Chapter Twenty-Eight: Screaming Scars

They soared for long hours, cutting through glimmering mist in the quiet suspense of the night. The air was cold, made pure with frost, but they laughed at its crystalline bite, baring mocking throats before the sharp ice of its teeth. Storm clouds rolled in the distance, roaring with shattering fury and the crackle of blue lightning, but leather wings carried them swifter than the wind. They had walked through the world's skin and suffered a thousand tortures; tonight, they would reach for the pale glow of full-bellied moons.

Harry grinned a raptured smile, leaning back against the corded strength in bony arms. Behind him, Sirius held on tight, fierce with a dead man's love. He shook with healing scars and reckless mirth, laughing at the clear moon and all the space between them. Above thick fog and below bleached stars, they outpaced nightmares on Thestral's wings, untouched by darkened fate.

With a sharp pull and graceful twist, black wings flattened against frozen air, brisk snap turning to easy roll. Harry unbent from the Thestral's neck, dragging Sirius up with him. He felt wakeful and free, drunk on moonlit air and weightless flight. Mindful of the shifting muscles under his thighs, he turned to his parent with curling lips, with dancing eyes.

"What do you think?" he called over gusting wind. "How long has it been since you've last flown?"

"Too long!" Sirius shouted back, gaunt chest heaving with dying delight. His hands pinched Harry's sides. "But let's head down soon, alright? It'd be a shame if my extremities started falling off."

Snorting, Harry shoved back against him, but a gentle push of knees in the crease between two wings drove them towards hard ground. The Thestral glided with sinuous strength, smooth and unhurried. They drifted down like dead leaves, a lazy, swirling descent.

It was as they touched down, started shaking out numb limbs, that Sirius slung an arm around Harry's shoulders, pulled him close and said, "So. When did you realise you fancy Salazar bloody Slytherin, d'you reckon?"

It was said with the warm interest of a parent's teasing, with such flippant nonchalance that Harry's heart tripped long before his mind shuddered. Then, the words registered, were caught by burning ears and understood in all their crushing weight. It was as though the far-away lightning had found Harry after all, had torn through his chest with hollering anger.

He felt himself react, knee-jerk and helpless, body seizing up with the sick rush of fretful blood. He had paled, he knew from the empty buzzing in his ears, had taken too long to answer, too, but Harry had lived long years with lies cradled close. He pulled a smile on nervous lips, forced himself to meet grey eyes turned black in the cover of night. He willed words past the tight fist of his throat, willed them steady, willed them incredulous.

"Uh?" he said, a studied slump bowing anxious shoulders. "Fancy? What – er. Padfoot. I don't fancy anyone. Salazar is my teacher. I like him well enough, but I don't – I'm not – I – "

Words dried out in his mouth, wilted like dead flowers. There was only so big a lie even he could tell. Not even to protect himself from a wrathful father could he deny the love that had taken root in his chest, sank like a tree reaching for water. Harry. Harry did not know how to tear out such a tenacious part of himself. It had grown too great for the trembling confines between ribs and spine. It spilled out of him like blood. There was no way for him to be free of this curse of restless want and broken tenderness. No words could leach it back in, under bones and far from sight.

Sirius looked profoundly unimpressed, frail weight pressing on Harry's shoulders.

"Lad," he said with a slow, measured tone. "I endured six years of your father mooning over one damned redhead. I know what you Potters look like when you want someone. Bloody dumbasses, the lot of you."

Easy words and careful smiles fractured, shattered. Harry felt his composure slip, was to slow to hold it back. He tried to wrench free of the crushing weight of a wasted arm, but found himself weak before Sirius's wan strength. The little panicked gasps of his breath rang loud in his ears, in the deep quiet of an ancient forest. His whole body felt as though it was crawling with insects, long-buried shame boiling up under his skin, hotter than he could stand. What could he do, he wondered numbly? What had he done?

Then, cutting through the mad spinning of the world, came a voice.

"Harry? Harry!" Hands cupped his face, pressed down hard enough to be felt, warm and grounding. "Merlin, kid, breathe. Just breathe, it's alright. It's fine. You're alright. Calm down, Pronglets. Deep breaths, c'mon."

