Last Compartment on the left.

by Kingsaxcul

Summary:

In which, two souls meet on a train heading for the only home either of them has ever known. But all the girl can wonder is what some ratty-looking boy is doing in HER compartment. (Harry/Fem!Tom Riddle story where they go to Hogwarts together.)

Chapter 1: The Last Compartment on the Left

Just something in my head.

On with the show.

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Kings Cross Station, 9 am, September 1st.

Someone was sitting in her compartment.

He was a small boy with black hair wearing what had to be the most raggedy hand-me-downs she had ever seen in her life. They were obviously several sizes too big for him from the thin cord tying three of the belt loops together, his shirt looked as if it could eat him alive as he all but hid in the large oversized leather jacket while he was curled up on the seat. He was facing away from the door and looking out of the compartment window with his knees drawn up to his chest with his head resting on them.

She frowns before pulling the sliding door open, which causes the boy to jump in his seat and spin around to look at her with wide and fearful eyes. Something in her purred at the look of fear in the boy's wide emerald-green eyes that hid behind coke-bottle glasses, but she kept her face tightly controlled as she looked back at him. She pauses, waiting for the boy to say something, but all he does is shrink back into himself.

"Are you going to be a bother?" She asks after a moment and watches as the boy quickly shakes his head, something like a scar showing itself on his forehead as he does. His eyes looked down to avoid her own piercing blue ones as he did. "Good, so long as you are not, I will allow you to stay," she tells him before stepping into the compartment and dragging her trunk behind her. It takes only a moment to float it to the rack above after removing her third-year defense book on dark creatures.

She takes a seat across from the boy and begins to read. She can feel the boy looking at her, but she says nothing as she waits for him to ask some inane questions. But to her surprise, the boy only turns back to look out the window after a few moments, her eyes peek up from her book to inspect the boy more closely. He was thin, far too thin for a child his age, so much so that she could see the bones in his wrist poking out and sharp cheekbones where baby fat should be. Bags hung heavily under his dead-looking eyes and he looked unwashed and dirty from where she sat.

She frowns at the sight of the pathetic-looking boy, disgusted at his weakness, but her eyes narrow at the boy's bangs and the scar that hid under them. Her eyes turned back to her book, turning over the options in her mind as she read on about the dark creatures she would be learning about this year. She knew the story, not many in the world she found herself in for the last few years didn't know. The story of the boy who lived, of how, some ten years ago a dangerous dark witch by the name of Bellatrix attacked a family of three in their home. The dark witch killed both the mother and father before turning her wand on the child, one that wasn't even two, only for her curse to backfire on the dark witch somehow.

Speculation and debate surrounded that night on what happened and how the child survived, but no conclusive theory from the Arithmancy community has ever been produced.

But as she turns the page of her book, she decides to leave the boy be for now, if he didn't bother her then she was content to let him be. They pass the few short hours like that, sitting in the silence of each other's company. It was oddly pleasant to her, the boy didn't once speak or ask a question. He kept to himself, simply looking out the window and onto the platform without complaint or comment.

But soon enough, the peaceful atmosphere between the two was shattered by the arrival of her least favorite thing- people.

The mindless and meandering crowd of simpering simpletons in which, the only truly astounding thing that ninety-nine percent of them could do- was to die; and stop stealing the oxygen for those who truly needed it, like herself. They filled the station like a swarm of locusts looking to feed on the peace and quiet she so held in high regard, it reminded her far too much of the group homes she had bounced between in her youth. The other children never leaving her alone, always screaming and stomping up and down stairs, she hated the loud noises that now swarmed around her.

She takes a deep breath- trying to bury the oncoming headache away, she marks her place in her books before shutting it with a snap. She smirks as she sees the boy jump three feet in his seat, eyes wide and frightened as he looks at her scared; as if she was going to attack him. She looked at him, she could feel the mask slip- her lips turn to a scowl and hatred bloomed in her eyes. The boy no doubt saw it in her face as he tried to duck deeper into the oversized leather jacket to hide in.

Oh, how she wanted to rip him out of what was no doubt his safety blanket- to watch him cower, to shake, to beg before her. But she forced the thoughts away and reaffixed her mask. Her smile returns in the blink of an eye, something that most people would return, but the boy doesn't calm himself; he still tucks himself away in his jacket with fear and distrust in his eyes.

She turns away from the boy, not wanting to look at the scruffy-looking boy nor the feeling he put in her chest at his fear. She looks out the window while laying her book on her lap as she crosses her ankles. She watches as the happy little families hug and say tearful goodbyes like they are never to see each other again; her stomach twists with disgust at the sight.

"Look at them," She mutters to herself under her breath, her disgust and virtual slipping into her tone as she speaks; unable to stop herself. "Their acting if they were boarding the train to Auschwitz or something," she says with a near soundless scoff at the sight before her. She doesn't expect an answer from the boy, she half expects him to agree with her; so she is surprised when he answers.

"It looks nice," the boy whispers softly, his eyes looking out the window watching a mother and father hug their son before sending him off; pain and want flickering in equal measure in them.

She scowls at the boy but chooses not to say anything. Before long the train was filled with annoying children who shuffled back and forth to find a place to sit, one such child ended up opening the door to her compartment. A small redheaded boy with in hand-me-down robes and a battered trunk, the boy's green eyes look hopeful when he looks into the compartment as they dart between the boy and her.

"'Ello, do you mind if I-" the redhead begins to say, but she swiftly cuts him off.

"Yes, we do," she tells the redhead with a firm but polite tone. "I'm expecting a few more friends to show up here any minute, so sorry but this one is all full up," she tells him, not even looking at the other boy in the compartment to see if he cared and speaking for both of them. The redhead's face falls at her words but thankfully he just nods his head.

"Right, have a nice trip then," he offers dejectedly before shutting the door to the compartment. There was a pause as she turned to look out the window, a scowl showing on her face in the reflection.

To her surprise, the boy speaks again. "There is no one else coming, is there?" he asks quietly, not even looking over at her as they both look out the compartment window. Her lips twitch at the boy's question, as if she is going to smile but quickly controls it.

"No," she answers honestly, her eyes traveling from her reflection to the boy- but he says no more. The train lurches forward as it begins to take off from the station, annoying children of all years leaning out the windows to wave and call back to their parents as they embark either on their first year or another year. But both she and the boy do no such tomfoolery, they both continue to look out the window doing their best to ignore the other. It doesn't take long for the other children on the train to settle and the sound of the train on its tracks to drown out everything else; she picks up her book and begins to read once more as a more comfortable silence settles over them.

Oddly enough, she finds herself enjoying the quiet company of the boy. He doesn't ask inane questions or bother her, and she returns that quiet respect with the same to him. From time to time she would look up from her book to find the boy watching her from behind his crossed arms, his eyes going from her face to the book cover. Every time she catches him looking, he quickly turns to look back out the window- she finds it…oddly cute, in a weird way. But it was after the first two hours and catching looking five different times did she finally allowed some conversation between the two.

"Is there something I can help you with?" She asks, not even looking up from her book; but knowing the boy was looking at her all the same.

"No," he mutters, shyly before looking away once more, and the quiet returns for a few more minutes before she sighs and marks her page. She pulls down the sleeves of her robes and checks the wristwatch on the back of her wrist for a moment and stands to put her book away in her trunk.

"The trolley should be coming by soon with lunch any moment," She tells him as she digs out her own lunch that she had made just that morning. "If you've got any money, I'm sure you'll be able to buy something off of it for lunch," she tells him before sitting back down in her seat, her four sandwich halves wrapped in plastic wrap to her side as she sets up the small folding table between them. The boy looked surprised for a moment when she tapped the wall just under the window for the table, but otherwise didn't say a word.

As she waited for the trolley as well, she took her time looking at the boy, what she could see beneath the dirt and oversized clothes. He was…cute, she supposed- in a kicked-puppy kinda way. His overly large eyes helped with that, but they also held a look of deep sadness and resentment for something she couldn't fathom. His cheekbones were high and sharp, along with his chin; obvious signs of being born from noble stock but other than a few family names she didn't know much about magical nobility, something she was going to remedy this year. The boy acted odd as well, he was skittish, almost afraid in a way she had seen before with a few of the kids that come through the group home every now and then.

She never cared enough about the dirty little muggle children to interact with them- let alone to sit down and have a conversation with them. She nearly shudders at the very thought of the act, disgusted with the dirty unclean loud little goblins that ran around the St. Wools Group Home. But the point remained- she had no frame of reference for how the boy acted, nothing to call upon and thus she was missing puzzle pieces.

Thankfully, they were both distracted by a knock at the compartment door. She swiftly stood and walks over to the sliding door and opened it, and just as she expected, a kindly-looking old lady was standing just outside of it. She was old and dressed in Hogwarts Express red and black, a large smile on her face as soon as the door opened with a small cart in front of her. It was stocked with cakes, candies, gummies, and chocolates that lined the top of the cart in all shapes and colors. Below them on the second level were triangle-cut sandwiches of roast beef and Swiss, chicken and provolone, turkey and cheddar; along with magically sealed tins of thick hot soups and stews of all kinds. But what she wanted was on the final level, drinks.

From a few muggle fizzy drinks to butterbeer and hot chocolates, all sat on the bottom of the cart. She reaches into the pockets of her robes and pulls out one of the two sickles she had saved from her scholarship for Hogwarts by buying secondhand.

"Anything off the trolley, dear?" The older woman asks with a joyest smile.

"One butterbeer, please," she says with a small polite smile that most adults seem to like from children before handing over the sickle.

"Coming right up," the woman says as she takes the silver coin before reaching down and grabbing a bottle. "Would ya like that warm or chilled, deary?"

"Chilled- please," she says after a moment and watches as the witch pulls out her wand and taps the bottle without speaking a word. Condensation immediately builds around the glass bottle as she takes it from the elderly woman before turning to walk back to her seat.

"What about you dear? Anything off the trolley?" The old woman asks the boy with a friendly smile. The boy looks confused, as if he didn't understand why the woman was speaking to him but he eyes the cart with hunger and hesitation. After a moment the boy finally stands, his eyes darting all along the cart, unsure what to do or say.

"Er- I don't really- um, wh-what can this get me?" The boy asks, sounding lost and very confused as he reaches into his pocket just to pull out a fist full of gold. Well, not a fist full of gold in the literal sense, she could only see three or four Galleons but he was also clutching at least twenty sickles and a few knuts. Her eyes almost bug out of her head at the sight before her teeth set in anger at the boy who didn't know the worth of a Galleon. But she pauses, for the lost and confused look on the boy was still on his face.

"Does- does he not know?" She thinks to herself in honest disbelief. There was a big difference between figuratively not knowing the value of a Galleon and literally not knowing the value of the gold he held. "How in the name of the devil did the boy buy his school supplies?" She thinks to herself in shock.

But the old woman, probably thinking it was a joke, simply chuckles at his question. "You could buy out most of the trolley with that, Deary. Why don't you just pick one or two things and leave some for the rest of the children?" The old woman tells the boy with a kind smile. She watches the boy's eyes drift down to the trolley, looking overwhelmed by the mere thought of the choices in front of him.

"Bullocks," she curses in her mind before standing once more- not understanding why she even felt the need to help the clueless boy. "Roast Beef, chicken, or turkey? Which one do you like best?" She asks the boy, watching him jump a bit at her words.

He turns and looks at her oddly for a moment, blinking as he does. "R-Roast Beef," he answers in a whisper.

"Give him a Roast beef and Swiss, a beef stew, and a chilled butterbeer," she tells the trolley lady with a charming smile. "Oh, and two pumpkin pasties as well,"

The old woman turns to the boy with a brow raised in question, watching as the boy looks between her and the trolley lady before quickly nodding. After the exchange of ten sickles and four knuts the boy was handed his meal before they sat back down at the small table. They are just as they have been in the last few hours, in a comfortable silence. The boy wolfed down his sandwiches and stew like he hadn't eaten in weeks, and from the looks of him, he probably hadn't. She watched in amusement as he took his first sip of butterbeer and his eyes went wide at the flavor before downing half the bottle, a half smile crawling on her face.

"Thank you," the boy says, not looking her in the eyes and almost in a whisper. She accepted it with a hum as she ate her own sandwich without complaint and sipped on her own drink.

After their lunch, they relaxed once more to the sounds of the train traveling across the Scottish countryside, both immersed in the quiet they shared in the compartment. She was reading her books and the boy simply sat in his seat looking out the window. For an hour or so neither of them spoke as neither wanted to shatter the silence they found themselves most comfortable in. But with the compartment door slamming open once more, shattering the silence they had both found peace in, a new voice calls out.

"I heard Harry Potter was on the train, and you must be him," the voice was high and young, causing her to turn with a glare to the boy who ruined the sanctuary of her compartment. The shorter blonde-headed boy had his head tilted back and a smirk on his lips- arrogance reflected in everything the boy did. From his stance- as he stood in the doorway flanked by two larger boys, from his words- demanding answers like a child unable to comprehend his own insignificance to the wider world outside of his home, to the way he held himself- back straight, head back to try and look down on everyone else; pride in his eyes and a hateful sneer waiting to bloom on his face. The boy was immediately in her bad graces from the show of his entrance that demanded attention that he had not earned.

"Who?" She asks, raising her brow to the blond boy as her compartment mate stiffens at the boy's demanding voice. Her voice was light and curious as if she didn't know who the blond boy was talking about. The boy scowls at her, his pale blue eyes taking in her state of dress, the silver and green of Slytherin showing proudly on her tie, robes, and skirt; but still, the blond boy looks unimpressed.

"Harry Potter, don't tell me you're some mud-blood who somehow swindled her way into Slytherin and doesn't know about him- killed my aunt he did," The blond boy says in an annoying shrill voice, images of cutting out his tongue and stuffing it down her throat dances in her mind for a moment; her eye twitching at being called a mud-blood.

"And who exactly was your Aunt?" She asks, playing dumb for the moment. "In fact, who exactly are you for that matter?" She asks as politely as she can.

"My name is Malfoy, Draco Malfoy," the newly introduced Draco Malfoy says, preening like a peacock when he says it. "And my Aunt was Bellatrix Lestrange," he says like it was a badge of honor.

She blinks at that statement. "You came looking for another child because he killed your Aunt when he was barely two- why?" She asks, honestly lost trying to come up with the logic for why Malfoy would do this.

"Well- I just wanted to meet the boy who stopped her," he admits without shame and now looking a little uncomfortable with his admittance.

"Then I'm sorry to tell you, but there's no Harry here," she tells Malfoy but not sounding sorry at all. "Perhaps he's not taking the train to avoid something like this," she tells Malfoy nonchalantly and with a tilt of her head, wanting nothing more than to get the annoying, arrogant, oxygen stealer out of her compartment.

"Well, what about him?" Malfoy says annoyed, pointing at the boy who hadn't moved from his spot, keeping his face facing away from the pack of annoyances. "What's your-"

"Tom," she tells Malfoy before standing up, quickly coming up with a fake name for her compartment mate. "His name is Tom," she says as she crosses her arms over her chest as she glares at the trio. "Now, if you don't mind leaving so I can get back to reading, you're disturbing us,"

Malfoy frowns as his eyes narrow at her, he huffs as he looks between the two one last time. "Fine, have it your way," he says as he straightens his silk robes. "Come on Crabb, Goyle- let's go back to sit with Theodore and Pansy. At least they're far more enjoyable company," he says with a dismissive sniff and a disgusted look on his face as Malfoy and his two henchmen turn around and leave the compartment. She rolls her eyes at the child's antics before flicking her wand at the door, shutting it before, huffing as she does, turning back to her seat and sitting back down.

The silence is awkward now, not nearly as comfortable as it was before Malfoy poked his nose into their compartment. The boy now revealed as Harry Potter- as she had suspected all along, sneaks not-so-subtle glances at her, possibly afraid that she'll start with questions or tripping over herself in some kind of hero worship. But all she does is reach over and steal one of the two cakes that Harry had gotten with his order off the trolley. Harry watches her as she unwraps it from the wax paper and begins to quietly eat it while looking out the window.

"Tamsyn," she tells him, causing the boy to look at her oddly. "My name, it's Tamsyn Riddle," Tamsyn doesn't know why she told the boy, maybe it was some odd hope that the atmosphere would go back to how it was; or something else entirely that she couldn't voice.

"Oh. I guess it's nice to meet you," Harry says softly as Tamsyn smiles at him, causing Harry to smile as well.

"It's nice to meet you as well, Harry," Tamsyn says, and to her surprise- she felt as if she meant it. She had never truly liked people, even on the first meeting- opting to be alone or tucked away from where they could find her. With a book or a snake, it didn't really matter; so long as she was away from people. She could recall, a few times when she was younger, going out of her way to try and make "friends" and it always ended disastrously.

Harry smiles at her and Tamsyn feels the atmosphere seems to settle back down to the comfortable feeling as they settle back into it. Tamsyn's scan Harry, from the dirty and ragged look to the slightly hopeful look in his emerald eyes and she couldn't help but to wonder what the boy was hoping for at the end of the train ride. She frowns as she turns to look out of the window to the countryside rolling past them, Tamsyn knows what she was waiting for at the end of the train ride- to be back home. The group home has never been her home with everyone passing through it and the caretakers being nearly absent for her, though she didn't mind that last part all too much. Hogwarts on the other hand had felt like the place she truly belonged, from the very moment she first saw it. It was like a bright unforgettable dream when she had crossed the lake and first saw the castle in all her glory.

Her eyes once more turn to Harry, wondering if he'll feel the same way. "Your glasses are broken," she points out to Harry, causing the boy to look at her confused. She lets out a sigh before pulling out her wand. "Here, let me show you a rather useful spell that I learned in my first year," she tells them before leveling her wand at his glasses- right before the compartment door opens again.

"Hello, I'm looking for a toad that belongs to Neville Longbottom- oh! Are you doing magic?" a girl with frizzy hair says, her eyes going wide as she sees Tamsyn with her wand in hand. Her voice was like an iron spike through Tamsyn's brain, the girl sounded like an overeager puppy looking for scraps from a table. Tamsyn's eyes were chips of ice, hard and cold as she turned to the voice that so reminded her of the annoying dirty stupid children of the group home.

"Why, yes. Yes, I am," Tamsyn says pleasantly and with a strained smile as she turns to look at the frizzy-headed girl. A look that made Harry nervous and uncomfortable as he saw something in Tamsyn's eyes and on her face turned dark and malicious, reminding him of his relatives. "Would you like to see?" Tamsyn asks the girl, just for the frizzy-headed girl to nod her head.

"I would love t-" the girl begins to say before with a whirling motion of her wand, Tamsyn slams the compartment door on her face before locking it; all with an angry look on her face.

"The rudeness of some people, I swear," Tamsyn says with an angry exhale as she turns back to Harry, lines pitching between her eyebrows. Harry lets out a small laugh, but otherwise says nothing about her actions. She levels her wand to his face once more. "Reparo," she says softly and watches as Harry's glasses fix themselves.

Harry looks taken aback at the display of magic before taking off his glasses and looking them over. "Wicked," he says breathlessly.

Tamsyn smiles at the look on the boy's face. "You can always go to the hospital wing to get your prescription checked. Even with magic, there seems to be a few things that can't be fixed- such as the mind or eye sight," she tells Harry as she is turning back to her book.

"Thank you," Harry whispers so softly that at first Tamsyn thought she had misheard him at first. She looks up from her book, confused- only to see Harry slipping on his glasses and looking at her with a smile. Tamsyn blinks in surprise, she had many people thanking her for her polite mask over the years, but this sounds so…heartfelt. She feels a creeping blush working its way up her neck at the look in the boy's eyes, she quickly looks away and back down to her book. Mentally blaming her emerging hormones for such a ridiculous reaction to Harry's words.

"It wasn't anything that you could have done in a few months, it's a very simple charm," she says in an excuse before bringing up her book to hide her face behind, cursing herself for having such a mundane reaction to such a simple thing. Once more cursing her hormones for it. They fall back into that comfortable silence once more for the last hour of the trip, it only breaks once for the loudspeaker announcing their immediate arrival to Hogsmeade village. Harry had quickly excused himself to change into his bathroom robes before returning just as the train was slowing down.

The train pulls into the station and both she and Harry watch as their peers begin to pour out of the train, laughing and yelling and all the other annoying things that children are want to do. Before long, they both step off the train to the calls of one of the Professors calling out to the first-year students to follow them.

