself," she pleaded. "If Harry doesn't understand why you were so upset then that's because he's never had his father around to be upset on his behalf, but he could never put you and Vernon in the same scope of his life. You're too good a person, and he knows that."

His face twitched, like he wanted to believe her but couldn't quite grasp the emotion yet, so she kept going. "And if you actually think Harry would replace Sirius with you if he had the chance, then you really need a reality check. They both love you, and they need you. It's a damn cruel world where Harry's from that you're not in the picture, but both of them would do anything to change that."

He closed his eyes then, his jaw still shaking, a few tears managing to escape, but at least for a moment Lily had seen the flash in him like he believed that.

There was silence for a long time between them, Lily not moving a muscle and James trying to get his under control, until finally he took a careful breath in through his nose and releasing it through his mouth before whispering, "I love you."

"I love you to," she said back at once.

He opened his eyes then, watching her for several more beats before moving like he was going to sit up. Lily sat back and let him, but she was at once buried into his chest as he wrapped his arms as tight around her as he could. "What did I do to deserve you?" He muttered into her hair.

"If I figure it out, I'll let you know," she returned, snuggling him for as long as they both needed, before he took another deep breath and whispered;

"Guess I should go back down and face them."

"They're all worried sick about you," Lily said at once. "You looked likely to jump through a window when you came pelting up here."

He made an odd noise, one Lily couldn't decide if it was in agreement or protest, but then he took to his feet, put his glasses back on, and started for the door, her hand still tightly in his, their rings pressed together.

As they came back down they saw Remus had to hop out of the way, and quickly took in the other two. Sirius who was an ugly gray but trying to pretend he was acting normal, and Harry's arms crossed and still looking defensive. It did not improve his mood that when Harry saw him, his foot looked like he wanted to take an automatic step back, but he met his eyes and at once whispered, "I'm sorry."

James opened his mouth, couldn't think of anything to say, closed it, and walked past him back to the living room. Lily met her son's eyes as well, but didn't release her hold on James and instead hissed something at him as James made for the recliner. He didn't respond, instead sinking down into that and pulling his wife with him. She perched on his lap, giving him a look that said plainly she did not approve of his actions, but when he wrapped his arms around her waist again and didn't look up to moving, she just rolled her eyes and looked back towards them expectantly.

"He's mad at me," Harry murmured for Sirius and Remus' ears alone.

"Only for the next hour or so," Sirius waved it off. "I pissed him off real good when I denied what my mother had been doing to me for most of my childhood. These two asked me a lot of the same questions they'd been asking you when I came back from holiday, and I gave a lot of the same answers. Didn't admit to it all till I ran away, and even while he was helping me unpack he was ribbing me."

"If there's one thing you want to do to piss Prongs off, it is lie to him," Remus nodded in agreement. "When he found out how long I'd gone without telling him about my being a werewolf, he was really ticked, so much so he went and did something illegal," he finished with an amused smile, causing Sirius at least to laugh.

Harry did not join in, still watching his dad with clear guilt on his face, but followed the other two as they went back into the room as well. He stood in the doorway, and finally he couldn't take it anymore. He'd never in his life imagined his father so angry with him, and the rejection trying to well up inside him and cast a new shade of light on every good memory he'd collected so far had the words bursting out of him before he'd considered them. "I'm sorry, alright. I'll tell you, I promise-" he tried to think of some way to begin, but the words failed him, so honestly stalling for time he finished in a whisper, "after this chapter's over."

James only hesitated a beat, nodded to indicate he'd heard, but still didn't unbury himself from Lily's back.

Harry quickly shuffled to the farthest sofa away, trying to curl himself into the cushions and looking anywhere but at his parents.

James had his face pressed into Lily's spine, doing a terrible job of pretending he wasn't paying attention to any of them, while Lily was giving him the stank eye over her shoulder but clearly wasn't moving until she saw something else.

Remus and Sirius exchanged uneasy looks, but finally Remus sat down next to Harry and Sirius went back to fetch the book. The last thing he actually wanted to do was go back and see how long Vernon had his hands on Harry before his little pup passed out, for all he knew he'd barely get a few more words in before he incited rage all over again from himself and James. Normally this would be the time Harry would step in, read for them as a reminder he was fine, but for now he was pretending to be invisible.

It also occurred to all three of them that they'd had this conversation when James and Lily hadn't even been here, so they'd never even gotten their sons full confession. Remus and Sirius locked eyes, knowing now probably wasn't the time, but hopefully by the end of this chapter everyone would be at least a bit calmer and they'd convince Harry to tell Lily and James what he'd told them. Sirius fidgeted with the page for a long time, before finally the silence dragged on and he felt he had no other choice but to keep going.*

Vernon was snarling into Harry's ear to put that thing away before anyone saw it!

Harry tried to pry his fingers away, telling him to get off, all while keeping his wand steadily pointed.

Sirius' fingers were so tight around the book they were beginning to hurt, but he couldn't release his hold one little bit, he was too busy picturing them being around Vernon's neck.

The pain of it all piqued, and Vernon yelped as he removed himself from Harry.

Remus wasn't even distracted by the coppery taste of blood in his mouth from biting his tongue to stop himself uttering a string of constant curses, his own throat vibrating violently already showing how he felt about having to imagine that being done to Harry. The very worst part was, this still wasn't the worst thing happening. There could still be danger around Harry, and Vernon was merely causing a fatal distraction.

An invisible force seemed to have surged through his nephew, making him impossible to hold.

Lily's face was ghastly white as that image kept floating just behind her mind's eye, blocking out her once peaceful living room and adult son trying to burrow himself out of sight behind Sirius and into the couch. How many times had this happened in his youth? Often enough it was clear this was a common reaction of Vernon's to begin throttling Harry, even in plain view of the street like that. Had his accidental magic ever kicked in before? Or had he never held on so long this happened? She hardly wanted answers to any of these questions, she was still likely to vomit and start skinning that walrus already with her own.

Harry stumbled out of the plants and forced himself to remain on the rest of the street, but there was no sign of any person to have made that noise. There were people starting to peek into the street.

This only reinforced what Lily had just been thinking though, and now she couldn't shake the thought! How on earth was that excuse- that was such a blatant sign of abuse and surely someone had just seen it as the neighbors were looking around. Did everyone in that neighborhood care so little about Harry's well being because of the Dursley's lies no one was going to do anything about this!

Harry stuffed his wand hastily back into his jeans and tried to look innocent.

Harry glanced half hopefully at Remus or Sirius, like he was hoping one of them would make a joke at his expense, but neither of them did, they were still too pail from anger to take the bait. Both were thinking of themselves in the future, what they wished they'd already done to Vernon but each having never done so and neither finding it excusable.

Vernon began playing it off at once, waving cheerfully to all and shouting about some car backfiring.

James still had his face buried in his wife's hair, though the fiery color was doing little to improve his mood it still held the only comfort he could find at the moment, and was far to distracted to ask what on earth that could mean in any relation to the noise Harry reacted to. He was just more disgusted Vernon was playing off his own moment.

He continued to grin in a horrible, manic way,

"I've never seen him grin like anything else though," Harry grumbled softly, as the silence apart from the violent reading was starting to freak him out. He'd grown far to used to the constant flow of commentary, and had learned that long lapses in silence like this were usually at the worst of times. He didn't agree this leveled up with other moments.

until the other faces vanished. Then his grin flipped to rage as he beckoned Harry back to him.

Harry flinched in shock at the eruption of growls in the room, but at least this time he understood why. He hadn't wanted to be back in arm's reach of Vernon then either.

Harry only moved a few steps closer, being careful to remain out of arm's reach.

It was highly unlikely before this moment that the Dursleys were going to live much longer when they were released from this place, but now whatever wavering may have persisted at Harry's words wouldn't even hold. It was utterly astounding he'd ever done so when he clearly had memories of this happening to him in his younger years!

He hissed at Harry what he meant by it?

"I hope he had the bleeding piss scared out of him," Remus hissed, choosing to focus on the disappointment this moment didn't cause Vernon heart failure rather than the still lingering fear of what was going on to start this.

Harry asked what he meant while still investigating the street for the noise that had started this.

Despite James' hands still wrapped tight around her waist, Lily was still fighting the urge to go over to her son right now and have him in her arms to make absolutely certain there wasn't anything wrong with him because of this instance. To run her hands gently over his neck, to be where he was and be just as certain no one was going to harm her son while he was surrounded by all those Muggles.

He furiously retorted Harry had made that sound, but Harry interrupted he hadn't done that.

Petunia's face appeared next to Vernon's now, demanding to know what he'd been doing outside their window then?

Sirius had to work furiously with himself not to give some waspish reply, that was far to similar to how his mother had treated him in the house he'd grown up in. Treating every room that wasn't his as if Sirius were trespassing in it.

Vernon at once agreed with his wife, she'd made a good point.

James felt his lip curling up in disgust, did that man have a single brain cell of his own?

Harry sighed before answering, and the two exchanged a look of outrage.

Harry almost laughed as he remembered those looks as compared to the ones his family still had in place. Vernon and Petunia had nothing on outrage when it came to them.

They demanded why he was doing this again, and Harry reminded it changed every day.

That did it. Harry's unexpected comment cracked Remus and he snorted in surprise but just as quickly tried to stifle his giggling. It wasn't hard, he could still feel bloodlust wanting him to curse something into oblivion, but at least Harry met his eyes and grinned back which made it worth it.

Vernon snapped at him to stop lying, his lot did not get onto their news!

Petunia whispered at his side to be careful, the neighbors could still be listening.

Lily rolled her eyes and tisked in disgust. She didn't care it was nearly fourteen years later for the man, he knew perfectly well her lot did in fact end up on the news from time to time, it had been what had drawn the man to question Petunia about Lily's whereabouts all those years ago. Either he'd blocked the memory or he'd forgotten, either way she no longer needed an excuse to find anything he said or did the lowest form of stupid.

Harry shot back that's all they knew.

The two exchanged a look again before Petunia called him a liar. He shouldn't have need of their news, he got his own from those owls.

"Because Merlin forbid he just get letters from his friends," Sirius muttered tersely. His knuckles still white around the books edge and the fearsome tone of his voice hadn't dropped one bit and Harry was starting to grow worried that none of them seemed to be breathing normally for a while now.

Harry hesitated responding, it pulled at him to tell the truth this time,

"Why do you bother!?" James couldn't stop his snap of outrage, but either Harry was expecting it this time or he just rolled with it Harry didn't flinch this time before answering calmly, "I rarely see a point in lying if I can help it." He did finish on a wince though as all of them gave him looks of disbelief for that, considering his lie by omission was a part of the reason everyone in here looked more than angry. He sighed and muttered something, but was sick of lingering on this topic so shot at Sirius, "do you want me to read through this part?"

"No," Sirius snapped right back, turning his boggling eyes away from Harry for now and effectively hiding a tint of hurt now. He couldn't help it though, he seemed to go out of his way to tell those Dursleys the truth as often as he could, but wouldn't for them? In his time or now?

but finally he admitted those owls weren't bringing real news.

Both snapped they didn't believe him at once.

"Don't see the point of telling them the truth when clearly they think he's lying about everything anyways," Lily was still hissing under her breath so low only James could hear, and he was in full agreement.

Petunia said she knew he was up to something,

"Like what exactly?" Remus rolled his eyes in contempt.

"Don't know, never asked for details," Harry said with a happy enough smile, at least someone was trying to push back into playing this off even if every part of Remus clearly didn't feel it. Harry was honestly wishing Remus hadn't put the baby away now, even that little infant would have helped them feel better.

and Vernon added on they weren't stupid.

There were several colorful comments each of them could have made to that, but considering Vernon would have long since died before this conversation had taken place if any of them had had their way besides Harry, Sirius didn't bother listening to the variety and instead kept up his lackluster reading in hopes this chapter would just end. Anger and worry were still at war with each other over Harry's predicament, and he wanted some kind of proof his little pup wasn't about to be attacked right there on the street and that Vernon was going to have his hands removed soon, not necessarily in that order.

Harry snapped back that was news to him!

Remus couldn't help it that time, he did manage a soft laugh under his breath for Harry's wit, but he was still the only one.

