Rising of the Dark

HARRY POTTER AND THE RISING OF THE DARK

by Meta4. Chapter 08.

The Eleven (Elven?) Commandments

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1. Thou shalt bow to J.K. Rowling, creator of the Potterverse!

2. Thou shalt acknowledge all characters created by Her.

3. Thou shalt acknowledge the trademarks of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

4. Thou shalt not read the story herein if Slash offendeth you.

5. Thou shalt not read this story if thou art not old enough so to do.

6. Thou shalt not pass the work herein as thine own.

7. Thou shalt not gain profit from distributing the work herein.

8. Respect thy mother and thy father - only read this work when they are out.

9. Thou shalt acknowledge My copyright

10. Thou shalt contact Me if thou likest or thou detesteth this work.

11. Thou shalt never piss off an Elf...

HARRY POTTER AND THE RISING OF THE DARK

by Meta4 meta4@meta4.org

CHAPTER EIGHT:: My Family and Other Animals...

Snape appeared rather preoccupied during potions that afternoon, failing completely to deduct house points from Gryffindor for our monumental cock-up with our soothing potion. Whilst everyone else's potions were a rather sweet-smelling, cobalt blue, ours was more an angry red and emitted a rather foul smell.

Snape simply gave us an 'F' grade and left it at that, much to our relief and Malfoy's annoyance.

"But sir, they've completely messed it up!" he complained, outraged that his apparently text-book-perfect example hadn't been singled out for credit.

"Mr. Malfoy, once you are qualified to teach this class I may take your criticisms of your fellow pupils seriously. Until that time, might I suggest that you concentrate more on not letting your own cauldron overheat."

Malfoy's concentration snapped back to his own cauldron and he looked on in horror as it began to boil over. Despite his rather valiant efforts, the potion turned a nasty green colour and started to dissolve the desk.

Snape looked most displeased as Malfoy's entire cauldron fell through the desk and landed with a clatter on the floor.

"Mr. Malfoy, I wonder if I might have a word with you after this period is finished?" asked Snape. Draco winced, but Snape continued. "I have a message from your Father that he asked me to convey personally."

Draco nodded in acknowledgement before trying to stem the flow of potion that had started to traverse the dungeon's floor and dissolve the soles of various students' shoes.

==========

"I wonder what was on Snape's mind?" asked Ron as we ambled round the lake in the low afternoon sunshine.

"Probably the same thing that was on McGonagall's" I surmised.

"I can't help wondering what was so important that Malfoy senior couldn't have just sent an owl," pondered Hermione.

"To be honest, I think I'd rather not know," smiled Harry.

"'Arry! 'Ermione! Ron!" came a rather gruff voice from the edge of the forest. I looked to my right to see a giant of a man waving energetically at us from the doorway of a very quaint looking hut.

I saw Harry smile and change course to walk over to the hut, so I followed.

"Alrigh' there 'Arry?" he grinned from behind his huge, bristly beard. "I've got sommat to show yeh,"

"If it bites, breathes fire or is hairy and has too many legs we're not interested, Hagrid," said Ron, looking rather apprehensive.

"Oh no," he smiled back. "I think you might jus' like this little lot."

"Hagrid this is Liam - he's a new student here." introduced Harry.

"Oh - pleased to meet yeh," smiled Hagrid, offering me his hand that was at least three times the size of my own - now rather delicate looking - appendage. "Now if I wasn' teh know better, ah'd a said you was Elvish,"

"I am," I smiled back.

"Really?" Hagrid beamed. "I ain't never met a Woodland Elf before. Folk say you can do some pretty amazing stuff..."

"Well, yeah, I guess," I admitted.

Hagrid chuckled. "C'mon - I reckon these little blighters'll get on well enough wi' Elves too."

"What, uh, don't they get on well with?" asked Hermione, sharing Ron's apprehension.

"Muggles as a rule of thumb, but this lot seem like quite a docile bunch."

Hagrid pushed open the door to his hut and led us inside. On entering, all I could hear was a cacophony of growling and snarling. Expecting to see a whole herd of teeth-on-legs, I was more than pleasantly surprised to see a half-dozen puppy-like animals. They looked almost identical to Jack Russell puppies with the exception of a rather vicious-looking forked tail.

Hagrid smiled down on them benevolently as he watched them rip one of his cushions to shreds.

"Hagrid, what are they?" asked Ron, actually smiling at them. On subsequent enquiry, I found that Hagrid's 'pets' usually had a bad habit of wanting to cause actual bodily harm to Ron. These in the grand scheme of things seemed very tame for Hagrid. At least that was until Ron saw one of them bite clean through the leg of a stool that promptly fell over with a clatter.