"That's Professor Flitwick, our charms professor," Tamsyn tells Harry, pointing out the diminutive wizard standing on a conjured box while sending multi-color sparks into the air. "He's also head of Ravenclaw house. He's genuine and rather nice, I think you'll like him," she says with a small smile.

"Oh, okay…" Harry says, trailing off as he looks back at the wizard with a small frown.

"Go, enjoy the boat ride," Tamsyn tells him as she turns to look at one of the last remaining carriages.

"Thank you," Harry says once more as Tamsyn turns back to look at him. "For- er, for…you know," he says shyly as he looks back to Tamsyn before looking down at his own shuffling feet. "I guess this is goodbye, yeah?" He says in a small voice, refusing to look at her in her eyes.

"For now, I'll see you on stage for the sorting and you never know, we may end up in the same house," Tamsyn says, and oddly enough, she finds herself meaning it once more.

"Yeah?" Harry asks, finally looking up at her with the large puppy-dog eyes she wants to pluck out and keep in a jar.

"Maybe, if not it's more likely I'll see you around Hogwarts if nothing else. Now go, before you miss the boats," Tamsyn says almost sternly as she points in the direction of the Black Lake. Harry nods once before muttering a goodbye and running off toward Professor Flitwick who looks at her with a smile and a nod of his head. She accepts with a nod of her own before heading towards the last carriage.

"Oi- Riddle, were you just being nice to someone?" A loud and infuriating voice asks as Tamsyn turns her head to look at the last carriage to see a black hair boy with a blue and bronze tie tied around his forehead and sporting a large grin. Tamsyn sighs internally as she doesn't even try to hide the sickening hatred sliding into her face.

"Shut it, Blackmoor, before I tie your flapping tongue into a knot," she spits at the raven-headed boy who just laughs at her response. She walks up the steps of the carriage and turns back to watch as Harry and Flitwick make their way to the Black Lake, Harry stopping once before descending the stairs to look back at her and wave. She returns the wave with a small smile before slipping into the carriage, plans for the future already boiling away in her mind and a smile on her face.

---

Dribble done!

This is a neat little set up. A  "Harry and Tom Riddle go to Hogwarts together"  but without time travel because holy fuck do I hate time travel. In this we see Tamsyn before her worldview is truly set in stone, she's only in her third year and doesn't know her heritage or is she truly setting herself up for being the dark force we all know Tom Riddle becomes.

There are no Horcruxes nor any prophecy, just two damaged kids meeting for the first time and slowly becoming closer over time. Each of their different personalities and world views clash and affect one another as the years go on.

This would be far more slice of life then any of my other fics.

Kingsaxcul, out!

Chapter 2: The Abandoned Classroom

Well, that did rather well.

How about another?

On with the show.

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Harry Potter, December 26th, 10:20 PM, Hogwarts.

Harry walked down one of the unfamiliar corridors of the ancient castle he had called home for the last few months. He shivers at the winter chill that has descended over the castle in the last few months- even wrapped in his winter cloak, Mrs. Weasley's jumper, his leather jacket, and his Invisibility Cloak the chill from the Scottish winters still invades his bones as he wanders the corridors of Hogwarts.

It had felt like a long term to Harry, more a dream that he never wanted to wake from than anything else. Learning magic, making friends, and more importantly- escaping the Dursleys.

He found himself in an odd position since arriving at school, for one- everyone seemed to know who he was. From the students who had heard from their parents of how he was the one that survived some terrible curse, to the teachers who had taught his Mum and Dad years earlier. His favorite was the latter group, Professor Flitwick would sometimes share little stories of his Mum, Lilly Evans, and her skills with charms that seem to outstrip half the school since her first class. Professor McGonagall, his head of house, watches him turn a match stick into a needle with a nod of her head and tells him that his Dad, James Potter, was also skilled in her class. But his favorite professor so far was his Potion Professor, Horace Slughorn.

Professor Slughorn had kept him behind after his first class with him for a cuppa and some crystallized pineapple. The old Professor had offered him his late condolences on the death of his parents before telling him that his Mum was his favorite student and one of the best he had ever had the pleasure of teaching. He spoke highly of not only her skills in the magical arts but also as a person; Lilly Evans, in his eyes, could do no wrong. Professor Slughorn admitted that he had high hopes for Harry's mom after she had left Hogwarts and spoke to a few of his own friends to help get her into Guilds and apprenticeships; even tearing up a bit at how he found out about her death and the heartbreak he felt over it.

It was a very awkward conversation with Professor Slughorn for Harry.

When Slughorn had made an offhand comment of Harry already knowing all of what he spoke of, He admitted he didn't. Until Harry got his Acceptance Letter, he was under the assumption that his parents were drug addicts and drunks who had died in a car crash that gave him his scar. He, of course, didn't tell the Professor this at the time. Merely telling the Professor that his Mum and Aunt hadn't gotten along after his mum graduated from Hogwarts, so much so that Harry didn't even know what they looked like; let alone anything about them.

Professor Slughorn had taken that bit of news in stride and didn't ask Harry for any details, which had him inwardly sighing in relief. He had no desire to talk about his relatives in any capacity. So when the Professor had brushed past it, Harry thought that was the end of it until he woke up yesterday morning to find presents(actual presents! For him!) under the tree in the common room. One such present was from Professor Slughorn, it was a scrapbook filled with pictures of his Mum and Dad. From there Hogwarts years right to their wedding and even a few with all three of them together.

Harry had looked at each page of the scrapbook, looking at the strangers in the page as they laughed, danced, and loved in their eyes.

But Harry couldn't feel anything for them, they were just people he would never know.

There was another oddity that Harry was still struggling with: friends. In his old muggle schools, most other children either avoided him because of all the trouble that seemed to happen around him or because Dudley was scaring them away. It wasn't like he could complain to his Aunt and Uncle that would get him the belt, or being locked in his cupboard for a week, or not being fed for the same amount of time, or more likely all three.

Friends were…hard for Harry. It was weird to have people who wanted to spend time with him, but it was hard to understand them too. Just like everything in this new and wacky world he found himself in. Ron would complain about the weirdest things like Hermione offering advice on spells or studying magic or his brothers. Harry didn't get it, Hermione only wanted them to pass their exams, magic! They were studying magic! And his brothers were always nice, if not a bit mischievous when left to their own devices. But Ron made things fun, always quick with a joke or an explanation about how the magical world works for him and Hermione. Always show them different games or hobbies to play or do when they take a break from studying.

Like Wizards Chess, Ron was really good at Wizards Chess.

Hermione, on the other hand, was a whole different problem. Sure, she was a bit bossy and demanding, but Harry had dealt with his Aunt and Uncle for years and they were way worse than Hermione. No, Hermione had her own quirks. Like slamming books shut or onto the table when she was aggravated with something, causing Harry to jump at the sound and making him want to flee the room, something Hermione had caught on to. Which, in turn, caused Hermione to be a problem; she started to ask questions.

One moment, she would be quizzing him and Ron about spells, incantations, and wand movements before, without warning, she started to ask him about life with his relatives. Needling and prying questions Harry didn't want to answer, so they were meaningless, like where he lived or what they did for work, before she slipped into a more probing one, like why he was so thin. Harry would quickly find ways to escape from the conversation when she started on them, most of the time just packing away his things and leaving the table they were sitting at.

"If only she stopped," Harry thinks to himself with a frown as he wanders down an abandoned corridor. He liked Hermione, he really did, but the more she asked questions, the more it reminded Harry that this dream would end sooner or later. Then he would have to return to them, the Dursleys, and he'd rather go anywhere than back to them, back to the cupboard. Harry shivers, and not because of the cold but in remembrance of the dark and tight space of the cupboard he was forced into nearly all his life. The Dursleys hated him, they hurt him and never wanted him; he's known that since he was seven. For as long as he could remember, they hated him, and for the longest time, he had no idea what he had done until his Acceptance Letter arrived- then it all came out.

He had snuck it into the cupboard when it arrived in the mail, opening it at night to read it. The morning after a restless sleep, after Uncle Vernon had left for work, he did one of the bravest and most foolish things of his young life- he confronted Aunt Petunia. As soon as she saw the letter in his hands open and read, her jaw set in rage as her eyes turned wrathful. She had sent Dudley to one of his friends to get him out of the house before she turned on Harry.

Aunt Petunia had smacked him clear across the face.

She wasn't one for hitting Harry, throwing things at him; sure. Screaming? She would do a lot of that, but she had left all of the physical stuff to Uncle Vernon.

Her hit had brought Harry to the floor before she reached down and ripped the letter from his hands. She started screaming then, about everything she had been holding in for the last tens or so years. The truth about his parents, the truth about him, and how he wound up in her "care". After a long bout of screaming, Aunt Petunia had pulled out the pack of fags she had hidden away in a cabinet and cracked the kitchen window to smoke. She only ever smoked around Halloween and when she got stressed when no one else was home.

After a long stretch of silence and two fags smoked down to the filter, she offered him a deal. She would let him go to Hogwarts under the condition that whenever he came back, all his school things were locked away out of sight, and he was to never breathe a word of it to Uncle Vernon. She would take him to the place where she remembered his mother got her things from, but after that, he was on his own, and come the summer of his sixteenth birthday, he wouldn't return at all.

Harry had accepted, and by pure dumb luck, he was able to stumble through the magical world. Once he was in Diagon Alley with the help of the innkeeper Tom, he was pointed to Gringotts Bank at the top of the hill. The goblins had been waiting for him to show up and collect his key before showing him to the Vault left to him by his Dad. He had gathered up as much gold as possible before shopping for his school things and sending a return letter to Hogwarts with the owl post.

Once he returned to the Dursleys via the Knight Bus that someone else had called, Aunt Petunia sent him to make dinner after locking away all his school things in Dudley's second bedroom. She had lied to Uncle Vernon about him getting accepted to a boarding school in Middlesbrough due to his grades; one of the few things they never got mad over was his grades. Aunt Petunia sold it to Uncle Vernon as getting rid of him for most of the year, something he readily agreed to. Then, on September 1st, Aunt Petunia dropped Him off at King's Cross and left him without a word. Harry only found the platform thanks to the Trolley lady walking through the barrier.

Pure dumb luck.

"I don't care if I have to be a homeless tramp for a few months until I'm sixteen. Anything is better than the Dursleys," Harry thinks to himself spitefully as he scowls at the thought.

"How do you work!? Just show me already you stupid hunk of junk!?" A voice shouts in frustration from one of the empty classrooms, a familiar voice that Harry knew.

Harry stops before turning to the closed door he heard the voice from. "Was that Tamsyn?" he asks himself before walking over to the door and turning the handle to open it. There was a sharp pop! Of magic that stung Harry's hand. "Oww, damnit!" He hisses as he shakes his hand.

"Who's there!?" Tamsyn's voice calls out angrily as Harry looks into the room. It was indeed Tamsyn dressed in heavy winter robes with her wand pointing threateningly toward where Harry was standing, her eyes alight with a cold fury and searching for him.

Tamsyn is…

Well, Harry wasn't sure what she was to him, but she was an oddity, that was for sure. Tamsyn Riddle was agreed upon by most older students to be the smartest girl in her year, if not the whole school; but she was also the loneliest as far as Harry could tell. She sat alone; she ate alone, and most of the time, she studied alone. Not even her own house of Slytherin seemed to like her for some reason even if she scored the most house points in classes and exams. Tamsyn seemed to prefer that way as well, always shunning people away from her- always going at things alone.

To a majority of people, she was cold and unapproachable but Harry thought the majority didn't know what they were talking about. On the occasions when he had fled from Hermione's question, he would always find Tamsyn in her normal spot in the library, surrounded by stacks of books. The first time he had found her in the early month of October, he had asked if he could sit with her; she had turned to him with such a baneful look he first thought she would say no and almost sent him running. But then she just stared at him for a long moment before levitating a stack of books off the table for him to sit.

They would sit with one another and let a comfortable silence fill the air as they both studied or did homework in the library. Sometimes she would even go over his work to see if he got it right or to give him pointers on his essays.

But there were times that Harry could see what the older students were talking about, like the one and only time Hermione had tried to join them. She appeared out of the stacks in the library, apologizing to Harry about her questions causing Tamsyn to look up with eyes full of fire. Hermione hadn't noticed Tamsyn glaring at her as she continued to speak and Harry didn't even hear half of what his friend had said before Tamsyn spoke up.

"Shut. Up," the older girl said with such disdain that it froze Hermione in place. "We are in a library, a place of quiet study and you are bothering me and Harry. So shut up and go somewhere else," Tamsyn hissed at Hermione, but when the younger girl tried to apologize and ask to sit and study with them, Tamsyn refused. "No. I know your type, the bossy know-to-little but thinks otherwise. You'll spend more time asking me inane questions than in quiet contemplation of your own studies, and I have no time for people like you to be. Gone," and just like that, Hermione had turned heel and all but ran from the library; leaving Harry to feel bad for his bossy friend.

"Did you have to be that mean?" Harry had asked after they had stopped for the night.

"Yes," Tamsyn had told him as she slipped her books into her bag. "If you give anyone an inch, they'll take a mile and walk all over you. Never give anyone an inch, Harry, or else people will see you as weak and try to use you," she told him before throwing the strap to her bag over her shoulder and walking calmly out of the library.

"Tamsyn! It's just me! Harry!" He says in a bit of a panic as he ducks out of wand point. Tamsyn's face grows even more confused before Harry pulls down the hood of his cloak, then she just looks surprised.

"Harry? How in the devil- why- how are you a floating head?" She asks ridiculously, her mouth slightly open as her wand dips downward. She was standing in front of a large standing mirror dressed in her school uniform.

"Oh, it's a cloak, see?" Harry points out before opening the cloak to show off the rest of his body. "I got it for Christmas from…somebody," he says, frowning at the memory of the unsigned card his cloak came with.

Tamsyn blinks twice. "Someone sent you an extremely rare and expensive magical object for Christmas and you just- decided to…put it on?" She asks, as if not comprehending his words at all.

"Well,...it was my dad's," Harry tells her as he looks away and shuffles his feet.

"And I'm guessing that the card said that?" Tamsyn asks as she puts her hand on her hip and lowers her wand as her brow raises at her own question.

"Y-Yeah," Harry mutters, kicking his foot and not looking up toward her.

"Harry," Tamsyn sighs as she shakes her head. "You are adorably naïve, do you know that?" She says with an exhale. "You shouldn't trust people who give you gifts, they're only trying to use you. Especially if it doesn't have a name attached, then they're just trying to curse you," she tells him before turning back to the mirror with a frown.

"What if they're just trying to be nice?" Harry points out as he walks deeper into the room only for Tamsyn to scoff at his words.

"People are never just nice without a reason, Harry," she tells him with a frown and a knowing look in her eyes. Harry frowns as well as he turns to look at the mirror that Tamsyn is standing in front of and prodding with her wand. It was ancient looking and at least ten feet tall and half as wide, it stood on two clawed feet inside a gilded frame of twisting yellow wood with "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi" inscribed across the top. "People are never nice, they're selfish and want nothing more than to hurt you," Tamsyn says as she walks around the mirror and continues to prod it with her wand.

Harry continues to watch Tamsyn poke and prod at the mirror as he turns over her words. He didn't think she was right- not at all; sure, people can be cruel and mean and hurt people seemingly without reason, but people were more than that. He thought of the warm jumper he wore under his winter cloak, how a woman he had never even met went out her way to hand-knit one and send it to him with a tin of homemade fudge all because he was simply Ron's friend. How someone had sent him a rare and expensive magical object simply because his dad had lent it out to them and they wanted to see it returned.

"I don't think you're right," Harry finally says as he continues to watch Tamsyn. "People aren't mean for no reason, even if it's not a very good reason. But people can also be kind to someone they never met simply because they want to be," he argues as Tamsyn stops and looks around the mirror at him with a face that speaks of how poorly she thought of his argument. "You were nice to me after all," he states, causing Tamsyn's face to fall.

"I was nice to you because you defied my expectations and didn't act like a complete mouth-breathing inane child by asking questions and talking," Tamsyn says deadpanned as she steps from around the mirror and crosses her arms. "Besides, I stole one of your pumpkin pasties after I helped you with getting lunch," she points out, only for Harry to smile at her.

"You told me the lady I wanted two, I was expecting you to take one," Harry says with a roll of his eyes in good nature as his smile never falls.

Tamsyn was quiet for a moment as she glared at him. "I liked you better when you didn't talk back as much, how did we get here?" She asks, sounding perplexed.

"Because you never told me to leave you alone?" Harry asks, only for Tamsyn to sigh before turning back to the mirror with a frown. "What's so interesting about that mirror anyway?" He asks when Tamsyn turns away from him without answering him.

"It's fascinating for one," Tamsyn murmured as she inspected it. "I'm almost convinced it can show the future somehow but I don't know enough about divination or artifice to say with any amount of certainty if it can," she admits with a small aggravating sight. Her eyes scanned the frame of the mirror- her eyes paused at the words carved at the top.

She turns back to Harry with a look in her eyes that Harry couldn't place. It wasn't the normal scary look she would use to scare off others, but like the one Hermione would get when she had a hunch.

"Harry, would you like to help me with something?" Tamsyn asks, softly and sweetly, her blue eyes sparkling and a smile as sweet as honey sliding onto her lips. Harry smiles back almost immediately, he likes it when Tamsyn is smiling; she doesn't do it often.

"Sure! What do I need to do?" He asks eagerly while walking over to her.

"Just stand right here in front of the mirror and tell me what you see, okay?" Tamsyn says with a wider smile as she places her hands on Harry's shoulders and guides him to where to stand. She stands beside him as they both look at their reflections.

"I don't see anything but us," Harry points out confused before looking up at Tamsyn

"Give it a moment for the magic to work," Tamsyn whispers while watching Harry in the mirror intently.

"But it's just-" Harry says as he turns back to the mirror before a gasp cuts through his words, for he and Tamsyn are no longer alone in the mirror.

"What is it?" Tamsyn asks, her eyes glittering like a thousand stars as she all but demands to know. "What do you see, Harry?" She asks the boy in front of her.

Harry doesn't answer, just stands completely still as he looks into the mirror. Two people were now standing behind him and Tamsyn, a man and a woman; his Mum and Dad. They were smiling at him with proud looks in their eyes, he watched as his dad reached out and put his hand on Harry's shoulders. Harry reaches up to his own shoulder to feel for his father's hand after he felt the hand touches him, but there is no other hand than Tamsyns and he frowns as he realizes that he never will. His Mum looks at him proudly, tears gathering in her eyes as she smiles at him then, after a moment she turns to look at Tamsyn. Intelligent emerald eyes inspect the girl for a moment before moving back to Harry as her smile turns softer and she reaches out and places a hand on Tamsyn's shoulder. The Tamsyn in the mirror turns to look up at Lily Potter and offers her one of her rare smiles before turning to look back at Harry.

"Well?" Tamsyn asks beside him, her voice sounding impatient. "What do you see, Harry?" She asks him, her eyes flicking back and forth between him and the mirror. A slight shake from Tamsyn pulls Harry out of his trance and he swallows the lump in his throat before speaking.

"My- My Mum and Dad," Harry answers meekly as he turns to look up to Tamsyn. "I see my Mum and Dad," he says breathlessly before turning to the reflections in the mirror. Tamsyn's grip on his shoulder immediately loosens as her eyes narrow at Harry.

"You told me before that you've never seen your mom and dad, how do you know what they look like? Or is it just a vague feeling that makes you think that the people you see in the mirror are your parents?" She asks Harry as she pulls away from him to turn back to the mirror, her eyes drifting up toward the top of the mirror.

"No- well, yeah, but I got a photo album yesterday for Christmas. It was full of pictures of them," Harry admits, his eyes never leaving his parents. Tamsyn's eyes flick to Harry's reflection, something reflecting in them almost like…jealousy before she lets out a sigh as her shoulders drop.

"I see," she mutters dejectedly as she backs away from the mirror. "It's not divination at all, it's charmed somehow," she tells Harry as she frowns.

Harry takes a step forward to stand next to her. "What do you mean?" Harry asks, turning away from his parents to look up at Tamsyn.

"See the engraving at the top?" Tamsyn points out with a nod of her head, her frown never leaving her face.