Harry couldn't help rolling his eyes at what he was now considering an overreaction from everyone else. He was fine, and if they really wanted another apology he'd give it just to stop all of this ugly silence and silent death threats he could still feel pulsing through the room.

He didn't wait for a response, but instead stormed off before either of them could call him back and was soon at the end of the street.

Lily blinked spastically for a moment as fear finally trumped anger. Harry was only at that place because apparently it was safe from dark attacks, but now he'd up and left with the noise of an apparition still going unexplained. Exactly how far was that protection magic around number four? Just the house, the street? Yet for even a second to turn around and say she wanted Harry to stay at that house for a moment longer would always feel wrong, it really spoke volumes she'd prefer Harry's chances with a dark wizard rather than her sister and husband in law.

He was in trouble now and he knew it.

Remus was dying to ask Harry what he defined as 'trouble' with those people. Another round of strangling? Harry'd made it clear it wasn't that common, but now he truly was in the dark of how much Harry could be leaving out there. Sirius was still reading every word as a death sentence and very clearly wanting to finish this, and since Remus was well aware Harry wasn't getting out of this conversation again at the end of the chapter he didn't bring it up for now.

He would have to face his aunt and uncle later and pay the price for his rudeness,

Sirius couldn't take the suspense anymore and did ask, "pay what price exactly?"

Harry wanted to sigh and roll his eyes, try and play this all off or just ignore it like he had in the past, but at this point he was sure that wouldn't help any. He didn't see how telling them the entire truth would make it much better, but he wasn't sure it could get any worse either. "Threats mostly, he knew he couldn't do anything to me, even if he knew I wasn't supposed to be doing magic he was still afraid I would after Marge. Locking me in the shed mostly, he even kept the padlock all nice and polished," he finished with a forced laugh like looking back made it funny rather than as menacing as he'd honestly found it, but he'd instead been right the first time, several disturbing noises promising more violence and more death glares at the door showed his honesty had won him nothing.

but he didn't care at that moment, his mind still on other matters.

That cracking noise was one made when someone Apparated, or Disapparated.

Harry was still very distracted by the tension that had practically taken up a seat in this room, and he had no want to think about the tingling feeling saying he could have a gut answer to that question.

No one else had really forgotten what had started the instance either, and honestly fear was starting to trump outrage. None of them could wait to start wringing Vernon's neck themselves, they'd probably have to find an object to do so considering their hands wouldn't wrap around but that wasn't the point. Now though, now that Harry was away from him, the reason he'd left was hovering in the forefront just waiting to pounce on their aching hearts. Most likely it was a Death Eater coming for Harry, and he'd now left the only protection he'd had.

Harry may not have understood why as he wasn't fearing the same thing, but he was relieved when Sirius finally started reading in less blood thirsty tones and hoped he'd finally switch back to at least semi normal.

It was exactly the noise he'd heard Dobby make, and suddenly wondered if it was the house-elf that was the cause of this?

Lily could tell she was the only one who was desperately hoping for that to be the answer. The other boys were all still too upset to even consider any kind of good option other than an attack waiting, but Lily was honestly hoping now it was Dobby with some cryptic new message. She'd take that over a fight for his life as strung out as she was right now.

Could Dobby be invisible right now following him? Harry suddenly whirled on the spot like he expected to see the tiny creature hovering right behind him, but still there was nothing, and Dobby could not become invisible.

Harry was looking on at nothing in a funny sort of way, his face twisted as he was so sure he was moments away from realizing something, about being followed by invisible-

"Not invisible," Remus agreed uneasily, "but you do know he can hide at least in a bush." His thoughts were hovering the same as the other boys, that a wizard could be hidden even more easily. Though it did beg the question, if Harry was under attack, why the hiding at all? Were they waiting until he was far enough away from Private Drive to attack? It was hard to see another motive when they were all still on the edge of their seat and white faced from anger.

He kept up his trudging pace, paying no attention to his route as he'd traced through these streets so much of late he would often wander to his favorite spots without thinking.

Lily tried to force herself to see some good news in this, that this wasn't Harry's first foray out of that house that summer and he hadn't been attacked yet. Her hand tightened around James' though as her mind just kept offering up more terrible solutions, that he was just being watched, and someone was waiting.

He couldn't stop glancing back over his shoulder, still convinced there was something magical about that noise he'd heard amongst Petunias begonias.

Harry fidgeted with unease as he was just as sure of this fact now, but he felt no impending threat from this like he was now aware those around him did. Yet that didn't stop a trickle of sweat breaking over the back of his neck as he couldn't find it in himself to comfort them either, to promise nothing bad was going to happen this night. In fact he was now fighting back the impulse to take the book away from Sirius again for a wholly other reason, something bad was going to happen to him tonight and he didn't think his godfather in particular was going to enjoy it.

Why hadn't they come up to him?

Remus shook his head in disbelief at Harry as he asked, "did it really not occur to you this could be an attack?"

"Not really," he sighed. "Dumbledore said the only reason I was going there was because it was supposed to be safe."

They wished they had that kind of faith in Dumbledore, but seeing as they'd never once seen that house as any kind of safe none of them agreed.

As his question burned, his certainty faded. Perhaps it hadn't been a magical noise at all, but something perfectly ordinary Harry was trying to see more into.

"Glory Harry, now I know you've been spending too much time with those muggles," Sirius sighed. "Trying to write off our instances as normal things."

Harry finally felt a real smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as Sirius tried for a joke again, somehow it felt better to watch them worry about something they knew he lived through like some impending attack then fear for his health at the Dursleys.

Feeling hopeless and alone, the same thoughts began plaguing him as they had all summer.

Lily felt James twitch behind her, the compulsion to go comfort his son when he heard of that feeling rearing its head and pushing away his own feelings. He sighed deeply, but finally unburied himself from her hair and glanced around at Harry now to see a far away, contemplative look on his face as he rubbed absently at his head while Sirius read, but thankfully there weren't any traces of hopelessness in him now.

Tomorrow the pattern would continue, he'd awake at five o'clock sharp to receive his Daily Prophet, though he often questioned why he continued to bother with the paper as he only took a passing glance at the headline and tossed it in the bin. If the idiots running it finally found news of Voldemort's return, that would be the first page, which was all Harry cared for.

Remus shook his head at Harry's naivety, he was looking for odd instances occurring in the Muggle news but only scanning front headlines of theirs? He was most likely going off his experience last year of the two headlines featuring Barty Crouch and Bertha Jorkins, but those weren't always front cover stories. Sometimes it took a few page flips to find anything remotely interesting other than politics and Quidditch scores. He wasn't going to bring this up to Harry now though, no since in riling him up when soon enough they were going to be hearing more about odd happenings in the book than they already were from their own Daily Prophet from this timeline.

Ron and Hermione would likely send him another letter soon, but they were of no more help.

"News like what?" Sirius couldn't stop himself from asking. "Merlin Harry don't you ever just send fun letters to your friends detailing all the times you've tried to kill your cousin."

Harry just rolled his eyes as he found the question obvious and considered the rest all joking, but he was wrong. Sirius wasn't the only one wondering if Harry would ever get anything resembling a normal life which now seemed laughable with Voldemort's return.

Quoting such things in his head about how busy they were, and they couldn't put much in these letters for obvious reasons, but they promised they'd be seeing him soon.

"That would get on anyone's nerves though," Remus sympathized. "Did they have to be so vague?"

"Wonder why you haven't been invited over to the Burrow yet," Lily agreed softly.

Harry just hummed in annoyed agreement, having no idea why he'd feel like correcting his mother he never made a trip to the Burrow this summer.

That was all that was given though, not a single mention of any specific timeline of when Harry would be joining his friends. He'd picked up some hints that his two friends were together, most likely at Ron's place.

"Now that's just hurtful," Sirius gave an exaggerated pout which was worth it when Harry almost cracked a smile at him. Sirius wanted to still be angry, he was certainly still worried, but Harry was starting to look sickly pale again and he didn't want his pup to be remembering whatever was fixing to happen while still thinking everyone was still mad at him.

It tormented him so much to think of the two having the time of their life at the Burrow while he was stuck here, he'd thrown away the chocolates they'd sent him for his birthday unopened.

"Now that was just hurtful, I don't think I've ever been that mad at anyone."

James still sounded off, but he met Harry's eyes so no matter how much hurt and anger was still there, Harry smiled right back.

He'd regretted it later after the wilted salad Aunt Petunia had provided for dinner that night.

Harry's kindling annoyance was certainly muted from what it had been at the age of fifteen, but it was helping that those around him were finally starting to act at least sort of normal again, so Harry tried not to linger too much on the hurt feelings he remembered feeling from his friends.

Just what were his friends so busy with? Why wasn't he busy with them? Hadn't be proved himself capable of handling more than them!

"What does handling situations have to do with anything?" Lily asked in confusion. "They're not taking Ron and Hermione out on Order missions, most likely Molly's keeping them busy with chores."

Harry at first felt a flash of confusion, like he was quite sure his friends did know something of what was going that he still wasn't privy to, but it was at once drowned out by his certainty that his mother was right and his friends were keeping quite busy and not in a way they were enjoying. It was all very strange considering he still couldn't imagine the Burrow coming into play. In answer, he simply shrugged with some chagrin and said, "well when you put it like that it sounds ridiculous, but yeah that's pretty much what was on my mind. They were out there getting told everything while I was stuck-" he finished with a wince, not having any proper way to refer to the Dursleys anymore without watching them all flash with another bout of anger.

Had they forgotten what he'd done, what he'd been forced to see happen to Cedric while he'd been tied to a tombstone?

Lily felt her throat nearly swollen shut. She couldn't stand just sitting here and letting him go through all that! It was killing her not to ask if he'd talked about this with anyone, but she knew he hadn't, he'd said so himself. The only people he'd ever even remotely brought it up with were Ron and Hermione, and that hadn't been the real talk Harry needed, just his friends listening to him chat about what Voldemort could be up to now.

She took one look at Harry's face though and could tell now still wasn't the time to be bringing this up. Harry's face was still lined with tension as he tried to throw covert looks at his father and was still glancing periodically at the door. Clearly whatever they were trying to prove in showing they were trying to move past that moment wasn't fooling him completely, and bringing back up that graveyard moment would only make him feel worse. She wanted her son to feel safe here, not like she was constantly interrogating him, so it was probably best to wait at least until he was at the Burrow and she could trust Hermione to bring it up for her.

Harry at once cut off that train of thought and scolded himself for the hundredth time that summer.

Sirius read all that with such a horrid wince it looked like his face was going to spasm off, but Harry couldn't think of a word of comfort for him or anyone. He couldn't help what his mind dwelled on, and even without the month long time span in between remembering that and where he was now, he could still remembering what it felt like. It was a mercy being here and not being able to constantly relive that moment like his dreams had been trying to do last night, but at least here he had distractions with his family so he couldn't dwell on that. At the Dursley's he'd had nothing.

It was bad enough he kept visiting the place in his nightmares, he did his best not to think on them in his waking moments too.

Green met green as the two shared a look, Harry trying this very hardest to act like this was no big deal. He was failing, and Lily knew full well what she'd woken him from last night with her gentle touch, but she wasn't going to call him out either as clearly he was not going to have this conversation on top of the Dursleys spit out he was expecting very soon.

None of the boys were remotely surprised either, they'd all heard the noise Harry had been making last night and it really wasn't surprising if they thought about it. His recurring memories would of course bring back the dreams he'd be lingering on when he was that age.

He took a sharp turn and just happened to pass the alleyway he'd first laid eyes on his godfather. Sirius' letters had been just as unhelpful, but at least they were filled more with caution and sympathy with such quotes as reminders to keep himself out of trouble, and he understood this was frustrating to Harry but still not to do anything rash.

Sirius had to work hard at it, but finally he got a tragic look strung across his face before looking around at Harry and demanding, "why do you always take the advice I give you like that? That's sound logic with what I know you get up to."

Harry just gave him an exasperated look back, he wasn't going to explain himself twice and he knew he'd had several mental rants about his godfather as well as his friends. Plus, at least he'd started with the nicety that Sirius understood him.