His head was tucked in the crook of Sirius's neck, against the scent of smoke and autumn leaves. Sirius showed him how to breathe, deep and even, running soothing hands along a trembling back. It took long minutes before the awful pinpricks left his chest. Before pressure eased from aching lungs, lifted off by tender words and careful hands.

"Do these happen often?" Sirius asked against his hair, tightening his arms when Harry made to leave, shaky with dizziness. He held on long enough for Harry to relax, melt against him like candle wax, soft with a child's reassurance before a parent's protection.

"Harry." With a sigh, Sirius pushed him away but kept him close, face grave with fierce worry. "Kid, to these happen often?"

Distantly, Harry took stock of the damage. They'd landed in a small clearing, at the edges of the forest. The surrounding bushes had been flattened by the weight caving in Harry's chest. Shredded bark littered the ground. A few small trees were uprooted, pushed clean off, bare-limbed and dying slow deaths. Harry could still feel the uneasy crackle of magic at his fingertips, growling power pooling under his skin, a sickly heat.

"Does what happen often?" he asked, careful to keep his breathing clocked to the steady pulse in Sirius's veins.

"Panic attacks."

It has a name? Harry thought and he was relieved, and he was confused, and he wondered if the jackhammer of his heart would ever be anything but painful. Sirius's face darkened further with each lingering moment of silence, lips pinched tight and brow furrowed. Harry watched him close his eyes, suck in a meditative breath. His expression settled in something firm, resolute. He bore the focus of a warrior making battle plans.

"Harry," he began, softly, with great care. "I truly am a shit parent." He levelled a narrow-eyed glare at Harry when he made a noise of protest, silencing him. "Did you think I was going to beat you up over being attracted to Slytherin? Or is it because he's a man?"

Harry swallowed, treacherous throat working around harmful words yes, yes of course, I beat myself up over it, why wouldn't you? He had learned to live inside his own skin, in long months of quiet wandering, but not even the burn of the Mediterranean sun could cauterize childhood wounds.

"Son," Sirius said with a sigh, snaring Harry back with trembling hope. "No one gets to choose who they want to take to bed. It's not something I'd ever blame you for." His smile turned bloody, turned ferocious. He trapped Harry with affectionate arms and a father's authority. "You and I," he said, gleeful, and Harry braced himself for what followed, "Are going to talk about sex."

{. . .}

It became a thing. Sirius found him in corridors between classes, sat beside him at lunch. With causal words and a neutral face, he dropped small bombshells at Harry's feet.

"Did you know, the reason why my mother finally kicked my out is because she found out I'd been dating Remus?"

"Wait, you dated Remus?"

Or, "Your dad was strictly Evans-centric, but Lily? She had a thing for Alice Longbottom back in Fifth year. You probably get it from her. She'd be so proud."

"They both would."

"I mean, I don't get what you see in Slytherin, but. If I didn't think Remus would gut me, I'd climb Godric Gryffindor like a tree."

"Oh my God Sirius, he's married."

Though most comments were innocuous enough, others made Harry very, incredibly grateful for the cover of foreign languages, preserving the innocence of children's ears.

"Sex should never, ever hurt," Sirius would tell him, stance relaxed but gaze intent. "You're doing something wrong if it does. Take it easy. Use more lube. Try something else. There doesn't need to be penetration for it to be good. Do not get talked into anything you're uncomfortable with."

"For fuck's sake, use protection. I don't care if no one can get pregnant, STDs don't give two shits about gender."

"First times are always messy. There are too many limbs you don't know what to do with. It's alright. Don't hesitate to talk about what you do or don't want. Now, if you want pointers about, say, giving head – "

For all that it left Harry feeling as though his face had caught fire, it helped. This avalanche of careless words, this nonchalance in Sirius's tone. The embarrassment of listening to a parent talk about sex never faded, but Harry stopped feeling like throwing up, like running away, like there were needles under his skin. The clench of shame and resentment he'd carried in the pit of his stomach loosened with every off-handed advice. You are allowed to want what you want, Sirius told him between merciless teasing and the affectionate press of shoulders. It is right, it is normal. Cast shame aside, my godson, and carry yourself with pride.