"Yeah," Harry says with a nod of his head.

"It's spaced a bit weird, but it's mirror writing. If you were to put it up to another mirror it would look normal," she says as she scowls at the mirror in front of her. "It says: I show not your face but your heart's desire," she says angrily as if she had fallen for an obvious joke. Harry doesn't say anything as he turns back to his parents, a frown playing on his lips as he sits down on the floor right in front of the mirror and looks up to his mom and dad.

"What are you doing?" Tamsyn asks, turning to look down at Harry. "The mirror is charmed or enchanted somehow to show what you want the most, nothing in it is real, Harry," she explains, sounding somehow more angry at Harry than herself.

Harry shrugs. "I don't care," he says seriously, his eyes not leaving his parents as he draws his knees up to his chest to rest his chin on them. "I've never- they never…" he attempts to put what he feels into words but he can't. He wants to stay and etch the proud look on their faces into his mind, even if he would never get to talk to them or get to truly know them. He wanted to miss them, he wanted to cry over them now that he finally understood them at least a little bit; but…

"Is it weird that I don't miss them?" he asks in a whisper to Tamsyn and the dark of the room. He looks up at Tamsyn as she looks down at him with a blank face. Harry saw a cacophony of emotions dancing in her eyes, some dark and angry, some twinkling and entertained before she let out a deep sigh and sat down next to Harry.

"I don't know my parents either," Tamsyn admits looking up at the mirror, her face was like a stone as she spoke and her eyes were void of all emotions. "The woman who gave birth to me did so in a muggle hospital; she died shortly after naming me after my father though I've never met the man. All I have from him is my name, Tamsyn Riddle. Tamsyn is the female version of Tom, and Riddle is his last name. After the woman died in the hospital, I was moved to a foster home to be raised. I've never known what either of them looked like or even my mother's name as she never gave it at the hospital," she tells Harry, her voice coming out almost dead as she speaks of who should have been her parents. Her words come out as rough and curt, cutting through the freezing air and her cold anger laced her words as she spoke of people she had never met.

"The woman that gave birth to me was weak and no doubt a muggle who gave up on life as soon as she knew she wouldn't drag me with her. The man who should be my father is off somewhere, I don't know whether or not he gave my mother a fake name or not. Maybe he doesn't even know I was born but he had to be the one with magic, of that I have no doubt," Tamsyn tells him before she shivers in the cold room as her breath finally comes out in white puffs. But as she points her wand at herself to no doubt cast some kind of spell to keep her warm, Harry throws both his Invisibility and winter cloak over her shoulders.

Tamsyn quickly turns to Harry with anger in her cold blue eyes. "I don't need your pity, Harry!" She snaps at him as she tosses the flaps of his cloaks off of herself.

Harry flinched away from Tamsyn's anger and hard tone of voice. "I wasn't doing that," He muttered as he scooted away from her. "You looked cold and I was just trying to help," he tells her quietly as he turns and looks down at the floor. Tamsyn continues to glare at him for a long moment, he could feel like a drill of ice boring into the side of his head.

"Fine," she says as she grabs the flaps and throws them over her shoulders as she turns back to the mirror causing Harry to smile. "But to answer your original question, no I don't think it's weird that you don't miss people you've never met before because I don't miss my birth parents either," Tamsyn tells Harry with a frown.

"Oh," Harry says while turning to look back at Tamsyn before he turns back to his parents in the mirror. They fall back to the normal comfortable silence that normally hung around them when they were together. Neither speaking and both admiring what they saw in the mirror. After a bit Tamsyn scoots closer to Harry under the cover of the cloaks, almost close enough to touch but still with a respectable distance between them. Harry, thinking Tamsyn was getting colder, scoots as well to the point they were leaning on one another. Tamsyn immediately stills and jerks away at Harry's touch causing Harry to flinch and close his eyes, preparing for the hit to come.

After a moment and a few deep breaths, both of them begin to relax before leaning against each other.

"What do you see?" Harry asks as he leans his head against Tamsyn's shoulder, he doesn't need to specify as he feels Tamsyn's own head slowly leans against his.

"Myself," she answers simply, her eyes never leaving the mirror as if she was devouring the image in it. "Older, more powerful- getting everything I deserve and with the world at my feet," she says in a whisper of awe. Harry doesn't say anything but he does understand why Tamsyn thought the mirror could show the future; because if anyone could be as powerful as that, it was her. They fall back into the comfortable quiet as two lonely orphans leaning on one another for support in the cold and lonely unused classroom- that is until a small cough causes them both to jump and turn around.

They both turn to see the Headmaster of the school, Albus Dumbledore, standing in the doorway to the room smiling at them both. Both Harry and Tamsyn jump to their feet, excuses flying from their lips as to why they were there and what they were doing out of bed, but all the Headmaster does is chuckle.

"I see you both have encountered the terrible delights of the Mirror of Erised," Dumbledore says as he sweeps into the room, his lime green and purple robes bellowing behind him with a twinkle in his eyes.

"I- We didn't know it was called that, sir," Tamsyn answers standing tall with her chin raised.

"I would be surprised if you did, Miss Riddle," the headmaster tells her, if Tamsyn was surprised that he knew her name; she did not show it. "But I am curious to see if two of the brightest students of their respective years have figured out what it does?" He asks them before stopping before the two, his own eyes being drawn to the mirror.

"Well, it shows us our desires," Tamsyn answers, looking back at the mirror with a slight frown.

"Our deepest ones, right?" Harry follows up as he looks over at Tamsyn. "The ones we want the most in the world, even- even if it's impossible," he says before turning to Dumbledore who smiles just a little more before chuckling a little.

"You are both correct- so I believe that would be ten points each for Gryffindor and Slytherin I think," Dumbledore tells them both to their confusion and the headmaster's amusement as he looks between them both. "It is a dangerous creation that many great witches and wizards have withered away in front of it, trying to unravel the secrets behind it and what they saw within. So caught within the dreams they saw within the mirror, they forget about all else," he reveals to the two students.

"If it is so dangerous, why is it here, sir?" Tamsyn asks politely as she raises a brow toward the Headmaster. Dumbledore pauses for a long moment, turning from the mirror to Tamsyn; his smile turning to a frown as he looks to be considering what to say.

"It was donated a few months ago with the passing of a former Headmaster, Armando Dippet. I was hoping to use it in the seventh-year ancient ruins class when they touch upon enchanting, a class I have no doubt you'll take, Miss Riddle," Dumbledore explains with a soft smile and crosses his arms behind his back. "But I do believe it is almost curfew for the both of you," he tells them, looking over his half-moon spectacles as he does.

"But it's past curfew?" Harry blurts out suddenly, confused by the Headmaster causing Tamsyn to slowly turn her head to stare at Harry with wide, shocked eyes that almost screamed for him to shut up.

"Is it?" Dumbledore asks, looking surprised at Harry's words. "I lost my pocket watch some time ago, so I fear with my old age I've lost all sense of time. Are you sure, Harry?" He asks Harry, turning to look at him with twinkling eyes. As Harry opens his mouth to answer, Tamsyn wraps her arms around him and covers his mouth.

"He must be mistaken sir, I think the mirror may have muddled his mind a bit while we were looking into it. It even affected me, I thought that Professor Rakepick was retiring at the end of the year," she says with a charming smile that makes Harry roll his eyes and Dumbledore's narrows at her as his lips quirk as she speaks.

"Yes, the mirror has that effect on some, but not you my dear, Professor Rakepick is indeed retiring at the end of the year," Dumbledore tells her as he steps to the side and gestures to the door. The two students take the nonverbal order and leave the classroom with the headmaster, though neither fault they were in trouble even with the headmaster following them with a smile on his face.

"Do you already know who the next defense against the dark arts professor is going to be since Professor Rakepick is leaving, Headmaster?" Harry asks, looking up at the man. He personally didn't like the red headed woman who was the current professor of the subject. She acted as if teaching the first year class was beneath her, acting almost like Uncle Vernon with the people he managed.

"I do, though I do not doubt that her presence here will cause me no end of trouble with the board of governors and the Ministry itself," Dumbledore admits as he leads the two students toward the Grand Staircase.

"Why is that?" Tamsyn asks, curious.

"Because she is from the Circle of the Fianna," the headmaster tells her after a moment of pause. Tamsyn's eye nearly pop from her head as they go wide and her jaw drops at the Headmaster's words.

"The circle of the fianna?" Harry asks, confused at Tamsyn's reaction.

"Think the IRA but magical," Tamsyn answers quickly, blinking away her shock at the Headmasters words. Harry stops as he looks at the headmaster in blatant surprise.

"Oh," was all he said before jogging to catch up with the Headmaster and Tamsyn. They reach the Grand Staircase soon after before wishing Tamsyn a goodnight as she heads off toward the dungeons. Dumbledore then guides Harry toward Gryffindor Tower, neither of them speaking as they walk through the dark cold halls of the castle. But as they come to a stop outside of the portrait of the fat lady, the headmaster turns to Harry to wish him a goodnight only for Harry to ask him a question.

"Sir, may I ask you a question?" He says, turning to look up at the towering form of the Headmaster.

"Technically, you already have, my boy. But I will permit one more before you hopefully head off to bed," he says with a smile and amusement twinkling in his eyes.

Harry pauses, confused before smirking at the Headmaster's words. "I was wondering, sir, how do you change someone's mind?" He asks, unsure how to do it himself.

"An interesting question that has befuddled even the most intelligent mind, my boy. But if one were to ask me, like you have done, I would say that it won't do to try and change their minds for some people can be frightfully stubborn. You'll find that winning their hearts, while difficult, can lead them to a changed mind for often the heart will lead them far more than their mind will," Dumbledore explains, looking at Harry over his half-moon spectacles with a knowing smile on his face. Harry looks at the ground, a frown on his face as he turns the headmaster's words over in his mind before looking up at the older man.

"I-I think I understand, sir," Harry tells Dumbledore with a smile of his own.

"Excellent, now off to bed, Mister Potter. While the night is a fine time to go looking for a bit of mischief; it is far safer in the daytime," Dumbledore says with a comforting but firm look in his eyes as Harry nods his head.

"Yes, sir. Have a good night, sir," Harry tells him, before turning to the Fat Lady and giving her the password to the Common Room, rushing inside, a plan already forming in his mind on how to change the mind of someone else.

"Goodnight, Harry," Dumbledore says, the face of the kindly headmaster melting away as concern takes over his face as he watches the far too small and thin boy rush off.

Days later, on December 31st during the morning post, a package was delivered to Tamsyn Riddle. The package held a winter cloak, something Tamsyn chose not to buy during her first year in lieu of getting a pair of high-quality Dragonhide gloves for she did not want to sacrifice safety with a pair of second-hand ones.

As she reads the note that came with the Wyvern Scale and Mink fur cloak, Harry Potter watches from across the Great Hall, unknowingly giving Tamsyn her first-ever birthday present.

---

Chapter done!

Hope this was as good as the last one, where we get to see through Harry's eyes. While an abused child, he still believes in the goodness of people because not everyone is like the Dursleys.

As y'all can tell, a few things have shifted around and the timeline isn't the same in this, such as Horace Slughorn still being at Hogwarts.

Dumbledore shows up with the Mirror, thankfully not for the same reason as in the books. But the worst part, he notices some things about Harry; things that he has been told about before…

What? A female from the Circle of the Fianna? Becoming DADA professor?

Why no, I have no idea who that could be and I will not stand for these allegations of playing favorites with my characters! How dare you slander me with these cantankerous remarks! Good day to you!

I said good day!

Kingsaxcul, out!

Chapter 3: The Leaky Cauldron

How about another?

In this chapter, we see that certain events are happening out of order.

On with the show.

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The Leaky Cauldron, London, July 29th 1992, 12:00 PM.

Sirius Black Escapes Azkaban!

Was the headline of the morning edition Daily Prophet with the picture of the man in question beneath the headlines. Tamsyn's eyes narrow at the maniac laughing at the reader with no sanity laugh in his eyes. She frowns as her eyes scan the story on the front page, mass murderer, unknown dark magic, and the most damning thing in her eyes known follower and cousin of the dark witch Bellatrix Lestrange.

The article went on to say that the Aurors were mobilized all across the country and that the guards (both human and non-human) had no clue how Black broke out of his cell before going on to say that the Ministry had even gone on to warn the Muggle government about Black's escape. Which was true, as Tamsyn had seen Sister Beatrice at the group home watching the news with the warning of Black's escape when she was sneaking out just an hour ago.

Her eyes scan over the top of the discarded paper, sharp eyes take in the hustle and bustle of the Leaky Cauldron. Most ill-washed and low brow masses fill the Cauldron all speaking on the turn of events that the prophet had brought. Some speak in hushed whispers about returning their world to the true way, the olden way but make no attempts to elaborate. The whispers made her want to gnash her teeth, to sneer and snarl and hiss like a wild animal, to render fat from bone using only her wand with them still alive and screaming for mercy she would refuse to grant them.

As if these plebeian mongrels knew anything about the olden ways they pay lip service to, about the belief her ancestor had popularized in his life. All they cared about is their own power, and not even their magic but political and gold, finite things in the face of the insurmountable and fathomless blessing that is magic. But Tamsyn hides these thoughts behind a clueless smile drawn across her face as she looks toward the Leaky Cauldron entrance. The only reason she sat in this cesspool of a bar was because it was the meeting point with the one person she wanted to see outside of a mirror.

It had started almost two months ago when Tamsyn found Harry on the Hogwarts Express, she had heard rumors throughout the last few weeks of school about Gryffindor students being awoken in the dead of night by nightmarish screaming; but not once had it crossed her mind that it was Harry. But when she opened the door to the last compartment on the right she saw the haggard and run-down form of Harry with the two "add-ons" as she called his friends. Paler than normal with large bags of sleepless nights sitting under his captivating emerald eyes; but Harry still smiled when he saw her, bringing her heart to beat quickly for some reason.

Tamsyn and the annoying girl with bushy hair exchanged numbers with Harry, Tamsyn telling Harry to only call her between ten in the morning and six in the evening but never on Sunday. Harry had given her his number and asked to only call him between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon but never on the weekends. It was an odd time, even the bushy bossy girl noticed it by the narrowing of her eyes; but Tamsyn didn't question it. Harry had stayed with his add-ons till lunch where he had joined her in the same compartment where they first met.

But after their parting at King's Cross, Tamsyn didn't hear from Harry for weeks, and as weeks turned to months and her worry reached its boiling point she finally picked up the Muggle landline and called him.

But it wasn't Harry who picked up.

"Dursley residence, Petunia speaking," a curt but polite voice answered after the third ring. "May I ask who is calling?" The voice says before pausing.

"Hello Ma'am, my name is Tamsyn Riddle. I'm looking for Harry Potter," Tamsyn says in her polite and charming voice with a perfect smile affixed to her face even if the other woman couldn't see it. But oddly, it takes a few moments before the woman speaks again in a far more hardened tone of voice.

"The bo- Harry you say? And may I ask how you know my…nephew?" Petunia's voice came with the same politeness but it was all false and sharp edges. Tamsyn's eyes narrowed at the woman's slip, she couldn't but wonder why the woman was being false but decided against pointing it out.

"We go to the same school, Ma'am. He's a…friend," Tamsyn says, the last word rolling awkwardly off her tongue.

"I see," Petunia said, and those two words came out colder than any ice or spell that Tamsyn had the displeasure of coming across. They shook with an unspoken hatred and bloody rage that refused to spill from the filthy muggle lips. "One moment please, he's currently doing his share of chores in the garden," the woman notes before putting down the phone- next or on the receiver with a bit more force than necessary. Tamsyn immediately turns up the volume on her end presses the earpiece against her ear and strains herself to listen.

"Boy!" Came sharp, loud, and clear before followed by murmurs she couldn't make out.

"-home number to one of those little fr-"

More murmurs.

"How dare you think-"

More murmurs before a sharp clap echo.

"-Back Talk from you-"

A higher pitch of murmurs now.

"-phone! And this means no di-"

Murmurs once more follow before footsteps come closer, the short stomps of a boy and the clicks of the heel on wood. Tamsyn quickly turns down the volume before clearing her throat and shakes her head to rid herself of any lingering thoughts on what she heard.

"H-hello?" The voice of Harry comes from the earpiece, causing Tamsyn to smile inwardly a bit.

"Harry! It's me, Tamsyn," she announced herself as she heard Harry take a sharp breath inward and knew he was smiling just as she was. The conversation that followed was awkward and felt sanitized from how Harry normally talked to her, Tamsyn didn't doubt that his Aunt was standing over his shoulder listening in. They quickly talked about one of his add-ons winning the Ministry raffle and going on vacation to Egypt to see his older brother or something of the like before Tamsyn asked if he could make it to London in a week or so to meet up. His answer came slow and carefully as he had to ask his Aunt, but it was a yes in the end, they quickly decided on time and place before he abruptly ended the call as a door opened and a man called out.

Now Tamsyn was left waiting at the Leaky Cauldron, waiting for her…friend to finally show up, and thankfully it didn't take long.

As she turns toward the entrance to the inn, the heavy door swings open and a small boy in an oversized leather jacket wearing ratty hand-me-downs and a muggle ball cap pulled low over his head walks in.

Tamsyn would know him anywhere and immediately smiled as Harry looked up at her, but something was wrong.

His smile doesn't reach his eyes as the haggard look had hardly left Harry from the last time she saw him. The most damning thing was the side of his face, his left cheek was swollen and puffy, marred with a purple and black bruise. She immediately balks at the sight before leaping from her seat and quickly walking over to him.

"Harry," Tamsyn says, automatically reaching out for his bruised cheek but stopping herself before invading his personal space. "What happened?" She nearly demands an answer from him.

"N-nothing," Harry quickly says, pulling away from Tamsyn, something he didn't do at Hogwarts. "I, er- just fell, that's all," he excuses as he looks away from her with shame in his eyes. But as Tamsyn's face falls blank at his lie; she could see the indent of something in the risen skin of the bruise- something in the shape of a ring. Tamsyn takes a careful step back from Harry, her smile falling onto her face like the mask it was.

"You should be more careful, Harry. It could have been a lot worse than just a bruise," she says with an amused sigh, hiding the raw rage and anger building in her chest. Someone had hit him, someone had hurt Harry and he was lying to her about it- something that didn't sit well within her chest. Harry had never lied to her at Hogwarts, always happy, always cheerful, and smiling. "What have those loathsome, disgusting Muggles do to my Harry?!" Her mind screamed before she could stop the thoughts from even forming.

"I-I will, Tamsyn. I promise," Harry mutters, looking down at his own feet and shuffling them; he was uncomfortable with talking about what had happened.

"Good, now come on. Let's get out of here and into the alley proper before a summer storm ruins our day," Tamsyn says with her fake smile and raging emotions in her chest, unsure of what to do about Harry and these odd feelings she was having about him.

---

Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, 5:26 PM.

Tamsyn and Harry's luck had held out, as the summer was kept hot and bright with a cool wind without a storm cloud in sight as they spent the day together. Their first stop was the Bank at the top of the hill for Harry to withdraw some gold, he had spent a good ten minutes arguing with the Goblin at the front desk to let her come down to his vault.

"Well, I trust her!" Harry had told the goblin, Griphook, in a firm tone when the little beast had tried to make her stay on the floor. It brought such an indescribable warmth to her chest when Harry had said those words that she was momentarily stunned trying to figure out what the feeling was. After that, Tamsyn got to ride in the carts to below the caverns of Gringotts; something she had never done before and now hoped to never do again.

The ride was nauseatingly fast with sharp turns and loops that threw her from side to side in the cart to the point it felt like her ribs were bruised. Harry, however, laughed during the whole ride as if he enjoyed the feeling of almost flying out of the cart. Tamsyn didn't understand it, but it was nice to hear Harry laugh after so long of being apart. When they stopped at his vault, her eyes nearly popped out of her skull as her jaw fell open at the sight of the small mountain of gold sitting within, and as soon as Harry swept two handfuls of gold into a bag, they were off to the surface again, and this time Tamsyn did sick up over the edge; the rancid little goblin chuckling the whole time.

After she collected herself, Tamsyn and Harry left the bank to run amok all across the Alley. They window shopped at nearly every store, and swung into Zonko's to buy wet-start fireworks that lit off in crowds while keeping out of sight. They walked through the small park in the middle of the Alley filled with magical creatures they could feed and pet, performers of muggle stage magic set up booths to perform tricks and sleight of hand for the amazement of the crowd. They went to Flourish and Blotts to peruse through their selection of books before going to the cheaper second-hand bookshop to look through the donation bins.