"They're Crups," smiled Hagrid. "Bit like a dog but far more cleverer. Very loyal too. They're one o' the few magical creatures the Ministry'll allow yeh to keep as a pet. Oh - Liam, I wouldn't get too close - they can be a bit feisty around strangers..."

I'd knelt down and offered my hand to one of the Crups who was looking at me with sparkly eyes. He took a tentative step forward and sniffed my hand. The Crup then waggled its bum slightly and leaped at me, knocking me backwards more in surprise than anything. Hagrid came bounding over to wrestle the little critter from me, but soon started laughing as he saw him licking my face, forked tail whipping back and forth with enjoyment.

"Well I'll be! Looks like he's chosen you there, Liam."

"Chosen me?" I asked, pushing myself upright and starting to fuss the little bundle of fur that was mountaineering its way onto my shoulders and licking my ear.

"Crups choose their owners an' stick with 'em for life - you've got yehself a new friend there now, lad!" smiled Hagrid, all teary-eyed...

"What?" I asked, retrieving the Crup from between my shoulder-blades and looking him in the eye. He wagged his tail furiously and tried to lick my nose again. He was almost completely white except for the odd black splodge over his head and, it had to be said, incredibly cute.

"E's yours now, Liam. When a Crup chooses 'is new master there's nothing 'e won't do for yeh, and you'll never be able to get rid of 'im neither."

Harry seemed to find this intensely amusing whilst Hermione was too busy 'awwww'ing at the other pups and their mum to notice.

I scruffed the little fluffy ball of teeth behind the ears, which he seemed to appreciate. I'd never had a pet before - it had never even crossed my mind in recent years - but I had to say that I quite liked the idea. The Crup also looked cool - there were more teeth in its mouth than a great white shark yet when he affectionately chewed my fingers he was very gentle.

Crup it was, then.

Ron surveyed the Crup with caution. It apparently fulfilled one of his definitions as Something That Should Not Be Kept As A Pet as he "has far too many teeth - what does he need them all for, anyway?"

"What are you gonna call him?" asked Harry.

I looked at the intensely messy hair and then looked at Harry and grinned.

"Ohhh no..."

"Monty," I grinned. "He's definitely a Monty. Aren't you?"

Monty barked a bark that would've more suited a Labrador than a little terrier, taking us all by surprise.

Hagrid chuckled. "Thing about Crups is that their bite is usually a lot worse'n their bark..."

Ron pulled his feet up from the floor.

After another few minutes of playing with Monty, Hagrid offered us all a cup of tea from a tea set that would've looked more at home in an iron foundry than someone's home. He took me through some of the things to know about owning a Crup, such as not letting it chase after things as they usually bit first and worried about what they were biting later.

Harry and I couldn't help but laugh as every time Ron picked up a biscuit from the plate on the table, Monty leaped vertically from where he was sat and snapped it right out of his hand.

After the third stolen biscuit, Ron looked at me in desperation. I whistled and patted the bit of empty seat next to me. Monty dashed up from the floor and crash-landed against my leg, wagging his tail excessively again.

Harry, who was sat next to me, reached over to stroke him. Hagrid quite visibly tensed for a moment, obviously expecting the worst again, but much to his relief Monty simply rolled over and let him tickle his tummy.

==========

Later that evening, all five of us were sat next to the fire in the common room again. Hermione had dug out her copy of 'Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them' and proceeded to read the entry for Crups.

"'The Crup originated in the southeast of England. It closely resembles a Jack Russell terrier, except for the forked tail. The Crup is almost certainly a wizard-created dog as it is intensely loyal towards wizards and ferocious towards Muggles. It is a great scavenger, eating anything from gnomes to old tyres. Crup licences may be obtained from the Department for the Control of Magical Creatures on completion of a simple test to prove that the applicant wizard is capable of controlling the Crup in Muggle-inhabited areas.'" [1]

"Doesn't mention the teeth, though, does it?" said Ron, employing his earlier idea and keeping his feet tucked under himself as he sat on the sofa.

Monty was busy destroying an old towel that I'd given him and looked immensely proud of the mess he'd made. Once it was 'just so', he turned round in circles a few times to flatten it and then plonked himself down, gently snoozing in front of the wonderful glow from the fireplace.

Interestingly, Monty showed very little interest in Hermione's cat, Crookshanks, when he strolled past. Crookshanks, however, ensured that he was well out of gnashing distance at all times, but other than that the two seemed to ignore each other.

