Ripples in the Pond

The foyer of the Diasomnia Dormitory was both familiar and mildly intimidating to his eyes. There was an echo of Hogwarts to it, as there had been with Night Raven College itself, with the bare stonework, grandiose, arching windows, and the numerous staircases which led to new places that he’d have to eventually explore. Yet there would be no Ron and Hermione to get lost with that time around, and there was a slight ache to his heart at the thought.

His grip on Lilia tightened, fear pulsing through him as doubts and worries started to bounce around in his brain. His brother was probably there – the brother he’d never truly realised he’d had until Lilia had told him so. He swallowed thickly, the concerns he’d briefly chased away coming back full force as the hour of their reunion drew closer and closer with every step Lilia took for the both of them.

“You need not be so tense, Gladius,” Lilia reminded, and Harry was abruptly reminded that he was as tense as a bowstring. His heart was almost pounding out of his chest, the possibilities of what could unfold flitting behind his eyes whenever he dared to blink.

“I’m just nervous,” he said, knowing that he couldn’t relax until he had met with his brother. “I’ve never met any family members who didn’t hate me,” he answered honestly then, letting himself curl into Lilia ever so slightly. It was almost funny how he quickly his trust of the elder fae had solidified into something tangible.

“But you do not have any family besides Malleus, and your grandmother, besides that of distant relatives, that is,” Lilia explained, as patient with him as ever, confusion clouding his expression as he carried him further inside the building. “Though I suppose you must have been adopted. Humans have rules regarding these sorts of things, if I recall. It’s been quite some time since I last visited a human settlement. Well, beyond this academy, that is,” Lilia said. “Heh. Perhaps that is something I should brush up on.”

“I… well, I didn’t know I was adopted until recently,” Harry said matter-of-factly, turning around to look ahead where they were going. “Where are we going?” he asked, meeting those red eyes which were near constantly looking down at him with fondness he didn’t quite understand. His friends had looked at him fondly, but the flavour – for lack of a better way to describe it – was different somehow.

“Ah. We’re headed to one of the receiving rooms of Diasomnia… I’ll have to have someone call Malleus over. This reunion of yours – I do not think it should be too public.”

“You have receiving rooms?” he questioned, one eyebrow raising at just how posh a receiving room sounded. It seemed like something the Dursleys would have loved; or, rather, something Vernon Dudley would have loved to have, if only to lord that very fact over other people. His shoulders sunk at the memory of everything Dursley, the last conversations he’d had with Petunia and Dudley ringing in his mind. There was a small part of him which hoped with all his might that they might have changed how they acted. Not that it really mattered to him all that much those days…

“I lost a sister.” The words echoed in his head, as they did whenever he dared to think of Petunia Dursley and the small figure he saw before leaving the house that night contrasted with the terrifying woman with a far too large shadow who haunted his childhood memories.

Yet he hadn’t lost his biological mother that night in Godric’s Hollow as he’d once thought. Rather, he had lost his adoptive mother, and his biological mother had already been dead by that point. Or at least that was Lilia had implied when they had spoken about his twin and how they were as eggs. Was there a nuance to that? Harry wasn’t sure. All he knew right then and there was that receiving rooms weren’t a fixture of normal homes. “That sounds posh,” Harry said matter-of-factly.

Lilia laughed, a full-bodied, incredibly amused thing. “It does, doesn’t it?” he acknowledged. “Yet this is the House of Diasomnia, who pride themselves in following the elegance of the Thorn Fairy,” Lilia answered, a smile set upon his lips. “Of course we would have receiving rooms, even if the college rarely hosts any guests of the sorts.”

“Aesthetic,” Harry mumbled, the word springing to the front of his mind.

Lilia chuckled again, leading him down up a flight of stairs, and then immediately down another, before strolling down a corridor to stop at the seventh door on the left. “Here we are,” Lilia announced, opening the door and strolling into a room which reminded him of Grimmauld Place’s Drawing Room. “I will have to ask someone to bring Malleus to us – or at least tell him that he needs to come down here,” he said, and Harry blinked as Lilia set him down on the nearest sofa.

