prowlingthunder (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
prowlingthunder) wrote2011-10-07 02:39 pm
prowlingthunder) wrote2011-10-07 02:39 pm
HP/StS: A Mother's Love: CH 4
Index: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/2118.html
Previous Chapter: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/6
Next Chapter: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/10657.html
A Mother's Love has a Q&A section on my LJ: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/9011.html
A Mother's Love has a Translator section on my LJ: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/10138.html
XXXXX-XXXXX
Transfiguration was a magick of turning one thing into another. Including, apparently, thin air. Harry managed to keep his mouth shut for all of five minutes, because changing base elements from one thing to another violated everything he'd ever been taught.
“That's impossible.”
The teacher's gray-threaded head jerked to him. Face pinched into a scowl, and green eyes flashing dark. “Mister Potter, please do not interrupt.”
“Twisting atoms to turn one element into another is impossible!”
“Mister Potter!”
“Diskopotiro.”
“What?”
“My name is Diskopotiro.”
In the end, Harry had earned a week's worth of detention and had been escorted from class, as well as costing Slytherine thirty points they technically didn't have. Still, it felt well worth it; he had been trained that self sacrifice only meant something if it accomplished a goal.
Though he doubted anyone except for Draco had heard him.
XXXX-XXXX
History of Magic quickly became Harry's favorite subject. Oh, the teacher, bless his still-beating heart, was boring and dull as could be. But his room was a library of knowledge on it's own, nevermind the library Hogwarts called it's own.
He'd literally tripped over a book entitled Myrddin Emrys and Arthur. It was in Welsh, unfortunately, but he was sure he would either find an english one or brush up on the language, one.
Of course, by mid-class, Harry was reading The Boggart: Real or Myth? while he absently paid attention to the teacher. The ghost hadn't appeared to mind that the Saint paid him the same attention as a painting, nor that the rest of the class had fallen asleep on him.
What was so fascinating about Goblins?
XXXX-XXXX
If there was one thing Harry didn't understand, it was the talking paintings.
There was a point to it, he was sure; tucked somewhere between 'dead people' and 'old knowledge'. To Magus, it probably made sense. But Harry was a Saint, and the dead needed to pass on to the Underworld. Even Athena's Chosen didn't get the right to avoid that.
“Ah, Diskopotiro!”
Harry blinked. Backtracked. Stared at the complete and utter stranger, leaning against a rather odd-shaped stone. A woman rested her elbow on the gold-plated shoulder, played with dark hair, held onto an unfamiliar sword. But the man watched Harry.
It occured to him, distractedly, that it was sad that the first person to call him by his name was in a Magus-picture.
“Yes, Afentis?” He seemed like a Lord, sitting there like he was. The lady.. well, Harry couldn't imagine who or what she might be. But Harry didn't recognise the man. Which wasn't that odd- he didn't recognise most.
The woman giggled. Leaned down to whisper something in the man's ear, and was batted away. “What is your name, young man?”
“Diskopotiro.”
“Nay. Your other name?”
Harry blinked again, blindsided. No portrait was that curious. “My master calls me Harry. My tombstone will say Ljang Khu.”
“Lymainomai,” The man nodded, and the woman cooed. “Do you know who I am?”
No. How would he? But Harry looked at him again anyway, searching for the tell-tale signs that would reveal the answer to him. The stranger had known him by site, so surely there must have been visual clues, and must be now...
“...Afentis Aigokeros?”
“Oooh Arthur, can we keep him?”
The man chuckled, and almost seemed to ignore her. Harry had to wonder though. “Yes. The locals call me 'King Arthur',” The woman snorted, causing the young Saint to jump at the reality of them both. “But Aigokeros Arthoúros is proper.”
Erk.
XXXX-XXXX
There wasn't enough ambient light in the dungeon that the.... hat had designated as Harry's room in order for the boy in question to do his homework.
He gathered his dancing inkwell, the box of calligraphy brushes, his list of homework and the appropriate books. And promptly sat himself out in clear view of the Womping Willow, which proved to be almost tempting enough to warrent forgoing homework in favor of trying to put such a beauty down on paper.
