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9 Minutes
Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, was famously a mundane. His parents had been a strong Guide/Sentinel pair. Many believed they would have developed into an Alpha pairing if they had lived to see their second maturation. It was almost of unheard of for such a strong pair to produce a mundane child.
Until he burst online when faced with a Hungarian Horntail in the Triwizard Tournament. A lifetime of conspiracy begins unravelling around him and his Guide, and a threat greater than Voldemort is waiting in the shadows to threaten the very foundations of magic.
It hadn’t even been a week since his last visit to the Hospital Wing. Harry wasn’t sure if that was a commentary on the safety of the school as a whole, or on his life?
It was probably both.
Two other beds were in use. A first year was sitting on top of the blankets waiting for Madam Pomphrey to let them go after having a broken arm fixed from a flying lesson accident. The other bed was a seventh year was was well tucked in and staring unseeing at the ceiling.
Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to know what was wrong with her.
He had been installed in his usual bed and large vats of a creamy potion were stationed beside him. His hands and wrists were soaking in the potion. Every five minutes like clockwork Madam Pomphrey stopped by and inspected the progress of the treatment. She had explained that the length of time he would be stuck there was directly related to how much exposure there had been.
Now though, he was bored. With both hands otherwise occupied he couldn’t hold anything and Hermione spent a bit of time with him before she had to hurry to Transfiguration with a promise to collect his homework for him.
A tiny blonde girl drifted through the doors. Harry tracked her progress down the room. She didn’t look hurt or in any sort of pain. He even tried sniffing carefully to see if he could pick anything up from her. She smelt like the depths of the Forbidden Forest that Harry had only been in once or twice. Living and dying, dark and light.
“Hello Harry.” She drifted onto the seat beside his bed. “It is ever so lovely to meet you. Logi told me I would meet you eventually. I saw us meeting on the train. But that didn’t happen. Maybe it was a different time?” Her voice was lovely. Light and airy without being childish.
“Or maybe a different universe?” He offered, not really knowing what he was saying.
“Hmm, maybe.” She shrugged it away as unimportant. “I’ve been excited to meet you, regardless of how it happens. Your guide is a cousin of a sort after all. And I think that makes us family of a sort as well.” Her smile was guiless.
He knew she wasn’t trying to latch onto his fame or had any other motive than saying hello and making a connection.
“My guide?” He tried to make the underlying question excited and intrigued, as if he didn’t know who his guide was and was looking forward to meeting them. Instead of wondering how she knew who his guide was.
“Yes, Draco. He is so prickly!” She said it as if it was a delightful personality trait rather than a grating flaw. “Nothing like my guide. But I suppose that makes sense, because you and I are nothing alike.”
“Are you online?” He asked quietly. She would be the first magical sentinel he had met that was his age. Not that he had met many of any age. He didn’t want anyone to overhear this conversation. SG status didn’t seem to be something that was discussed in the wix world.
“Mhm. For four years now. Someone in every generation of the Ravenclaw family always comes online.” She told him as if she wasn’t changing how he saw the world. “Though, you are the first of the Slytherin line who has come online for five hundred years or so. All the families are coming back together. I hope we will be as close as our ancestors were.”
“Slytherin?” His heart sank. He didn’t want to be of Slytherin’s line. That would make him related to Voldemort!
“And your Guide is the first in the Gryffendor line to come online since Godric himself!” She smiled at him.
She was lying. She had to be. There was no way Draco Bloody Malfoy, the Prince of Slytherin was a descendent of Godric Gryffendor. His ancestors going back into time immemorial would have risen from the grave to riot!
“I know you don’t believe me.” She reassured him. “But you have someone you can ask.” With a smile, she got up from her chair and began drifting back out of the room.
“Wait!” He called her back. “What’s your name?” He felt like an idiot for not having asked earlier.
“Luna.” Luna told him with a smile before slipping out of the main doors exactly when Madam Pomphrey came out of her office.
= + =
Madam Pomphrey declared him healed an hour after dinner. The hallways were filled with students. Harry ducked around who he could, only being waylaid by the Weasley twins. They wanted him to test a new prank, but he hadn’t fallen for that since halfway through first year.
Shaking them off, he finally got into the not so abandoned classroom. Draco wasn’t there. He needed to talk to his guide! And wandering around the castle wasn’t going to help, especially if he was in the Slytherin commonroom. Annoyingly he had left the Marauder’s Map in the Dorms. Instead he tucked himself into a small alcove and closed his eyes. Breathing deeply he reached into himself for the thread that bound them together. It stretched tight and true down through the floor and to the right. Towards the dungeons, the courtyard or the greenhouses.
One day, maybe, he would be able to know exactly where Draco was. But they hadn’t even been bonded a week and Harry knew nothing about being a Sentinel. For now, he would head down to the first floor and try again.
It took three more goes of tracing the bond before he tracked Draco down to Greenhouse three. He was in there with two Slytherins, Davis and Zabini he thought their names were, and two Ravenclaws, Parvati’s twin and Michael Corner.