They were a green colour, like a majority of the decorations, and Harry only found his thoughts drifting back to Slytherin House. He had rarely entered the Slytherin Dormitories, and had never gone further than the main common room. Part of him wondered if it all had resembled anything like the room in front of him. Then again, Black had been a name renowned in Slytherin, and Grimmauld Place had belonged to the Black Family. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that there was some resemblance.

“Are you going to find Malleus?” he asked tilting his head, swinging his legs back and forth as he sat on that green sofa, looking into the crackling green fire. Diasomnia liked their green colouring, Harry was coming to understand. Part of him could almost see the similarities between that dormitory and Slytherin House; though those similarities weren’t something he liked to linger on. Slytherins hadn’t, after all, made the best impressions on him throughout the years.

“Yes…” Lilia answered, simple and to the point. “It would be best to find him… before any rumours start circulating around. I would rather he find out from me that you have been found… rather than hearing it from others who don’t quite grasp what this means to him.”

He swallowed, wondering then why the thought of Lilia leaving made him ever so nervous. He was an adult – even if he had somehow shrunk to the size of a child and could be easily carried like one. Adults weren’t supposed to get nervous at the idea of people leaving.

“I can either go and bring Malleus here myself, or I can go and ask someone to tell Malleus to come here to this room,” Lilia explained. “I will be back, Gladius,” he said, and Harry knew then that he was telling the truth. The odd blanket of safety Lilia’s very presence brought about wouldn’t vanish all of a sudden. “What happened for you to think I would leave and never come back?” Lilia asked, and Harry could only blink at that.

“Nothing,” he murmured, flipping the hood of his robe back, revealing his face and his horns properly. He fought the urge to reach up and grasp them then – as if to remind himself that they still existed and everything around him was real. His world had been flipped on its head, and Harry thought the reality of the matter was starting to sink in as a heaviness came to weigh on his heart.

He would never see Ron and Hermione again.

A bite of tears came to claw at his eyes, Lilia’s gaze boring into the side of his head as he sat there, feeling ever so slightly overwhelmed. He didn’t quite understand why. He had fought a Dark Lord. He had helped win a war against a madman when he had been almost constantly on the back foot against a foe so much older and more experienced than him. He should have been used to uncertainty and being left behind – or leaving people behind as he already had.

“I will not be gone long,” Lilia promised, and Harry did his best to smile.

“I’ll see you in a bit then,” he said, kicking himself off the sofa and back to his feet as he indulged in the urge to explore that new room. “And I suppose I’ll see my brother soon,” he murmured after Lilia had all but vanished in the blink of an eye. He hadn’t even heard the door open and close. “A brother,” he mumbled again, still trying to get used to the word and all the emotions it brought.

Family matters were complicated, he was coming to understand. Though more to the point his family matters specifically were the most complicated. It wasn’t like Hermione or Ron had learnt they had hatched from an egg, and that the people who’d died for him hadn’t been biologically related to him; something which had settled as a fact in his brain somewhere over the several years of people telling him of his… adoptive parents who’d made the ultimate sacrifice for him.

Was him leaving Ron and Hermione behind to go to a different land itself spitting on that sacrifice? Harry wasn’t sure, shoulders sinking even as he tried to distract himself with the room around him. There were trinkets lying about on shelves on one side of the room, a tall fireplace with green fire crackling behind the cast iron guard on another wall, and it was that fire that drew his eye.

He looked at his hands, remembering that wall of green fire that had erupt not too long ago. “What was that?” he murmured, freezing all of a sudden as the entire building seemed to shake all of a sudden. Pictures and paintings rattled in their frames on the walls, trinkets on the shelves shifting or falling over. It was almost like what he thought an earthquake would be like. Distantly, the sound of a loud bang met his ears, footsteps ringing out as though someone was running, the sound sharp against flagstone, and Harry could only glance towards the door and pray that Lilia would reappear sooner rather than later.