The dark evenings and murky corridors of Hogwarts always seemed to ensure you felt as if it was the middle of the night when it was in fact just past seven o'clock. As Snape had omitted to set us homework (which I was assured simply never happened) we were all at rather a loose end, so I suggested to Harry that we go and take a walk.

Ron looked at Hermione, but realised she was far to engrossed in her book to want to do the same, so he did his best to sidle up to her.

I gave a quick whistle and Monty immediately leaped off the towel and skidded to a halt by my side, looking up at us expectantly.

"Bit eager isn't he?" I smiled.

"Just like his owner," grinned Harry.

We pulled our cloaks on and headed out of Gryffindor Tower and into the grounds.

We'd barely cleared the front door before I pulled Harry to me and kissed him hard on the lips. After a brief moment, I let us part and smiled at him.

"I've been wanting to do that all day," I admitted.

"Me too," he smiled back. "I... I've also been thinking about what we did this morning and... well, I'd like to... uh..."

"Try it again?"

"Yeah,"

His shyness and sincere innocence turned me on like you wouldn't believe, so I suggested we cut short our walk and beat a hasty retreat to the dorms. Harry agreed with me whole-heartedly.

Without further debate, Harry and I about-faced and headed directly for Gryffindor tower once again.

We made a suitably pathetic excuse to Ron and Hermione as to why we'd returned so soon and ran up to the fifth form dorm. On finding the dorm empty, we set about removing each others' clothing as quickly as we could muster. The drafts that regularly whistled through the castle, whilst adding to the whole mystical air of the place, also had the side effect of making most parts of it almost unbearably cold.

Gryffindor tower was no exception, but the huge fireplace and heavy tapestries in the common room easily made up for it. In the very top of the tower, however, there was but a rather insignificant iron stove to heat the room and as it hadn't been stoked for a few hours it wasn't exactly throwing heat around the place.

Stood in just my boxers, I suddenly became very aware of the cold, hugging myself and shivering. I was just about to will the room warmer when Harry asked me to let him try. Firstly, he raised the temperature in the room a good few degrees and then set the fire roaring up its flimsy little tin chimney to maintain it.

I smiled at Harry's improving command of his magical abilities and hugged him to me.

==========

Over the following week, I found myself settling in very well to school life, which surprised me more than anyone as previously I'd managed to turn truancy into an art form. Now, however, I was actually enjoying classes and learning about the wizarding world.

The weather, however, seemed to be diametrically opposed to my mood, quite suddenly getting colder and colder, bringing with it an almost continuous snowfall.

Much to Harry's surprise, I elected to take History of Magic classes. Professor Binns, the ghost who taught the classes, appeared to be quite surprised that one of his few attendees was paying attention and initially seemed rather disconcerted when I started to ask questions.

Gradually, however, he broke out of his monotone and began to enthuse about the people of which he was speaking which in turn piqued the interest of some of the other students as well.

Harry had been right about Snape's lack of petty vindictiveness being an anomaly: He soon returned to berating all non-Slytherin pupils, deducting points for things like "sneezing in a disruptive manner" and "stirring without due care and attention", much to the amusement of Malfoy and his cronies. If the majority of these hadn't been directed at Harry and myself I too would have probably found the whole thing rather amusing. That not being the case, however, I simply had to resort to gritting my teeth and willing Snape's quill nib to break shortly after he changed to a fresh one.

Monty too had settled into Gryffindor tower and was amiable enough to the majority of the students, the exception inevitably being Neville. He made the rather unfortunate mistake of thinking Monty's towel was his and tried to wrestle it off him. Monty took offense to this and every day since has dutifully chewed to shreds anything that smelled even vaguely of Neville.

Aside from these little altercations twixt boy and dog, life was good. Harry and I, apparently having overcome the initial lust-period we felt for each other, found ourselves falling for each other more and more. At first, Harry felt as if he had to protect me from his past and his scar, not wanting me to share his emotional burden.

I, however, would have none of this and the argument became quite heated at one point.

"But you don't deserve to have my emotional baggage hovering over you!" Harry said, pacing up and down our dorm. When he was agitated, he ran his fingers through his hair repeatedly, making it even more unruly than usual.

"H, look at me."

He stopped and turned, frustration written all over his face.

"If I was at all worried about having to deal with your past I'd have run a mile by now!"

I stood up and walked over to him and rested my arms around his neck, allowing our foreheads to touch.

"I don't want to hurt you, Liam. I've already done that once," he said, referring to my touching of his scar.

"I've told you - you didn't hurt me, it just took me by surprise, that's all. I'd feel honoured if you felt you could share this with me. You know I'll do anything I can to help you and comfort you, Harry."

