An hour before curfew, a young witch sat in my lap in an empty classroom on the fifth floor, kissing my face all over like it was the most delicious thing in the world. My hands were gently resting on her hips, fighting my brain over whether or not they should start roaming around naughtily. Luckily, so far, my brain won out over my hormons.
"Oooh~! You won my first kiss, and you're telling me I'm your first, too?" She cooed with a love-drunk expression, threading her nimble fingers through my hair in a loving manner.
"Yep, you'll always be my first now," I answered with an easy smile as I watched her squeal in delight. I was starting to get more and more unsure how this development came to be. Even more so because this was extremely different from my usual behavior around people.
"Sooo romantic~! Aaah, I want to live in this moment forever~!"
To stop her from saying more along those lines, I leaned forward once more to capture her cherry-red lips in another deep kiss. Softly pushing my tongue forward, every movement of mine confirmed that her lips literally tasted like cherry.
I needed to stop myself from getting ahead of myself, so I idly thought about why her lips tasted like they did. Were there potions for this? Magical lipbalm? Lavender is a pureblood witch, I doubt she had muggle chapsticks.
Suddenly, the Gryffindor witch barely responded to the kiss and instead just sighed into my mouth with a dreamy, content moan.
'...'
"Lavender, are you still here?" I gently asked as I watched her drift off into some kind of romantic wonderland in her mind.
'....'
She snapped out of it, though just barely and reprimanded me with a cute pout.
"Taliiii~! You can't call me by name. You have to find a cutesy nickname for me~!"
'.....'
"Oh, sure, Lav," I answered with an uneasy smile.
"Lav???? Like love??????? Kyaaaa!!!"
'.......'
I watched her drift off once more and started questioning my life choices. All I did was ask her if she wanted to play truth or dare to get to know each other better. A game that she had never heard about, and I intended to use it to give her some gossip as a way to establish a friendship with her.
... a game she completely failed to grasp. Instead of doing anything that was according to the rules of the game, she excitedly closed her eyes with her hands and asked me the color of her eyes.
... my answer 'a beautiful forest green' was the truth... and then she dragged me into a classroom to make out - a dare she made with herself.
'I still don't get it. How did she misunderstand truth or dare so hard that she made out with a guy she barely knew the name of? Or am I just her type somehow??'
To get her to come back into this plane of existence, I pressed another chaste kiss on her lips and felt her melt into it. I could have likely done all sorts of things to her at this point, and the chances that she noticed or cared would have been pretty low.
The pretty brunette didn't make it easy, but I still didn't start fondling her to the discontent of the raging, teenage voice in my hand, no, my head. Since she didn't react, however, I brought up my hand to carress her cheek in an effort to gain her attention. She merely sighed and leaned into my hands.
'I'm reserving my judgment for now, but... Plan 'Gossip Queen' might have been a mistake. How could I possibly ever break up with her and still be in her good graces if she is like this one second into our relationship. Personally, I wouldn't even call it that, but I don't think Lavender wouldn't...'
She mewled and peppered me with little kisses all over my face moments into my contemplation, and all I could do was despair as realisation struck me.
'I'll have to gaslight the shit out of her to get out of this, don't I? Fourteen years of scheming, and I get undone by my own hubris on the second day of Hogwarts because this airhead didn't grasp the rules of truth-or-dare...'
As I talked with Lav about not making a big deal out of this before the gossip starts and how exciting a secret relationship could be, which all flowed too easily out of my mouth, I tried to harden my resolve to do something terrible to this cute, innocent young witch. Her literally showering me, the love-starved orphan with no positive relationships to my name in 14 years, in affection out of nowhere only made it worse. So much worse.
Somehow getting her to agree to 'sneak around like star-crossed lovers that have to hide their love for one another from their rival parents', reinforced by us being in different houses, I guided her back to her common room like a gentleman which cemented her idea of me as a romantic even more.
'Seriously, did someone dose her with a love potion keyed to me or something? This is ridiculous,' I thought as she could barely keep her eyes off of me. Hiding our relationship was going to be impossible if she looked at me with those eyes at breakfast tomorrow.
I walked back to the Ravenclaw common room after dropping her off, nodded toward Hilliard the Ravenclaw prefect who was on curfew duty today apparently, and sat on one of the couches to blankly stare at the beautiful domed ceiling of the common room. The prefect did look at me a little strangely, but I didn't care to find out why. Well, until the next person who talked to me pointed something out.