They even snuck down to Knockturn Alley to look at the shops from the outside. They avoided the grifters and tramps that called the darker side of Magical London home, only stopping so Harry could feed a hungry-looking black dog the rest of his chips they had picked up from a stand back in the park. The only shop they entered due to the respectable-looking front was Borgin and Burkes which had a macabre showing of cursed and powerful magical artifacts. The shopkeeper, some withered old man sitting behind the counter, had warned them not to touch anything unless they intended to buy it; very rudely she might add.

Tamsyn was immediately drawn to the small bookshelf full of books, most looked dark but she doubted the shopkeeper would display anything outright illegal in the shop. The old man didn't say much when she pulled a random book down and started to flip through it. The book was an old handwritten grimoire on curses of all kinds, she paused to read a section on something called "The Torture Curse" and immediately started to plan on how to use it on the Muggles that hurt Harry.

It was when she heard Harry ask about the price of something that she turned to see him standing at a glass case full of jewelry, pointing at a locket. It was a gaudy thing of emerald and jade on a thick gold chain, the only thing remotely interesting about it was the silver snake in the form of an S on the front.

"More than what you have for pocket change, brat," the shopkeeper snarks at Harry with a scowl, but it doesn't stop Harry from eyeballing the locket for a long moment. As soon as his face screwed up into a determined look, Tamsyn knew exactly what Harry was going to do next. So, as she slots the book away on the shelf where she found it, Harry reaches into his coat and drops his full bag of gold on the countertop, causing the shopkeeper's eyes to widen at the sound.

"I have a lot more than pocket change, sir," Harry said with a large grin. Five minutes and a whooping hundred gallons lighter, both Tamsyn and Harry had left the shop with the old gaudy locket. It took a bit of sweet talking from Tamsyn to drive the price down, because it wouldn't open, to where Harry didn't have to visit the bank again to get bus fare back home, but it was worth it to see Harry smiling again. With how much Harry had spent on the bobble, it was a shock to Tamsyn when as soon as they left Knockturn Alley, Harry had turned to her and handed her the package the locket was wrapped in.

"But why?" She had asked, flabbergasted at the boy, and In true Harry fashion, he had just shrugged.

"It's green with the Slytherin S on the front and you're a Slytherin, I thought you might like it," He admitted before a nervous look overcame his face as he shuffled his feet and looked away. "Do- do you like it?" He asked, sounding unsure.

Tamsyn had stood there looking at the generous soul before her in utter amazement. She had never had anyone ever spend so much on her for no reason other than they wanted to, they had always wanted something in return. Favors, doing their homework, being an alibi, and everything in between. Her eyes burned but she beat down the want to cry and just smiled and nodded at Harry, not trusting her words to convey what she wanted.

Tamsyn tucked away the package under her arm before they went to the Ice Cream Parlour at the south end of the Alley, to enjoy one last treat before ending one of the most perfect days either of the two orphans ever had.

But as all good things must come to an end, so does the good luck they have shared all day.

All starting with some pink-haired harlot.

Tamsyn and Harry were sitting outside at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour splitting a sundae while chatting about the upcoming year. The only other person sitting outside was a red-haired woman in a black dress, smiling as she read a book and enjoying her own treat in the shade of the large umbrellas. But as Tamsyn scoops up another bite of banana and vanilla ice cream to eat, she feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She turns to look into the summer crowd of the Alley to see a woman looking in her direction, she was dressed half like a muggle; and not the respectable kind if there was such a thing.

Her black denim jeans had huge holes around the knees, and her black combat boots came up to mid-calf and were mostly unlaced. Her black Queen shirt was faded and ripped under an open red robe, but the thing that stuck out the most was the vibrant neon pink hair spiked up and shooting in all directions with matching pink eyes narrowed and looking at her.

"No, not at me- behind me," Tamsyn thinks to herself as her eyes narrow at the older skeezy-looking girl. Tamsyn thought she looked like the women of ill repute that wandered Whitechapel or the underground selling themselves for a few quid. "Does she think she found a mark or a John?" Tamsyn thinks with a frown.

"Tamsyn? Are you okay?" Harry asks concerned, causing her to turn back to him with a smile before eating her bite of the sundae.

She swallows before answering. "Yes, of course, Harry. Why do you ask?" She says, wondering if she had missed a question he had asked when she was inspecting the tramp.

"You didn't-" Harry begins to say before something over Tamsyn's shoulder catches his attention, she once more turns around to see the pink-haired harlot approaching them. Tamsyn glares at the harlot with eyes that could melt steel as the harlot saunters up to their table with a friendly smile.

"Wat'cha kiddos, havin a good nip of ice cream?" The harlot asks curiously, her smile never leaving her face, but before Harry could answer; Tamsyn takes control of the conversation.

"Yes, we are Ma'am, so if you don't mind leaving us to that," Tamsyn snaps dismissively to the pink-haired girl who turns to her with a sharp look in her eyes.

"Yeah, a bit awkward that, because I don't think I can," she says with an awkward smile before turning to grab a chair from the table that the redheaded woman was sitting at and dragging it over to Tamsyn and Harry's table. As the harlot flops undignified into the seat, Tamsyn's wand finds itself in her hand and aims at the woman under the table as the harlot leans forward. "Tell me kiddo, you wouldn't happen to be Harry Potter, would ya?" She asks under breath toward Harry, causing Harry to sit up with a bit of a panicked look on his face as his eyes dart around.

"Ah- n-no, my name is Tom, Tom- er, Weasley," Harry says back, shooting the girl an awkward smile and causing Tamsyn to want nothing more than to facepalm at Harry's lie; though she controls her reaction.

The harlot just smiles brightly as her eyes sparkle with mirth. "Weasley? As in the Weasley clan out of Catchpole, yeah?" She asks Harry, her smile widening as he quickly nods; not thinking about the facts behind his lie. "Odd that, because I used to date Charlie Weasley, the second oldest, a few years back and got to know the family real well; and I don't remember meeting you, Tom," the harlot says with amusement before sticking out her hand toward Harry.

"Nymphadora Tonks, though fair warning; never use my first name and just call me Tonks, yeah?" She tells Harry with a wink that sets Tamsyn's blood boiling.

"Can we help you, Miss Tonks?" Tamsyn asks through clenched teeth as she burns holes in the side of Tonks' face and her wand begins to spark.

Tonks turns to look at Tamsyn with a raised brow. "This one has a temper on her, doesn't she? but don't worry kiddo, premature sparks happen to the best of us," she says with a coy smile of good humor that did nothing to placate Tamsyn's anger. "But I'm not some rabid fan or any of that rot, Harry. I'm an Auror, or well- Auror in training really, and we've been looking for you all bloody day," she tells Harry with an easy smile. Harry looks confused, his eyes flicking back and forth between her and Tonks.

"Wh-whats an Auror?" He asks with a frown.

"Magical Peace Officers, Harry," Tamsyn tells him without looking away from the harlot, quietly wondering what in the devil did the Aurors wanted with Harry if the harlot was telling the truth.

"Oh, o-okay, but what do you want with me?" Harry asks Tonks, his eyes narrowing in distrust as Tamsyn begins to try and plan an escape route through the crowd.

"That's something I think that the Headmaster should explain when- OI! Savage!? Over here!" Tonks began to explain before jumping from her seat and waving one arm in the air to a man pushing his way through the crowd.

"Dumbledore?" "The Headmaster?" Both Harry and Tamsyn blurt out at the same time confused as someone shoves their way through the crowds of the Alley.

"Fucking finally. Good work Tonks, I'll put in a good word with Moody for this," a tall man with brown hair and honey-colored eyes says as he steps up to the table to look down beside Tonks. "As for you, kid. You're coming with me, we've been busting our asses looking for you all day," the man snaps at Harry before grabbing him by the arm and yanking him from his seat.

Tamsyn watches as something flashes in Harry's eyes, something primal; something full of fear. Harry pales as he begins to try and tear himself out of the Aurors hand like a wild animal.

"NO! ST-STOP! LET ME GO! LET ME GO! STOP!" Harry begins to scream like bloody murder as he claws and kicks at the Auror as he frantically tries to escape the man. "I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK! I'LL BE GOOD! PLEASE! NO! NOT THE CUPBOARD! PLEASE!" he begins to beg while continuing to thrash.

"Savage! What the hell-" Tonks shouts at him before jumping to her feet to try and restrain the frightened animal that was in the shape of Harry.

"I don't know! He just started freaking out!" Savage says as he fights to keep his grip on Harry. "Mister Potter! You need to calm down or I will be forced to-" he tries to say before Tamsyn has seen enough and throws herself at the harlot.

"LET HIM GO!?" Tamsyn screams as she jumps on the back of the harlot wraps her arms around her neck and begins to yank her back. "YOU'RE HURTING HIM! YOU'RE HURTING HIM LET HIM GO! LET HIM GO RIGHT NOW!" Tamsyn yells as she brawls like some undignified muggle like she used to when she was right with the other kids in the group home.

"Okay! That is it! I'm stunning the bo-" was as far as Auror Savage got before a shadow fell over them. He never saw the hand that grabbed a fist full of hair before his face was slammed into the solid oak table with a crack of his nose breaking. As blood fills the Aurors' mouth, the shock of pain makes him let go of Harry and makes Tonks turn toward the shadow. Tamsyn swiftly lets go of the Auror before wrapping Harry in her arms and dragging him away from the scuffle, Harry latches onto her like a lifeline as they watch the fight in front of them with wide eyes.

The shadow turned out to be the woman that had been sitting by her lonesome reading, as harmless as she looked then; she seemed to be a proper menace now. After slamming Auror Savage's face into the table, she picked him up by the hair to look at his face. Once the woman saw the Auror was still conscious, she repeated the slam once more, right into the sundae that Tamsyn and Harry were sharing before letting the limp body of the Auror fall to the street as she turned to look at the harlot.

"H-hold it right there!" Tonks yells as she draws her wand and levels it at the woman, but freezes as menacing red eyes bore into her pink ones. Some shifted and snapped around the outside pavilion, like an ice-cold wind blowing in suddenly as magic, thick and suffocating, filled the immediate area. A feeling like the stocks of Irish Gorse wrap around Tamsyn, Harry, and Tonks' throats as the woman doesn't even break stride as she walks up to the frozen Tonks. The feeling of Gorse thorns wrapped around Tonks' throat is quickly replaced by a very real voice grip of a slender hand as Tonks is slammed against the parlour wall.

"You would have to train for another five hundred years before you could even hope to take me on, lass," the woman speaks as she knocks the harlot's wand from her grasp with a single hand. Her Irish accent was as thick as the ice cream she was eating while reading with a burning hatred in her cold blood-red eyes.

Faster than Tamsyn could reasonably follow, the woman had drawn her wand and angled her body before casting a shield charm that covered all of them before two flashes of scarlet light reflected off of the shield. Tamsyn then turns to see two Aurors, dressed in the crimson silk and dragonhide cloaks of their office come running to a stop; wands leveled at the woman.

"Put her down! Now!" The tall dark-skinned Auror fumed as he glared at the woman still holding the harlot by the throat.

"That wasn't a request, bitch!" Another female Auror with mousy brown hair yells after a moment. But all the woman in the dark dress does is smirk as the magic around her becomes thicker.

"Well, don't be shy now. Come make me, I do happily take all comers after all," she says with a slightly mad grin as she levels her wand at the two Aurors. But as the two Crimson cloaks prepare themselves to fight, and the crowd begins to gather around the standoff; a new voice calls out.

"Kingsley! Hestia! Stand down!" A barking voice of another Auror screams as he steps past the crowd. He was singly the most scarred man that Tamsyn had ever seen, his face reminding her of a poor wood carving of what a man should look like with a fake electric blue eye whizzing around in his socket. "She'd kill you before you even got your first spells off," he mutters as he passes the other two Aurors.

With wand in hand, he walks through the impressive and oppressive aura of magic surrounding the woman in black as if he didn't feel it, as both his real and fake eye fall on the woman. They stand not five feet from one another, steering each other down for a moment before the scarred man speaks once more.

"My trainee is turning purple, do ya mind letting her go, Witch-Queen?" The man growls out at the woman with a glare.

"Witch-Queen?" Tamsyn thinks as her eyes turn toward the towering woman in the black dress. "Does he mean THE Witch-Queen? Grandmaster of the Fianna?" She thinks in surprise. The woman seems to consider his request for a moment before dropping her wand.

"I suppose," she says airily before releasing the harlot, who falls to the ground and begins to cough and sputter. "What are you doing here, Moody?" She asks as she turns fully to face him, standing almost a head taller than Moody.

"I should be asking you that, Árd-Greimne," the older Auror says with a sneer. "Last I checked, you weren't allowed to step foot on English soil," he tells her, tilting his chin up as the woman smirks down at him.

"That was nearly twenty years ago, times have changed my old enemy or has your ministry failed to inform their attack dogs about my change in status?" Árd-Greimne asks with a smirk on her lips as Moody's magical eye begins to whizz around his skull again.

"Alastor! Lady Árd-Greimne!" The familiar voice of Albus Dumbledore calls out as the crowd parts, both of the powerful magicals turn to face the approaching headmaster, one scowling and one still smirking.

"Albus, how many times must I tell you to call me Scáthach? We are to be in a working relationship soon enough," the woman in black tells the headmaster as Tamsyn bulks at the woman.

"It is her," Tamsyn thinks in a bit of awe. Scáthach Árd-Greimne was the current Grandmaster of the Circle of the Fianna and known as the Witch-Queen due to her skill with dark magic. It was said that what Dumbledore could do with his wand in Transfiguration, Árd-Greimne could do the same with curses. She was someone undoubtedly on the level of the great Albus Dumbledore, though they have never come to blows. Tamsyn watches, in a little awe, as Dumbledore approaches Árd-Greimne to shake her hand as the aura of magic dies down.

Dumbledore just chuckles at Árd-Greimne's words. "Forgive me, My Lady. I was merely being respectful to your position; as you are to mine," he says with a nod of his head. Árd-Greimne rolls her eyes in good nature at the Headmaster's flippant attitude toward her. "But I feel the need to ask- what happened to Savage?" He asks as he looks over to the unconscious Auror on the ground.

Árd-Greimne turns to look at the man, almost as if she forgot about him. "Oh, yes. Hmm,..." She pauses before turning back to the headmaster as they drop their hands. "Would you believe that he fell? Twice?" She asks with a small smirk as Dumbledore looks at her in disappointment over his half-moon spectacles. She sighs before answering.

"Alright fine, I saw him hassling some children and well,...old habits die hard I suppose," Árd-Greimne says with a dismissive shrug.

"Children?" Dumbledore asks before Árd-Greimne gestures over to both Tamsyn who still has a shaking and frightened Harry wrapped in her arms as she glares at everyone as she shelters him in her arms protectively.

"Oh," Dumbledore says as his eyebrows shoot upwards. "Oh, dear…" he says before sighing deeply at the turn of fate.

---

Chapter Done!

SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH GEORGE!

Anyway, in this chapter we have more bonding time between our main two before Scáthach Árd-Greimne comes crip-stepping into the story over the bodies of Aurors!

Don't worry, Savage isn't dead just…learning a painful lesson.

But that's right, Sirius breaks out of Azkaban earlier than in the books! The whole reason that the Aurors were searching for Harry was because of Dumbledore, for the blood wards aren't in play in this story and he may have freaked out a bit over Sirius breaking out.

Tamsyn officially has the locket, but she doesn't know the history behind it…yet.

Why was the locket still at the shop and not with Miss Smith? Well, Miss Smith is dead in this because in the books she was old as fuck when she met Tom in the 50's, I think. So, with the timeline of Tamsyn's birth moved up to the modern day the locket would still be at the shop because the collector that was Miss Smith isn't around to find it.

Kingsaxcul, out!

Chapter 4: The Burrow

A lot of people think Dumbledore is trying to cover things up, and I have no idea why.

Anyway, let's see how a meeting unfolds with new faces.

On with the show.

---

The Leaky Cauldron's private room, July 29th, 6:36 PM.

Harry sat alone in one of the rooms above the Leaky Cauldron; the high-back chair he was slouching deeply into was springy and uncomfortably comfortable to him. He fiddled with the ends of his leather jacket as he looked out the glass window that sat over muggle London, frowning as he did so. After…whatever happened at the Ice Cream Parlour had calmed down and he had stopped shaking so much, the Headmaster and the tall red-headed woman had separated him from Tamsyn and sent her back home before marching him back down to the Leaky Cauldron.

Harry had at least gotten to see Tamsyn off at the door to the Leaky before going upstairs.

He knew for a fact that the Headmaster, some portly man by the name of Herbert Bones, and his sister Amelia Bones were all in the other room discussing him. Harry personally thought it a bit rude, but he had yet to see the other adults to voice his opinion of that just yet. The tall red-headed woman was sitting in the chair just a few feet away from him, reading the book that he saw her reading at the Ice Cream Parlour. She had yet to say a word or even introduce herself before she sat down; just telling the Headmaster that she would watch over him while Dumbledore was talking to the other two people.

"Isn't there someone in my year with the same last name?" Harry thinks to himself with a frown, trying to put a name to the face he sees in his mind. "Something with an S I think? Sansa? Suzie? Something like that. Her last name is Bones, however," he muses as he unknowingly begins to glare across the room.

"Has the window done something to personally offend you, boyo?" The thick Irish accent speaks once more, reminding him of One of his roommates; Seamus Finnegan, as Harry turns to Scáthach.

"What? Er- no?" Harry tells Scáthach who chuckles as she continues to read. "I was just trying to remember someone's name in my year at Hogwarts; it starts with an S, I think," he says out loud, still frowning as he speaks.

"Susan?" Scáthach intones as she turns the page in her book, a small smile growing on her face.

"Yeah! That's her name! Wait- how did you know that?" Harry asks as his eyes narrow at Scáthach as her smile becomes wider.

"Well, I assumed you were thinking about Herbert's daughter, Susan Bones seeing that you just met her father and Aunt," she says offhandedly as she turns the next page in her book, her eyes never leaving it.

"Oh," Harry says as he looks back towards the window. "Why aren't you talking with them?" He asks Scáthach who finally pauses her reading to look at him with something between amusement and queer curiosity.

"My oh my, aren't we just full of questions," Scáthach says with a grin before dog-earring the page she was on, an act that caused Harry to hear Hermione in his head cry out in pain. "I doubt either of the Bones would want me in the room when they were discussing matters of state, seeing I have a long history of disturbing said state," she says with a cat-like grin as she puts down her book and turns to look at Harry.

"Oh," Harry intones before turning to look at Scáthach. Even sitting, she seemed tall; her posture while sitting in the chair was perfect, and her shoulders were relaxed as she oozed confidence just by existing; she was also very pretty. "Though not as pretty as Tamsyn," he ideally wonders to himself.

"That one man with the fake eye said you weren't allowed to come to England, why?" Harry asks with a tilt of his head as Scáthach chuckles fondly at him.

"First of all, that man was named Alastor Moody. He's a very old and well-respected Auror in England, so I don't think he'd appreciate it if you called out his eye like that," Scáthach tells Harry, making the boy shift uncomfortably in his seat. "Second of all, that is a very long story. It is a story of war and topics best left to older men and women, but needless to say, I fought in said war, and I was a bedlam to most English wizards in power. When the war came to an end and we won independence from Magical England, we signed the Treaty of Kilashandra- which states in no uncertain terms that I and the rest of the Fianna were not to set foot on English soil," she says with a chuckle and a shake of her head at the irony of her sitting in the Leaky Cauldron.

"Then, about twelve years ago, the Circle of the Fianna was approached by Bellatrix Lestrange and her gathering of mad men and sadists. They offered us a chance to invade our old enemies, but our old enemy offered us a better deal; one would see the Circle of the Fianna as a recognized army by the Ministry and thus dissolving us of our crimes in their eyes so long as we didn't help Bellatrix. We had our freedom and nothing to prove, so we accepted your Ministry's deal and thus I am no longer a war criminal," she says with a dark chuckle as she looks at Harry, her crimson eyes traveling over his face for a moment before she looks away and at the clock in the room- a tad impatiently if you were to ask Harry.