The window of the room rattled ever so slightly, winds outside howling against the glass panes, and Harry could only blink as a bolt of lightning struck the grounds of Diasomnia. He shivered, wondering where Lilia had got to – and what the sudden change of weather was for.

As if summoned by the very thought, the door to the room slammed open, and he flinched at the sound that made as the handle slammed into the stonework of the nearest wall. “Gladius,” an unfamiliar voice spoke, a strange mix of shock, relief, and utter confusion in its tone, and Harry blinked at that. That wasn’t Lilia, although Lilia was there, hovering in the air almost like a bat next to—

He froze, staring up at the figure who suddenly looked incredibly tall – but then again he was a child’s height right then and there. Yet that wasn’t the pressing issue there. That fact hardly mattered, because the person standing in front of him, staring at him in shock could only be one person.

His brother.

His heart thudded frantically in his chest, panic closing its iron grip around his lungs before he shoved that feeling deep down where it could no longer reach him.

He stared at his brother, taking in the face which resembled his own – back when he had looked like a seventeen-year-old human – but with a few softer edges, and slightly sharper cheekbones than his own. They shared a nose, and they definitely now shared the same eyes; a viridescent green that almost seemed to glow, with slitted pupils, and Harry could only wonder if his pupils were as blown wide as Malleus’ as they stared at each other.

There was a moment of silence, the pair of them just looking at each other, each taking in the sight of the other with something like concern and amazement, and then the next thing Harry knew was the remarkably prominent collar bone of his brother’s digging into his cheek as he was crushed in a hug. The arms that wrapped around him shook ever so slightly, something wet dripping down onto his other cheek, and he startled at the knowledge that his brother was crying. “You’re alive, Gladius,” his brother whispered, chest vibrating beneath Harry’s cheek. “I’ve wondered ever since Lilia told me of your existence once I was old enough… I wondered what fate had befallen you, and lately I had begun to fear the worst.”

“Heh. Did I not tell you that he would find his way back to us eventually?” Lilia chimed in, looking at the pair of them with nothing but fondness in his gaze. “One way or another…”

“It was very much implied that we would find his body… or a shattered egg,” Malleus muttered, and Harry flinched ever so slightly at that – remembering then, that his brother had apparently hatched much earlier than him. Part of him was also generally aware that the longer someone was missing, the less likely it was that they would be found alive. “Where have you been, Gladius?” his brother demanded, and all he could do was shuffle back and stare once more at his brother as he found himself sitting on his lap.

He was positively tiny those days, and it showed. Part of him missed being tall, and yet there was this strange side of him that almost felt as though he was finally getting to experience being held, carried, and loved as he hadn’t as a child. Cathartic, was that the word for it? Harry tilted his head, pondering on the matter for a few seconds, time feeling as though it were immersed in treacle as he sat there, trying to comprehend multiple things at once. “It’s… complicated,” he mumbled, watching as Lilia took a seat, legs crossed beneath him as he looked at the pair of them intently. “Lilia said that he’s never heard of England – that’s the country I grew up in…”

“Perhaps that is what the people of that country call it, and its true name is something else?” his brother offered, looking incredibly perplexed by the possibility of England.

“He hasn’t heard of the Queendom of Roses,” Lilia said matter-of-factly, pulling his brother’s attention onto himself ever so briefly before Malleus was back looking at him. “He doesn’t think that the world he grew up in is the same as this one… and while that is certainly strange, it’s not impossible. Spellcraft is a curious thing, and none of us saw what your mother did with Gladius’ egg. He was already missing by the time we were retrieving yours,” Lilia murmured, a dark look flashing across his face so quickly that Harry could have blinked and missed it.

Part of him could only wonder then, just what had led to him and Malleus – their eggs – being separated as they had been.