"You should go wash your face," a quiet voice said from beside me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"How did you get here?" I asked with a defensive posture as I looked toward the girl I met in the history section of the library earlier.
"I sat here before you," she countered, still engrossed in her book. How'd she know I need to wash my face then?
'Wait! My face? Oh no, I'm covered in lipgloss, aren't I?'
As terror struck me, I quickly made my way toward my room to do as the girl suggested, ever thankful that most students had their noses in books or were engrossed in Wizarding Chess battles. I firmly looked toward the wall when I fled, so I didn't see how many people saw the state of my face, but I was sure it was more than I wanted.
Harry sat on his bed, reading a book as I entered. I didn't question why he wasn't downstairs like most others, and he didn't question the state of my face.
After all, my predicament was quite obvious once I saw the hundreds of lip-shaped kiss marks on my face in our bathroom mirror, and Harry was probably exhausted, entirely unused to prolonged social situations.
I wanted to commend him for trying to get out of his shell early in the day during charms when he helped out Sue, but I didn't know how that wouldn't sound condescending coming from a fellow fourteen year old.
"Exciting evening?" Harry quipped with a small, sly smirk once I came out of the shower. I noticed quickly that Lavender somehow managed to sneak in kiss marks onto my neck and behind my ears, and I didn't know what else I would have missed unless I scrubbed my entire body.
"Bit off more than I can chew, I fear," I countered with a forced smile that didn't earn me any sympathy from my roommate.
He was probably mocking me in his head like 'Oh no, a beautiful witch threw herself at me and all I could do is take it, boohoo' and if it wasn't for my predicament of having to play with her heart to further my goals, I'd probably agree.
I toweled off the remaining moisture in my hair with a charmed towel that was pretty much ten times as effective as a regular cotton towel, and then once more spoke to Harry.
"I went to Madam Pomfrey earlier. I got us an appointment before lunch if you're willing. Though, she told me she would tell the results of any diagnosis to our guardian if prompted. That's Dumbledore for us magical orphans, if you didn't know," I casually told him, and he froze, his eyes becoming distant.
"When I saw the look in her eyes, I knew Madam Pomfrey kept something from me. But there's literally nothing we can do other than keep suffering, so I'll take the potion and spells to remove the scars I have tomorrow. Apparently, it works on pretty much any mundane scar tissue without magical residue in it. So I get to keep the line over my nose, and you get to keep being the lightning boy."
"Lightning boy?" Harry asked with a scoff. I knew I'd need to joke around to get an answer out of him.
"Yeah, has a nicer ring to it than boy-who-lived if you ask me. Cause that name will always imply that someone didn't," I retorted with a soft voice and got ready to go back downstairs to see how much face I've lost sitting in the common room with lipgloss all over. "You decide if you're coming or not. I certainly want to find out more about that scar I had since I was a week old or younger. And I won't get answers on my own."
Just before I closed the door, Harry asked, "What kind of answers are you looking for?"
I took a moment and looked at him before revealing something that would determine whether or not we would be allies, friends, or enemies in the future - all depending on his next actions.
"Someone schemed to put me, the son of a pureblood witch, in a muggle orphanage with an untreated magical scar. I want to know who and why."
If Harry was already Dumbledore's puppet, I'll get summoned by either him or a 'trusted' professor in the coming week after saying something like that to him. It was why I didn't present much anger, just bewilderment and determination. If Harry was smart, he'd figure out that someone was messing with his life, pushing him to be or do something against the wishes of his parents.
And if he was dumb enough to not question anything and was not yet influenced by Dumbledore, he could only become a pawn in my path to expose Dumbledore as a dark lord. I got the feeling, though, that Harry was really, really smart.
"You smell nice," the girl I purposefully sat next to said once I arrived on the same sofa in the common room I sat on before.
"Thanks, the wonders of scented soap," I quipped. "I actually didn't see you before, but it can't be a coincidence that we ran into each other twice in a day. I'm Talion Macnair."
"It could easily be a coincidence. Meeting me in the library and the common room is quite frankly the only way you could meet me twice in a day since we're not in the same year," she argued back without stopping to read. "Plus, we're both Ravenclaws. So where else would you find me?"
I leaned forward a little to get the title of her book, and she readily lifted it up a little to allow me to see it.