He'd at least been following that advice, or at least, he hadn't strung his broom to his trunk yet and flown off to The Burrow.

"Honestly you deserve a lot of credit for restraining yourself," Remus chuckled, "I know Sirius himself wouldn't have lasted."

Harry gave an absent smile as he tried to visualize it, but all he was finding was an empty house at the end, which made no sense. Of course the Weasley's would be at their home.

Harry honestly found it galling his godfather giving such advice from the same man who'd broken out of prison to come to Hogwarts and then escaped from there on a stolen hippogriff.

James and Remus couldn't help throwing their heads back in surprised laughter while Sirius' smile turned utterly indulgent.

"Well when you put it like that-" he began to agree, when Remus got a hold of himself and spoke over him, "the best part is, that's still not the most wild thing he's ever done. Don't think we've yet told you about the time a Ravenclaw dared him to tie a string up to-"

"You're going to give Harry the wrong impression about me," Sirius cut him off with a wagging finger and a mischievous smirk.

"What impression would that be?" Harry demanded as he laughed along, finally feeling the releasing tension from his shoulders as they all got a laugh again.

"That I was some scoundrel who deserved that detention," Sirius said, making his eyes go wider with innocence. "I'll tell you that one when I know these two idiots won't paint me in a bad light."

"You know that's never going to happen," James muttered loud enough they all heard anyways, but Sirius kept going with a smug smirk.

He'd reached the park now and sat down in one of the remaining swings, his mind still busy with all of these weighing thoughts. Tomorrow he'd have to come up with some new way to listen in on the news.

"You could always try hanging from the gutters," Remus couldn't help but suggest while he rolled his eyes.

"That's not nearly as comfortable or long term helpful," Sirius shook his head, "though I suppose if the telly's loud enough anyways, he could just lay on the roof, I'm sure he's agile enough to get up there."

"Why do we keep your friends around again?" Lily muttered to James as she watched them have a light bicker over the pros and cons of both while Harry watched indulgently.

"You know you love them," was James' only response. He couldn't decide if he wanted them to stop and keep going so that this bleeding chapter would be done with and he'd feel at least a little better talking to Harry again now that he'd cooled down, or keep listening to something so silly as a kind distraction. Harry made the decision for him.

While it was clear he was enjoying the show, and was the least looking forward to this chapter being over as it would only put him back in the spotlight, he still cleared his throat significantly to at least get past the danger they were all feeling because of that cracking noise still having gone unexplained.

He had nothing else to do after all, even his dreams left him restless. If he wasn't revisiting the graveyard and all that had happened there, he was instead traveling long dark corridors ending in locked doors.

Whatever amusement his pseudo uncles had just given Harry vanished at once as Harry shivered violently. He looked more frightened in that moment then he ever had when realizing what Vernon had been doing to him. Even as Harry tried to shake it off though and just tell the others he truly hated being kept there now more than ever, there was something lingering about Sirius reading about that place...

He supposed those had something to do with the trapped feeling he had when he was awake.

"Well that makes sense," Lily said fairly to try and get rid of at least one of the worry lines that hadn't gone away in ages now in her son.

"You sound like Trelawney," Sirius told her for the soul purpose of switching her worried eyes to being agitated upon him. "Dreams don't mean nothing."

Lily curled up her lip at him, prepared to give a volley of colorful retorts to that comparison, but Sirius promptly ignored her and smugly went back to reading.

The scar on his forehead prickled from time to time to further randomly agitate him, but he hadn't bothered mentioning this to anyone, knowing they wouldn't find that interesting any more.

"Of course I would!" Sirius spluttered at once, any amusement he'd collected for himself vanishing at once. "It means it's bothering you, and less importantly, I get to know when Voldemort's annoyed by something. That all matters very much to me."

Harry studied him for a moment before simply shrugging. He knew Sirius truly was concerned for his well being, but he still hadn't found the need to write his godfather any more than his friends of the annoying pain, it would only make his letters even more repetitious and not even remotely helpful as far as he'd been aware.

He already knew the response he'd get, that it was just going to happen more frequently because Voldemort was back, nothing to worry about, old news.

"You make us comforting you sound so drab," Sirius sighed.

"And I'm confident no one would be telling you that was old news," Lily added on forcefully, she knew no one Harry was sending that information to would just write him off like that.

Remus just winced and chose to say nothing, he couldn't even pretend to say how he'd respond because apparently he didn't exist anymore outside Dumbledore telling Sirius to go find his useless arse.

The injustice of it all welled up inside him so that he wanted to yell with fury.

"I'd suggest letting that out then, alone in the park," James told him. "Better than on someone who doesn't deserve it." Or someone who might resume strangling him because Harry raised his voice. He wouldn't put anything past that monster.

Harry got a rather sheepish look about him though, like he was worried that might be exactly what happened.

He'd been the one to tell everyone Voldemort was back! Yet his reward was to lay around Little Whinging for weeks cut off from the rest of the world, forced to listen to useless news surrounded by dead begonias!

Lily winced at the sharp volume Sirius was using while yelling Harry's thoughts, she honestly believed Sirius was venting a bit of his own frustration in there on Harry's part as he more than likely agreed with Harry's plight. Still, Lily tried to keep up a peaceable conversation, "I thought you said those were hydrangea bushes, not begonias."

Harry gave her a strange look as he said, "there's more than one flower in those gardens."

How could Dumbledore have done this to him? How had his friends forgotten about him here? How much longer was Sirius going to tell him to sit around like a good boy? How much longer until he lost the fight with himself and sent a letter to the stupid newspaper telling them Voldemort was back?

"Well that last one at least is doable just to vent," Remus forced a smile that stuck out more than ever with Harry's seemingly never ending supply of frustrated demands. "Even though it'll most likely be chucked in the fireplace, at least you got all that out somehow."

No one responded, Sirius in particular was still pouting down at the pages that his godson was so clearly frustrated with him and yet Sirius thought Harry was in the right this time. What on earth was Sirius doing leaving Harry at that place? It had been made more than clear he hadn't the faintest idea what went on there, but even if he thought Harry was having the time of his life with those Muggles he would have thought he'd be insisting to Dumbledore to at least let Harry come around to Remus' place by now so that Sirius could visit. Or even the Burrow, since Molly and all the Weasley's most likely knew him now. It really was annoying Sirius as much as Harry the longer he thought about this of why Harry was still there.

These thoughts all continued swirling together in his mind leaving him vacant to the rest of the world as dusk fell around him.

James fidgeted hard, his hands tightening around Lily's waist again in fear that was clearly gripping her as well if her small shivers meant anything. Time was clearly passing Harry by and still no attack had come. What in Merlin's beard had that cracking noise been already? It was going to drive them crazy sitting on the edge of their seats not knowing.

The thing to draw him out of his own thoughts was the sound of many approaching, and Harry looked around curiously to spot a gang all heading home, laughing loudly. At the lead was his cousin, Dudley, as massive as ever, but a year's hard dieting and the discovery of a new talent had wrought a change in his physique.

Remus blinked quizzically, cocked his head to one side, then the other, before declaring, "nope, can't picture it. Here I was thinking he'd break that diet and his pants in his next mention."

Harry smirked a bit, but gave no articulate response. He had no clue what had wrought the change in Dudley to physically better himself, but Harry knew he hadn't considered it much more than what damage it could now do to others which was surely fixing to be explained.

As Uncle Vernon delightedly told anyone who would listen,

"The mailbox then," James snorted in disgust.

Dudley had recently become the Junior Heavyweight Inter-school Boxing Champion of the Southeast.

"I think Harry should actually be terrified for his life," Sirius blinked spastically at the idea. "Teaching that little hippo to punch with accuracy and more power!"

"I still can't wrap my head around him in any training regime," Remus had an odd expression on his face like he wanted to laugh at the idea," but I suppose the best advice always has been play to your strengths."

James shook his head at both of his friends while still vividly imagining all the spells he'd still love to use on Dudley. It didn't matter he was Harry's age, he couldn't picture anyone raising a fist to his son anymore without seeing red and Dudley was still second on the list.

Harry may no longer have been afraid of Dudley,

"Is it because you can set him on fire with a word?" Sirius asked innocently, "because I heard that can instill some real confidence."

Harry gave an easy laugh as he fell into joshing about Dudley, avoiding mentioning that after surviving Lord Voldemort Dudley was more laughable than a hedge.

but he still didn't think that Dudley learning to punch harder and more accurately was cause for celebration.

"I'm starting to wish you had to take psych evaluations before learning to play in sports like that," Lily muttered bitterly, thinking that even if Harry wasn't his victim anymore, most likely Dudley was still bullying others out there with this new found gift.

Neighborhood children all around were terrified of him -

James scoffed in disgust as he pictured it, and how any complaints would go nowhere and the best thing to do would be to call the Muggle police on that boy if there was any luck. Preferably while Harry was not in the vicinity.

even more than they were of that odd Potter kid whom everyone knew attended a center for criminals.

Harry sighed and rolled his eyes as he remembered that stupid lie, but for some odd reason he had a bad feeling about his real school year to come and how it may be worth going to that center to avoid another attendance at Hogwarts this time.

Harry watched them passing by without taking notice of him, and Harry had to fight back the urge to hail them back.

"That would, certainly be, interesting?" Remus said brokenly, unsure if he was supposed to be laughing as the last time Dudley had bothered Harry he'd run off screaming to his mum about Harry setting a plant on fire, and now he'd be doing this in front of his friends. On the other hand, was testing Dudley really the best idea, as surely he would tell his parents and Harry was already in enough trouble.

Harry had an unfamiliar look on his face, but it was only because of the flashing green eyes that set the look off. Otherwise he was practically the spitting image of James, ready to antagonize someone because they'd ticked him off, to vent some of his frustrations when Lily'd just turned him down again. It was an uncharacteristic look for Harry and really showed just how frustrating his being there really was to him for Harry to be trying to vent in this particular way.

If Dudley's friends saw him here alone, they would without a doubt try to come over and start something with him, leaving Dudley in a hard place. He wouldn't want to lose face in front of them, but he'd be terrified of provoking Harry.

Remus rolled his eyes as he at once noticed Sirius adopting the same look as Harry, ready to rile Harry up in this clear display of fun to him, giving no regards to the consequences of what could happen if this played out. Honestly Dudley did deserve the outcome, but Remus still didn't want Harry to take any of the fall which was most likely to happen at the end of any scenario.

Harry would find it the most fun he'd had in ages to watch Dudley's dilemma, taunting him and watching him be powerless, while if any of his friends did try something Harry could draw his wand on them in a second.

Lily huffed and gave Harry the stank eye for that, he knew quite well that he wasn't going to go cursing any of those boys and none of those Muggles would do any more than laugh at such a real threat to them. She understood he was angry but she could think of five other healthier ways than provoking Dudley and she was not happy to be hearing him entertaining this, but she still couldn't bring herself to scold him for it either. Dudley had done quite a lot of damage to Harry and he deserved just a tiny bit of payback, she just wished he'd think about the consequences more than Dudley squirming.

He'd honestly love the opportunity, to torment the boys who'd made his youth hell.

James couldn't help it though, he laughed just a bit under his breath as he was on Harry's side, his sons wit would be worth whatever fight broke out between those boys.

They didn't see him though, and Harry didn't really draw their attention. He had to fight hard against the impulse, as picking a fight would only get him a risk of expulsion.

Harry clucked his tongue in annoyance at what he considered a wasted opportunity, but then why did he have a sudden surge of confidence he did use magic this night...and it involved Dudley.

They began fading back into the night, and Harry watched them go with disappointment as he thought towards Sirius that he'd done as asked, the exact opposite of what his godfather would have done.

All five of them finally gave a free laugh again, not a breath wasted on saying otherwise.

He did rise to his feet once they were out of sight, and began trailing the noise out of sight. Vernon and Petunia thought the best time for Harry to be home was when Dudley was. Vernon had already threatened to lock Harry in the shed if he was late again.

"The worst part is, I now know you're not kidding," James hissed, a fire rekindling in his eyes at that threat.

Harry fidgeted, but remembering his promise, decided against playing it off this time and weakly offered, "Well, it's better then the cupboard right? Probably because I wouldn't fit in there anymore."