“Then who were you raised by?” Malleus questioned, brow furrowing as he kept on staring at him. “If there is another world… what sorts of people were there? Even beastfolk would not have been able to raise a dragon fae with ease—”

“England, and well, the rest of the world only had humans,” he said, part of him, in the recesses of his brain piecing the word beastfolk together with those students he had seen with animal-like ears, and tails, in a vast number of cases. He hadn’t thought much of it until that moment what with the whole not human debacle he’d been facing at the time. “We didn’t have… beastfolk, or fae… Fae only appeared in old stories – they weren’t… real,” he mumbled, grappling with the realisation that fae very much existed there, and he was one of them. It was strange that the fact was taking so long to properly sink into his brain. “I’ve never heard of this Night Raven College… and there are precious few magical schools, what with how the number of muggles outweigh the magical ones…”

Malleus blinked. “What… is a muggle?” he asked, tilting his head.

“A non-magical person,” Harry answered succinctly.

“People without magic,” Malleus spoke hesitantly, looking inordinately confused by the fact. “They outnumbered those with magic?” he questioned, eyebrows rising in what looked like surprise. “Curious.” He turned to Lilia then. “Is that normal in some places?”

“People without magic… aren’t that common. No land that I know of has a population of magic-less that outweigh those who can use magic,” Lilia said. “Yet I do not know of every single land. I do believe the little dragon might be correct when he says he comes from another world – or dimension. Heh. No one person knows the full limits and possibilities of magic…”

Something inside him settled at the fact that he was being believed. Did it say something about his life, that he was far used to people not believing him? Harry tilted his head, trying to shove the memories of his Fifth Year far down in his memories.

“The Dark Carriages that bring students to school… they are an ancient piece of spellcraft. Who knows how far and between they can traverse?” Lilia murmured. “Trying to get answers out of Crowley is like trying to get blood from a stone…” Red eyes fixed back on him, Lilia floating around in circles midair as he watched them both curiously and cautiously. “Though I suppose that is not all that pressing of an issue, I think. Gladius promised me stories from this place called Hogwarts, and you would not go back on that promise, would you, little dragon?”

Part of him almost wanted to protest the use of that nickname, whilst the other part of him reminded himself that he’d never really had a nickname before. “Where do you want me to start?” he asked, looking between those red eyes and those familiar green ones that he had seen every day in the mirror since he had shrunk to the size he had. “At the beginning?”

“That would be the best place to start, I believe,” Lilia said matter-of-factly. “All good stories start with a beginning.”

“Well then…” Harry stumbled his way through the words, brain ticking over how best to tell his story. He was no storyteller – that he knew with utmost certainty. He had never told a story to anyone. “I suppose it all began with a letter,” he said, thinking back to that day with an abject fondness. “Or several… I grew up not knowing anything about magic – it wasn’t common knowledge, and my aunt… well, I suppose she was my adoptive mother’s sister. Can I still call her my aunt?” Harry mumbled, more to himself than anyone else as his story went underway. “My aunt… she hated magic, later I found out because she didn’t have any and she was jealous of my mot—adoptive mother. So she tried to keep the knowledge from me. When they saw the letter – sent by Hogwarts, that is – they freaked out… and my uncle drove us around the country trying to avoid these letters, and we ended up on an island. That’s where Hagrid found me and gave me my letter, which I finally got to read…”

He had just gotten to the end of his First Year adventures when his stomach made a loud growling sound that had heat rushing to his cheeks.

“It would seem we’ve kept you storytelling for a bit too long,” Lilia remarked, visible amusement in his gaze even as it darted over to the window – undoubtedly spying just how late in the day it had gotten. “We could pop to the kitchens for a quick late-night snack?” he offered, and it took Harry a few moments to realise how quickly Malleus paled at the mention of a heading to the kitchens.

“I think we should head to bed,” his brother said, sounding altogether far to decisive about the matter.

Harry tilted his head, wondering then, if he was really tired enough to go to sleep. His head felt as though it were spinning from everything he’d learnt in far too short of a time period. “I think I want to go for a walk… it’s still evening, even if its dark,” he added, ruining his statement ever so slightly as he decided to yawn.