'Legends of the Inuit Sorcerers: The Myth of Tornarsuk'
'So another history text, one talking about the legacy or the inuit? I'm a little ignorant on the matter... were the Inuit an offshoot of the Eskimos, the other way around, or two completely different peoples living in similar conditions? As in, 'snow people' living somewhere in Northern Russia all the way to the Northern Americas and near the frozen wastes of Greenland?'
I looked back to the girl who looked nothing like someone with Inuit heritage, if I pictured them correctly in my mind. No, she looked like the daughter of a proper British noble with her perfectly braided dark brown hair and warm, honey brown eyes.
"Lara Croft," she eventually offered when she figured out I wouldn't bother her anymore if she didn't want to talk.
"Nice to meet you, Miss Croft. So, since we're talking: honest to god muggle archeology, curse breaking, or just curiosity for their culture? What makes you read about the Inuit of all people?" I asked with a curious smile since she bothered to talk at all.
"My father is an archaeologist. I promised him I'll find something for him in our society."
"Among the snow people? No, sorry, I don't mean to pry."
"You're good, lover boy. I'll tell you anyway, it's no secret. I originally planned to find out more about Avalon, but the library is suspiciously barren regarding that topic. So I'm reading anything that could be interesting until I find something about Avalon."
Well, I knew close to nothing about igloos or other pieces of Inuit culture for that matter, but I did know a few bits and pieces about Avalon - even if I knew exactly zero actual facts since I didn't confirm changes to this world yet or compared them to fanfic knowledge.
'Let's see what sticks, she seems to know a bit herself.'
"Ah, the magical kingdom of King Arthur Pendragon wielding his Excalibur and Merlin or Myrddin Emrys, his mentor and 'court wizard'. Except for a rumored book in Dumbledore's possession and the enchantments of the Wizengamot, no other evidence exists of Merlin and his kingdom. Unless, of course, we consider Salazar's student Merlin to be the same Myrrdin Emrys. I kind of doubt it, though. Because that would mean Hogwarts and the four founders existed at the height of Avalon's might, and that would mean the founders had no reason to create a sanctuary for magicals or they would bind it to the magical kingdom. Avalon would have already been that sanctuary they wanted to create. Let's not forget the fact that Morgan or Morgana Le Fay and Morrigan are probably not the same witch either."
Lara finally looked up from her book to search my face with furrowed brows.
"Weren't you raised with muggles? How do you know all that?"
"How does any Ravenclaw know anything?" I asked with a smile that I hoped looked mysterious, and walked away.
'A character I know nothing about that's interesting. She's going to be my anchor for when I feel like I'm lost among characters in a book while mindlessly following some plotline,' I thought with a smile as I nodded to a few more upper classmen. I saw a few of them smirk, likely because they saw my face before, but I ignored them all - even Penelope.
Back in my room, Harry was still reading his book. Neither of us said anything as I got ready for bed and laid down. Harry continued reading with a small light on by his bedside, largely ignored by me, and did so until I fell asleep, which wasn't long after I laid down.
The next morning, on a sunny Saturday filled with many plans once more, I woke up roughly at the same time as before. Harry, just like the day before, was up before me, looking outside. I noticed rings under his eyes that deepened a little in color. It looked like he didn't sleep much or at all - and now that I thought about it, he likely didn't sleep much last night either.
"Trouble sleeping?"
Harry didn't look back but nodded.
"Anything I can do? Do I snore or something?"
Harry looked over his shoulder toward me and scoffed, "You do, but that's not it. It will take a while..."
'...to feel safe in these walls, to feel safe to sleep in the same room as me - that's what he's thinking, right?'
I said nothing and walked into our bathroom to get ready for the day.
"You coming?" I asked once I was done and dressed in the school uniform because the robes were enchanted for my comfort. The halls are bound to be a little chilly this early in the morning despite it being summer.
Wordlessly once more, Harry nodded in confirmation and threw his robes over his form.
"If you need to catch up some sleep, I'll stay out of the dorm after lunch, likely until curfew. You got the room to yourself," I whispered to him as we walked down the stairs, and like I suspected, Harry didn't answer, and I didn't repeat myself.
For 8AM on a Saturday, there were more students up than I anticipated.
The girls from our year weren't there yet, though, but we didn't wait this time and made our way to the Great Hall as just the two of us.
"Jenga might be coolest game ever invented," a voice from behind me exclaimed as someone sat beside me.
Another one sat on the other side with an arm over my shoulder as Harry looked on with a lifted brow, "We decided to call the wizarding version of Battleships 'Battlebrooms' and there's going to be two spells you can cast to hit blindly. Stupefy for singular hits and bombarda to hit in a 5 pin cross shape."