"I think I liked it better when you weren't trying to be funny about this," Lily muttered in disgust.

Harry rewound his path back towards Private Drive, passing the now quiet and dark houses that only had little patches of beams to light his way. He liked Little Whinging best like this, when all the neighbors couldn't glance out the window and start muttering about the 'delinquent.'

Lily still couldn't help but clench her teeth in disgust of all of these people swallowing all of the Dursley's lies so easily. Lily could never imagine seeing such a scrawny little kid like Harry next to pampered Dudley and not questioning it, now he'd practically grown up and never had one single person said a word about such a thing?

Harry came to a stop in the shadows when Dudley's gang was departing from him, all saying their farewells to their friend calling him Big D. Harry waited until they were all out of sight and Dudley was on his own before sprinting after his cousin and calling him in the same name.

"You're just begging for that fight tonight," Remus said with resignation.

"Least he was alone now, and not stupid enough to pull anything," Harry half heartedly defended while stopping the trembling of his hand going for his wand now. Every moment that passed left him more sure than ever something was fixing to happen...to him or Dudley. Maybe they really were going to be attacked tonight.

Dudley turned, but turned back away at once when he recognized who it was.

Harry caught up to him anyways and asked how long he'd been going by Big D?

Dudley just told him to shut it.

"And I was just dying to know the answer to that," Sirius muttered belligerently as he flipped the page viciously, his mind's eye now vividly picturing what Harry was heading back towards, and if that cretin put his hands back near Harry again Sirius was going to have a much harder time stopping Prongs a second time.

Harry ignored this and told that he may find it a cool nickname, but Dudley would always be Ickle Diddykins to Harry.

Lily snorted volatility in surprised laughter which quickly dissolved into giggling while the other boys quickly gave a nice laugh for Harry using up Petunia's pet name like that. They were honestly starting to wonder though if they were being paranoid, if that crack really had been nothing. Harry had been alone for hours, far enough away from that house he really would have been vulnerable if anything was going to happen. They were at least trying to force themselves to relax, Harry wasn't in immediate danger, from the outside world anyways.

Dudley repeated shut it, louder.

Harry reminded he never told his mum to shut it, and then further asked if he could at least use Popkin or Dinky Diddydums?

Sirius never would have believed he could read with such blissful happiness once again, but being able to read this after all the horrid feelings he'd already been feeling on top of yesterday's times made this mild taunting feel euphoric.

Dudley said nothing. The effort of keeping himself from hitting Harry seemed to demand all his self-control.

"I never would have bet he'd have so much self control," James smirked, still picturing that fat little blob sneaking sweets from the fridge when he'd been on his diet.

Harry switched though to a less amusing topic, asking who his victim had been tonight? Had he gone after Mark Evans again?

"Evans eh?" Sirius looked up and around curiously.

Lily just shrugged though, saying, "don't ask me, I told you my maiden name's actually a common one. My dad never mentioned any more family to me though, so I wouldn't think there's an actual relation." Her face went an ugly puce color as she remembered that Harry was only there because Petunia was supposedly all the family Harry had left. If she did have some distant relative out there who was of her blood other than Petunia, she still suspected Harry would have been better off with some stranger she'd never met.

Dudley snarled back that kid had been asking for it, he'd cheeked him.

"Clearly not hard to do," Sirius snorted.

Harry asked if he'd been told he looked like a pig in a wig? Because that wasn't cheek if it was true.

Harry felt a small smile as those around him laughed at his humor, they were clearly trying to force themselves to calm down finally after that disastrous blowout Vernon had caused, which made Harry feel all the more uneasy that the true danger was only just getting started.

Harry was watching with high entertainment at the frustration he was clearly causing Dudley, like he was siphoning off his own and passing it along.

Lily ran her hand through her hair with a sigh, accidentally flicking some into James' mouth, still wishing Harry wouldn't do such a thing but at least semi grateful he was doing something about it. It would be even worse to have no release she supposed, she just wished he wasn't suddenly even unintentionally mimicking his father in his school years like all the boys around her were clearly laughing about.

They turned right down the narrow alleyway where Harry had first seen Sirius,

Sirius couldn't stop a little shiver creeping into his tone for realizing that, though he would have thought that was a good thing, such a random mention of that alley way managed to try and spring all his worrying fears of his time in Azkaban. What a stupid thing to be dwelling on now when those creatures were as far away as could be from his pup.

when Dudley suddenly stopped in the dark where the streetlights couldn't reach them on either side, demanding of Harry he thought he was a real big man carrying that thing?

"Can't even bring himself to say wand," Remus rolled his eyes in disbelief at this walking dung bomb.

Harry grinned again as he told Dudley he wasn't as stupid as he looked, but then if he was he couldn't walk and talk at the same time.

"No need for digging into blond jokes there Harry," Sirius critiqued. "I know you're better than that."

Harry pulled out his wand.

"Was just proving a point," Harry quickly said in defense, throwing his hands up in surrender at once of his mum giving him such a look of exasperation.

Dudley looked sideways at it, reminding Harry at once he wasn't allowed or that freak school of his would expel him.

"And wouldn't that just make every one of your coming holidays," James snapped, honestly finding it a miracle the Dursleys never tried to provoke Harry, to find some way to get him expelled from a place they hated so much.

Harry said back slyly that for all Dudley knew, they'd changed the rules.

Dudley said they hadn't at once, but his tone wasn't so sure.

"For all he knows the crazy school of magic burns it's rule book every few months," Remus snickered.

Harry just laughed, and Dudley snarled back Harry was just too scared to take him on without that thing.

"Well can you blame him," Lily grumbled, "he's twice the size of you."

Harry just shrugged though, he hadn't feared Dudley in a long time by that point, and while he still didn't consider himself much of a physical fighter, he was honestly rather confident by this point he could probably take Dudley on if he stayed out of his range enough and made at least one good blow of his own. He'd just never bothered as it still wouldn't win him anything where he was staying that night.

Harry said back with derision that all Dudley needed to beat up kids was four mates behind him. Asking about that boxing title he was so proud of and how old his opponent had been, single digits?

Even James was well aware they put opponents up in better racquets than that, but it still wasn't a nice thought Dudley could be out doing this to such young kids in his own neighborhood which they all honestly believed.

Dudley snarled back he was their age, twice the size of Harry, and out cold for twenty minutes after Dudley was finished with him.

"Was I supposed to be impressed?" Remus mock yawned.

"Weight isn't everything," Sirius sniffed. "I'm sure Harry's still faster than him and Dudley."

Then going on to say he was going to go straight home and tell his dad that Harry had that thing out-

"Running off a tattletale now," James sneered, still fighting back his own impulse to curse Dudley stupid.

Harry cut him off for being so afraid, but Dudley sneered back that Harry wasn't usually this brave at night.

Harry felt himself shiver just a bit, he had a bad feeling where Dudley was trying to go with that crack.

At first confused, Harry returned that it was night now, that's what people call it when it's all dark.

This time no one could wrangle up much humor for that jab, they all remembered what they'd heard from Harry last night and what Dudley may have been hearing for over a month now. However, if he was really fixing to mock Harry for his nightmares, that kid was in for a serious problem from the lot of them, more than he already was.

Dudley snapped back when Harry was in bed.

Harry still didn't get it, asking what he was supposed to be afraid of, pillows?

Sirius managed a laugh, but he was the only one who did.

Dudley said back triumphantly he'd heard Harry all last night whining in his sleep.

Harry mumbled something as he shifted around uncomfortably, not meeting anyone's eyes. He tried to swallow, to say what he wasn't sure, because he only managed to cough and just gave up, waving Sirius on to get it over with.

He didn't want to, this wasn't going to go well.

Harry tried to deny it, but he could already feel it was pointless even as Dudley mockingly quoted Harry about 'not Cedric!'

"How would he, why-" Lily began sputtering in outrage. As cruel a child as she'd always seen Dudley, she never imagined he'd stoop to taunting Harry about this. He was having nightmares about it for crying out loud, surely some shred of humanity must live in Dudley for him to realize this was the very last thing you should ever taunt someone about! Harry's little jabs had been of no comparison to the cruelty of this! Yet she couldn't string all of that together, and Sirius wasn't going to wait for her to as he spewed it all out.

Harry tried to snap that Dudley was just lying, but it wasn't possible, he couldn't know Cedric's name any other way.

Dudley paid Harry no mind, already moving on to whining for help from Harry's parents and how pathetic Harry had sounded.

That one hurt the worst, and the foulest part was Dudley had no idea what he was really mocking. Harry hadn't once mentioned a thing about his parents to Dudley of all people, but the ghostly images of his parents that night haunted him nearly as much as Cedric.

Dudley's cruel laughter was cut short as Harry finally lost his temper, and drew his wand, right for Dudley's heart.

Sirius finally felt some of the heat rushing his face receding in relief. He couldn't stop what he was forcing himself to spit out, mocking Harry like that even if every part of him knew it was technically another person doing it. He'd rather pull off all of his extremities than really hear someone saying things like that to his pup, and was more than pleased to finally find the part where Harry really pushed back.

Dudley backed into the wall in fear as Harry felt the past fourteen years of hatred pounding through him. What would he give to strike Dudley now, have him crawling home from the worst of jinxes, like sprouting feelers.

James hummed in pleasure at the idea of leaving Dudley transfigured for at least a few days, might teach him a lesson or two.

The two began shouting loudly at each other, Harry demanding that Dudley never speak of this again, while Dudley told Harry to put that thing away!

Remus honesty wondered how long this circular argument could last. Harry had the most anger and power on his side, but he wasn't going to put it past Dudley to strike out in fear here soon and Harry may accidentally curse him just on instinct and get himself into some real trouble with the Ministry again.

It ended when both boys shuddered as if icy water had been dumped on them.

"Did you finally do something?" Sirius demanded eagerly, but when he glanced up and Harry said nothing, instead he noticed his pup growing sickly pale, Sirius thought the answer was yes and he was just realizing how much problems he'd just caused himself. He didn't wait around for Lily or anyone else to berate him for what he'd done, Dudley had deserved it.

Harry suddenly blinked in confusion as he glanced around, but it was too dark to see anything, there was no light. The stars, moon, and streetlamps had vanished.

Then the book was suddenly in fear of falling from his too slick hands, icy chills covering him while sweat broke across his palms. He'd recognize that description anywhere, he kept imagining it happening to him in the coming months of his world going black with that cold. The oddity of it didn't sink in though until beside him Remus spluttered in disgust, "what the devil are those things doing there!"

Nobody answered him, no one had even the faintest idea. All Lily and James could think to do was praise Merlin and all their luck in the world Remus had taught Harry to do that Patronus spell so many years in advance, because whatever anomaly had caused dementors to appear in Little Winging right near Harry, it had saved their son's life.

Harry came to his senses first, a flare of protection raising his head as he saw Sirius' plight and tried to reach around and take the book from him, but that snapped Sirius out of it and he clearly wasn't having it. He held it protectively to his chest and gave Harry as superior a look as he could manage underneath that pale skin, "unless you actually died in this chapter from something as stupid as dementors when I know full well you can handle them, you're keeping your paws off this until it's your turn."

Harry rolled his eyes, deciding to leave Sirius be if he really wanted to unnecessarily prove something to them by reading about those things.

There was no noise, no nothing but a biting cold seeping into their every skin.

For a split second Harry thought he'd done something by accident,

Despite her absolute confidence Prongs was going to make an appearance any moment and keep her son safe, it still didn't stop Lily nibbling at her lip in fear of how long Harry was going to have to suffer hearing her scream again before that time came.

then reasoning caught up with him as his brain reminded no wizard was powerful enough to turn off stars.

Remus couldn't help a particularly hard involuntary shiver for that idea, what he wouldn't give some nights to blot out the moon, but it had never really occurred to him that a price that could be paid for that wish was a soul.

Harry began wildly looking around to find them, but Dudley broke his concentration by demanding to know what Harry was doing to him.

James honestly wished it was Harry doing this to Dudley, at least his son doing some sort of magic on Dudley would have been more laughable and entertaining than watching Sirius stutter this out in fear. He really had no clue why Padfoot was insisting he wanted to read about those creatures that more than likely were the star of his own nightmares now.