It helped, and in some ways, it didn't. The hazy, directionless want Harry had felt for Salazar found new focus. It sharpened, took on clearer shapes in the dead of sleepless nights. What would it be like, Harry wondered, to urge Salazar forward from the cradle of his thighs? Would he let Harry suck bruises in the hollow of his throat, down the flat planes of his stomach? He wanted Salazar's mouth on him, wanted to know the stretch of his fingers, the slow slide of him inside his body.

He wanted, with great hunger and ramped up pulse. It was a dull ache that never went away. Where he had danced out of Salazar's reach before, he now found himself giving in. He watched the way Salazar moved, watched the curl of his lips. Harry had averted his eyes long enough; now he looked his fill.

Salazar caught him at it, once. He watched Harry watch him for long moments and held still under his gaze. Harry thrummed with rabbit-fear when the weight of shadowed eyes prickled the back of his neck, but there was challenge in the way Salazar met his stare. With a face that told nothing, Salazar arched back against his seat, chin tilted up to bare the vulnerable stretch of his throat. He looked at Harry, and he made his posture lax, and he wrote something defiant in the curve of his spine, in the spread of his legs. A dare, to look away.

Or, perhaps, an invitation, to come closer.

With his heart in his mouth and a mocking smile tracing the dips of his back, Harry fled and did not look back.

{. . .}

"You should tell him," was Sirius's advice, after he was done laughing, bright and raucous in the seclusion of his rooms. "If you think it's safe. We don't have long here, you told me. Don't deny yourself what little happiness you can find before it's too late. Harry. Better to live missing something you've had, than long for something you'll never know. Take hurtful memories over bitter regrets. Trust me on this. You don't want to look back, ten, twenty years down the road, and realise you've forgotten to live."

Perhaps, thought Harry.

Perhaps.

"Besides," Sirius added, with bare teeth and savage satisfaction. "If he doesn't treat you right, I'll gladly break his legs."

{. . .}

With an ease that came from the passage of too many tragedies, Sirius settled into his life at Hogwarts.

"It's strange," he told Harry one day, contemplating the Great Hall with haunted eyes. "How much has changed, and how much hasn't."

He spent the first few weeks following his release from the Hospital Wing glued to Harry's side. It was, Harry suspected, as much for Harry's benefit as his own. Whenever common sense started to slip from underneath his feet and Harry came to doubt his own sanity, he could reach out, for warm skin and building strength. Assuring himself of Sirius's presence. He lived. He lived, reached back for Harry with easy grins and crinkling eyes, until the taste of corpse-dust and the green glow of deadly spells faded from Harry's senses. He breathed with Harry when anxiety tightened his stomach; Harry guarded Sirius's mind from the monsters prowling in the dark.

With endless patience and the care that came from long separations, they bore each other's hurts and did not bow under the weight.

Sirius moved in to the Slytherin Dungeons. Though he had come to a grudging acceptance of Harry's House of choice, there were limits to his concessions. Over two decades of prejudices would not vanish overnight, not with the stain of a rotten family, not with the burial of too many corpses still fresh in his mind.

"I am not leaving you alone down here," he snapped when Harry pointed out he'd be more at ease in Gryffindor Tower, where Godric had offered a place to stay. "Also, I want to keep an eye on your Lord Slytherin. You may be in love with the man, but I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. Specially not with you."

"Sirius, I don't need a bloody chaperon."

"Yes. Yes you do."

In Slytherin territory, Sirius dogged Harry's steps with a grim smile and watchful eyes. He treated Harry's Housemates cordially enough, contenting himself with playing a few harmless pranks the Snakes were all-too happy to learn from. He saved the burn of his hostility for Salazar. He only ever addressed the Founder with cool disdain or thinly-veiled threats. With Harry under the protection of his arm, he bared hungry teeth at the space between them, more Grim than human, made alive with the dark promise of untold pain.

Look, he seemed to say, from across the common room and the long stretch of empty hallways. This boy who was your student, this boy who is your friend. He is mine now, mine to protect and look after. You will not touch him, or else I will tear out your throat.

Salazar, to Harry's great surprise, did nothing in response. He bore Sirius's animosity with long-suffering grace, met snapping jaws with pleasant smiles. He greeted Sirius like an equal, or a better, with careful bows and polite words. My lord, he called at a studied distance from Harry, with hands tucked behind his back. This is my House; be welcomed here, for it is your own. It was an ostentatious show of respect, and Harry did not understand it.