Draco's twin friends found him as he was sketching out the final draft of his Charms homework, cutting out errors and double-checking the information, all the while wondering why the flighty man had found it prudent to Charm Dream-Catchers.
“Oi 'Arry!”
“Want to settle something between Fred and me?”
Harry blinked and looked up. And blinked again. He would never be able to get the image of the two boys modelling dresses out of his head. Ever.
XXXX-XXXX
Harry sighed, setting his workbook down on the bed. It was frustrating; the Potions... something or other was a decent book. It was well worded, with more then a few recipies. There was not, however, a good explanation; why you had to stir things one direction, then the other, or why crushed instead of ground ingredients were called for. He knew there had to be reasons, otherwise the definition wouldn't be either precise or necessary.
Potions, he decided, was going to be murder.
XXXX-XXXX
“What's this?”
Hermione paused in her step, turning-- Neville, another Gryffindor, had stopped by the announcement board in the Great Hall. She had read the fliers yesterday; a note for Quidditch tryouts, various clubs, holiday list...
Neville was holding a pale brown paper, one she hadn't seen before, and when he left, she inched over to read it too.
AFTER CLASS STUDY GROUP
IN VIEW OF WOMPING WILLOW
DAILY
ALL HOUSES WELCOME
TEACHERS WELCOME
It wasn't signed, but she hadn't really expected that, either. It didn't read like sanctioned club or activity group.
Yet...
XXXX-XXXX
Nagini missed her fruit tree. Harry didn't have to be told this, it just made sense. If he was homesick already, it stood to reason that the snake would be too. So to be fair, the young Saint had told her to explore and have fun while he was out.
Harry didn't regret it. Wouldn't. Refused. It was easier to suffer through her recounting her day then it was to deal with his dancing inkpot as he practiced his Roman letters.
“There is an egg in the caverns below.” She told him after she caught her train of thought, having revealed that there was miles and miles of pipe. In the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Some ran water- a good deal more ran air, and spiders and mice, and those varied in sized and ran well beneath the dungeons.
Harry blinked at her. “An egg?”
“Yes,” Nagini hissed at him, a soothing, easy voice. “It is dusty, but there are no spiders. The water is not stale, yet...”
“Yet?” Harry prodded, refilling the quill. Nagini raised her head to taste the air, ever fascinated by the odd writing utensil. More then he was, at any rate.
“I wonder if I could find vulture eggs?”
“...when was the last time you ate?”
“The train?” Nagini wondered aloud, sounding less sure about that then she had about weither or not the sky was even a color.
Harry had to laugh, reaching down to take the ink-bottle from her. Explaining what a train was had been fun; the nearest they had gotten was land-river. “Go on then. We can finish this story later.”
“Yes, little one,” She needled, and then fled from the sheets like a bolt of lightning. “Yes. Here, mousie, mousie. Come to me, come....”
Idly, he wondered if he could turn in a future extra credit report about the personalities of snakes. Then he remembered Nagini had found a nest where Hogwarts: A History claimed nothing was.
Time for a trip to the library.
XXXX-XXXX
“Flying lessons.” Harry spoke flatly, eyeing the salt-and-pepper coach like she'd gone mad. Leave the gracious, ever-loving flesh of Gaia-- for Ouranos? Why? He didn't have wings, and he was fairly sure going in the air without them was a well-defined, very short recipie for visiting Hades far, far too early.
Why did Magus do such things? Did they enjoy bumping into the trails of Hades' wake, of death well before the Fates wished to cut their threads? Was there a route to their madness, a disease which could be cured, a disconnect of nerves to be reconnected? Had they been dropped as babies, knocked heads one too many times against stones?
“No, Ma'am, I am not. I think I'll be sitting this one out.”
“Nonsense,” Madam.. Coach seemed to tsk. “Every witch and wizard learns how to fly a broom.”
“I'm not a Magus, and I most assuredly am not. It can't be healthy or safe, and it'll take a lot more then two opals to cross the river when I fall off that thing.”