Harry tried to get him to shut up as he strained his ears, thinking desperately that they couldn't be here, all the while his brain was warning him he'd see them before they arrived.

The problem was they all knew full well Dudley wasn't going to do a thing Harry told him to, Dudley still thought it was Harry doing this, so they all stayed clenched in fear as something new occurred to them. They hated Dudley for everything he'd ever done to Harry, but they'd never wanted his soul sucked out! Harry could certainly fend them off himself, but would he be able to keep Dudley protected as well? He'd kept a hundred at bay before, surely he wasn't about to witness something so inhuman happening to another person now.

Dudley was not listening to a word as Harry was still telling him to shut up, but then they both fell silent as they heard it. The deep, rattling breath trying to take in more than air.

Sirius was doing an unintentionally good impression of that noise in between drawing breaths to keep going. They really worried he was going to run himself out of oxygen in his strive to force himself to keep reading about the demons he kept fearing were going to ruin his life.

Dudley swore one last time if Harry didn't stop it, he'd hit him!

Harry tried one last time to tell Dudley to shut-WHAM.

Sirius hadn't meant to shout that so loud he made everyone around him jump, but he honestly hadn't been expecting that word either. What on earth hit Harry at a time like this? Surely even Dudley wasn't that stupid!

Something violently collided with the side of Harry's head, and little lights popped across his vision as he hit the ground, his wand skittering away.

James felt a snarl of outrage ripping up his throat, of all the times he'd wanted to inflict physical violence on someone rather than cursing them, this now made number one. Of all the times for that idiotic Muggle to be doing this to his son!

Harry called after Dudley what a moron he was,

"My honest sentiments, really you should have told him much sooner," Remus hissed under his breath as he kept white knuckling his wand.

all while scrambling around on his knees to find his fallen defense.

Dudley was paying none of this a mind as he tried to blunder away, but Harry shouted after him he was heading right for it!

Sirius never would have believed he'd feel so much fear galloping inside of him for Dudley Dursley, but there was no way he could deny it was there now. Sirius had never before wished this fate on anyone, even that wretched Muggle, but the absurd imagery of this happening to a Muggle was at least helping to block out his mind's eye offering up the same image happening to him.

Dudley did not respond, instead his footsteps faltered and Harry felt the chill somehow manage to increase. There was more than one.

Lily could feel the scream building up in her throat, still unable to shake from her mind of Harry passing out around these creatures. He'd grown stronger since then, but even staring at her full grown son she still couldn't erase the fear of what those things once did to him.

Harry howled after his cousin to keep his mouth shut at all costs! Then he kept shuffling frantically across the ground, his fingers grasping at nothing but dirt in frustration before shouting on instinct the spell to light it, lumos.

Five inches from his right hand, his wand tip ignited.

Sirius might have felt bad at breaking off there with such a horrible timing, but his gaping mouth wouldn't shut and he was having problems finding his brain to keep going. It had gone from overdrive to off like a switch.

"That was wandless magic!" Remus collected himself first. "Merlin Harry, even the most advanced wizards struggle to do that under extreme pressure!"

Harry cocked his head to the side as he stared at him, something tickling in the back of his mind as he asked, "can't wands do magic without us though? Act on their own to aid."

"I've never heard of that," James came back to himself enough to say, "but I suppose none of us are wand experts either. You'd be better asking Ollivander such a thing."

Lily just shook her head in exasperation at her boy playing off such a moment and trying to divert it back to his wand like that. He really had no clue the potential he'd just enacted in himself.

None of them were quite over their panic, but that had been a healthy kick to make them realize that Harry was going to be fine! He'd take care of Dudley, though the miscreant only just barely deserved it. Surely Harry would be far more concerned for his cousins well being if something had happened to him, rather than still looking curiously into space puzzling his own question.

Harry did not stop to think, grasping it and taking to his feet in one fluid motion to face the dementor.

Sirius honestly wished he could go back and keep talking about all the insane things Harry could start training to do with this newly discovered skill of his, or even have a bloody chat about cabbages if it would get him to stop thinking about these things for even a second now. The only reason he was forcing himself to keep going instead of the cowardly impulses trying to convince him to give these pages up was that Harry was fine. His own plight was going to be worked through, because Harry would get through this.

He shouted the spell to be rid of the creature, but all that came out was a silvery wisp. The spell hadn't worked right, and it was getting harder every second to concentrate.

James felt as if those own slimy fingers were gripping tightly against his own heart. He couldn't shake the image that Prongs was failing Harry now, of all times! It may have been Harry's magic and panic that was causing him to stumble over this, but he was Harry's guardian, that couldn't be a coincidence!

The laughter began in his head, shrill, high-pitched . . .

Lily had to resist the urge to press her hands over her ears like a child so as not to hear this next part. Her pleading screams mixed with that high cold laughter, James trying to save them with some time that would all fail...

The rancid smell of the dementors breath was filling his brain, slowing any train of thought, he could not think of a single happy thing. The laughter changed to the icy voice of Voldemort as the dementor grasped his neck, the echoed words from his nightmare repeating again for Harry to bow to death.

Then Lily's trembling fingers truly did fly up, to cover her mouth to smother a gasp of fear. Her mind simply wouldn't process past the muddle of shock that she was no longer her son's worst memory, her screams would never haunt him again, and yet was this truly better? There was no such thing as a good worse memory, but somehow, in some twisted way, at least in that one she hadn't just died to save her son only for it all to have gone to waste in Voldemort's return. No, at least the vision Harry would have now was his parents truly being able to rescue their child. It would hold no real comfort to anyone, not even herself, though she had not a clue if the boys were even processing all of this in the same way she was, they were all looking ready to jump to their feat in moments and Sirius was going to keel over from forcing himself to read about this dementor experience replaying such a thing!

Harry was sure his last thought would be he'd never get to see Ron and Hermione again, and like a shot of fresh air their faces flashed across his eyes and he finally shouted Expecto Patronum.

It finally worked properly, as the silver stag ran free.

Sirius actually sagged back into the cushions with relief as finally Harry found his friends faces. He'd be safe now, he'd found his will, now all that was left to worry about was Dudley, still an odd enough concept he kept back those poisonous thoughts trying to cloud his own mind.

It's antlers caught the Dementor in the place where the heart should have been;

Remus found a laugh somewhere in him that still came out too strained, but he'd never deny he loved that mental imagery.

and before he had a moment to breathe he ran off in search of Dudley, who was curled upon the ground, his arms clamped tight as could go around his face.

Harry blinked in surprise as he wondered if that was instinct, or Dudley had actually been trying to listen to him. He had no clue, wasn't going to ask, and had no doubts he never did ask Dudley about this experience.

The second dementor was over him, prying his arms apart easily, almost lovingly.

Lily felt her nails digging into James' arms still wrapped tight around her waist, that warmth needed now more than ever as she forced away the image of that being Harry again! How many times had a dementor nearly taken his soul? What would he be if not for Remus? She was more grateful than ever when Sirius found his breath back and forced himself to keep going.

The stag had not yet vanished, instead Harry urged his magical guardian to rid this one as well. Once the creature had vanished as well, the lights began to reaper, and the silvery form flickered, then too went out.

The relief flooding the room was nearly visible, none of them had felt any such thing in what felt like years though honestly they'd just started this book. The trauma of what Vernon had physically done to Harry stacked on top of another near death experience all combined into one thing really was too much to process all at once!

Little Whinging came back to life around him as if the dementors had never been here. Harry's reality was slamming back into him just as quickly, his sweat soaked shirt clinging to him, and his mind screaming the question of why they'd been here to begin with.

"I'm still remembering how to breathe properly from you surviving it, haven't quite gotten to the processing of why's yet." James croaked, keeping his head rested on Lily's shoulders and her curled tight into his chest while he kept a steady eye on Harry. No matter how angry he ever was at his son, it would never trump the sheer pleasure of seeing him alive in this room.

Dudley lay curled on the ground, whimpering and shaking. Harry bent down to see whether he was in a fit state to stand up,

Remus honestly wouldn't believe so, dementors affected Muggles much more physically than even wizards as they had absolutely no magical ability to fight them off. It would be an honest miracle if Dudley was even still awake instead of passed out on the pavement.

but then he heard loud, running footsteps behind him.

Sirius felt like his spine was going to snap in half he suddenly tensed so hard, his mind filling with images of the Death Eater who had sent those dementors there for Harry, and now preparing to finish the job! Only the tiny little print could distract him from such horrid visions that just couldn't be worse than that.

Harry turned back on instinct, raising his wand again, before Mrs. Figg came panting into sight.

"Oh!" Lily felt almost dizzy from too many things happening back to back, and that random muggle appearing like that certainly was just another level of odd.

Harry could understand his mother's suddenly faint look, his own mind was already starting to feel bogged down with shock at so many things happening to him in this one night, and it wasn't over.

He at once tried to tuck his wand back away, but Mrs. Figg shouted at him for being an idiot trying to put that away, there could be more! She was going to kill Mundungus Fletcher!

"Did she really say that?" Harry yelped fiercely, tugging the book away from Sirius who was honestly relieved to have the bleeding thing out of his hands by this point. "You guys mentioned him as a member of the Order before, as well as Mrs. Figg. There's no way that's a coincidence, which means they must be the same people you know as I do. So this means the Order-"

"Don't change the subject Harry." James told him with a far sterner voice than Harry had yet heard. He honestly felt like taking another step back, never having felt so much like a scolded child. "You promised, now is the chapter over?" James couldn't care one lick what the Order was doing in that moment, or anything else in the world for that matter.

He sighed as he closed the book for answer. He still thought them being honestly ridiculous about all this, he found discussing this groups members and what this could potentially mean for plans against Voldemort far more important, but he also recognized there was just no point in delaying this anymore. A promise was a promise.

"Yes, alright, so sometimes they did things like this, but it never, you know-"

James couldn't help but cut off, his temper still getting the better of him. "No, we don't know, and it's high bloody time you told us!" The only thing stopping him from going and throttling Vernon this second, even if his hands wouldn't fit he'd find a way, was the stupid bloody magic keeping them locked in this house!

Instead of feeling outraged, or even making a move to stop them, Harry just sighed miserably. He'd known this day would come, the book wouldn't just keep glossing over everything, but he really didn't want to get into this! It was over and done with, they really couldn't do anything to him now, and what they had done had never been anything awful enough that he had ever considered telling someone, let alone running away. Even what Marge had done back when he was thirteen had hurt him so much deeper than any physical blow Vernon or Petunia could duel out.

Still, glancing around at all of their haggard faces, he decided it was high time they knew anyways. What's done is done, now and then, so him telling his family wasn't going to make anything any better, honestly it was probably going to make it worse, but he told them anyways because he felt like they deserved to know. Sirius and Remus had told him things about their past, honestly it only seemed fair to divulge something so minor to him.

"Okay, yeah, sometimes they did stuff like this. I meant it though, they never left a real bruise! Sometimes he'd cuff me upside the head when I said something he didn't like, Dudley pushed me around a lot, she swung at me with what ever was in her hand because I'd asked to do something she didn't like, just little stuff like that."

Lily had to very carefully bite her tongue for fear of mimicking James and cutting Harry off when he was finally speaking about this, but she still in no way considered any of that little stuff.

"When I got older, they all pushed me around, reaching out and grabbing me, usually by the arm, and dragging me along if I was caught doing something they didn't like, then they'd shove me in the cupboard and yell at me. I think that's what he was doing now, just reaching out and grabbing hold of me, trying to get me to stop doing something he was afraid of. When I was really little and did some accidental magic, it scared Vernon so much sometimes he'd choke me until I went limp and fell down, but it never left a bruise because he never hung on that long. Just enough that I didn't fight him when he threw me in the cupboard. That's another thing, when I got older I realized they were afraid of me." He paused for just a moment with his head cocked to the side, though this revelation was no longer new to him it still seemed to stun him just saying it aloud.