"Bastard thinks he can make a good impression, does he?" Sirius muttered when asked, a dark glower curling his lips. "I'll crack him open like an egg."

Harry just sighed, and let Sirius play his part.

{. . .}

Sirius's first meeting with Godric Gryffindor went something like this:

"You must be Sirius Black," Godric said, blood-red and golden, moving with easy warmth and a hunter's fluidity. "It's good to finally see you on your feet, Lord Black. I've heard much about you."

"...," said Sirius.

"My name is Godric. Godric Gryffindor. I've had the honour of taking your son as my apprentice. He is shaping up to be a great swordsman."

"...!" said Sirius.

In the background, Harry guffawed.

{. . .}

Harry walked Sirius through the castle, pacing his steps to a convalescent's rhythm. Sirius had endless questions, listened to answers with the look of a starving man offered a feast. For the first time in his life, Harry talked without restraints, confidant in a loved one's acceptance. He talked about the Horcrux hunt, about last year's battle. He talked about Ron and his betrayal, about Gytha and the way she had died. He had words of fears, and doubts, and loneliness. He talked, and he talked, and Sirius let him.

"I missed you so much," Harry told him one day. "After you were gone. We hadn't spent a lot of time together. I know. But – "

"Speak your mind, lad. It's alright."

"But I felt your absence more keenly than I ever did my father's."

That day, Sirius embraced him hard enough to crack ribs, fierce with a living man's strength. "I don't want to replace James, or betray his memory," he whispered against Harry's hair, through the tremble in his voice. "But you have to know. Before. Before the Ministry. I wanted to ask – that is, we'd have to – once my name was cleared, but – I wanted – it's – ah." Harry kept him close as Sirius struggled for words, held him together as Sirius shook with emotions and too many regrets.

I'm here, he said, with a firm touch, with patient silence. I'm here, and I will not leave. We spent long years apart Sirius, Godfather, family. I am done letting go of the people I love. Whatever you have to say, I will stay by your side.

"Blood adoption," Sirius blurted finally. "I'd found the ritual in my family's library. I was going to ask you, but. Never got around to doing it. Figured there'd be time later." Harry felt the dampness of tears against his skin, and couldn't tell whose they were. "I'm sorry I missed that chance, kid. I was reckless, and an idiot. Harry, I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me."

Harry laughed wetly, an ear pressed against the beating of Sirius's heart. "Well, you're here now," he said, pulling back with a shaky smile. "Ask me again once you get those papers back, yeah?"

Sirius pressed their foreheads together with unsteady hands and wondrous eyes. "Yeah," he said, hoarsely. "Yeah alright, I'll do that."

{. . .}

"Sirius," Harry asked, thinking about Remus, about Nick, about family. "Will you teach me to become an Animagus?"

"Ah, lad. I thought you'd never ask."

{. . .}

The boy found him some time after Sirius's recovery. He walked with weighted steps, the land and sky bowing before his dancing strides. The shadows of unnamed powers curled at his fingertips like tamed beasts, but his smile reflected only childish wonder. Harry watched him approach and saw the green depths of a sacred lake, the melted gold of a crown in the making. Oh, he thought through the sympathetic shivering of his soul. Oh, I know you.

"Hello," said the boy, with the rage of a storm in his eyes, the echo of laughter lingering in throne rooms. "Do you remember me?"

"Merlin," said Harry in two voices that overlapped, and he was reaching out, thinking, there you are my brother, over the splitting of his chest.

Merlin clasped his forearm with a firm grip and a broad grin.

"I've been waiting for you," he said. "I wasn't sure we'd meet again. It's been a while for you, hasn't it?" Then, head tilted to a side as though listening to voices Harry couldn't hear, "Arthur. Are you alright?"

There were phantom weights on both his shoulders, the taste of blood lingering on his tongue. Harry smiled from the foreign stretch of his own skin, spoke with a voice that rang deeper than it should. "You have me confused with someone else," he said. "Arthur you'll meet later. I'm just Harry."

Merlin looked at him with ancient eyes that could crack the world open. "So you've told me," he replied, terrible in his kindness. "Funny how destiny works out, isn't it?" He brightened, sudden as the sun coming over the horizon. "It's the first time we're here together though. It's great, don't you think? Magic everywhere. Harry, I have so many questions. I'm glad you decided to stay longer."