The woman looked downright scandalized. “Mister Potter!”
“My name is Diskopotiro, not Potter. --will you stop gaping like that? Your jaw is open far enough to let in to liontari tis Nemeas.”
XXXX-XXXX
Potions was a mess from the moment Professor Snape introduced himself until the very moment the last Gryffindor had fled the room at the bell. Or what constituted a bell in Potions; for some reason, there was a glowing cauldron pot the size of an apple that changed colors every hour, and two stirring spoons of appropriately sized betwitched into a mock swordfight that would routinely knock the 'looser' into the edge every ten mintes or so. At the end of class, they flew to the back of the room and got stuck in the far walls.
Amusing, if no short disturbing.
Coupled with the sense of his Slytherine tattoo squirming and slithering under his skin, among so many of his housemates in the cool, odd-smelling room, Harry had been nearly compelled to ask if there would be a snack party of some sort. There wasn't, but it hadn't helped the compulsion.
The biggest trouble Harry had with the Head of House wasn't that he picked the smallest, mose nervously-disposistioned Gryffindor to antagonize, but that he treated honest to goodness important questions with the sort of disdain Shiva had treated eating range-chicken.
Harry determined to ask Snape some later, hoping that with no one around the House-Parent-Master would be less inclined to show his forked tongue, and secretly hoped Longbottom attended the study group. It might do him good.
“Professor Snape?”
“What, boy?”
Wide-eyed with open curiosity, Harry laid out his most troubling question; and watched bone-pale skin burn red.
“What are knickers?”
XXXX-XXXX
“How many mice did you eat?” Harry poked Nagini's leaf-specked scales gently, wondering why she had decided to curl up next to his pillow.
Nagini sounded utterly saited. “An adult and three hairless runts.” Babies- young. So she had found a nest then.
“Ah. Don't you regurgitate the hair and bones on the bed.”
“Of course not. Now close the curtains already.”
Harry shook his head and did so, amused. It was amazing how bossy snakes could be, no matter how small they were. But Nagini would eat well this year, so Harry couldn't complain much.
“Goodnight, Nagini.”
“Go to sleep, you.”
Previous Chapter: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/6
Next Chapter: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/10657.html
A Mother's Love has a Q&A section on my LJ: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/9011.html
A Mother's Love has a Translator section on my LJ: http://prowlingthunder.livejournal.com/10138.html
XXXXX-XXXXX
Transfiguration was a magick of turning one thing into another. Including, apparently, thin air. Harry managed to keep his mouth shut for all of five minutes, because changing base elements from one thing to another violated everything he'd ever been taught.
“That's impossible.”
The teacher's gray-threaded head jerked to him. Face pinched into a scowl, and green eyes flashing dark. “Mister Potter, please do not interrupt.”
“Twisting atoms to turn one element into another is impossible!”
“Mister Potter!”
“Diskopotiro.”
“What?”
“My name is Diskopotiro.”
In the end, Harry had earned a week's worth of detention and had been escorted from class, as well as costing Slytherine thirty points they technically didn't have. Still, it felt well worth it; he had been trained that self sacrifice only meant something if it accomplished a goal.
Though he doubted anyone except for Draco had heard him.
XXXX-XXXX
History of Magic quickly became Harry's favorite subject. Oh, the teacher, bless his still-beating heart, was boring and dull as could be. But his room was a library of knowledge on it's own, nevermind the library Hogwarts called it's own.
He'd literally tripped over a book entitled Myrddin Emrys and Arthur. It was in Welsh, unfortunately, but he was sure he would either find an english one or brush up on the language, one.
Of course, by mid-class, Harry was reading The Boggart: Real or Myth? while he absently paid attention to the teacher. The ghost hadn't appeared to mind that the Saint paid him the same attention as a painting, nor that the rest of the class had fallen asleep on him.
What was so fascinating about Goblins?
XXXX-XXXX
If there was one thing Harry didn't understand, it was the talking paintings.