"They wouldn't ever really do anything too bad to me, because they were afraid of my magic, even when I didn't know I had it. So they never would have done anything to bad to me, because they probably thought I could magically retaliate. Besides, even if they had done something worse, I knew it would be pointless to complain about it, because they were always spreading around the rumor that I was an odd and troubled kid that they kept 'out of the kindness of their hearts.' So if the neighbors saw or wondered anything, they put it down to just 'those poor Dursleys having to deal with a criminal in there house.'"

He seemed to find that conclusive enough he'd be happy to move on, but none of them really felt yet like this was just a matter to move on from. Those Dursleys had abused Harry, physically and mentally, and it was their reasoning and lies that had stopped him from telling anyone or anything being done about it.

Voldemort was a ruthless mass murderer who had made it his mission in life to eradicate a large portion of the population, and they were fighting him because what he was doing was wrong. Then he'd turned his sights on the Potters, and he was not going to get away with that, and still this was different. It wasn't possible to hate two singular people like the four of them did, but Vernon and Petunia were going to pay for what they'd done to Harry.

"I'm guessing you never mentioned a word of this to me?" Sirius muttered morosely, unable to kick out the twisting of hatred for himself he was feeling that Harry didn't know him that well. If only he hadn't been so rash in going after that rat that night, if he'd just stuck around and been there for Harry none of this would have happened to his pup.

Harry shook his head vigorously at once, looking at him like he'd lost his mind. "I didn't need to know you long to know what a terrible idea that was. You needed to be as far away from me as possible, and you knowing about any of that would have made the opposite happen. You moved into Hogwarts backyard because my scar twinged, what on earth would you have done if I ever mentioned this."

Sirius had to breathe carefully through his nose to not start shouting at Harry about that, it should have been his decision, but still he pressed, "not even Dumbledore though? Come on Harry, McGonagall or someone?"

"Did you?" Harry shot back with a triumphant look, clearly already knowing the answer even before Sirius winced and looked away.

Harry looked around at all of them one more time, putting a pleading note into his voice, "I'm sorry if you felt I was lying by not just saying all that, but I really just didn't think it mattered to know. I hated it there, I love it here, that's what mattered to me, I didn't see the point in making you all angry by mentioning something that was long done."

Any of them could have argued the point with him, it would have been easy to spend hours having an uneasy chat about every little thing those Dursleys had ever done to Harry and then reciprocating with a loving promise it was all going to be okay now, but Harry was a grown man now. They all still couldn't help envisioning this happening to their infant upstairs, but it truly was now his decision how he wanted to handle this. He didn't technically owe them anything.

Harry had kept his promise, and while he took one last hopeful look at his dad and waited for those hazel eyes to brighten when they met, he went back to the book. His dad may even still be mad at him, but at least they were okay now.

HPHPHPHPHP

  *Alright, real talk here folks. I did a lot of thinking over this topic, as it's such a widely debated thing amongst HP fans about what Harry really lived through during his time at the Dursleys. Personally, I think a lot of it gets exaggerated, but I never undermine that they did Harry some real harm. I kept myself to the facts and truths that I knew about, and I may have built this up a bit, but don't take my/ Harry's explanation as one that isn't terrible. What the Dursleys did to Harry was a lot more mental punishment than physical, making sure he felt as unloved as possible, which can do as much damage to you as a beating. Guess I don't really have anything else to say, mostly it turned into a big thing between him and James more so then what the Dursleys actually did, but I hope the build up to this scene was at least kind of worth it.

[snacc-noir]

The Idiot Effect

(Marinette the Flirt AU) 

AO3

Summary: 

It starts as a game about their mystery love interests.

“He’s really smart. I’m sure he’ll pick up on it one day.”

“Oh really?” Chat goads. “Then for them to realise, let’s see who can flirt better.”

Yeah... turns out there’s a lot more to realise.

(Or the fic where Marinette’s a ruthless flirt, Ladybug and Adrien are dense, and Plagg can’t stop laughing at everyone)

Notes: the fact that a few actually wanted this crack mess is concerning, and it seems some have brought “expectations” so i’ll kindly ask you to leave those at the door. thank you!! (and there’s more chapters coming im so sorry)

-

Listen.

Marinette stuffs up but when she stuffs up it’s with class, alright? When there’s a problem, her own or not, she fixes it because that’s just what she does. She spews garbage and has the composure of a flailing eel trying to stand upright – but she’s a pillar source of entertainment for it. She’s a normal girl, with a normal life (except for the superhero thing), so excuse her for trying to be adventurous once and a while.

Adventurous, flirtatious; whatever.

She’s made it to school two minutes after waking up before and was recently (6th Grade Graduation) voted “Sweetest Classmate”, so yeah, she’s quite up there. And ever since (unwillingly) sprouting the wings of a brave superheroine she’s tried her hand at a bit of confidence, despite those continual dignity stuff ups she’s played off gracefully (the tripping happens no matter what, she can’t control that, okay?) The Guy may be the son of a famous fashion artist—that has, in fact, recognised Marinette’s talent and sent her self-esteem higher than Chat’s puns make her want to throw him—and is entirely out of her league,

But see, usually that would cease her pursuits, if not for, you know, the fact she’s an epic superhero and he’s the biggest snack she’s ever seen.  

Kindness? A literal angel? Most wholesome grace?  

A model?

As if she’s not flirting with that.  

She shivers remembering the ignorant days (half a school day) where she was under the idiocy that Adrien Agreste of all celestial beings had the tenacity to be an entitled jerk with an inheritance long enough to rival the list of times Dupain-Cheng had sliced from Chloé’s lips through the years.  

And yeah, that couldn’t have been further from the truth, but genuinely, genuinely, flaws and all, Adrien Agreste is the sweetest being she’s ever met.  

That she’s stuffed up her chances with, countless times.

But she’ll work on that.

Chat Noir knows how to flirt. He’s not too relevant – her miraculous partner in battle, black suit clad teenage girl idol, the best friend she’d kill herself and everyone she knows for – you know, the least of importance right now. But she’s got to admit, he has some good ones when she’s suited up. Only difference between him and her is that on Ladybug, it’s all fun and games with no meaning. But with Adrien,  

she’s serious.

(Most of the time. The lines are pretty eccentric.)

She loves him. It’s whatever. She doesn’t know if he loves her back but she’ll make it work. He can’t pick up a hint for his life — causing completely no progress— but the way her indications of affection propel over his halo is just a spanner in the mission to conquer his heart; a mere stain to the golden-hearted persona she adores so much; so much as a friend, too.

Because, you know,

“We’re friends,” Adrien tells his capped bro as though the suggestive nudges up the courtyard would lessen, an attempt that fails, because an arm is slung around him instead in such a buddy-buddy way he knows is saved for interrogating or persuading purposes.

“You didn’t hear what she said to you?”

How could he not.

He didn’t mind. If anything, he found it humorous. “Yeah, she’s just messing around like that.”  

“Mmmhmm… sure,” Nino says in a way that totally isn’t assuring. “I don’t even have Alya telling me we should share a locker to hide in during an akuma attack. And we’re dating.”

“That’s because Marinette’s joking around. Since we’re friends.”

“Since you’re soulmates. ”  

“Mmmhmm…” he mocks, cheek twitching, “sure.”

One-hundred percent sure, according to Marinette the next day.

It’s some chemistry lesson half the class doesn’t pay attention to because they’re overreacting (ha) to their assigned lab partners, and Adrien’s fine since he’s paired with Good Friend Marinette. And although he doesn’t like her like that – after all, Ladybug’s a thing – she seriously is lovely company without so much as an awkward fence (excluding the way she stumbles heading to the bench) to hinder their bonding (haha).  

Because, for those in the back, they’re just friends.

She’s funny and kind and all that, talented too – class rep, master of the arts, always doing things for others. Her confidence is mystifying but not unappreciated. In fact, having a crush on her would baffle him since she’s so out of his league (he says, dressing up as a cat and going after a superhero) , or at least impossible considering how much she’s definitely kidding with her flirtatious behaviour. No matter what Nino says.

The equipment clinks on the benches as his partner sets up. Distracted by Chloé whinging about Alya for a lab partner, he’s oblivious to the manner about how Marinette scoots next to him.  

“Look at us together. I bet we were paired because we have so much chemistry,” she says, out of nowhere, and yet completely expected at the same time as he turns back. “I guess we just work so well together.”

His lips tickle, but he sterns himself by moving an elbow dumbly, knocking a small beaker of water so the contents spill across a ripped page of discarded notes. Her old work fuses to the bench as the ink bleeds and they watch. “Apparently not.”

Marinette cracks a grin. “You suck.”

“You suck.”

“You—”

The lesson is a blast.

Marinette doesn’t know how someone can get any more dumb. Or is it dumber? Whatever. They’re tied for English, anyway (“The A + stands for Adrien plus Marin—” “Shut up.”). And she knows it’s not her who’s the dumb one because, you know, you need to have the supremacy of a genius to have the flirtatious skills she can dish out, possibly a degree of some kind.

Adrien’s smart, but he’s not—

He’s not there sometimes. It’s because of her absolute lack of progress (and she knows the lines are just Too Good for her to not be at fault here) that she often wonders if retreating to the long-abandoned pink-cheeked and shy character would’ve made things any more obvious.

Not that she thinks they can.  

“When we get married, I shots the left side of the bed.”

Seriously.

“You’re only getting the prime bed spot if you take the most dishwashing days,” he plays along, musing irresponsible blond tuffs with the towel Kim’s tossed him as he slinks from the locker room. “That includes Sunday morning. Saturday nights are major guest nights.”

His lacrosse game couldn’t have gone better, even if Nino and Alya were babysitting and didn’t attend. He scored most of the goals and the pride warming Marinette’s expression as she greets him is what tops the cake. He still hears Alix, Kim and Ivan chatting jubilantly of their win as the door swings behind him.

“You’ve obviously thought about this before.”

Adrien snaps the towel at her, purposefully missing, but water that’s been tipped on his head spurs from it and Marinette’s composure is quelled as the assumption of sweat drives her over.  

“You wish.”

Boy does she ever.

They break into step down the hall. Adrien pats down his arms and side-eyes her. Her blue pools of comfort are already beaming at him.

“I did that good for a marriage proposal, huh?”

“Yep!”

He does little to hinder the bashful chuckle.  

“And you touched my shoulder twice yesterday. That’s sixty-eight percent more than usual according to Max.“

“That doesn’t mean we’re married, Marinette.”  

Her lips quirk. “Totally does.”

tagged 💕:

@aplayfulplatypus @wegan97 @soap-lady @poisonouscephalopod @woodsbeyond1 @spartanxhunterx @laadychat @mochegato @gelana-12 @heldtogetherbysafetypins @galaxiesanddaisies @melicmusicmagic @legallyspawned @aarushi-03 @purple-people-eaters-productions @gothfoxx @glassesandcardguns @princess-of-fangirls @mewwitch @emeraldpuffguide @johnlockfeels @kittyynoirr @aryamanbose @paintedbirdsong @trubel43 @lulumatthews

[kylorengarbagedump]

Little Bird: Chapter 18 (NSFW)

Read on AO3. Part 17 here. Part 19 here.

Summary: You're concussed. You didn't really think anyone would care.

Words: 4100

Warnings: Handmaid AU

Characters: Kylo Ren x Handmaid!Reader

A/N: Hello! I did the thing again where I was like, oh, this chapter is not gonna have ANY smut in it. And then I wrote it and, y'know, Kylo Ren just... does things to me, y'all.

Does this count as fluff? It can get fluffier, I know, but like. For the universe, and all that.

Thank you so much for your feedback and encouragement! I love y'all so very much! See you soon. <3

The Audi screeched as it rolled into Kylo Ren’s driveway. The rim was almost certainly scrap by now, the way he’d ripped through the roads. You’d spent the entire ride coiled to the door frame--despite the reality of your destination, it was a relief for the car to finally cease moving. He engaged the emergency brake, turned the keys.

“Out.” 

Ren exited the vehicle, and you followed, stumbling onto the concrete. You still felt dizzy from colliding with the dashboard. As you thought it, a brief reverie--the car, the light, Poe’s head--pop--your vision fizzed, and you crumpled against the car, temples pounding. Pain split your skull, and you groaned, kneading your forehead, trying to ease the shrieking in your ears. For the four-hundredth time since you’d left the Resistance house, you were nauseous.