I placed a gentle, lingering kiss on his lips and hugged him.

When we parted, he was crying. I lifted his head and looked into his tear-streaked eyes. I could see he was torn between trying to protect me and letting me help him, so I took the decision on his behalf.

I led him to the bed and lay him down. I then walked round the other side and snuggled up close to him. Carefully - and making sure I was ready for the torrent of feeling that was about to pour into me - I touched Harry's scar once more. Knowing what to expect made the whole experience far more metered and after a few seconds I found I could slow events to the rate I could fully understand.

For the next three hours we stayed like that, holding one another, as I relived Harry's life.

==========

I woke up on Saturday to find myself inexorably entwined with Harry, such close proximity with him having a rather predictable effect on me.

My stirring began to wake him and a moment later I was staring into his wonderful emerald eyes.

"Good morning," I whispered.

"Mornin'," he replied, flexing his muscles around me as he woke. I also felt him flex another 'muscle' that was exquisitely squashed against my own, and I shivered with pleasure. We shared a kiss that lasted a whole lot longer than I think either of us had intended, but neither party was about to complain.

"Thank you," I smiled.

"What for?"

"For letting me in."

"I should really be thanking you," he smiled shyly. "They say a trouble shared is a trouble halved - and they're not wrong..."

I kissed him once more.

"So what's happening this weekend?"

"It's a Hogsmeade weekend," he yawned after we managed to separate ourselves from one another. "Want to go?"

"Hogsmeade?"

"Local village. A few shops and a pub - that's about it."

"Not exactly SHOPPING shopping then is it?"

"How d'you mean?"

"We're in Scotland, right?"

"Right."

"A stone's throw from Loch Ness, right?"

"Right.."

"Now, I know I'm shit at Geography, but ain't Loch Ness right next to Inverness?"

"Yeah, I think it is."

"How long have you been here?"

"This is my fifth year..."

"And in all that time you've never been to Inverness?"

"Well, no..."

"C'mon, then," I said, getting out of bed. "We're going to go to Inverness."

"Don't you think we ought to do something about that first, though?" asked Harry, staring intently at my midsection.

I looked down and grinned. "I suppose you're right..."

==========

"I think you'll enjoy Hogsmeade more," commented Hermione as I aired my idea.

"Really?"

She nodded. "There's all sorts of weird and mad stuff there - it's worth having a look at least once. All Muggle towns and cities are the same - see one and you've seen them all. Besides, with all this snow it'd be rather difficult getting more than a couple of miles."

I looked over at Harry. "We can always go to Inverness as soon as the snow clears up," he offered. I surmised that to be perfectly true and, as I hadn't seen a wizarding town before, decided it to be a good idea.

We all nipped back to the Dormitories to retrieve our heavy winter cloaks as the sky looked more than a little foreboding.A few minutes later, we were all togged up and ready for the worst the Scottish winter could throw at us. We pushed aside the portrait hole and began the mile-or-so walk to Hogsmeade from Hogwarts.

From four floors up in Gryffindor tower, the snow appeared as a light, fluffy blanket gently covering the countryside. The reality on walking out of the front door was somewhat different, however: The snow was nearly three feet deep in places where Hagrid hadn't been dutifully shovelling, aided by the odd charm here and there from any passing member of staff. It was truly awesome to behold and, living a lot further south, I had not really experienced proper snow.

Ron and Hermione led the way, wading rather comically through the snow with an awful lot of giggling and falling into one another. Harry and I kept a respectable distance behind them, whilst Monty was leaping around like he had springs for paws, thoroughly enjoying the sensation of sinking three times his body height into the snow.

"So, do you reckon they've... You know," I asked Harry, nodding towards Ron and Hermione who had ended up on top of one another in a conveniently placed drift.

"What, like..." he nodded his head suggestively. I nodded in affirmation. "Oh God no. Ron'd be far to nervous and Hermione... Well, I just get the feeling that she wouldn't anyway."

"Bummer,"

"Or not," smiled Harry. "Hey, see that?"

He pointed out a building half-way up a hillside on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. "That's the Shrieking Shack. My Dad and some of his friends used to hide out there. One of them was a werewolf, and so every month when he transformed, he had to leave the school. There's a secret tunnel that leads all the way from the castle grounds into its basement."

I was starting to get used to taking the most arbitrary, nonsensical sentences as fact now, and I even managed to suppress the majority of my surprise and intrigue, although deep down it did still rather amaze me.

"Cool... Hey, perhaps we could... You know, kinda use it as our own?"