"Why did they call you a war criminal?" Harry asks, scowling at the term as he tilts his head.

Scáthach chuckles once more. "Now, now Mister Potter. You've already asked so many questions, don't you think it's only fair that I get to ask you one in return?" She inquires of Harry in good nature and with a smile as she places her book on her lap and leans against the armchair.

"Er- sure? Though I don't think I'm very interesting," Harry says with a shrug.

"Where did you get that bruise from?" She asks softly, her smile remaining on her face even after Harry's fall and he turns away from Scáthach, hiding his bruised cheek.

"Nowhere. I fell, that's all," Harry quickly says, changing his answer in the span of a breath as he squirms in his seat uncomfortable with the question.

"A fall?" She inquires with a raised brow; even though Harry couldn't see it, he still nods his head as he glares defiantly out the window. "Now, Mister Potter-" Scáthach begins with a soft sigh. "-It's a rather bad start to our acquaintanceship if you lie to me," she intones to Harry, her eyes narrowing at him.

"I'm not li-" Harry tries to defend himself but with the door to the room opening, both Harry and Scáthach turn to see the headmaster standing in the doorway with a smile on his face. "Headmaster Dumbledore," Harry quickly says, hoping to escape the uncomfortable conversation with Scáthach as quickly as possible. "Am I going to get to go home soon?" He inquired to the headmaster.

A shadow of something passes over Dumbledore's face as he looks to be momentarily considering his words. "No, Mister Potter. I…don't think that you'll be returning to your Aunt's home for the rest of the summer," he intones toward Harry, almost as if he was choosing his words carefully, as he walks into the room; his eyes avoiding Scáthach.

Harry blinked, shock running down his spine at the words as hope and excitement bubbled in his chest. It must have shone in his eyes, as he could see that both Scáthach and Dumbledore had different reactions. Dumbledore fought a frown from consuming his face as his eyes were full of regrets, Scáthach however looked amused more than anything with a soft resolve shining in her eyes.

---

One week later.

A week. One glorious week free from the Dursleys. One week of no chores, one week of getting fed a full meal at every meal time, one week without yelling or screaming or being called names. Sure, he had to have minders checking on him every now or then, but Harry didn't really mind seeing that he was given free rein to run around Diagon Alley so long as he wasn't out after dark or ventured off the main street. Which were small things to ask of him, in Harry's opinion.

And the best thing? He got to see Tamsyn every day.

She apparently didn't live too far away from the Alley and could easily walk to the Leaky Cauldron. They normally just stayed inside catching Harry up on his homework that he was forced to ignore over the summer thanks to his Aunt. With Tamsyn's help and tutelage, Harry was able to get a majority of it done before the week was up. In their spare time, Harry and Tamsyn did much of the same when they first met last week, wandering around the Alley and eating Ice Cream. They talked a lot too, mostly about the future and what they wanted to do when they graduated from Hogwarts. Tamsyn wanted to become the Minister of Magic after traveling the world for a bit, perhaps even teaching at Hogwarts for a few years.

Harry didn't know what he wanted to do when he was older, only that he wanted to get away from the Dursleys; though he didn't share that with Tamsyn.

Harry had also told Tamsyn the reason why the Aurors and Dumbledore had shown up that day last week. They thought Sirius Black was after him, but when Harry told Tamsyn this she didn't seem surprised by it. She was completely calm- apart from the dark look in her blue eyes. But she blinked and it was gone before a smile replaced it.

"Don't worry, Harry. As long as you're with me, I won't let anyone hurt you, okay?" Tamsyn had told him, her smile never falling away or reaching her eyes; but still, Harry believed her.

They were currently in Harry's room over the Leaky Cauldron, doing the summer reading for their respective years. Tamsyn read up on curses and counter-curses with bright eyes as Harry read the introduction about hexes, jinxes, and dark creatures. They both pause at the sound of loud clambering footsteps charging up the stairs; both Harry and Tamsyn look at one another, confused, before the door to his room bursts open.

"Harry!" the familiar voice of one of Harry's best friends calls out as the door crashes open. Harry turns to see the bright red hair and freckled face of Ron Weasley.

"Ron!" Harry calls back in pleasant surprise as he smiles as he places his book to the side. "What are you doing here? I thought you and your family were in Egypt for the summer," he says as he gets up from his chair that sat across a small table from Tamsyn with a tray of tea and biscuits. Harry chooses to ignore the snarling angry look Tamsyn gives Ron as he storms into the room.

"Dumbledore got a hold of Mum and Dad a week ago and asked if we could come back a bit early and let you stay with us," Ron says with a large grin, causing Harry to blink in surprise at his words. Dumbledore had spoken to Harry about him staying with other people and not just in The Leaky Cauldron, but he never said who. It was a surprise, to say the least, to know that Mrs. Weasley agreed, seeing that he had known Ron for less than a year.

"But why?" Harry asks, his confusion clear on his face as his face scrunched as he is unable to come up with a good reason. But as Ron opens his mouth to answer, a voice like thunder calls down from the hallway.

"RONALD WEASLEY!" the voice yells in a tone that reminds Harry of a coming storm; the tone of the voice is like a crack of lightning that causes all three children to flinch in fear. "HOW MANY TIMES MUST I TELL YOU NOT TO LEAVE MY SIGHT!?" the voices yell as heavy footsteps lead to the room before the door swings open with force. "Well, young man? What do you have to say for yourself-" the short redheaded woman says with her hands on her hips before she abruptly turns to Harry. "Harry, dear! There you are, oh look at- you're a picture of James, how are you deary?" she says with a soft smile before turning back to Ron with a glare.

Ron's mom, Molly Weasley, wasn't a tall woman, nor was she particularly mean-looking- but she was extremely formidable to Harry. Her sheer presence standing in the doorway reminded Harry of a mother bear he'd once seen on a muggle telly as she stood up on its hind legs.

"Er,...I'm-ah,...good?" Harry says, turning to eye a pale and shrinking Ron before turning to look at an equally shrinking Tamsyn.

"Well, that's good to hear, Harry," Mrs. Weasley says with the same soft smile and eyes before they turn hard as she looks at her son. "And you, how many times must I tell you not to run off like that, Ronald," she says with an aggravated huff as Percy, Ron's oldest brother still in Hogwarts, appears behind his mother, trying to hide an amused smile at his little brother's predicament.

"It was just up the stairs, Mum," Ron says guiltily as he looks down at his feet.

"And how would I know that, hm?" The stern woman says with a shake of her head before stepping into the room. "You were first through the floo and then off you shot to somewhere while I was stepping through without a word of where you were going," she tells her son before stopping before him; her lips pinched in disappointment. "Next time you run off, I would at least like to know where you are going, am I understood?" Mrs. Weasley says, but her anger at Ron had all but died away as she spoke; her words turning soft and stern.

"Yes, mum," Ron intones without looking at his mother as both Harry and Tamsyn look on in confusion.

"Good, now let's not be too rude and why don't you introduce me like a proper young man should?" Mrs. Weasley says while raising a brow at her youngest son.

"But you already know-" Ron begins to say before he is cut off by both his mom and Tamsyn coughing lightly. Ron's head drops as he sighs as Percy snickers behind his mother's back. "Mum, this is Harry Potter, my friend from Hogwarts. Harry, this is my Mum Molly Weasley," Ron intones dryly while motioning between Harry and his Mum. At his words, Molly comes sweeping into the room with a large smile on her face as Harry sticks out his hand to shake hers.

"Hello Ma'am, it's nic-" Harry says to Molly, only to find himself swept up in a hug from the woman.

"Oh, Harry dear, it's a pleasure," Molly says as she hugs him tightly for a moment before letting him go to step back and give him a large smile. "Look at you, I wasn't lying when I said you look just like James," she tells him with a bright smile. "But your eyes," Molly says more softly. "Those are Lilly's eyes through and through,"

Harry blinks twice in confusion. "You know my mum and dad?" Harry asks, tilting his head to the side in question.

"I did, yes," Molly confirms as she takes a step back from Harry. "Me and my husband, Arthur, didn't know them as well as Remus or...well, it doesn't matter. We met while helping Albus with something some time ago, even helped your mum with preparing for you," she informs Harry.

"Who's Remus?" Harry asks, causing Molly to be the one who looks at the other confused.

"Remus. Remus Lupin?" She supplies, watching Harry with sharp eyes. "Surely you know him? He has written to you, yes?" She asks and watches with growing indignation as Harry slowly shakes his head. "I…see," Molly says gruffly, almost in anger as a fire begins to burn behind her eyes. A sight that informed Harry why Ron was so scared of invoking his mother's wrath; something he could no longer argue against. Thankfully, the angry silence was broken as Tamsyn let out another small cough. The sound had the effect of breaking Molly out of her look of righteous rage as she turned to Tamsyn.

"Oh, dear me. Where are my manners," Molly says with a shake of her head as she steps around Harry and walks over the Tamsyn. "My apologies, dear. Molly Weasley, and you are?" She asks the black-haired girl sitting properly in the chair by the window.

"I'm Tamsyn. Tamsyn Riddle, Ma'am," Tamsyn informs Molly as she stands and does a small curtsy, but Molly isn't having it. She sweeps Tamsyn into a hug, shocking the girl as she's pulled into Molly's warm embrace. Her eyes shot wide as she looked between Harry and Ron in shock, Molly's touch causing her to flinch and stiffen, much like Harry did when Molly hugged him a moment ago.

"Now, while it's a pleasure to meet you dear, I'm afraid we are on a rather tight schedule," Molly says as she steps away from Tamsyn and turns to Harry. "Are you all packed, dear, or do you need some help?" She offers Harry with a smile. Harry frowned for a moment before turning to Tamsyn. She was smiling at him, and if he was anyone else, Harry probably would have never noticed the look of pain in her eyes.

Molly notices the look between both Harry and Tamsyn. "Not to worry dear, I'm sure she can come over to The Burrow in a few days after you settle in," she tells Harry as she pays his shoulder. "I'll contact her parents in a few days to ask-" she continues, but stops as she sees the slight flinch on Harry's face before turning to Tamsyn with a frown and a raised brow.

"I- I live in a group home, Ma'am. I've never met my parents," Tamsyn tells her plainly as if she were discussing the weather and her smile never wavers.

"Oh, dear," Molly says as her lips fall into a small frown and her hand covers her heart. "I'm so sorry dear, I didn't mean- I didn't know," she says with a sigh before falling quiet for a moment, her eyes flickering between Harry and Tamsyn for a moment before her eyes take on a strange gleam. "Percy," she suddenly says, turning to her oldest child in the room. "Could you help Harry pack and get him and Ron back home by yourself? I want to make sure Tamsyn gets to a safe place," Molly asks Percy, watching as the older boy frowns a bit.

"But I thought we were going to the owl emporium?" Percy notes as he shuffles uncomfortable with something.

"I know, Percy. I know, and I promise we'll do it another time. It's just I'd rather not have you boys wandering the Alley considering…everything going on at the moment," Molly tells Percy, her eyes traveling over to Harry as she says the last part. Percy didn't look too happy with his mother's request, his lips pressing into a thin line, and he looked ready to argue with her, but after a moment, he let out a sigh, and his shoulders sagged in defeat.

"I understand, Mum. I'll make sure they get back home safe and sound," Percy tells his mother as she beams at him with a proud smile.

Harry turns to Tamsyn, who is slowly collecting her books and slipping them back into her bookbag, her false smile still placed on her face. Harry could see her dark blue eyes shining with pain, anger, and sadness, but she said nothing about how she felt; she never did around other people.

Tamsyn pulls the strap to her bag over her head before turning to Harry. "I guess this is goodbye for now," she says pleasantly, but to Harry, it rang hollow.

"Yeah," he admits with a frown, turning his eyes downward.

"I'll see you on September first in any case, just a few weeks away," Tamsyn tells him while adjusting her bag. "I'll be-"

"-in the last compartment on the left, I know," Harry interrupts her, looking up at her with a sad smile that she returns with a nod.

"Just- just be careful, okay Harry?" Tamsyn asks him, her smile faltering a bit as she speaks. "I want to see you on that train come September, so don't do anything foolish, understand me?" She tells him, but from Tamsyn, it sounded more like an order. Harry smiles at her, large and bright, and makes Tamsyn's face flush red before he decides to do something both foolish and brave.

Harry walks over to her and hugs Tamsyn.

Tamsyn freezes under Harry's arms before, very slowly, she returns the hug as she buries her face into his hair. They both squeeze one another, neither really wanting to let the other go for the longest one. For one fleeting moment, Harry is pulled back to the abandoned classroom Dumbledore found them in, where they sat alone; just the two of them finding comfort in one another.

After another moment, they broke apart. Stepping away from each other, the two of them share a small smile.

Mrs. Weasley looks moments of saying something borderline embarrassing as she calls Tamsyn over to her before. With one last look shared between both Harry and Her, they leave. Packing up Harry's things didn't take long for how little that he had in the room even with Dumbledore delivering his trunk from the Dursleys. Thankfully, Tom, The Innkeeper, was more than willing to shrink his trunk for him to carry. The next hour passed in a blur of learning how to use the floo, arriving at the Burrow with Ron and Percy, meeting the twins once more, and introducing Harry to their little sister, Ginny; who blushed and ran away from him after he said hello to her.

Ron spent the rest of the time showing him around his home -a real magical home!- "It's not much, but it's home," he had told Harry sheepishly, but Harry thought it was brilliant! As they were coming down the steps of that lead up to all the bedrooms, the floor flared once more.

"Brilliant! Mum must be coming back; I'm starving," Ron said with a grin right before a figure was thrown from the fireplace in a spin, causing Ron's smile to drop in horror.

For standing in his living room, looking lost and frazzled, was Tamsyn Riddle clutching her bag to her chest with wild eyes and a slightly green complexion. Both Harry and Ron were almost too busy looking at her in shock and amazement; they almost missed Ron's mother stepping from the floor next, dusting ash and soot off of herself.

Mrs. Weasley looks over to both of them with a smile and a glint of mischief in her eyes as she catches Harry's look. "It seems we'll be having one more guest for the summer," she tells them with a sweet smile.

---

The Burrow.

Mrs. Weasley had somehow talked the matron of Tamsyn's group home into letting her stay at the Weasley home for the rest of the summer. A fact that had both Tamsyn and himself smiling over it no matter how long it was ago. Not even Ron's dad, Arthur Weasley, was mad at the fact. He had simply returned from work at dinner time with a call to his family and a kiss on his wife's cheek before taking a seat at the table and beginning to eat with his family. It wasn't until he asked for someone to pass the salt that he finally noticed two more people sitting in his home seeing that it was Tamsyn that passed it to him.

Mr. Weasley paused as he stared at Tamsyn, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"Molly love, did you have two more children when I wasn't looking?" He asked, looking down the table to his wife on the other end. Without missing a beat, Mrs. Weasley looks up from her meal to look her husband in the eye.

"Yes, I also had an affair with the milkman to have them," she told him deadpan before taking a bite of chicken.

"Ah!" Mr. Weasley exclaimed. "That would explain the darker hair," he said with a fond smile that had his wife chuckling before he turned back to Harry and Tamsyn, who were sitting next to one another. "You must be Harry Potter; Ron and the Twins have had nothing but good things to say about you," he tells Harry with a smile; Harry smiles back as Mr. Weasley turns to Tamsyn. "But I don't think I know you," he offers with a raised brow.

"Oh- yes, my name is Tamsyn Riddle, sir. Your wife offered to let me stay over the summer with Harry; I'm his friend," Tamsyn replied with a polite smile and a nod, one that Mr. Weasley returned.

"Well, the more the merrier, I suppose," he told her before taking a sip of his drink, and a look of curiosity came over his face. "Riddle, that's a muggle name isn't it?" He asked turning back to Tamsyn, his eyes lighting up.

"Yes,...sir," Tamsyn said as she fought to keep the smile on her face, Harry frowned as he could see her bunching her skirt in a fist from her own anger at the subject.

"Excellent! Maybe you could help me with a question about muggles then, tell me," Mr. Weasley says as he looks back at his plate to cut up his food. "What is the function of a rubber ducky?" He asked Tamsyn before taking a bite of his own chicken and began to chew. Harry nearly laughed at the bafflement on Tamsyn's face at the question as amusement danced in Mr. Weasley's eyes.

Tamsyn wouldn't say it, but Harry was pretty sure she hated staying with the Weasleys. Too many people and too little space, and she had to share a room with Ginny at night the soon-to-be first year had taken to Tamsyn like an older sister asking all sorts of questions- needless to say, Tamsyn hated it and for the life of Harry, he couldn't figure out why she was putting up with it. They spent most of their time outside of the Burrow as being in the countryside was a bit of an oddity for two kids who grew up in the suburbs and downtown London. When they weren't doing chores or when Harry wasn't hanging out with the Twins and Ron, he and Tamsyn spent most of their time in the apple orchard behind the property reading and enjoying the quiet together.

While the Weasley children complain about the chores, Tamsyn and Harry do them without complaint. From mundane things of feeding the chickens, to the more magical of de-gnoming the garden. Both Harry and Tamsyn agreed that helping Mrs. Weasley with the household chores where she had taught them both housekeeping charms and old family spells passed down from mother to daughter and father to son over the space of years.

When Tamsyn brought up the Law against underage magic, Mrs. Weasley brushed it aside with a weird frown on her face.

"The law was created to protect the secret of our world dear and mainly for Muggleborns, sadly enough," Molly explained with a disappointed shake of her head. "You'll find in most magical communities that while it is illegal, it's often overlooked so long as the children have responsible supervision around," she told them as she waved her wand to set the kitchen table for supper.

"So the law mainly targets Mu-Muggleborns and their parents because the Ministry doesn't think of them as responsible?" Tamsyn asked politely, her brow raised but an angry look in her eyes.

"I'm afraid so," Molly said with a flat and angry look.

Harry had no idea why that had made Tamsyn angry. He had tried to ask but she deflected the question, anger still simmering in her blue eyes whenever he asked. But both he and Tamsyn learned a lot of useful charms from Mrs. Weasley: how to make vegetables bigger to feed more people, how to charm knives to slice and chop things, a charm to set the table, and one that would make the dishes clean themselves.

"If only I could do that at the Dursleys," Harry had thought sourly to himself when Molly was teaching them. It was a dark thought that sent him spiraling into memories of all the times he had broken a dish or burnt something only to be yelled at, hurt, and forced into the cupboard. He hated remembering these things, especially at the Burrow- a house that couldn't be more different than the Dursleys. It was these times that Harry would seek out isolation, to be alone with his thoughts and old pains but he would never be alone for long.

It was as if Tamsyn knew what he was doing or thinking at any or every moment of the day and came to find him. She would never talk or ask questions; she would just sit next to him as a silent, accepting company. Leaning on him slightly just to show Harry she was there for him and him alone, it was…comforting to him as he leaned against her as well.

It was during one of these times, a few weeks after he and Tamsyn had come to stay at the Burrow, did Mrs. Weasley came calling for Harry.

For one heart-stopping moment, Harry panicked because he thought he had done something wrong and Molly was going to send him back to the Dursleys. But instead of his dark thoughts becoming reality, all Mrs. Weasley wanted was to introduce him to someone.

He was a lanky man with sandy blond hair, small scars lining his face, and dark bags set under his eyes. He was pale, almost sickly so, with a bone-deep weariness set deep in his hunched form as he was preparing himself a cuppa. He wore a worn-down muggle tweed suit with patches sewn into his elbows and along the bottom of the blazer. His icy blue eyes looked up as Harry and Tamsyn entered the kitchen, and in them flashed so many emotions that Harry wasn't sure he caught them all. Regret, sadness, anger, surprise, were the few Harry caught flickering through the man's eyes as he looked at him.

The man suddenly coughs lightly into his hand. "Excuse me," he says before standing from his seat and walking over to Harry. "While this isn't the first time we've met, I do believe this is the first time that you would remember," the sick man says with a sad smile. "I'm Remus Lupin; I was a," he supplies before Harry cuts him off.

"Friend of my mom and dad," Harry says, looking at the man with wide eyes.

"Yes, though I was more of a friend with James if I was being honest," Remus tells him with a smile before sticking out his hand to shake Harry's. "It's nice to meet you again, Harry," he says as Harry stares at his hand. There was an awkward moment of Harry just looking at the man's hand, causing Remus to turn to Molly in confusion. It wasn't until Tamsyn gave Harry a small shove that caused him to snap out of his melancholy and take that final step forward to shake the man's hand.