Except this time, you vomited, heaving nothing but stomach acid onto the window of Ren’s car. 

“Hm.” His presence was murky, like mud in your mind. “You hit your head in the crash.”

You wanted to respond, but couldn’t, mouth somehow made of marbles. Instead, you tried to move, but fumbled--mid-fall, you flailed and grabbed the side mirror for stability. Despite this, your limbs were like rubber, bowing, sending you straight toward the ground. A large, strong hand hooked under your arm, hoisting you to your feet, where you wobbled, unsteady.

“You have a concussion.” He guided you forward, and you retched, trying to push him off. “Come inside.”

“Just… hold on a second.” You weren’t ready to move so fast. The world felt like it was underwater. 

Ren urged you along another step, and you winced, collapsing into him and rolling toward the ground again. In one swift movement, he slipped one arm behind your knees, the other supporting your shoulders. Your head spun--you were in far too much pain to acknowledge the gesture, sight still too blurry to even fully comprehend what was happening. His face, to your muddled memory, was stoic--if there had been emotion behind his decision to carry you, it didn’t show. He regarded you with all of the affection that one might regard a paper bag.

Clutching you to his chest, he opened the doors to his home, his heels loud clacks on the hardwood floor. The halls remained dark as he passed through, a fact you were entirely okay with, as you were certain the introduction of any light would slice your head open with its edge. You allowed your eyes to close, your body rocking with his movement, mind attempting to map your location in the house under the strain. One hard step, another--he’d begun to ascend the stairs, but your map must have been in error. They were the stairs to his bedroom hallway, not yours. 

“Sir, is that you?” Johana’s voice, sharp with worry, pierced your ears. The noise of footsteps. “Where have you--oh.” 

There was a pause. Ren stopped. You dangled in his arms. 

“What are…” She paused, and then tried again, softer. “What’s going on?”

“I’m retrieving my property.”

A creak of hardwood. “You… Why is she… You’re bringing her upstairs, Sir?”

Silent, he started to climb again, the movement making you groan. 

“Wait, please--”

“Move.”

“Can you just explain what--”

“No,” he replied. “Move.”

There was a lull of silence--you had a desire to peep open a lid, glimpse Johana’s face, construct a visual memory of the tension weighing between them. Even through the air, you could feel the anxiety whipping like a corona off her skin, could sense her restraint, a straitjacket shackling her to obsequiousness. 

“You shouldn’t have brought her here, Sir,” she said. “The Eyes could have her slated for re-education.”

“There’s been no order for that.” 

“No order?” she whispered. “Did you… Did you abandon your duty to go after a Handmaid?” 

“That’s irrelevant.” He went to step again, and stalled in response to a wooden creak.

“We should at least dress her in--”

“Johana.” His voice was a cleaver. “Move.”

 “You can’t bring her into our bedroom,” she spat, trembling tone hiding a plea. “I don’t care about the Eyes, or if you left, or any of that. Just. Please. Not. Where we sleep.”

Silence again--and then: “She has a concussion.”

A long, slow breath. A sigh. “Fine.”

Finally, you heard a shift, and he pushed past the last few steps and through the hall. Johana, with feather feet, followed. Ren shouldered open a door--to his bedroom, you gathered--the low glow in the room like a blinding flash to your hidden eyes. You grumbled again, squirming in his grip, and after a short walk, he laid you on the bed. The moment your head connected with the pillow, you seethed, rolling over, shielding your face from intruding light.

“How do you know she had a concussion?” 

Ren was crossing, unhooking something. You heard a clatter across the room.

“Why do you have your gun--”

“She was in a car accident,” he said. “She can’t stand.”

“Sir,” Johana sighed, “are you going to at least tell me what happened so I know what to say if the Eyes--”

“It’s none of your concern.” He bit the words off between his teeth. “I will take care of it.”

She grumbled--you felt fingers at your shoulder, rolling you to your back. You whined, burying your head in your hands, but Johana wrenched them down with experienced grace, tacking them to your sides. At the sight of your face, she gasped.

“Is that blood?” When Ren was silent, she said again, “Is that blood on her face?” She released you, and you peeled your lids open, squinting even from the dim yellow ambiance. Johana had spun on Ren, who stood, a gargoyle of indifference. “What the hell did you do?”

“Quiet.” 

“I swear to Christ, if she is pregnant--”

“Enough.”

“--and if you ruined my chances of being a mother, Kylo, I--”

“Johana,” he hissed. “Remember your place.”

She stalled, stepping back, her blue nightgown a plume around her legs. “Yes, sir, Commander.” Scowling, she stomped back over to you, meeting your eyes with a flash of rage. “Sit up.”

Nodding, you pushed up on your palms, wincing as your head throbbed. Nausea washed over you again. The bed swirled under your frame--you sucked in a deep breath through your nostrils, quelling the tsunami of vomit that wanted to burble up and spew all over your Commander’s Wife. Thankfully, once your back was against the pillow, you were able to fully open your lids. Johana’s thumb was on your wrist, checking your pulse, face screwed in concentration. In the corner of the room, Ren was seated, shoulders flared like the wings of a raptor, a gaze just as keen.

Glancing at your eyes, she turned to the nightstand, rummaging through it. “Where’s the flashlight?” she asked. And, after a moment, “Nevermind. Found it.”

She clicked it on, two fingers prying open your lids as she shined the flash directly into your pupils. You whinged, seething, trying to shove her off, but she snatched your wrists and strapped them down with her strength, flicking the light back and forth from your eyes, scrutinizing your response. After a moment, the pain simmered, washed away. 

“Her pupils are normal.” Johana turned the flashlight off, returning it to the nightstand before staring back at you. “What nation do we live in?”

“The… Republic of Gilead?” you replied, raising a brow.

“And what year is it?”

“Nineteen… eighty-five…”

“What role do you serve in this home?” Her tone grew more severe.

You blinked, scanning her, wanting to inch away. “I’m… I’m a Handmaid.”

“And what is your name?”

A shiver crawled up your spine as you remembered the rasp of Kylo Ren’s voice in your ear, the tears at your neck, the weight of his body and the thick stretch of his cock, slamming into you, demanding your submission. Your gaze flickered to his. The depth of it--like a pit that threatened to swallow you--gnawed at your stomach.

“Ofkylo,” you murmured, and met her eyes again.

Johana studied you, a slow breath escaping her, before she turned to Ren, voice flat. “She’s oriented. No dilation.” A slight shrug as she glanced at you from over her shoulder. “She should be fine.” 

Ren shifted, head tilting. “She could still vomit in her sleep. She couldn’t walk.”

She sighed again. “What are you asking me, Sir?”

“She shouldn’t fall asleep.”

Johana threw her hands up, crossing to her dresser. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, she’s fine,” she mumbled. “I was a nurse, not a doctor.”

The admission made your stomach flip. A nurse.

Ren stood, long strides bringing him to the side of the bed. Warmth and terror eked through you in equal measure, body tingling for his touch, brain shriveling at the thought of it. His eyes lingered on your figure, appraising it, before traveling to meet your own. Within his irises, there was a fog--a nameless, formless ache, suffocating in the depth of his denial. You could see it, feel it as it coasted across your skin, scattering like shadow as he stared--and you hated it, hated the flutter it brought to your heart, hated the fire it stoked in your veins. It was that asinine desire to know, even as you had already decided that your knowledge of him was complete. 

In secret, a single finger drew a soft line down your calf, and you shuddered. “She will stay here tonight.”

Balking, Johana whirled to face her husband. “What--” She cleared her throat. “Um, excuse me, Sir?”

It was a surprise to you, too--you stared at him, brow furrowed, but his expression was inscrutable, like he’d put on a mask.

“She could choke. Fall into a coma. She requires observation.”

“I’ve already told you that I think she’s fine.”

You nodded, sitting up. Anything to get you out of pissing off Johana. “I actually feel totally fine--”

Ren held up a finger, silencing you, his attention still on his Wife. “You don’t know that to be true.”

Her jaw stiffened. She crossed her arms. “You’re not putting out your Wife so you can watch over a Handmaid,” she said. “That’s… the impropriety--”

“At what point did I order you to leave?” 

She blinked, jaw dropping. A choked laugh broke from her throat, her head shaking. “You… You expect me to share our bed with a Handmaid?” she asked. “Have you--I mean…” She drew in a steadying breath. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sir.”

You nodded, swinging your feet toward the floor, ignoring the rush of pain when you moved. “You know, I don’t really want to stay here, either--”

Ren caught your legs as you tried to kick them off the bed, suspending them in air. “No.” He tossed you back as if you were made of cotton, looked to Johana. “You may sleep here or in any of the other bedrooms in this home. It’s immaterial to me.”

Johana stood, staring, her mouth parted, hand falling over her heart. You could almost see it--the silent disintegration of her reality, like a building crumbling in on its own framework, shattered pieces pulverized into rings of dust. Her eyes glossed, cheeks reddened, and she cleared her throat again, swallowing. A sickened smile flashed over her face; she blinked it away.

“If that’s how you feel, Sir, then please, feel free to share our bed with your little whore. You know where to find me, if you need me.” She threw open the closet, grabbing a robe and tugging it on. “But I know you won’t.” With a flourish, she left, slamming the door behind her.

Guilt sank like venom into your bones, twisted your intestines. You glared at Ren. “You’re cruel.”

He cocked a brow, unbuttoning the cuffs on his shirt. “She should be concerned with your survival, given the possibility of pregnancy.” He glanced at your face and paused. After a moment, he turned, heading into the bathroom.

“She loves you, you know,” you called after him. 

No response. You sighed, sinking onto the bed, head plopping back onto the pillow, gazing into the gauzy lavender canopy, tracing its network of soft wrinkles with your eyes. It was true that your head felt like a cantaloupe that someone had smashed with a mallet, and it was also true that the thought of walking currently made bile bubble in your esophagus--but despite all of this, the thought of staying in Kylo Ren’s room with him all night made your chest tight. 

The memory of Poe’s head bursting with cherry blood was a circular film in your mind, reeling on repeat, as if someone was rewinding the tape and pressing play over and over and over. The fact that Ren had murdered him without a breath brought a chill to your toes, to your stomach. The fact that even after that, you’d begged in unfortunate honesty for his cock froze you entirely. Poe’s new adage--There are no saints in Gilead--did little to assuage your shame. Just because sainthood was unachievable didn’t mean you were supposed to drown in sin. 

Who could be considered more reprehensible--the devil? Or the one who had witnessed him shed his humanity, spring forward as a full-formed monstrosity--and still chose to kneel at his feet? At least one was by nature. You weren’t sure what your problem was.

Ren entered the room again, a white towel draped over his hand. You eyed him with suspicion as he approached--Was this all a plan to kill you?--but before you could sputter a protest, he sat at the side of the bed and wedged his hand under your head, cradling it with ease. 

Silent, he guided the warm, damp cloth over your face, tracing it across your forehead, gentle along your hairline. You felt the crust of blood and sweat on your skin drifting clean, the heat of the towel soothing the thumping of your temples. Air failed to enter your lungs, a tremor of something only identifiable as affection tunnelling through you. In his gaze, you saw no evidence of the man who had pinned you to the pavement, pistol to your chin--he was open, a wound without a bandage. 

“I don’t understand why you killed him,” you said, the words leaving before you’d had a chance to think them.

Ren blinked, soft, dark lashes shielding his eyes. “I don’t understand why you left.” The towel caressed your jaw, his long fingers tilting your head as if you were made of porcelain. 

You snuffed a laugh. “Are you… serious?”

For the first time in minutes, he leveled you with his stare. “Yes.”

“How… do you not understand?” you said. “This is hell. You’ve created hell for me.” You bit your lip, choosing your words carefully. “You’ve created hell for all of us.”

He considered you, motionless. “You’re not happy here.”

Snorting, you wondered how many times you’d have to say it for him to actually listen. “Commander--are you?”