They all spotted him at the same time.
“Um, hey. Have any of you seen Neville?” He asked. It was awkward and probably unconvincing, especially as he was trying to catch Draco’s eye at the same time.
It wasn’t working. Frustrated, he flicked the bond. Draco’s grey eyes instantly found his. A glare lighting them.
“I think he is in Greenhouse four.” Padma waved towards the building in question.
“Uh. Right. Thanks. I need to ask him about something.” He kept eye contact with Draco before turning and walking out. As he passed the door, he flicked the bond again, hoping Draco understood that he wasn’t really looking for Neville.
He hurried back up to the castle, and slipped into the old alchemy classroom. He didn’t have to wait long before Draco came in through a different door.
“Are you okay?” Draco demanded the moment the door was closed and locked.
“What? Yes.” He waved away the concern. “That isn’t why I came looking for you. A Ravenclaw, Luna, can to visit me in the Hospital Wing.”
“Loony Lovegood?” Draco’s face was trying to suggest derision but was missing the mark by a mile. Luckily for them both, he gave it up for a lost cause pretty quickly. “Why did Luna come and visit you?”
“She said she was descended from Ravenclaw.” He needed to tell Draco everything she had said, but it was proving more difficult than he imagined.
“Huh, that isn’t as surprising as it should be, and also not enough to drag me away from my friends and risk both of us.” Draco poked at the bond himself.
Harry assumed he was trying to figure out what they were doing there. “Apparently all the tossers in second year were also right. She said I am the heir of Slytherin, and that youaretheheirofGryffendor.” He let the words tumble uncontrolled out of his mouth. It had to be the verbal equivalent of ripping off a band-aid, right?
“What did you just say?” Draco growled. True anger on his face. Possibly for the first time in their acquaintance.
“She said you were the heir of Gryffendor. And for some crazy reason I believe her.” Harry said again.
“You’re cracked. Loony Lovegood?” This time the disdain was genuine. “My cousin,” he spat the word, “barely knows what day of the week it is. She probably couldn’t tell you her own middle name, let alone mine or yours. Never mind our family trees going back a thousand years!” His voice rose as he was talking until Draco was yelling. His hands cutting through the air in anger. “I am not related to the bumbling fool who was your house founder!” Without giving Harry a chance to say anything, Draco stormed out of the room.
Harry dropped where he was standing onto the cold, hard ground.
Knowing Draco wouldn’t take it well didn’t make being yelled at any easier. The Sentinel in him was raging that he needed to go and make it right. That his Guide was in danger when his own emotions would be clouding his ability to read the emotions of those around him. Harry knew that would be the wrong move. They both needed time to calm down.
His ass was frozen by the time he levered himself up from the ground and went to find to find Hermione before their Astronomy lesson that evening. Hopefully Draco would just ignore him and not try to push him off the astronomy tower in aggravation.
= + =
The next evening, he had his first lesson with Satü. It was just the two of them, Guivi had wandered out of their rooms when Harry turned up after a quick dinner. The older Sentinel had nodded at him in greeting but didn’t otherwise acknowledge him.
“Good evening Harry, how have the last few days been?” Satü asked. Her attention was only half on him, the rest of it was on the tea service she was putting together.
Harry shrugged in true teenage recalcitrance.
“I heard that you had a zone in Potions yesterday?” She still wasn’t looking at him, instead focusing much too hard on plating a selection of biscuits for each of them, and pouring the tea when it was ready.
It wasn’t the dark brown that Harry was expecting, instead it was a light golden colour and smelt of early spring growth.
“Can you tell me more about kiment’aan?” He asked instead of answering. Cutting off the ability for her to push his need for a Guide to balance him. Draco had done what he could, bringing him back and getting him out of the way of further danger while he did it.
Satü sat back in her seat and watching him for a long moment before sighing in exasperation and giving into his change of topic. “Kiment’aan is a gift that only Sentinel-Shamans can develop. No one knows why, but I suspect it requires the triumverate of magic, advanced senses, and the extra link between a Shaman and the psionic plane.”
“And I can use it to talk to spirits? Any spirits, or can I call a specific one?” He asked, even if he didn’t have an ulterior motive, it was interesting.
“Yes and no. With practice you will be able to call specific people to you, but if they had already moved on from the psionic plane or afterlife, where ever it is they are, there won’t be anyone to answer.”
That made sense, but was annoying.
“Can we start there?” He asked.
“Harry…” Satü paused. “It will be a very, very long time until you will be able to talk to someone you are emotionally invested in. And you will never manage it without a Guide to stabilise and anchor you.”
What? He was so confused.
Satü misinterpreted his confusion for distress. “I do not want you to be disappointed that you will not be able to speak to your parents straight away.”
She was so kind in letting him down on something that hadn’t even occurred to him. Merlin, he was an awful son. They had died for him and he hadn’t even thought about being able to speak to them for the first time. He flushed.
“I would still like to try. To learn.” He stumbled.
“Then let’s get started.”