"I don't see why not," smiled Harry. "Shame we didn't come up with that earlier," he smiled.

We carried on into Hogsmeade and, as Hermione had suggested I may be, found myself rather overwhelmed by the strangeness of a Wizarding town. All of the buildings reminded me of pictures from history books: they all seemed to be plonked in rather arbitrary positions with little or no regard for a street plan, whilst having roofs that started almost at ground level and swept two or three stories high. If Sir Isaac Newton could see them he'd have torn up his whole idea about action and reaction, such were the physical impossibilities of some of the constructions.

We rounded the corner into a street that tortured the very definition of a high street. The biting wind loaded with snow whipped straight down the zig-zag alleyway, causing us all to involuntarily shiver and pull our cloaks just a little tighter round us. Directly opposite us was Zonko's Joke Shop. Through the brightly decorated window, I could see Fred and George talking in an extremely animated manner to the shopkeeper, who seemed to have a rather eclectic mix of enthusiasm and trepidation on his face.

A couple of doors down was a house so thin that if it wasn't supported by its peers on either side it surely would have to have fallen down. Next to that was what looked like an office signed "Obscurus Publishing", out of which came a very hassled looking witch, clutching a large pile of parchment and cursing under her breath as the wind did its best to rip the papers from her hands.

We all followed Hermione's lead into a branch of Flourish and Blotts, clenching our fists and blowing our fingers to try and get some feeling back into them. As we entered, a small bell tinkled somewhere in the back of the shop. A rather rotund, elderly witch hobbled out from the back of the shop and greeted us all with a smile until she spotted Monty.

"I'm sorry, dear," she said, eyeing him suspiciously. "I'm afraid we don't allow animals in the store."

"He won't be any problem, ma'am, I promise. I'll pay for any damage," I added, hoping it might swing her decision. Thankfully, it did.

"All right, but try and keep an eye on him - the last Crup we had in here destroyed a whole shipment of Lockhart books..."

Ron snorted. "Not a major loss, then,"

Both the shopkeeper and Hermione looked at Ron as if he'd just crapped on the carpet before they both wandered off in their own directions.

"Now, you're going to be good aren't you?"

Monty wagged his tail and shuffled a little closer to my leg.

"Were you talking to the Crup or to Harry?" enquired Hermione as innocently as she could from across the shop.

We browsed round for a bit. Harry picked up a book on the Chudley Cannons and flicked through the pages, stopping to watch some of the moving pictures in the centre. Ron too had gravitated towards the Quidditch section and was peering over Harry's shoulder.

"Who're they?" I asked.

"Who're they?!" echoed Ron incredulously. "'They' are only one of the best Quidditch teams ever to grace the face of the planet," he continued.

"Quidditch?"

Ron looked at me aghast, and then looked at Harry for some support. He got none as Harry was too busy sniggering at Ron's horror at my ignorance.

"Harry, now don't take this the wrong way, mate, but you're really going to have to educate your... uh..."

"Boyfriend?" he offered.

Ron blushed slightly. I positively beamed at Harry. We hadn't really spoken about any kind of 'formalisation' of our relationship, such as it was at less than a week old, but it looked as if Harry was happy to let it progress a little.

"Yeah, well," continued Ron, regaining his stride a little. "Whatever he is, if he's sharing our dorm you've got to teach him Quidditch."

Harry looked around the shelf from which he'd got the Chudley Cannons book and pulled a green-covered volume from the shelf. "A present," he smiled. I looked at the cover: "Quidditch through the ages?"

"Best way of explaining the game and why it's played like it is," smiled Harry. "Tell you what, why don't we all go and get a butterbeer from the Three Broomsticks and I'll explain it all."

"'K. Any chance we can swing by a cash machine?"

"A what?" asked Ron.

"Cash machine - allows you to get money out of a hole in the wall," I explained none too clearly.

"There's a branch of Gringotts round the corner from here - we'll see if they can sort out some wizard money for you," smiled Hermione. Harry volunteered to pay for the small assortment of books we had chosen. The shopkeeper smiled at us and paid comment on how well I'd managed to train my Crup. She looked at Monty thoughtfully for a moment, then bent down behind the counter and retrieved a rather tattered copy of "Magical Me" by Gilderoy Lockhart.

"Seeing as the poor man's lost his marbles I's don't suppose he'd mind," she smiled, and placed the book squarely into Monty's mouth. We thanked her, turned up our collars and trudged back out into the snow again.

[1] Extract from "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them" by Newt Scamander and J.K. Rowling; Bloomsbury Children's Books; ISBN: 0747554668

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