Ren paused, holding the towel to your cheek, his gaze fixated on yours. Those full, pink lips twitched with something nameless, the mellow lights casting a mahogany shimmer over the dark waves of his hair. You laid there, locked with him, trading a feeling too dangerous to articulate in the absence of your breathing. Heat dripped into your face--too much heat for the towel to be responsible. He focused on your mouth, rubbed it clean, and offered another blink, almost meandering in its speed.

“Smuggling a Handmaid is punishable by death,” he said. “For Guardians, public execution.” He scrubbed at your chin, swooping along the perimeter of your face.

You grimaced. “So you killed him out of the kindness of your heart?”

“No.” The towel glided under your eyes. “I killed him because he took you.” He dabbed at your neck, your pulse a drum underneath his fingertips. “But his death was inevitable--by me or otherwise.” Leaning back, he examined you, seeking out any other stains. Apparently satisfied, he lowered your head to the mattress and stood, returning to the bathroom.

You sighed, embers crackling in the ash of your flesh. You’d asked to understand--and now you had. For some reason, it didn’t make you feel any less guilty. In fact, it only made you feel worse as you imagined Finn and Rey finding out the mission had gone haywire, that Poe had met his inevitability. All because of you. All your fault. More tears welled, and you shook them away. You were tired of crying. 

After a moment, Ren exited the bathroom carrying clothing. His shirt was untucked, a pair of black drawstring trousers hanging at his waist. Your eyes stuck to him like flypaper, gawking while he crossed the room, his fingers popping open his shirt buttons, revealing inch by inch his thick, powerful torso. A wad of saliva lodged in your throat, breath stuck behind it. He tossed his clothes in a wicker basket, shucking his shirt into it, muscles in his back rippling as he rolled his shoulders. You devoured him, a wolf starved for his vulnerability. 

He turned, approaching you in silence--it was impossible not to notice every movement of his body, how it tensed with his footsteps, how the veins in his hands rooted in his arms, how the breadth of his chest appeared so, so deliciously solid. The light almost disguised the white scars spread across his skin, phantoms of the revolution still haunting his flesh. A wave of fire crashed over you at the realization. He was dangerous--a weapon of a man. And he had just tenderly cleaned your face.

You finally remembered to breathe and swallow when he hovered over you. Was he going to try and fuck you in the throes of a concussion?

“Uh, excuse me, sir.” You tried in vain to tear yourself from his beauty.

“Sit up.” 

Despite his order, his hands were at your back and shoulder, pulling you forward. Ren turned you, sliding in behind you, his legs framing yours, your back flush to his chest. He curled an arm around your waist, tugging you tight to his body, his heat enveloping you. In silence, he gathered your hair, folded it over your shoulder, smoothing the strays over your scalp. Having finished that, he lifted the Bible from his nightstand and flipped it open, his head nestling next to yours as he began to read. You fought for breath, mind whirling from either the concussion or from stupor. How was this the same man who, only hours ago, had his gun shoved in your cunt?

You wanted to feel disgust, horror--you were his possession, after all. But his touch was too gentle to signify ownership. It was the touch of a human, a touch you’d only known men to give to women they cherished--a touch you hadn’t known in years.

“What… are you doing, Commander?” It was the only question that could crawl its way out. 

“Observing you.” Velvet rolled from his mouth to your ear. “Until you can walk, it’s not safe for you to sleep.”

“But Johana…”

“Johana would risk your safety to spite me,” he said. “I want you alive.”

You almost laughed. “Is that why you shot into the car that you knew I was in?”

A pause, and his chest fell in a sigh. “You were never my target.” 

“You could’ve missed, Commander.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “And I don’t.” The darkness in his tone sent ice through your spine. Another pause. “Use my name.”

You blushed, choking on your own spit. “I’m sorry?”

“When we’re alone,” he murmured. “Use my name.”

The motive of his observation clarified in your mind. Ren had wanted Johana, and you, and his own self to believe his intentions were practical. So far, he’d managed to fool only himself--and maybe not even then. He dipped his face to the slope of your neck, drawing in a long, deep breath through his nostrils. Goosebumps swelled across you--in an automatic reaction, you melted against him, your head resting on his shoulder.

“Kylo…”

“Yes, little bird?” he whispered over your skin.

You sighed. “I hate you…”

He nuzzled his nose along your pulse. “You hate me?” he asked. “You are me.”

“What?” You frowned.

“You want to resist…” A hand rested on your hip, bunching fabric as it curled to a fist. “There’s something here that makes us both betray what we believe in.”

You shook your head. “No,” you said, “because what I believe is right, and what you believe is wrong.”

“Inconsequential.” His lips skated your heartbeat, and you caught a sigh in your chest. “When we both believe we’re right.”

You squirmed, feeling his growing desire at your backside. A pang of lust knocked between your legs, and you gripped his thighs, feeling them harden under your palms. “I know I’m right.”

“Of course.” He tossed the Bible to the side, mouth pressing soft, lingering kisses to your exposed throat. “And I know you’re getting wet for me, right now.”

A shudder rattled you, and you chewed a whine before it escaped. “Kylo…”

Kylo Ren growled, undoing the button and zipper of your jeans and slipping his hand into the open flap. You whimpered, your head throbbing with the surge of delight hitting your nerves--he shushed you, his thick fingers gliding across your mound. 

“I want to make you cum again,” he purred, kissing your jaw. “I want to hear you say my name as you clench around my fingers.”

Longing roared inside of you, searing your insides. “My head hurts,” you replied, even while your cunt pulsed with need.

“I’ll be gentle, little bird.” His other hand threaded through your hair, nudging your face toward his, and he captured your lips in a hot, tender kiss. “Now be good for me.”

Ren slid a digit across your already stiff clit, his chest rolling with excited breath as he teased it with a quick swirl. You gasped, legs spreading wider, your nails biting his thighs, and he huffed, tracing quick, tight circles around it, the pad of his finger supplying shocks of friction. Pleasure flooded you, muscles collapsing as you succumbed to it--Ren kissed you again, holding you there, tongue delving into your mouth while he rubbed your swollen nub faster. Two more fingers coated themselves in your slick and pushed inside you.

You moaned into him, and he jerked you harder to his body, tongue massaging yours while his plush lips worked over your mouth. His hand continued to cup your head as he kissed you, as if to meld you with his frame, as if to brand you in his memory, and his fingers pumped into you, one digit flicking and circling your clit. Air was passed in hot gusts between your nostrils, your bodies grinding together in a futile attempt to fuse. He was deft--your climax approaching fast, his hands pulling it from you faster than they had your dignity.

“That’s it, little bird,” he groaned against you. “You’re close, aren’t you?”

Nodding, you fussed, trying to meet his lips again, missing the heavy comfort of his kiss. Your walls clenched his fingers, the beat of bliss thrumming to your head, every new thump of your heart cracking your skull. A sob of pain was silenced by another peak of pleasure over your flesh, your pussy squeezing him faster, yanked to the edge by the stretch of his digits plunging into you, his finger battering your nub.

“Let me hear you.”

“Kylo,” you breathed, gripping his thighs as if they’d anchor you to sanity, “oh, fuck, Kylo…”

“That’s right,” he muttered, “that’s right…”

You splintered, ecstasy burning through you, and as you came, Ren’s lips crashed into yours, swallowing your desperate wails of pleasure, his body solid while your limbs twitched. He was a rock, a sanctuary where you could come undone, finger rubbing until you squealed with discomfort, continuing to kiss you, softer, gentler, until the last tatters of your climax dissipated from your skin.

Wilting into him, your lids fluttered shut, lungs heaving while your heart searched for its rhythm. Ren kissed you again, then pulled his hand from your cunt and popped his fingers into his mouth, sucking them clean with a quiet moan. Once finished, he zipped up your jeans, re-buttoned them, and propped you up, positioning you flat along his chest once more. His length still throbbed at your back--but if he noticed, he said nothing. 

You sighed, ignoring the echo of pain at the perimeter of your skull, waiting for the oxytocin to leave your blood. “I hate you, Kylo.”

He stroked your hair, flipping it over your shoulder for the second time. “I know.” He returned to his Bible, thumbing it open to 1 Corinthians, and you spied a verse circled in pretty black ink.

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 

The rest of the night, he was silent, nudging you only when you would drift toward sleep, vigilant until the sun crested into the sky.

[causeiwanttoandican]

Celia Walden

Did Meghan Markle appear via video link at today’s Sandringham showdown? In my head, she did. In my head, she didn’t even just “dial in”, but was beamed into the Queen’s Long Library from the Canadian waterfront mansion in which she’s sought refuge, like a Hollywood A-lister picking up an award from a provincial backwater it wasn’t worth making the trip to.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t be with you today,” she would have begun, unleashing that expensive Hollywood dentistry. “I’m on mom duty, as you know. So if Archie suddenly needs a change, you may all just have to bear with me.” Then a slanting of the brows and widening of the eyes – the way she was told, “to emphasise sincerity”, in drama class. “But this moment means so much to me. Really.”

One would hope so. There’s little doubt it was Markle who brought about the summit in the first place. Harry, bless his cotton polo shirts, won’t even know what “progressive” means. And that the Duchess of Sussex wouldn’t make the effort (or was too cowardly) to fly in and thrash out a plan with the Queen – but was happy to fly to New York to watch her pal Serena Williams in the US Open finals when Archie was four months old – is a defining fact in a long list of facts that have defined Meghan Markle in my eyes.

Not one of those facts has anything to do with her heritage. Because, in case you’ve missed the diplomatic incident sparked by Megxit and stoked by the kind of commentators who are always ready to whip out the easiest and laziest card in the pack, it’s not Meghan’s actions that have driven out the young couple, but racism: yours and mine.

Writing in The New York Times, British author Afua Hirsch decried our “racist treatment of Meghan”, which “proved what many of us have always known: no matter how beautiful you are, whom you marry, what palaces you occupy, charities you support, how faithful you are, how much money you accumulate or what good deeds you perform, in this society racism will still follow you”.

Supplant the word “racism” for “criticism”, and Oxford-educated Hirsch is bang on. We love our royals and, like a nation of nightmare mother-in-laws, we’re overprotective and intrusive, zeroing in on every tiniest spousal misstep and capable of coddling an inexhaustive number of petty grudges at any one time.

So, yes, we sighed, snarked and snorted about silly things, like Markle closing her own car door, the fact that in six months this woman spent five times what any royal in the whole of Europe had on clothes, and various Marie-Antoinette-isms involving things like penning empowering messages on bananas for sex workers. And yes, the courtiers will also have been uniquely poisonous about all of that and more.

But as a former Hollywood actress, this can’t be Markle’s first encounter with back-stabbing and bitchery? And weren’t Camilla and Fergie put through exactly the same baptism of fire?

Remember that Saturday, when we welcomed Ms Markle into the fold? I was in the grounds of Windsor Castle. I saw the Brits who had travelled to be there celebrating the arrival of the first African-American member of the Royal family – many of them mixed-race couples (estimated to be 9 per cent of the population in the UK, as opposed to just 4.6 per cent in Wokeville, Canada, and 2 per cent in the US).

And what struck me then, as someone who has lived in the US on and off for the past decade, was how blissfully uncluttered and unpolarised we were by racial issues in comparison. How very – to coin Megxit terminology – naturally and unselfconsciously “progressive”: a thought echoed by Trevor Phillips this month, who called Britain “the only country in the world where a sizeable mixed-race population has come about as a consequence of love, rather than coercion or slavery”. It struck me, too, that we were very optimistic about a woman we knew so little about.

Over time, that optimism was eroded not by the occurrence of rapid-onset racism, but by Markle’s actions and behaviour. The capriciousness over Frogmore Cottage, Archie’s hide-and-seek christening and the ghastly press, who simply would not pander in the way that they were ordered to.

Oh, and the overt whinging about us to everyone from Pharrell Williams (“they don’t make it easy”) to Tom Bradby: “Not many people have asked if I’m OK,” she told the journalist as – in an eye-watering feat of narcissism – she managed to eclipse every cause she and her husband had gone to Africa to highlight, and make it all about her.

In toddler tantrum-style, the list goes on, ending only with yesterday’s emergency summit. So, no, Meghan: had you been blonde-haired and blue-eyed, you wouldn’t have been judged any differently. Because this isn’t racism: this is piece-of-work-ism.