Harry couldn't help it. The question slipped from his mouth before he could stop himself as he looked up at Remus' eyes.

"Where have you been all this time?" Harry asks, and watches as that same sadness for the moment Remus saw Harry return with a vengeance.

"I haven't been…well," Remus says with a face of a lifetime of regrets bubbling to the surface. "I haven't been well for almost eleven years," he tells Harry with a sad smile.

---

Chapter done!

Molly Weasley: "The elites don't want you to know this but the orphans at the Leaky Cauldron are free. You can take them home, I have two Orphans."

And boy howdy, it has been a  month  for me. Seasonal depression and burnout has been hitting me hard as well as one of my brothers passing away and having to see my family again.

(Please don't, I don't like any of them at all)

But I was able to do another chapter of pure fluff for my own soul, which has been somewhat of a balm to my spirit.

Y'all have some happy holidays.

Kingsaxcul, out!

Chapter 5: The Last Compartment on the Right.

Welcome back to another Tamsyn Chapter. Some of my favorite chapters to write.

On with the show.

---

Tamsyn Riddle, the last compartment on the left, September 1st.

Staying with the Weasley family was a trial for her, the chaos, the people, being forced to share a room with a silly little girl who would make moon eyes at Harry whenever he was in the room. It was the last one that she hated the most- the girl had her head in the clouds with silly little fantasies flitting about. Something Tamsyn didn't doubt that the real world would shatter as soon as little Ginny left her mother's protective embrace. But whenever Ginny made eyes at HER Harry, something ugly and hungry roared in her chest.

Dark emotions and thoughts were nothing new to Tamsyn- even on her best days, they floated in her mind and her heart; it was only when Harry was around that these dark thoughts and feelings never entered her.

But Ginny making cow eyes pushed her patience like nothing else before, even with Harry around Tamsyn had vivid fantasies of plucking Ginny Weasley's eyes from her skull and crushing them in her hands. To force the pulped remains down her throat, to use her magic to make the silly little girl burn and bleed and scream and cry…

Not even the annoying actions of Fred and George, with their insipid pranks, caused her such distress.

But for everything that she hated about staying with The Weasley family, she didn't… dislike it. It was a true oddity for Tamsyn to stay with a family unit so tightly knitted like the Weasley family coming from a group home that had happily ignored Tamsyn's existence. Molly was the oddest to Tamsyn, she was powerful- dangerously powerful, more so than anyone outside a few Tamsyn had met in her life. But the woman, with all her power, seemed to be quite content with her role as a stay-at-home mother. Molly Weasley seemed to know a charm for nearly anything that needed to be done, from sewing and washing dishes to cooking a roast to perfection and dicing vegetables to the perfect size; it didn't escape Tamsyn's notice that the spells could work on anything with the right amount of power. But Molly seemed to happily hold herself back to play her role as a housewife.

And what was a housewife without her husband? Arthur Weasley, on the outside, seemed to be just another eccentric wizard obsessed with muggles, but if one would ignore his eccentricity and see it as what it truly was, one would see the mad genius that had his beneath it all. His endless questions and curiosity about muggle inventions had lent themselves to his endless tinkering in his shed. He asked questions to understand how things worked so he could tinker and enchant them as best he could. He had shown her the old Ford he had broken down and enchanted in ways that only muggle Syfy literature could come up with. The car could fly, turn invisible, had multiple expansion charms layered over each other but the best thing was that it didn't use petrol fuel. It ran off of pure magic that was pulled from the driver and passengers passively from riding in it, a grown wizard or witch could drive the car for as long as they lived.

It was…a staggering contrast to how some of her fellow Slytherins spoke about the Weasley family. They often spoke of the squalor they lived in due to their financial problems from a gambling forefather from a few generations ago. Even their ancestral seat on the Wizengamot was held in permanent limbo until the family paid back the staggering amount of gold owed to other families. Tamsyn knew it couldn't be as bad as they told her, the blue-bloods that made up her house wouldn't know squalor from the lower middle class that the Weasley family was; the silver spoon permanently stuck in their mouth seemed to have blinded them from what true squalor was.

Tamsyn had…enjoyed staying at the Weasley's, as much as a person like her was able to. There were no morning prayers, fewer chores that had to be done, and a lot more food than what was in the group home- underfunded as it was. There was never enough food to go around, largely relying on donations from the church, and one could only eat so many casseroles until one could stomach it no more. But at the Weasley's, Molly always had a snack to feed the children under her watch and every meal was stacked with food to feed all the hungry mouths at the table. Sure, the Weasleys didn't have the gold to spoil their children, but none went to bed hungry, and that- to Tamsyn, was something worth more than any galleon.

Her stay also held no lack of surprising intelligent and curious conversations. Whether with Arthur and his tinkering or Molly with her wand work, Percy with his studies into the government and foreign affairs, or even Ron with his chess skills.

If it wasn't for Harry, all that smothering love from a family unit wouldn't have driven her insane, but luckily, Harry was always willing to sneak off with her to the orchards for long moments of quiet. Only once did Molly ask where they would get off to and after being told she had checked on them once. It struck Tamsyn as odd that the overprotective woman would allow her and Harry to wander that far from the house without adult supervision with Sirius Black running around, but the woman didn't seem to be worried about it.

Tamsyn was sure Molly had more subtle and magical means of keeping track of them while on the property, but she never asked how in respect for the family's privacy, even if her curiosity burned to know.

Then there was Remus Lupin, the very thought of the man would ignite a flame of pure rage in her heart. He had abandoned Harry to those disgusting Muggles, left him in hands that Tamsyn was sure had hurt him, and had the gaul to show up years later to try and get into Harry's good graces. She wanted to gnash her teeth in rage; she wanted to pull him apart piece by screaming piece; she wanted to see how his organs pooled upon the floor, hot and wet with blood. But sadly, she couldn't; he had ingrained himself with Harry by sharing stories of Lily and James Potter with him, and it sickened her to see. She did all she could to keep them away from one another when he visited the Burrow, bar from directly telling Harry not to talk to the raggedy man. Remus had even come to see Harry off to Hogwarts, pleading with him to be careful and stay within the grounds.

Because, of course, the dark cloud of Sirius Black had to loom over everything they did.

Even here, in her compartment, she could feel it. The whispers of younger children speaking of Black like he was the boogeyman come to life to snatch away any misbehaving children. Some of the older years weighed the possibility of Black showing up at Hogwarts to seek bloody vengeance against the one who had stopped his cousin's carnage and chaos. Tamsyn herself hoped that Black would turn up in the halls of Hogwarts, just so she could kill him herself. She would plea self-defense and she doubted many would care that she had killed him to look much deeper into it. But the brewing dark thoughts were pushed aside when the compartment door rolled open and Harry's smiling face looked back at her.

"Hey, Tamsyn!" Harry says, his smile alone lighting up like the sun and parting the dark clouds from Tamsyn's thoughts. "How's the ride been for you?" He asks as he takes a seat across from her.

Tamsyn smiles back at him. "Quite for the most part, which is a lovely change after the Burrow," she informs him. For a moment guilt flashes in Harry's eye, confusing Tamsyn; she had no idea why Harry would feel guilty about her not liking the Burrow.

"Ah, yeah…" Harry says, his eyes falling from his face to look at the floor.

"What brought you to my compartment?" Tamsyn quickly asks, hoping to distract Harry from whatever guilty thoughts he was having. "Weren't you going to spend most of the ride with the other two?" She asks, Harry had been missing the Mudblood bookworm with her trip to France over the summer and was looking forward to seeing her again.

"Yeah," he says, his voice becoming thick with disappointment. "She started asking questions again…" he says with a small sigh before taking the seat across from her. Tamsyn frowned at Harry's offered excuse, she had always disliked that want-to-know-it-all mudblood. They fell once more into the comfortable silence they were known to share, both had turned to look out the rain-splattered window; enjoying the silent company as the sun began to set beyond the horizon.

It was in moments like these that both Orphans finally thought they belonged…

Until a sudden screech could be heard as the train began to abruptly stop, sending Tamsyn flying out of her seat and sailing across the compartment. An inappropriate scream left Tamsyn's lips as she hurdled toward the other side of the compartment; but in what seemed like a blink of an eye, Harry was there to catch her.

"Tamsyn!" He cries right before she crashes into him, sending them both slamming into the seat behind him. After landing, they stay frozen in a head with arms wrapped around each other as Tamsyn slowly looks up to the shining emerald eyes of Harry. "Are you okay?" He asks softly, causing a blush to creep across her face.

She immediately extracts herself from his arms (though she wanted to stay in them for some reason) and stands before straightening her robes. "Yes, I'm fine," she quickly says before turning away from him. "...thank you," she says softly before the lights in the compartment and all across the train cut off.

"What's going on?" Harry says quickly as Tamsyn hears him stand up. "We can't already be at Hogsmeade, can we?" He asks.

"No," Tamsyn says firmly before looking out for the compartment door in the dark. "There is no way we reached the school by now," she informs Harry as her hand finds the latch on the door and locks it before closing the blinds.

"What are you doing?" Harry asks with a slight panic in his voice as it breaks through the dark.

"I'm locking the door, you need to get down; now," Tamsyn orders him before turning around in the dark, and reaching for him.

"What? Why?" He asks quickly, the panic surging in his voice.

"Harry, think!" She hiss at him as she grabs the front of his robes and begins to pull him down the floor. "There is only one reason the train stopped, and that is if someone stopped it," she points out, only for Harry to freeze.

"Sirius Black," he all but hisses through his teeth. "Tamsyn! Let me go! I need to go-"

"Nowhere!" She all but screams at him. "You need to get down and get behind me, now!" She snaps at him as she tries with all her might to force him to the floor. "He won't touch him! He won't hurt him while I'm still breathing," she fervently thinks to herself.

"What about Ron and Hermione, I need to-" Harry once more tries to convince Tamsyn, but the lady serpent wasn't having it.

"Do nothing!" Tamsyn once again snaps at Harry. "Think Harry! Wherever you are, you are a danger to those around you because of Black! He'll kill everyone one to get to you unless he is killed first," She tells him in a hard voice before finally shoving him to the floor. "Now stay down until we know the coast is clear," she informs him before turning back to the door and pulling out her wand.

"But what about-"

"Harry!" She turns to him with a hiss of frustration and snake tongue. "Harry, I am older and far more powerful than a lot of the fools in the years above me. Besides, I don't have to kill him- just busy him long enough for Professor Slughorn to get here," she quickly tells him before turning back to the door with a hard look in her eyes. While it was true that Professor Slughorn was on the train and would no doubt help, she wasn't playing on letting it get that far. For as soon as she saw the hide or hair of Black, she was going to kill him.

Her breath came out like mist as an unholy chill entered the air, Tamsyn froze at the feeling; watching in confusion as frost and ice began to creep their way across the windows. Screams began to echo down the train as whatever was causing this skulked down the corridor of the train, and before Tamsyn knew it she was shaking for some odd reason.

"Demon child," the head sister hisses in anger at her as she is dragged along the halls of the group home.

Tamsyn's head whips around, looking for the matron in the compartment on the train; her eyes wide with fear.

"He was wrong, Father," the matron demands right outside of her door. "The appraiser was wrong, she is possessed! I know it!" She nearly screams.

Tamsyn blinks before taking a step back from the door, her breathing becoming erratic as she hears the latch of the door coming undone.

Her wrists were burning from the ropes that held her in place. She screamed as she struggled against the hands that grabbed at her ankles pulling the straight to bind her leg so she wouldn't kick. "Stop it! Stop it! I didn't do it! It wasn't me!" She screamed as loud as her nine-year-old lungs could, begging and pleading for them to stop but they didn't as they bound her legs.

She trips and falls backwards, her head striking the wall, she looks over to Harry and in the dark, she can see him shaking as if he was having a fit of some kind. The compartment door slowly sliding open draws her attention as a hooded figure slowly opens the door before sticking its head in and begins to…sniff? As if it was scenting the air.

It loomed over both of them with a tattered black cloak handing off its form, it let out a rattling breath that seemed to choke the light from the rest of the dark. A grey scab-riddled hand pulls from the folds of the dark cloak, it is a slimy, dead-looking thing reaching toward her and Harry. Tamsyn throws herself over Harry's shaking form to protect him as she shuts her eyes tightly as the Latin chants to cast out demons scream in her mind.

There was a crash and a bang as warmth began to return to the cabin with a soft silver light. Tamsyn risks opening her eyes and turning to the entrance to see an awe-inducing sight of a hound, twice as big as any she had ever seen, savaging the creature. It screeches as the hound's fangs sink into its shoulder before shaking its head and throwing it into the door to the other compartment before standing before her and Harry protectively.

"Foul beast," a new voice calls down the corridor, hard and wrathful. "Sirius Black is not on the train, take you and your ilk and leave," the voice says with wroth. Irish Gorse once more wraps around Tamsyn's throat as the shadows cast by the silver light of the hound begin to extend and wrap around everything like stocks of thorns. The cloaked creature bends unnaturally and crawls up the wall and hangs off the ceiling as its cloak bellows and floats as if it was underwater; facing the voice. "Enough of this," Scáthach says in a flat emotionless tone before a spell of crimson red, the color of freshly spelt bloody, strikes the creature.

A horrible screech fills the train, like a cross between an animal dying and a wet gurgle as the creature fell to the floor; writhing in pain as stocks of iron thorns began to stroup from its body. The creature begins to tear out the thorns before finally fleeing through the back exit of the train; screeching into the storm.

With a wave of her wand, Scáthach dismisses the spectral hound before with another flick, all the lights turned back on; only for her to turn and see Tamsyn protecting Harry.

"Miss Riddle," Scáthach greets Tamsyn, her red eyes resting wearily on her wand. "How about we lower the wand, the danger has passed for now," she says calmly as she takes a step toward Tamsyn with her hands raised.

"Harry," Tamsyn mumbles as her wand shakes.

Scáthach blinks as her eyes travel to the second prone form that Tamsyn was protecting. "What happened to him? Did they grab him? Maybe tried to kiss him?" She asks with an emotionless tone but her blood-red eyes are filled with such rage.

Tamsyn slowly lowers her wand, before moving off of Harry. "He-he just started having some kind of- of fit? When that- that thing opened the compartment door," she informs the older woman as Scáthach swoops into the room to kneel next to Harry just as the compartment across the way slides open.

"-Going to find out what is going on-" Hermione snaps at someone in the compartment before turning to look across the way. "HARRY!?" She screams before charging into the cabin that Tamsyn, Scáthach and Harry are in. "What's wrong with him!? What did you do to him!?" The bookworm says as she rounds on Tamsyn a look of horror and blame on her face and in her eyes.

"Me!?" Tamsyn says, her fear edding away to anger as she turns on Hermione. "I haven't done anything to him! I was protecting him!" She snaps right back at Hermione as the two girls begin to glare at each other.

"Hermione. Tamsyn. How about you two-" Ron tries to cut in but is quickly ignored as the two continue as Scáthach moves Harry to one of the benches.

"Don't give me that, I've seen the types of books you read- the ones from the Restricted Section full of dark magic," Hermione says, stepping up to Tamsyn with a glare.

"What I read is none of your concern, you nosy little Mud-" Tamsyn begins to growl back, but is cut off by a single hard word.

"Enough," Scáthach says with a flair of her magic, quickly silencing the two bickering girls. "If you two can't behave, I will have to ask you to leave," she intones as her eyes never leave Harry as she checks him over. "And for your information, Miss Hermione, Mister Potter is suffering from a severe reaction to a Dementor's presence; not from anything Miss Riddle could have done," she supplies as she stands to look back at the gaggle of students at the cabin door.

Hermione takes a step back but keeps glaring at Tamsyn but before either could say anything a groan leaves Harry. "Harry!" Hermione calls out and moves to go sit next to him, but as she does Tamsyn flicks her wand casting the tripping hex and causing the girl to crash to the floor. Tamsyn swiftly makes her way to Harry's side, pointedly ignoring the glare from Hermione and the amused smile from Scáthach to take her seat next to Harry.

"Harry?" Tamsyn says softly, taking one of Harry's hands into hers. "Harry, can you hear me?" She asks.

"Tamsyn…" He says groggily before slowly opening his eyes, where emerald meets dark blue, Tamsyn smiles in relief. "What happened? Were you screaming? Did you slam the door on that…thing?" Harry asks, sounding so very lost.

"No Harry, Professor Árd-Greimne chased it away after you fell unconscious," Tamsyn explains gently as Hermione pushed herself off the ground to stand.

"Huh?" Harry intones before looking past Tamsyn to the compartment full of people, his eyes widening at the sight of Scáthach. "Oh, er- tha- thank you," he murmurs as he avoids looking at the new professor.

Scáthach merely smiles at Harry. "Think nothing of it Harry, my informal position as the defense teacher is the protection of the castle and all who reside in it. I am just a bit disappointed in myself that I didn't arrive in time to chase the Dementor away before you had succumbed to its powers," she tells him, a sorrowful look in her eyes but her smile never wavering.

"Was- was I the only one who passed out?" Harry asks with a shiver.

"A bit too early to tell, but as of right now; yes," Scáthach informs him before tucking her wand away and looking back at Harry, seeing the shame on his face. "None of that now, Harry," she intones, causing Harry to look back at her. "I've known grown men to faint in the presence of a dementor; do not judge yourself unfairly, Harry," she tells him with a soft smile before turning to the rest of the children gathered in the cabin. "Now, with the immediate threat dealt with, I will be returning to the front with Horace. I'll get the trolley to come down the aisle to pass out some chocolate to all the students on my sickle, make sure he eats all of it," she informs everyone but turns to Tamsyn and nods at Harry before leaving them.

Tamsyn turns back to Harry as he sits up, his hand still in hers, his eyes downcast with a forlorn look in his eyes. A look that felt like a twisting knife in Tamsyn's stomach to see on his face.

"Harry?" Tamsyn says softly, ducking her head to try and catch his eyes. "What is it?" She asks.

"I thought… I heard screaming and i-" Harry shakes his head before pulling his hand from Tamsyn's. "Sorry- I just-" he didn't finish what he was going to say before standing up and walking out of the cabin.

"Harry?" Tamsyn calls after him before standing. "Harry, what's the matter?" She asks as he walks over to the last compartment on the right-hand side and shuts the door without another word. "Harry!?" Tamsyn says as she walks toward the closed cabin door before the insipid bloody know it all Mudblood steps in her way. "Move!" Tamsyn all but growls at the girl as she gets nose-to-nose with her.

"No," Hermione says, nearly baring her teeth right back at Tamsyn. "He obviously wants to be left alone, even from you- so do us all a favor and stay away from him," she says in a sharp tone.

Tamsyn takes a deep breath to calm herself. "What is your problem with me?" she asks, quietly, calmly, and respectfully to the annoyance in front of her.

"You give me the creeps," Hermione states flatly as she looks Tamsyn in the eyes with a cold flat look.

"What?" Tamsyn asks, confused on what this annoying little shit was going on about. All Tamsyn wanted to do was cut out the little Mudblood's tongue before shoving it somewhere unpleasant. Hermione's eyes narrow at her.

"Like that," Hermione points out as Ron's eyes flick between the two girls with an unsure look on his face; not knowing who to back. "Every time you look at me like that I get goosebumps, like something isn't right- like you want to hurt me," she revealed as uncrossed her arms and pulled back the sleeves on her robes. Tamsyn looked down and saw the younger girl wasn't lying, goose flesh had coated her arms. "I don't know what's going through that head of yours, but I'm sure it's rather unpleasant; something I would like to keep away from Harry. He has a hard enough life as it is," she states before recrossing her arms.

Tamsyn, however, has had enough of the mouthy little bookworm.

Her wand twitches as she hisses a spell in her ancestor's tongue, the door to the cabin snapping shut behind Hermione. The fear and shock in her eyes was of the sweetest look Tamsyn has ever seen her wear, Hermione's hand shoots for her wand but is stopped as Tamsyn wraps her wand hand around her wrist. With another hiss, she throws up a silencing charm over the cabin before her free hand wraps around Hermione's dainty little throat and slams her against the door.