"You'll make the board a little bigger then? Or are there more 2-piece 'brooms' you have to hit?" I asked as I thought about it.
"Two more columns and rows, we thought about verticality, but Lee told us nobody wants to break their heads over such a thing," the Weasley twin on my left told me and apparently thought I would know who this 'Lee' person was without prior canon knowledge.
"You could do it by animating a little stick figure wizard who casts your spells according to the coordinates you announce, so fake verticality since the board is still two-dimensional. He can't cast in a line. He has to cast up or down. Game makes no sense otherwise," I suggested, not stopping my breakfast of scrambled eggs - a recipe the house elves hadn't known before... which was bonkers to me. Well, now they knew.
"Ooooh, he could cast downward into a 'mist' or smokescreen from atop his own broom! That's why he can't see the enemies!" The twin on my right exclaimed with a shout.
"Brilliant idea, my less handsome copy," the other twin quipped.
"Oh please, the game just changed from a dud into an all-time bestseller on the likes of gobstones."
"Don't get ahead of yourself."
"Don't drag us down."
"Don't look stupid."
"I look just like you, stupid."
"Hey, watch who you're calling stupid-looking, we look the same, stupid!"
As amusing as their back and forth was, I raised my hands for them to pause for a moment.
"If you go ahead with the idea of a stickfigure flying above the board, ask Cleansweep, Nimbus, or Firebolt for a sponsorship. You know, they pay you money, and you put their name on the game to boost their sales and ours," I suggested.
Fred and George's eyes lit up like Christmas came early before one of them, I still didn't know which, turned a little somber.
"The game has to be popular first. Like, super duper popular. There's no way we get a good deal otherwise. Worse yet, they might want us to pay."
"True enough. And don't forget, those companies are run by wizards. And wizards are idiots. I suggest you ask your dad for a muggle book on marketing and sales if you truly want to make it as businessmen."
I saw Harry nod opposite me.
'So he noticed the absolute backwards economy of the wizarding world as well? I mean, there's barely any ads in the Daily Prophet, safe for the same products in every single issue. And the ads are terrible. 18th century level terrible with no strategy or vision.'
"You're pretty alright for the grandson of a death eater," one of the twins suddenly said as he patted me on the shoulder. A few students among us perked up, and I had no idea why the twins were dragging me down right now by mentioning something like that.
'Damage control, or is this leading to some kind of joke, and I'll look like an idiot when I defend myself?'
"Walden? Why wasn't he in Azkaban when he was a terrorist?" I asked in clear surprise as I decided on damage control.
"Terrorist?" "Little Lion might be onto something. They were terrorists, weren't they?"
'That's it? So they just lost all tact and dragged my name through the mud by pointing out I was related to a death eater openly? One that got out with that god damned Imperius defense to boot? What the hell?'
I looked around to see what was happening around me. Harry looked at me with furrowed brows, and I had no idea what he was thinking. I hoped he knew I had no relationship to Voldemort's cause. Otherwise, his sleeping problem would never get better, and our budding chemistry would fizzle out forever.
Then there were a few Ravenclaws sitting close to us that looked like they wanted to look inside my head for answers. A small group of Hufflepuffs looked aghast, unsure what to do with their emotions. The Gryffindors sitting close to us gave me angry looks like I was the death eater, and the Slytherins sat too far away to hear the conversation.
And there was Albus 'Too Many Names' Dumbledore at the staff table with his twinkling eyes, looking at me with his grandfatherly smile like this clownery wasn't by his design.
'What? I was too popular on my first day, so he drags me down a peg or something? Motherfucker.'
"By the way, what's a Firebolt?"
'Huh? Oh, the release of the Firebolt is three years later as well because Hogwarts teaches three years later? It was released before or during Harry's third year in canon, so 1993, a year before now originally. What was his name again... Randy Spudmore? Can I still invest in him if that's the case? Did he need investors?'
I shook my head to chase away these errand thoughts. I was 99% sure Dumbledore was trying to fuck with me - but was it to see my reaction or force me to choose a side or something?
'Well, fuck him and the broom he came in on. Since he's done this, let's just pull the trigger on the Gossip Empress plan and give Rita Skeeter something to make a name with. Hundreds of ways that plan can fail, but at least I won't get another clingy girlfriend whose heart I will have to break.'
'... right?'