“You aren’t familiar with the grounds,” Lilia said, tilting his head. “Besides, are you not hungry? The sounds your stomach makes indicates you are.”

“You shouldn’t eat too late,” he murmured, knowing he’d be uncomfortable if he tried to sleep on an overly full stomach. “I can wait until breakfast. Today has just been… a bit long…”

“I imagine it would be…” Lilia said, a knowing look in his eyes. It wasn’t every day that one found out they had a brother, and then met them after learning that startling information – more so after one had been considered an orphan for most of their life. “Will you be wanting company on this walk of yours?” he questioned, and Harry didn’t know why it felt like his emotions and thoughts were laid out on display in that instant; namely the confusion, happiness, and unending sense of loss he felt all at once. It was a confusing tangle of emotions, and Harry rather thought he needed just a bit of solitude to figure things out.

“I think I’d like to go alone,” he said decisively, glancing out of the window then, noting the milder weather. There were none of the heavier winds nor any lightning strikes on the horizon, and Harry could only wonder if Diasomnia was prone to sudden, random storms. A magical phenomena common to those lands? He could only theorise, even as he pushed himself to his feet. “Not that I don’t want to, well, hang out with you… I just need some time alone to process things, I guess.”

“Malleus will have to save his tour for a later date, it seems,” Lilia remarked, interjecting before Malleus could say a word. “Though I feel as though I must warn you that the magic of this dormitory area… sometimes it can be unstable and spit you out onto the campus itself. So I would like to send some… friends to keep an eye on you whilst you wander. You are very new to this school, and I’m not sure you could navigate back to Diasomnia itself if you became lost… and it would be rather distressing to lose you again so soon after we have just found you.”

Harry blinked, frazzled brain taking a moment to process that request for what it was. “Okay?” he hesitantly agreed, wondering then what Lilia meant by friends. Somehow he didn’t think those friends were human-shaped.

“We can walk you to the entrance to the grounds,” Malleus declared, his expression considerably more distressed than earlier, and Harry couldn’t help but feel a sliver of guilt at the knowing feeling that he was behind it. “Can’t we?”

“Of course,” he answered, because he didn’t even know how to get on the grounds, and even though the Diasomnia Dormitory was smaller than Hogwarts Castle, he had a sneaking suspicion that it was just as hard to navigate. Or at least as hard as it had been as a First Year still new to the castle and all its fake steps, long corridors that seemingly led to nowhere, and the sprawling staircases which shifted constantly.

“Then let us go,” Lilia said, smoothly taking flight and opening the door. He had a habit of flying around like that, Harry noted, watching as Lilia waited for them both to catch up. “The hour grows late and we don’t want Gladius outside for too long. You young’uns need your beauty sleep before school starts up tomorrow…”

Harry frowned at that, silently mouthing the words young’uns to himself as he followed Lilia out of the door. Malleus stayed behind him, a looming, somewhat comforting shadow. He tilted his head, wondering what specifically it was about the pair that comforted him so much. Malleus was his brother, and it showed in their far too similar appearances – even if his own face was lined with a bit more baby fat. He was younger, after all. For all that their eggs had been in the womb together, they had ultimately hatched at different points in time.

“How old are you?” he found himself asking, taking the hand that his brother immediately offered.

“I recently celebrated my one-hundredth and seventy-eighth birthday,” Malleus stated, and Harry could only blink at that, and promptly add that fact to the growing pile of things to freak out about later. “How long have you been hatched, brother?”

Harry stared straight ahead, silently pondering over what sort of lifespan was awaiting him, even as he answered, “Seventeen years. Nearly eighteen.”

His brother only hummed in response to that. Harry wondered then what his brother thought of him, what with how much of an age difference there apparently was between them both. He wondered if it would make it harder to bond with his brother who was definitely estranged to him by that point. Growing up worlds apart would do that, Harry mused as he walked alongside his brother, simply enjoying holding his hand and spending time with his newfound family.