For the first time in a long time, the mask of the prim and proper girl falls away to reveal the monster that hid underneath…

"Listen to me, you filthy little Mudblood," Tamsyn snarls into the frightened face of Hermione. "Nothing is going to stop me from seeing my Harry. Not you, not that cow eyed little cunt, not anyone. He. Is. Mine," she growls at the scared girl as she keeps her hand firmly in place around her neck, tight enough to send a message but not hard enough to leave a bruise. "If you so far as even hint to Harry about staying away from me, I will know, and when I do find out you'll have… let's call it a happy little accident- well, happy for me, that is," she says with a cruel smile as her eyes shined brightly with the promise the violence and bloodshed.

"I'll- I'll tell-" Hermione gasps out, cut off by Tamsyn.

"Tell? Tell who?" She asks as she pushes herself against Hermione leaning down to whisper into her ear. "No one at Hogwarts would believe you, I'm a model student with perfect grades, I'm a shoe in for prefect next year because I have my head of house wrapped around my little finger- and if you even think about telling Harry, I'll carve out your eyes and your ovaries and switch them," she says before letting out a small giggle and taking a step back from Hermione so the other girl could take in the uncaring face of just who Tamsyn truly was.

Hermione looks at Tamsyn with such fear that it almost makes Tamsyn purr from just the look alone, but then the bookworm's eyes harden in challenge.

"Fine, but we'll see who gets the last laugh," Hermione says, her tone hard and unyielding as Tamsyn flicks her wand and undoes her spell work, and slips back on her mask.

"Oh, I'm sure we will, Hermione," Tamsyn says with a polite grin as Ron slides the door open.

"Everything… okay?" He asks as if he could sense the charge in the atmosphere of the cabin, his eyes narrowing at Tamsyn a bit.

"Of course, Ron. Me and Hermione just had to have a little chat," Tamsyn says with a charming smile. "Why don't you two run along now, check on Ginny and the twins, make sure they're okay," she tells them as Hermione steps out of the cabin, her eyes never leaving Tamsyn.

"I think-" Ron begins to say before Hermione grabs his hand and cuts him off.

"A marvelous idea? I quite agree with you, Ron," Hermione quickly says before turning and dragging Ron with her and flees down the corridor of the train.

Tamsyn stepped into the hall, watching them fly away from her compartment; Ron asked what was wrong as Hermione shot glances over her shoulder at Tamsyn. The Heir of Slytherin just smiles at the fleeing Mudblood before turning back to the last compartment on the right; knocking on the door before opening it.

"Harry?" Tamsyn calls out, in a somber voice as she opens the door. "I know you wanted to be alone, but I'm worried about you," she intones softly before walking into the compartment and closing the door behind her.

---

Chapter done!

And boy howdy has the mask been dropped in front of Hermione, will this come back to bite Tamsyn? Probably, but no time soon.

A little more of Scáthach in my life is what I need in my life.

But hope y'all enjoyed the new chapter.

Kingsaxcul, out!

Chapter 6: The Great Hall

Another chapter of this little story.

On with the show.

---

Harry Potter, October 31st, outside the secret entrance to Gryffindor after dinner.

"Why it was that lout everyone has been on about, Headmaster," the mad Knight says as his visor falls over his face. "That man, Sirius Black did this," he points out as he shoves the visor back up to look at the shocked faces of the Headmaster, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Árd-Greimne. The woman whom Harry so affectionately called Teacher's head whips around, her blood-red eyes wide and searching the crowd of students before they land on Harry. Something passes through them when Scáthach sees Harry standing in the crowd of students that were now all looking at Harry.

Harry watches as Professor Árd-Greimne leans over and catches the headmaster's attention, whispering into his ear for a moment before he takes turns and looks at him. Whatever Árd-Greimne said to him must have convinced him as he nodded to her before turning his attention to the gathered students.

"All students are to return to the Great Hall immediately, I repeat, all students are to return to the Great Hall immediately," Dumbledore announces with his wand pointed at his throat to magically enhance his voice to the Gryffindors assembled on the stairs.

"Harry!" Percy Weasley calls out as he is flanked by the twins and Ginny. "Come on, we're heading to the Great Hall. I want you, Ron, and Hermione with Ginny in between me, Fred, and George," he tells the trio quickly as he gestures to them to start moving. "If there is any trouble, I want you four to start-" he continues to speak as the twins fall back, both having their wands out. But before he could finish, he was cut off by someone else- the same person who placed her hand on Harry's shoulder to stop him from continuing down the stairs.

"A fine plan Mister Weasley," Professor Árd-Greimne says, causing most people surrounding Harry to turn and look at her. "You should continue with it, but I'll be the one escorting Mister Potter to the Great Hall," she tells Percy, whose lips were pressed into a thin line, but he nods his head.

"All right, you lot heard the Professor; let's get moving," Percy intones before waving his hands to get everyone moving.

Hermione and Ron look toward Harry as Percy's Goose steps down the staircase; Harry nods at them, showing them he is okay. It does little to settle the look on Hermione's face but both of them nod back towards Harry before turning away.

"Come along, Mister Potter," Scáthach urges him as they walk down the stairs, but instead of following the crowd of the students, they paled off to the left, taking them into a corridor leading in the opposite direction of the Great Hall.

"Teacher?" Harry says, looking up toward the woman leading him away from the crowd. "Where are we going?" He asks Scáthach, and like always, she has an answer for him.

"We're taking the back way to the Great Hall," Scáthach tells him, her eyes alert as they sweep the corridor for any threat that may be hiding in the shadows. Harry falls quiet at his teacher's side, with her hand never leaving his shoulder as his mind wanders over the last few months under Scáthach's tutelage.

Scáthach Árd-Greimne was an oddity when she first started teaching at Hogwarts; she was an Irish national who was teaching at England's premier magic school. Something that some of the Slytherin students made it their mission to remind her at almost every turn, even Draco Malfoy went out of his way to do so. Snide comments under their breath, always asking "If she was sure that's how it was taught" when asking questions, talking about the welfare of the Irish Circles within earshot of her. The only person who didn't do this from what Harry saw was Tamsyn; his friend seemed to hang onto every word that left the Professor's mouth with some intent to find deeper meaning in them.

But through all the muttered words and undermining that they did, Scáthach Árd-Greimne weathered it all undeterred from what she saw as her path in life.

Punishments were swift to be handed out to anyone disrespectful or trying to undermine her. Point lost, and detention was handed out like they were going out of style in the school; nearly all of Slytherin had, at one point or another, faced Professor Árd-Greimne wrath, as well as Ravenclaw and Gryffindor members who tried to emulate their Slytherin counterparts. The only ones who seemed to be immune to her wrath were the Hufflepuffs, but they tended to get along with most people, so Harry really didn't look too deep into it.

But throughout the hazing and disrespect, Professor Árd-Greimne didn't falter in the reason she had come to Hogwarts and her classes quickly became the most popular in the school. She was an inexhaustible font of knowledge and wisdom in all things magic and warfare, classes were a mix of open discussion, learning spells, history of magical warfare, and mock battles. It also helped that she was one of the few teachers in the school whose homework never went over six inches of parchment on what they learned in class that week due that Friday; and on Monday she would go over the most common misunderstandings her students had before sitting down with the others that had problems with specific things in her lessons.

But beyond the classroom, she quickly climbed to the illustrious position of Harry's favorite teacher when she invited him for tea after the first week of classes.

"So, how have you been feeling, Mister Potter?" She had asked as she poured them both a cuppa before pushing a small plate of biscuits toward him. "I was a bit worried about you after the Dementor attack," she admitted, picking up her mug to take a sip.

"Oh, Er-," Harry intones eloquently as he pauses while reaching for a chocolate chip biscuit. "I'm- I'm fine," he says before looking away as he nibbles on his biscuit. He didn't want to remember the train ride to Hogwarts, the hooded and cloaked figure that looked like drowned death and brought all the horrors of his life rushing back in a bone-chilling winter wind.

Scáthach hums non-committedly for a moment. "You'll have to excuse me if I don't believe you on that front, Mister Potter," she informs Harry as she places her mug down and looks across the table to Harry. "I've studied dark creatures the world over and there are very few worse than the Dementors of the Formorians," She intones as she picks up a biscuit and takes a bite out of it.

"Formorians?" Harry asks, perking up at the information. "I thought they were from Azkaban and Ekrizdis created them? Or at least that's the current theory," Harry points out, confused at Professor Árd-Greimne words. The woman herself blinks at him in complete surprise before smiling softly at him.

"My oh my, such a learned boy at such a young age as well," Scáthach praises him as she hides her mouth behind her hand, causing Harry to blush at her words. "But while that is a current theory in the English Wizarding World, the circles of Ireland have a much longer memory than those men who think our stories are just that; stories," she tells him before taking another sip of her tea to wash down the biscuit. "But we've long known the origin of the Dementors, and that is their sire by the name of Balor the Baneful," she informs Harry as her face scrunches into something like distaste.

"Whose that?" Harry asked with a frown as he wracked his brain for the name, but came up empty-handed.

"Balor the Baneful was a dark wizard from the age of myth, he was a part of a cabal of dark wizards and witches known as the Formorians," Scáthach says as her demeanor changes, switching from the kind woman sitting in front of him to the the teacher he was now used to seeing. "The Formorians dedicated themselves to spreading fear over the islands, and Balor was particularly interested in the fear of pain. He thought that causing suffering to others would infuse the magic and rituals of that era with more power thanks to the heightened emotions during the sacrifice. He wasn't wrong- but throughout his experimentations, he created something new using the suffering forms of a Lethifold and a drowning Muggle," she says with a disgusted look on her face.

"So, he just… combined them? With a ritual? Can you even do that?" Harry asks as he feels his skin crawl at the subject matter.

"I personally don't think he meant it to happen at all, but the stories are… unclear about his intent, just that he enjoyed causing fear and misery among all living things so he certainly didn't complain about his creation," his teacher informs him before taking another sip of her tea and putting her mug down. "But he had created his perfect weapon no matter his intent, Dementor's pulls the most painful memories of its victims to the surface of their minds while smothering all their happy ones," Scáthach says with a shake of her head.

"But not everyone… faints," Harry says, his eyes downcast and looking into the murky water of his tea.

"No, not everyone," Scáthach tells him, her fingers drumming on the table between them. "It is an understudied phenomenon, but the current theory is that when someone has… a disproportionate amount of pain and trauma in their lives, more unhappy memories than happy ones, they are more susceptible to the effects of the Dementor," she says and Harry could feel her eyes burning into the top of his head as if she was expecting something. But as the moment drags on without Harry saying a single word, Scáthach sighs before speaking once more. "Mister- Harry, I know you know that I have my suspicions about what your home life is like-"

"It's fine," Harry quickly supplies through gritted teeth, jerking his head up at her accusation to look into her eyes as if to challenge her.

"Hmm, I'm sure it's fine for someone," She supplies right back, not looking away from Harry's livid glare. "But I need you to understand Harry, I just want to help- I want to make sure what you've suffered through, whatever that may be, doesn't happen again," she says, her eyes losing the hard demeanor and softening greatly as she looks at him. Harry could see it too, her willingness to help- her want to protect, something he had never seen before in any of his other teacher's eyes. "So, I'll ask once more, how did you get the bruise on your cheek, the one you had when we first met?" she asks in a soft, pleading tone.

Harry had almost told her, the words almost sprayed from his throat and slipped past his lips like a confession; but in the end, he didn't. He had simply dropped his eyes again and told her he had fallen and she had sighed.

It didn't stop her from inviting him back to tea, however. Every Saturday at one in the afternoon found Harry back in his teacher's classroom for an hour where they would sit and talk or she would help him work through any homework or classwork he was stuck on. She would tell him stories about her homeland and tales of her own battles fought, she had even started teaching him spells outside of the curriculum. Professor Árd-Greimne had told him that a few of the spells she was teaching him were considered "Dark Magic" by the Ministry due to the nature of the spells she showed him.

It didn't take long for Tamsyn to join him either, Harry had walked into the classroom one Saturday afternoon to find Tamsyn already there talking animatedly to Professor Árd-Greimne. Soon the one-on-one tutoring turned into a small study group with both Harry and Tamsyn learning under Professor Árd-Greimne. Tamsyn, like always, helped him when they hit a particularly complicated spell as Scáthach stood by watching them with a soft smile, it was honestly the best Saturday that Harry had ever had.

But the Professor who walked beside him in the dark corridors of the castle wasn't the friendly and caring mentor he had found in her. No, the woman beside him fit the moniker she had earned over the long war she waged with England "The Witch-Queen" she was called and Harry didn't question why. It reminded him of the first time they met outside of the ice cream shop, her magic was almost suffocating as it filled the air like a thick summer humidity. She walked with no less grace but with an air of violence about her that would make even the most seasoned auror question if they should engage her in combat as she held her wand loosely in her free hand.

Harry keeps quiet as she leads him through the halls and into the trophy room that connects to the Great Hall, stopping before the door, Professor Árd-Greimne turns to him; her blood-red eyes seem to be glowing in the dark.

"After I leave you in the Great Hall, I will be needed to sweep the castle, you are to remain in the Great Hall until I or the Headmaster comes to get you personally, no matter what, do you understand me?" Scáthach spoke, her voice firm as her question sounded more like an order to Harry; but still he nodded his head once in understanding. She nods her head once as well. "Good, let's get you to your friends," she tells him with a small smile before opening the door to the crowded and loud hall.

It seemed that the Headmaster's words could have been heard by everyone in the castle as the rest of the houses were in the Great Hall; each person holding a comfy-looking sleeping bag. Harry starts pushing his way through the crowd, ignoring the looks and the whispers coming from behind him as he looks for his friends; and he doesn't have to look for long.

"Where. Is. He?!" Tamsyn's voice snaps at someone, her tone dripping with venom. "And don't lie to me, Granger! I'll know," she threatens as Harry inwardly sighs.

"Not this again," Harry thinks to himself as he moves toward the sound of Tamsyn's voice. She and Hermione were at each other's throats for months, ever since they had returned to Hogwarts. Hermione would try to find a way to keep Tamsyn and Harry away from each other while Tamsyn, almost maliciously, took joy in undermining the other girl's plans while Ron and Him tried to keep the peace between the two.

"Tamsyn!" Harry calls as he lays eyes on his friends, all three of them turning to look at him, two with wide fearful eyes and the last set in panicked worry that soon flooded with relief.

"Harry!" Tamsyn calls out as she charges at him, wrapping him in her arms and crushing him to her chest for a long moment. "Are you okay?! He didn't touch you did you? Did he curse you!? I'll do more than kill him, I'll dis-" she begins to babble as she squeezes Harry into her.

"Tamsyn! I'm fine! I didn't even see him," Harry says calmly as he struggles in Tamsyn's almost overbearing grasp. Tamsyn lets him out of her hug, her eyes swiping over him to inspect every inch of him for anything remotely off. "Professor Árd-Greimne escorted me here through the trophy room, I'm fine, I swear," he tells her softly. Tamsyn's piercing ice blue eyes bore into his for a moment, as if she were looking for something before she sighed.

"Fine, but you are not leaving my side tonight," she demands with a look as Hermione scoffs and begins to open her mouth to refute what Tamsyn just said.

"Okay, you can come sleep with me, Ron, and Hermione," Harry says with a large grin that both cuts Hermione off and causes Tamsyn to pause for a moment before her neck begins to turn red.

"Oh! Yes,... Sleep with the sleeping bags… close to each…" Tamsyn says, blinking in surprise for a moment before shaking her head. "Capital idea, Harry!" She says with a huge grin as Hermione scowls at Tamsyn's back.

---

The Great Hall, the early morning of November 1st, Harry Potter.

Harry Potter wakes up in a precarious position, one he didn't remember falling asleep in. But while precarious, he never felt warmer or safer in his short life. He was pulled to the chest of Tamsyn as they were both sleeping on their sides, her arms were wrapped around him pulling him closer to her as her legs coiled around his in an almost possessive manner. Harry could feel the slow and steady breaths of Tamsyn's on his head as she had her face pushed into his hair.

As he laid in Tamsyn's embrace, he wondered what in the world had awakened him from some of the best sleep he had ever gotten when he heard the soft echoes of heels on the flagstone floor of the Great Hall.

"Albus," the soft voice of Scáthach says in greeting.

"Ah! Lady Árd-Greimne, did you find anything?" Dumbledore's voice answers and questions back just as softly in the early morning hours.

"How many times must I tell you, Albus?" Scáthach says with an exacerbated sigh. "We are not only colleagues but equals, you can refer to me by my given name," she says and Harry swears he hears the soft smile on her voice.

"I seem to remember a conversation like that we've had a few times, my dear. But you must forgive an old man for his need to mind the manners his mother imparted to him at a young age with a switch," the Headmaster says with a light chuckle following, Harry could practically see Scáthach rolling her eyes at Dumbledore's words. "But I dare say you are avoiding my question, Scáthach," he points out in a soft tone. Harry could hear the sigh of aggravation from his teacher from where he lay and knew it wasn't a good sign.

"I couldn't find hide or hair of him, it's like he vanished into the aether," Scáthach says with no shortage of frustration as Dumbledore hums in thought. "Where is he?" She asks next, confusing Harry for a moment but Dumbledore doesn't say a word before the click of heels begins walking towards him.

Harry lays completely still as he feels Scáthach approaches him, steadying his breathing so as to not give himself away. He felt a hand brush his bangs as it to see his face; his mind was racing a mile a minute as to why Scáthach was doing this.

"Have you come to care for the boy so much and such little time?" Dumbledore asks, his voice was curious and light.

"Are you that surprised, Albus?" Scáthach says as she stands and moves away from him and back towards the Headmaster.

"With what I know of you, My Lady, yes," the Headmaster supplies matter of factly. "Even knowing what I do, the boy takes more after his father and looks nothing like Uath-" the Headmaster begins to say before he is swiftly cut off by Scáthach.

"Watch your tongue Albus," she snaps softly like she is chastising a child with a very real anger in her voice. "Least you want me to strike you," she threatens, causing the Headmaster to cough awkwardly.

"My apologies, Lady Árd-Greimne. I was speaking without thinking, I didn't mean to drag up your past in such a painful way," Dumbledore apologizes for something that Harry didn't understand. They two soon fall into a small stretch of quiet, neither of them speaking as Scáthach reigns in her anger before she speaks again.

"How is the investigation going?" She asks, far more softly this time.

"So far, none of our other colleagues have reported anything, nor has the Dementor's report anything amiss. It is as if Sirius Black was a ghost, slipping into the grounds unnoticed by all and leaving much the same way," the Headmaster says, frustration and curiosity lacing his tone like its own kind of venom. "While I have many theories on how he did this, each is more impossible than the last. The Dementors wanted to search the castle of course, but I told them so long as I am Headmaster, they will not set foot on the grounds," he rambled, speaking his thoughts out loud as if to hope to divine some secret from them.

"That's nice, Albus, but it wasn't the investigation I was asking about," Scáthach supplies in a broad tone now; Harry could almost see the deadpan look on her face and fights off the want to giggle at it.

"Ah! That one, hmmm…" the Headmaster answers, sounding genuinely curious about Scáthach's motive. "It seems that you do care…" he notes, no doubt looking at Scáthach.

"I am not in the mood for games, young man," Scáthach says icly to the Headmaster who just chuckles at her words.

"Forgive me, when you get to my age one must find their entertainment where they can," the Headmaster supplies cheerfully. "But it is going well, there is enough evidence to formally bring them in for a discussion. Hopefully, after the consented use of Veritaserum can be employed to get the whole truth of the situation from them," he tells Scáthach as they begin to walk away from where Harry was lying.

"And if they don't consent?" Scáthach asks confidence in her words rang throughout the hall as if she knew whoever they were wouldn't do it.

Dumbledore sighs. "There is still more than enough evidence to have him removed, temporarily if nothing else," he tells the Witch-Queen with an unsatisfied tone, to what Harry didn't know.

"If that's the case, I'll be putting my name forward to-" Scáthach says before the soft creaking of the door to Great Hall drowns out the rest as the Headmaster and Scáthach leave the hall in quiet silence. Harry tries to pull himself from Tamsyn's embrace only to find her arms wrapping around him tighter. He pulls his head away and looks up and into Tamsyn's open eyes as she smiles slyly down at him.