There was a point to it, he was sure; tucked somewhere between 'dead people' and 'old knowledge'. To Magus, it probably made sense. But Harry was a Saint, and the dead needed to pass on to the Underworld. Even Athena's Chosen didn't get the right to avoid that.
“Ah, Diskopotiro!”
Harry blinked. Backtracked. Stared at the complete and utter stranger, leaning against a rather odd-shaped stone. A woman rested her elbow on the gold-plated shoulder, played with dark hair, held onto an unfamiliar sword. But the man watched Harry.
It occured to him, distractedly, that it was sad that the first person to call him by his name was in a Magus-picture.
“Yes, Afentis?” He seemed like a Lord, sitting there like he was. The lady.. well, Harry couldn't imagine who or what she might be. But Harry didn't recognise the man. Which wasn't that odd- he didn't recognise most.
The woman giggled. Leaned down to whisper something in the man's ear, and was batted away. “What is your name, young man?”
“Diskopotiro.”
“Nay. Your other name?”
Harry blinked again, blindsided. No portrait was that curious. “My master calls me Harry. My tombstone will say Ljang Khu.”
“Lymainomai,” The man nodded, and the woman cooed. “Do you know who I am?”
No. How would he? But Harry looked at him again anyway, searching for the tell-tale signs that would reveal the answer to him. The stranger had known him by site, so surely there must have been visual clues, and must be now...
“...Afentis Aigokeros?”
“Oooh Arthur, can we keep him?”
The man chuckled, and almost seemed to ignore her. Harry had to wonder though. “Yes. The locals call me 'King Arthur',” The woman snorted, causing the young Saint to jump at the reality of them both. “But Aigokeros Arthoúros is proper.”
Erk.
XXXX-XXXX
There wasn't enough ambient light in the dungeon that the.... hat had designated as Harry's room in order for the boy in question to do his homework.
He gathered his dancing inkwell, the box of calligraphy brushes, his list of homework and the appropriate books. And promptly sat himself out in clear view of the Womping Willow, which proved to be almost tempting enough to warrent forgoing homework in favor of trying to put such a beauty down on paper.
Draco's twin friends found him as he was sketching out the final draft of his Charms homework, cutting out errors and double-checking the information, all the while wondering why the flighty man had found it prudent to Charm Dream-Catchers.
“Oi 'Arry!”
“Want to settle something between Fred and me?”
Harry blinked and looked up. And blinked again. He would never be able to get the image of the two boys modelling dresses out of his head. Ever.
XXXX-XXXX
Harry sighed, setting his workbook down on the bed. It was frustrating; the Potions... something or other was a decent book. It was well worded, with more then a few recipies. There was not, however, a good explanation; why you had to stir things one direction, then the other, or why crushed instead of ground ingredients were called for. He knew there had to be reasons, otherwise the definition wouldn't be either precise or necessary.
Potions, he decided, was going to be murder.
XXXX-XXXX
“What's this?”
Hermione paused in her step, turning-- Neville, another Gryffindor, had stopped by the announcement board in the Great Hall. She had read the fliers yesterday; a note for Quidditch tryouts, various clubs, holiday list...
Neville was holding a pale brown paper, one she hadn't seen before, and when he left, she inched over to read it too.
AFTER CLASS STUDY GROUP
IN VIEW OF WOMPING WILLOW
DAILY
ALL HOUSES WELCOME
TEACHERS WELCOME
It wasn't signed, but she hadn't really expected that, either. It didn't read like sanctioned club or activity group.
Yet...
XXXX-XXXX
Nagini missed her fruit tree. Harry didn't have to be told this, it just made sense. If he was homesick already, it stood to reason that the snake would be too. So to be fair, the young Saint had told her to explore and have fun while he was out.
Harry didn't regret it. Wouldn't. Refused. It was easier to suffer through her recounting her day then it was to deal with his dancing inkpot as he practiced his Roman letters.
“There is an egg in the caverns below.” She told him after she caught her train of thought, having revealed that there was miles and miles of pipe. In the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Some ran water- a good deal more ran air, and spiders and mice, and those varied in sized and ran well beneath the dungeons.
Harry blinked at her. “An egg?”