It wasn’t like he’d been able to do that with the Dursleys, he mused, shaking his head as he tried to shove those memories back into the box they had slipped out of. He wasn’t human, part of him mused, thinking then of his child-like body that was seemingly like that because he was a fae child; and not quite the human adult he’d thought he’d been. And death had somehow been the catalyst for that much, his brain added, and he pondered for a moment on how he was supposed to tell Lilia and Malleus of his final year of Hogwarts – not that he’d spent most of it in the castle itself, hostile takeover and all.

“These are the grounds,” Lilia declared, opening the door which led outside. “I wouldn’t advise straying too far, but you are Malleus’ brother, and he is known to roam.”

“Oh,” he mumbled, glancing at his brother and receiving a nod of confirmation.

“Come back once you’ve finished exploring the grounds. My friends will let me know when you return, and I’ll be with you in the blink of an eye,” Lilia said, and Harry heard a faint chittering chirping noise. Small little wings flapped noisily, and Harry blinked at the bats which were flying around him.

“So you’re Lilia’s friends,” he whispered, waving then, ever so briefly and awkwardly at Lilia and his brother before turning his back on the dormitory castle and making his way through a few rows of neatly trimmed hedges.

He closed his eyes, breathing out a sigh, part of him almost expecting to find Ron and Hermione there… He hoped they were safe, with him gone, he mused, hoping those white-robed witches and wizards had left them alone after he’d gone. “And breathe,” he murmured, enjoying the quiet that surrounded him. It was a far cry away from the hubbub that had fallen like dominos ever since he had woken up in a coffin in those lands.

His eyes opened, part of him giving into the urge to look up, and he stared up at the cloudy sky, frowning at the dregs of colour he could see poking through. Idly he wondered if it was an enchanted sky, like that of the Great Hall in Hogwarts, part of him wondering about that space. They’d accessed it through a mirror-like portal, after all. But he was no Hermione, so he shelved his questions and pottered along the path in his quest to get his head on straight.

“The facts,” he mumbled to himself, filling the quiet with his commentary. “I’m fae. A child fae… and I have family here,” he added, even as he reeled inside at the fact that he had a brother, and he had met him earlier. He swallowed thickly. “A brother…”

The bats chittered at him, almost as if answering him and confirming that very fact. Then again, they were Lilia’s so-called friends. Who knew how much they understood? He hummed under his breath, taking another step – and in true Potter fashion, even if he was only a Potter by adoption – his foot landing in a pile of mud.

Wet mud. Because it was raining. He spun around, heart sinking before he’d even properly looked around – because he knew he’d just stumbled likely onto Night Raven College’s campus. Lilia had warned him of the possibility of that fact, and part of him knew he should have long been resigned to the fact that he would always fall prey to the worst-case scenarios. A bat chirped near him, and relief surged through him at the fact that Lilia would undoubtedly be informed of his situation, and hopefully of where exactly he was. There was nothing around him but forest; the way back to Diasomnia abruptly lost to him.

Rain splattered down against his face, and he pulled his hood up then – as though that might protect him somewhat – but the robes he wore weren’t waterproof, and the rain was quickly seeping through them.

His eyes caught on a structure a little ways away, and a years worth of memories spent on the run informed him that was likely the best place to wait out the rain; until Lilia either came to get him, or until the downpour stopped.

He hurried towards the dilapidated building, uncaring as rain splashed against his feet, seeping through his shoes and making his toes cold. “Ugh,” he muttered, wincing at the way the door creaked as he pushed it open. “Of all the times…” he spoke, words seeming to echo around the room – which wasn’t water-tight, if the several leaks coming from the roof had anything to say.

A flash of light caught his eyes, blue flames sputtering and flickering atop the head of the cat from earlier. He frowned, almost waiting for the outspoken creature to start hollering words at him yet again. Nothing happened though, and Harry felt his frown deepen as he hesitantly padded his way over the creaky floorboards.

The cat-like being was curled into a small ball, visibly shaking and utterly soaked, and Harry felt himself pause at that. He shared a name with—

“Your name was Grim, wasn’t it?”