Merlin took his hand and Harry followed. It was right, it was wrong; his place was beside that boy, and it wasn't. He'd already stood there, Harry thought, though he had no memory of doing so. The pull of Merlin's magic tasted like lightning, like the groan of the Earth underneath their feet, like Harry's. If Harry blinked for a second too long, he could see red blood drip drip dripping down the edge of a sword, ear the gleeful cawing of crows, the snarl of rotten darkness. He breathed in the brackish waters of a lake, felt a weight upon his head, the weary curl of a bloodied smile on lips that had been his.

Merlin tugged on his hand. "Do you remember that time we went hunting for wyverns?" the boy asked, light, carefree, brighter than the stars.

They were passing a tapestry the size of a small house. The span of rich fabric was taken up by a roaring dragon, golden scales glinting in the sun. The beast was great and fearless, a lance piercing its heart. There had been mud, Harry remembered, and the touch of a fire that could melt bones.

"I don't," he said. "I don't remember. And neither should you. You haven't lived that yet."

Merlin cast him a smile, soft and full of mischief. "Does it matter?" he asked. "I haven't, but you have. It's really one and the same, isn't it? If you were to call me by your name I wouldn't be able to tell the difference." Then, "C'mon! I need to ask you about magic. You've been having troubles with control, haven't you? I thought we could help each other."

Merlin dragged him to an isolated classroom, a bare space with abandoned, broken desks. Harry thought about torn up trees and all the damage that had followed him through the summer. He'd felt unstable for long months now, hadn't known what to do about it. Hogwarts had helped, but not even the reassurance of home had been enough to tame the new thing shaking itself loose below his sternum.

"Alright," he said, facing Merlin with squared shoulders and steady hands. "Where do you want to start?"

Early morning faded to late afternoon. Neither of them took note beside uninterested glances at the gliding sun. Harry lost grip on his shaky sense of self. He stood on school-grounds, in lavish ballrooms, in the mud of battlefields. Merlin raised his wand, but it was his own voice that spoke. He moved, but it was Harry who waved life into being. He broke and came together; he fell and grew bruises. He thrummed to bursting, with cracks splintering wider under his feet, with a distant call pleading his name, a name, over here Harry, here is your way home, here is the voice to lead you out of the dark, a friend's voice, Hermio –

"Harry," they called him, with teasing words and light hands on sweaty skin. "There you are Harry. We've been looking for you for long hours. Come back, friend, mentor, brother, you are ours still."

Harry came to in a midst of Slytherins, deep green and glittering silver, sly smiles and studied postures. Alfric had an arm around his waist, Ignotus was tucked under his arm. Audra was scowling, swatting at a cackling Glenn.

"When did you get here?" Harry mumbled, and he could feel himself settle back inside his own skin, could feel the receding crackle of his magic.

"We just did," Alfric replied, shaking him gently.

"Since when do you hold study sessions we're not invited to?" Dallin demanded, with crossed arms and adolescent petulance. "I swear, we should give you a collar with a bell. Maybe then you'd stop sneaking off every other day."

"Possessive much?" Bradley asked him, snickering, earning a swift glare from the other boy.

"Sorry," Harry told them, keeping his tone bland and his manners unrepentant. "Mostly, I didn't want to see your ugly mugs for half a day."

He met Merlin's eyes over hollering laughter and indignant spluttering. The boy winked at him over Cadmus's head. See? He seemed to say. Isn't that much better now?

And it was. Even through the daze of exhaustion, Harry felt a new ease sink beneath his bones. The classroom smelt of ozone, the heavy tang of spellwork, and something like peace loosened the tense knots of Harry's muscles.

He let himself reach back for the strength in Alfric's shoulders, the warmth of Ignotus against his side.

"Now that you're here though," he told his Housemates, "you might as well stay. I didn't mean to make you worry."

"We know, Potter," Audra told him with a roll of her eyes.

"We know."

{. . .}

"I keep hearing her," Harry told Salazar, one quiet evening after dinner had come and gone.

Salazar met his gaze over the soft glow of candle light, silver eyes made dark in the creeping gloom. "The friend you love and left behind," he said. "Hermione."