“Yes,” Nagini hissed at him, a soothing, easy voice. “It is dusty, but there are no spiders. The water is not stale, yet...”
“Yet?” Harry prodded, refilling the quill. Nagini raised her head to taste the air, ever fascinated by the odd writing utensil. More then he was, at any rate.
“I wonder if I could find vulture eggs?”
“...when was the last time you ate?”
“The train?” Nagini wondered aloud, sounding less sure about that then she had about weither or not the sky was even a color.
Harry had to laugh, reaching down to take the ink-bottle from her. Explaining what a train was had been fun; the nearest they had gotten was land-river. “Go on then. We can finish this story later.”
“Yes, little one,” She needled, and then fled from the sheets like a bolt of lightning. “Yes. Here, mousie, mousie. Come to me, come....”
Idly, he wondered if he could turn in a future extra credit report about the personalities of snakes. Then he remembered Nagini had found a nest where Hogwarts: A History claimed nothing was.
Time for a trip to the library.
XXXX-XXXX
“Flying lessons.” Harry spoke flatly, eyeing the salt-and-pepper coach like she'd gone mad. Leave the gracious, ever-loving flesh of Gaia-- for Ouranos? Why? He didn't have wings, and he was fairly sure going in the air without them was a well-defined, very short recipie for visiting Hades far, far too early.
Why did Magus do such things? Did they enjoy bumping into the trails of Hades' wake, of death well before the Fates wished to cut their threads? Was there a route to their madness, a disease which could be cured, a disconnect of nerves to be reconnected? Had they been dropped as babies, knocked heads one too many times against stones?
“No, Ma'am, I am not. I think I'll be sitting this one out.”
“Nonsense,” Madam.. Coach seemed to tsk. “Every witch and wizard learns how to fly a broom.”
“I'm not a Magus, and I most assuredly am not. It can't be healthy or safe, and it'll take a lot more then two opals to cross the river when I fall off that thing.”
The woman looked downright scandalized. “Mister Potter!”
“My name is Diskopotiro, not Potter. --will you stop gaping like that? Your jaw is open far enough to let in to liontari tis Nemeas.”
XXXX-XXXX
Potions was a mess from the moment Professor Snape introduced himself until the very moment the last Gryffindor had fled the room at the bell. Or what constituted a bell in Potions; for some reason, there was a glowing cauldron pot the size of an apple that changed colors every hour, and two stirring spoons of appropriately sized betwitched into a mock swordfight that would routinely knock the 'looser' into the edge every ten mintes or so. At the end of class, they flew to the back of the room and got stuck in the far walls.
Amusing, if no short disturbing.
Coupled with the sense of his Slytherine tattoo squirming and slithering under his skin, among so many of his housemates in the cool, odd-smelling room, Harry had been nearly compelled to ask if there would be a snack party of some sort. There wasn't, but it hadn't helped the compulsion.
The biggest trouble Harry had with the Head of House wasn't that he picked the smallest, mose nervously-disposistioned Gryffindor to antagonize, but that he treated honest to goodness important questions with the sort of disdain Shiva had treated eating range-chicken.
Harry determined to ask Snape some later, hoping that with no one around the House-Parent-Master would be less inclined to show his forked tongue, and secretly hoped Longbottom attended the study group. It might do him good.
“Professor Snape?”
“What, boy?”
Wide-eyed with open curiosity, Harry laid out his most troubling question; and watched bone-pale skin burn red.
“What are knickers?”
XXXX-XXXX
“How many mice did you eat?” Harry poked Nagini's leaf-specked scales gently, wondering why she had decided to curl up next to his pillow.
Nagini sounded utterly saited. “An adult and three hairless runts.” Babies- young. So she had found a nest then.
“Ah. Don't you regurgitate the hair and bones on the bed.”
“Of course not. Now close the curtains already.”
Harry shook his head and did so, amused. It was amazing how bossy snakes could be, no matter how small they were. But Nagini would eat well this year, so Harry couldn't complain much.
“Goodnight, Nagini.”
“Go to sleep, you.”