"You're awake too, huh?" She whispers to him before she leans her head forward to press her forehead against his; their nose now centimeters apart. "What do you think that was about?" She asks him, her hot breath washing over his face and making him flush.

"I don't know," Harry murmurs back to her. "They were talking about removing someone from somewhere," he says, trying to fight down the blush that crawled its way across his cheeks.

"Yes, they were…" Tamsyn says absent-mindedly, her eyes sparkling with some deeper understanding that Harry couldn't comprehend. "Harry?" She says causing Harry to blink and break the spell that Tamsyn's eyes had him under. "Can you do me a favor?" She asks before Harry nods once.

"Anything for you, Tamsyn," Harry says, meaning every word of it; she was his first friend- someone he cared deeply about at that.

"No matter what you hear about Sirius Black, no matter what anyone tells you- do not go after him, okay?" She tells him, a pleading look in her eyes that baffles Harry.

Harry blinks, confused at her words. "I wasn't planning on chasing after some nutter after my head, Tamsyn, why would I?" He asks before Tamsyn lifts her head to tuck his head under her chin.

"I know, Harry. I know," she says softly as her grip tightens on him. "Just… promise me, okay? That no matter what, you won't go after Sirius Black," she repeats herself almost desperately.

"I promise, Tamsyn, I won't go after him- no matter what," Harry swears, intent on keeping that promise to his friend.

"Good," Tamsyn says as she nuzzles the top of his head. "No matter what Harry, so long as you don't go after him- I swear he won't touch you, he will never touch you," she tells him as Harry closes his eyes to drift back to sleep in Tamsyn's embrace, missing the malicious and terrible gleam In Tamsyn's eyes as she swore to the darkness around them.

---

Chapter done.

With mysteries abound, the plot thickens..

Chapter 7: The Hospital Wing

Another chapter from Tamsyn's point of view…

---

Tamsyn Riddle, November 7th 1992, Hogwarts Hospital Wing.

Tamsyn sat in a chair, looking at the unmoving form on the Hospital Gurney; her dark blue eyes, normally sharp and full of cunning intelligence, were now hollow and distant. She was soaked head to toe, looking as if she had just climbed out of the Black Lake fully dressed; even now, she could hear the storm outside rage against the ancient castle as a small puddle of rainwater formed around where she sat. The cup of Pepper-up potion that was thrust in her hands by the matron of the hospital wing had lost all its steam as Tamsyn didn't even bother with it.

She had watched him fall.

Outside of the Slytherin games, she never used to watch the Quidditch matches, using that time to study quietly or explore the school without the watchful eyes of her peers and professors watching her every move. But ever since Harry got that stupid broom last year, she always made sure to go to the matches that he was flying in. He was amazing on a broom, far better than her, how he would bank and turn, his corkscrews and loop de loops were more graceful than any dancer she had ever seen. It was like she was hypnotized by how he flew so freely, always smiling when he was up in the air; completely free from any earthly worry.

She screamed his name as he fell from the sky.

Tamsyn didn't understand why she felt like this, it was an odd and alien feeling to her. She had never truly had a firm grasp on her emotions no matter how terrifying her cunning intelligence was; her emotions were always a blind stop twisting in a funhouse mirror for her. Those odd little ephemeral things that coil in her chest and crush her heart as it tightens around it- and she had no clue how to handle them. She had once asked another girl in the group home what feelings felt like, the girl's answer was as unsatisfying as it was annoying to listen to. The constant onomatopoeias that she associated with things like happiness and sadness grated on her nerves, as the girl explained, to the point she pushed the girl into one of the tide pools in the sea cave. Little Amanda never came up from the pools and Tamsyn never got a satisfying answer to her query.

He hit the muddy and wet earth hard enough that she could hear the impact of the storm and screams around her.

Those transient feelings mixing in her chest tore at her insides, squeezing around her heart as Harry's teammates and friends whispered around her. Oh, how she wanted them to just go away- to not see her like this; even Granger managed to keep her mouth shut about her being by Harry's bedside. How sad she must look in their eyes, just a confused little girl who doesn't even know her own feelings…

She ran faster than she had ever run in her life, forgetting about the storm, about magic, about everything but-

Tamsyn had never stopped once to consider her feelings about Harry Potter, she never saw any reason to. Her feelings were as distant to her as the earth was from the stars above, she never truly considered what Harry meant to her. Ever since they first met in the last compartment of the left of the Hogwarts Express, he had been a near-constant, quiet companion. He was someone who understood the want to be left alone, to just bask in the quiet of a room with only a crackle from the fireplace or the turning of a page to break it. But now, sitting next to him, unmoving and too quiet, had everything she thought about herself flipped upside down. She wasn't supposed to feel these things, she couldn't bear it…

The ice-cold rain was a shock, but she ignored it as she ran across the field to the small body lying in the middle of it; unmoving.

"What was Harry Potter to her?" it wasn't an odd question, nor one not asked to her by her housemates. She had always either blown off the question or answered that the young boy was a study partner for her. That answer alone was good enough for her, he was just a study partner -he was hers- someone she wanted to keep close to her; the first of her followers, that was all…

Wasn't it?

"Harry! Harry!" She screamed as she shook him, hoping to wake him as something warm was leaking from her eyes and mixing with the ice-cold rain.

Maybe once, for the briefest moments, she had considered him just that but the more time she spent with him and his disarming hopeful, and innocent nature; the more he slept through the cracks of the wall erected around her heart. Tamsyn thought she was above such things- a cold-blood serpent waiting for her time to strike, gathering knowledge and power to win when she did. But all her knowledge and all her power felt hollow, useless, and bitter in the face of Harry lying still on the Hospital Bed. She hated this, she hated herself for feeling like this, and in some small way, she hated Harry for making her feel this way.

She cared for him, she cared so much it hurt- like a POW and POP to the heart.

But all hatred vanishes the moment Harry twitches and begins to open his eyes. The potion clatters to the ground and spills everywhere as Tamsyn lunges forward and ceases Harry's hand in her own.

"Harry!" Tamsyn cries out as Harry's eyes open before wincing at the sudden onslaught of light. Tamsyn immediately reaches over to the bedside table to pick up his glasses and slides them onto his face.

"Harry," she says softer, well aware of the multiple eyes looking at her as she drips rainwater on the bed. "Harry, how are you feeling? Does anything seriously hurt?" she asks, reaching out to caress his cheek with her hand.

"Tam-" Harry started to say as he looked at her in confusion before he began to cough. She quickly summons the cup from the floor, and vanishes any remains of the potion, cleaning it with a handy charm that Mrs. Weasley had shown her, before filling it with fresh water and handing it to Harry in quick succession. He takes it and greedily drinks it down before handing the cup back with a soft thank you. "What- what happened?" Harry asks, looking from Tamsyn to his teammates and friends.

Tamsyn opened her mouth but she almost choked on her words, they died in her throat as she couldn't even bring herself to speak about what had happened.

"It was the Dementor's," Hermione says, holding onto the bag of shredded wood pulp. "I think they were attracted to all the high emotions of the game, all that happiness and excitement must have been like a feast to them," she tells Harry as she shuffles her feet awkwardly. Tamsyn watches as Harry's eyes go wide for a moment in recognition before a cacophony of emotions flashes in his beautiful eyes. Shame was the first one, then confusion about something before a flicker of recognition before something even greater shame; sadness…

A deep heartbreaking sadness that Tamsyn couldn't even begin to ponder, let alone imagine.

"Harry?" Tamsyn says, worried before Harry shakes his head to try and void his mind of whatever he just realized.

"Wh-what about the match? Did we win?" Harry asks, trying to grasp onto something that wasn't what was now haunting his mind. Her wand was still in her hand, she wanted to risk a whisper to peek into his mind, to see what was bothering him but Harry wouldn't look her in her eyes. He was distracting himself with Quidditch talk with his team and trying to ignore the thing that was bothering him.

It wasn't long before Madam Pomfrey came around to usher everyone but Granger and Weasley out of the Hospital Wing. Ordering Tamsyn, in particular, to get out of her wet clothes and into something warm, while she hears her, she doesn't honestly care; all she wanted was to stay with Harry but she doesn't. She leaves, avoiding the Gryffindor Quidditch by turning the opposite way which they go. She wanders through the halls, lost in thought and unsure of how she came to feel like she did.

Tamsyn finds herself in an alcove hidden behind a tapestry depicting a girl trapped in a tower wrapped in thorns. Sitting on the floor and trying hard to not let her sobs echo down the corridors, he was alive! He was going to be fine! So why was she crying? Why did she even care?

-he was hers- he was hers- he was hers-

This- whatever this was, was beyond her simple positive nature over things and people. It- it felt deeper than that, like some great yawning cavern within her that she had stubbornly refused to admit was there but now was being filled with something that she had no words for. If it was anything else, anyone else, she would have blamed her rampaging hormones on it and brushed it off after a good long cry but this felt different- was different!

And she had no clue on what to do but cry.

"Miss Riddle?" Someone says, someone she did want to see when she was like this so she tucks herself into a tight ball hoping they would go away; but she doesn't.

"Tamsyn," the soft voice of Professor Árd-Greimne says, causing Tamsyn to flinch and look up at the older woman. What a sight she must be, crying while shivering in rain soaked robes in a cold castle. Professor Árd-Greimne was kneeling down next to her, her blood red eyes showing sorrow and pity for the girl. "What are you doing here, you poor girl?" She asks before a flash of worry and panic crosses her eyes but not her face as she keeps a cold control of it. "Is Har- is Mister Potter okay?" she says, stumbling over her words for a moment.

Tamsyn doesn't speak, she doesn't trust herself to do so but still nods only to watch Professor Árd-Greimne let out a barely audible sight. Somewhere in the back of Tamsyn's mind she wonders why the professor seems to care so much for her Harry, for a boy she barely knew. But her rational mind was nowhere near the forefront as more tears poured down her cheeks.

Tamsyn tries to swallow the emotions, to wipe them away so she could speak without sobbing, but it was fruitless. She couldn't swallow it and it climbed up her throat like bile.

"Then why are you crying?" the Professor asks, confused.

The words spilled from her lips like a sweet release she didn't understand. "Because I saw him fall," Tamsyn says as a fresh wave of sobs and tears rip from her like a painful thorn stuck in her coils; all the while Professor Árd-Greimne pulls Tamsyn into her arms and holds her as she weeps.

"Oh, you poor, foolish girl," Professor Árd-Greimne says as she rocks Tamsyn as she cries and doesn't understand why…

---

Defense against the Dark Arts classroom, the following Saturday.

Tamsyn sits in the comfortable armchair next to the window, she was looking at the reflection in the window with the stormy clouds above. The weather still hasn't cleared from the storm that had started the week before. Thankfully, unlike how that met last week, Tamsyn was no longer blotchy face and crying in front of the woman she had come to respect; not that Professor Árd-Greimne had mentioned how she had found Tamsyn last week at all.

No, the professor had held her in a moment of weakness as uncomfortable truths slipped from her mouth about everything that had happened that day. All the professor had done was hold her and listen, and when all the words were gone and her tears had run dried- Professor Árd-Greimne had simply dried her clothes and eyes before walking her back to the Slytherin Common room. The next week has continued as if nothing happened, something Tamsyn greatly appreciated from the Professor. The soft click of that very same professor setting down a tray of tea startles Tamsyn out of her thoughts, her eyes almost instinctively looking down at the tray before she frowns; there were only two cups on the tray.

"Is Harry not joining us?" Tamsyn asks, the frown not leaving her face.

"No," Professor Árd-Greimne says as she takes her seat with grace. "I've asked Harry to skip this weekend, as I'm going to ask you to skip next weekend for him in turn," she supplies easily as she begins to prepare her tea to her liking.

"Why?" Tamsyn asks as her brow creases in confusion. She watches as Professor Árd-Greimne's eyes flick up to look at her for a moment before looking back down at her tea.

"You were not the only one who had an epiphany last week, Miss Riddle," Professor Árd-Greimne replies softly before bringing her mug to her lips and taking a sip of her tea. "But that is Harry's personal business, one I keep in strict confidence; as I'm sure you understand," she says, looking up at Tamsyn with flashing red eyes that demand Tamsyn not question her; so Tamsyn just nods, and begins to make her tea.

They lapse into silence as the pitter-patter of rain could be heard on the window, each other lost in their own thoughts at the moment; and surprisingly, it was Tamsyn who was the one who broke it.

"The spell you used on the Hogwarts Express, the one that you used to repel the Dementor, could you teach it to me?" Tamsyn asks, looking up from her tea to the inquisitive but unsurprised eyes of the Professor. Professor Árd-Greimne takes a sip of her tea before placing her mug back onto the table, turning her head to look outside to the storm clouds above before asking the oddest question to Tamsyn.

"What is happiness to you, Miss Riddle?" She asks, causing Tamsyn to blink at the question.

"Excuse me?" Tamsys asks in bafflement, unsure of how to answer.

"It isn't a hard question to answer, Miss Riddle, what is Happiness to you?" Professor Árd-Greimne reiterates, her brow raising in question as she turns to look at Tamsyn.

Tamsyn, once more, blinks. "Happiness is…" Tamsyn says and falters, trying to draw off something other than the most textbook definition of it. But she couldn't, emotions were always ephemeral and distant things to her. "A…feeling?" She says though it came out more of a question.

Professor Árd-Greimne sighs. "I see…" is all she says before standing from her seat and walking towards a bookshelf. "Tell me, have you ever read A Treatise of formal potion use on Non-magical Humans by Marcus Prince from 1765?" She asks before searching for a book in her collection.

"I- No, I don't believe I have," Tamsyn answers honestly and very confused about why she would bring up a potion publication from over two hundred years ago. "What does that have to do with learning a spell? What does anything have to do with it, Ma'am," she asks, her frustration with the woman building.

"It is a wonderfully horrifying study on what happens when non-magical beings consume different types of potions," Professor Árd-Greimne says before pulling down a rather thin book, turning back walking over to the table and laying it in front of Tamsyn. "For instance, healing potions have the opposite effect and act as a poison to Muggles. Some enhancement potions mutate their bodies horrifically, but I think the most interesting thing is the experiments with Love Potions," she explains before sitting back down and picking up her mug to take a sip.

Tamsyn was looking at the small Treatise set in front of her, completely confused about how they had come to this subject.

"Page twenty-two, paragraphs four through eight," Professor Árd-Greimne states as she looks over the rim of her mug at her. Tamsyn looks up from the book to the Professor and then back down to the book with a frown before Tamsyn slowly opens the book. She could hear the crack of white leather and see the creases set along the spine that spoke of how often it was opened. She quickly turns to the page and reads the suggested paragraphs before pausing…

Tamsyn looks up at the professor who is looking at her with a blank face before she turns back to the Treatise and rereads the section again…

And again…

And again…

After her third reread, Tamsyn slowly shut the book and slid it away from her- as far as she could. The words floated in her mind as she digested what she had read, it was Marcus Prince's findings on the Muggle use of love potions. It seems that the potions had their intended effect and created a powerful obsession between the two muggles who originally could not stand one another. But a decade later, when the couple had a child, the boy was…odd; "an unnatural birth," Marcus Prince had called it.

"The boy seemed unresponsive to stimulation to invoke emotions of a positive demeanor or natural happiness; but had a powerful possessive personality…"

He concluded that a child born under the influence was stripped of certain emotions, the more powerful the love potion the less emotion or understanding of emotions the child would have. It was…hauntingly familiar to Tamsyn, something she struggled to believe at the moment.

"I don't…understand," she finally admitted, looking up at the professor in front of her and feeling numb.

"Magic can do and create many things, Tamsyn, but some things are beyond its reach," Professor Árd-Greimne says impossibly soft to her. "One can not create true life with magic, nor can it create true emotions, only facsimiles of them," she explains before placing her mug down on the table. "But in the rare circumstances, that magic comes together with primordial life, the consequences are normally, and unfairly, the child's to bear," she explains leaning back in her chair and watching Tamsyn carefully.

Tamsyn's eyes drift down to the table as she considers what she read, like always her emotions were like a fine mist that she had no way to capture. She knew she should feel horrified to find out that her father had essentially raped her mother before abandoning her to die on the cold streets of London but she couldn't feel it. Objectively, Tamsyn knew that it was a horrible thing to do but personally, she couldn't care less about it; it was like watching it on a telly show, it was… less real to her. Tamsyn's plans about her father before this moment were up in the air, resting on the fact that he hadn't known about her, that her weak mother might have been merely a one-night stand that created her.

But now?

Now her plans were shifting, when she found father, whoever he may be, Tamsyn was going to kill him after taking everything from him.

"I'm going to guess that whatever spell you used against the Dementor is largely tied to feelings," Tamsyn says after taking a deep breath and looking up at her Professor.

"Yes, the Patronus spell is a spell that requires happiness to work properly, a feeling that you lack I would think," Professor Árd-Greimne points out and Tamsyn doesn't feel the need or see a reason to correct her on.

"So, there isn't anything I can…" Tamsyn trails off once more, unable to say the words and unsatisfied with it all.

"Did I say that?" Professor Árd-Greimne says, causing Tamsyn to narrow her eyes at the woman. "I stated that you were unlikely to ever cast a Patronus Charm, but I never said that you couldn't help; I happen to know another spell that works on Dementors just as well as the charm can," the Professor tells her with a small smile. "But I am curious Miss Riddle, do you know why I agreed to come teach at Hogwarts?" She asks, once more out of the blue, as she crosses her legs and rests her hands on them.

"I don't know, Professor," Tamsyn answers, feeling the whiplash of the conversation once more. Most teachers of the school were respected masters of their field, Slughorn was one of the most competent brewers in the country bar, maybe, two other names. Flitwick was not only a champion duelist but one of the youngest charm masters in history. McGonagall's name was high on the list of transfiguration masters sitting just below Dumbledore. Scáthach Árd-Greimne was famous across the isles and the world over for her skills in not only offensive Magic but dark magic as well.

Teaching at Hogwarts has long been held as a prestigious position the world over as far as Tamsyn knew; so it wasn't all that surprising if Professor Árd-Greimne wanted another feather in her cap.

"I came here to search for an apprentice," the professor says, causing Tamsyn's heart to leap into her throat and her eyes widen. "Someone to pass on all that I know about magic and its many secrets," she informs Tamsyn with a small grin.

"I see," Tamsyn answers, swallowing the lump in her throat. "And do you have your eyes on anyone so far?" She asks as politely as she could without sounding too eager.

"I do," Professor Árd-Greimne answers vaguely before picking up her mug and taking a long sip of her tea, leaving Tamsyn in a near fit to hear the rest of it. "But I still haven't made my final choice, too early to say, you see," she tells Tamsyn with a smirk that leaves the younger woman frustrated.

"Is one of them Harry?" Tamsyn asks, her brow shooting up as she asks, watching as something flashes in Professor Árd-Greimne's eyes.

"No, Harry would need to be a few more years older for me to consider him," the professor answers smoothly and honestly surprising Tamsyn.

"Then why do you care about him so much?" Tamsyn asks, her eyes once more narrowing at the much older woman, watching her as her lips twitch at Tamsyn's question. Some suspicion was scratching at the edge of Tamsyn's mind about the professor as if something was off but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"My personal relationship with Mister Potter isn't a subject open for discussion, Miss Riddle," the professor says icly and almost defensively as her eyes were slightly narrow at Tamsyn. "Or perhaps I should bring up how I found you crying over him last week with him?" She asks while sharply raising her brow at Tamsyn.

"So, what was this spell you wanted to teach me?" Tamsyn says with a bright smile, letting the other two subjects drop completely as the professor's brow drops and her smile turns softer as she picks up her own mug and takes a sip of her tea.

"Wonderful, and the spell I want to teach you is a very old one, dating back to the age of myth for the isles," Professor Árd-Greimne says before leaning forward a bit in her seat. "Tell me, Miss Riddle, have you ever heard of a spell called the Gaé Bolg?" She says, as a wide smile spreads across her face and a dark glimmer enters her eyes. The look alone sent a shiver up Tamsyn's back and a smile across her face that she hid behind her mug.

Tamsyn had no idea what the Gaé Bolg was, but she had no doubt it was going to be extremely satisfying to use on a dementor if they even came close to her Harry again.

---

And so Tamsyn starts to realize things she doesn't understand and learns the reason behind it all.

Oh, yes, the Gaé Bolg is in this; it's just no longer a spear but a spell.

Until next time.