"Yes."

"It isn't the first time. Do you hear her more often?"

Harry nodded. "I think I heard her a few times over – over the months I've been away. But I was never sure. It's been getting worst lately, though."

Carefully, Salazar set down his quill. He closed the journal he'd been writing in, bound green leather containing detailed notes on their progress.

"You understand what this means, don't you?" he asked, leaning against a desk with the deliberate slowness of the injured avoiding pain.

Harry inclined his head. "I think I do," he said, because he couldn't always tell the difference between delirium and reality, caught in visions of black wings and groaning ice, terrified of the dark lurking beneath.

"I am sorry."

If Harry hadn't spent careful months schooling himself in each of Salazar's micro-expressions, he might have missed the rawness of his tone. Something bled through the measure of Salazar's voice, something that spoke of helpless rage, of repressed sorrow, of deep regret. Harry's own breath stuttered, locked somewhere at the back of his throat.

"Salazar," he called, and stopped there. He thought about Greek philosophies, about pain and the avoidance of it. He held a restless tongue still between firm teeth, counted full breaths before he spoke. "Did you think I would blame you, Salazar?" he asked, and didn't wait for the damning confirmation only silence could bring. "Salazar, listen. I'd meant to thank you. For everything you've done. I don't know what's going to happen next. I want – I. I want you to know, in case I don't get the chance later. How much I – I value who you are to me." He was febrile, feverish with unrequited love, with a want that burned his skin, hotter than dragon-fire. He forced himself to stillness and said, "I won't ever forget it. I won't let anyone else forget, either."

A promise.

I will fight for your reputation for as long as I draw breath, Harry told him, with a heavy heart and the roar of blood, but Salazar could not hear him.

"I am missing half the equation," he said, low and frustrated, and Harry wanted to ease the tense set of his shoulders with soothing hands, with skirting lips. "We've made great progress, you and I," Salazar told him, with a broad gesture that encompassed the whole room, the arching lines of spell theory, the scent of chalk, shivering with too many questions. "It could work. I could make it work, I am certain of it. But I cannot undo a spell without knowing its source. I would kill you."

"I wouldn't worry about that," Harry assured him. "Another man is already waiting on that honour."

"Do not," Salazar snapped, and there was nothing veiled about the desperate anger on his face, "Make light of your own death."

"I'm not." With a weary sigh, Harry propped himself on the table beside Salazar, pressing up against him, elbows to shoulders, a light touch, to ground and reassure. "There's been too much blood spilled in my name for me to go down without a fight, I promise you. To many sacrifices."

"Maybe there hasn't been enough, considering," Salazar murmured, a vicious whisper. He eased himself back on his feet, shifting from Harry's touch. "Regardless," he said, picking up his journal, quick fingers flicking through the pages. "I would like you to tell me again what you remember of the day you were sent back in time. Anything at all could be useful."

Harry had lost count of how many times they had gone through this particular dance, but the narrowing of Salazar's eyes dissuaded him from further protest. Bowing his head in defeat, he began his tale from where it had started.

{. . .}

Life, as it was wont to do, followed its course. Harry trained with Merlin, with Godric and Sirius. He gave some classes, and attended others.

Away from Sirius's distrustful eyes, Salazar pulled him in for long hours of research. In turn, Harry followed him to the Chamber of Secrets, kept him company through restless nights. He never helped, kept still by Ginny's screams and a leaden tongue, contemplating the unyielding burden of set fate with each stroke of Salazar's wand.

Sometimes, the two of them fought, between walls that were water-slick, hanging heavy with the primal scent of wet earth. They fought with sharp swords and bloodied fists, coming together with light steps and unrestrained violence. It did not satiate Harry's desire for touch, for long hours spent in bed with nothing but bare skin and cut-off breaths, but bearing Salazar's bruises, marking the man's skin with his own, made the furious, snarling thing in his chest purr in contentment.

Life followed its course, draped itself in heavy snows and the bite of winter frost.

An early morning in December, Harry woke, for the first time in over a year, to screaming pain, splitting his skull along the edges of the lightning scar on his forehead.

A.N: Happy (belated) Christmas and happy (soon to be) new year, if it's anything you celebrate!