After the seeming defeat of Lord Voldemort by the Potter twins, a young Harry Potter is taken to the Program, a schoolhouse that raises young children as soldiers for the ICW. Starts in 4th year.
A Broken Mind (Harry Potter)
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Chapter 1
After the seeming defeat of Lord Voldemort by the Potter twins, a young Harry Potter is taken to the Program, a schoolhouse that raises young children as soldiers for the ICW. Starts in 4th year. There are a few AU elements that will be revealed throughout the story. The title is shite, too.
Chapter 1
The wizard was fast, Ares realized, lightning fast—a half-dozen curses and jinxes flew his way in the span of just seconds: sickly yellows for the entrail-expelling curse; dull reds for the blood-boiling; purples for an illegal castration jinx. Each was as vicious as the wizard's snarls, yet they all splashed uselessly against Ares' shield in a shower of colored energy.
From the other rooms in the manor, screams and pleas echoed like a deathly chorus, fueling the dark wizard's mindless aggression, and his casting became sloppier and nastier as their duel lengthened. Ares could see the emotions building in the man's eyes: anger, desperation, the onset of fear and doubt.
Good, he thought. Emotion is weakness of will, and weakness precludes only death.
Staying true to his training, Ares remained calm despite the spell barrage, his feet planted in a ready stance, knees slightly bent, wand glowing with power. From the corner of his eyes he saw the transfigured stone dogs advance slowly along the walls, their disillusioned forms shimmering close to the floor. In the dim light of one of the manor's drawing rooms, the other wizard wouldn't know what got him until it was too late.
As if realizing his dire situation, something shifted in the man's posture. He growled and spat on the floor, then his wand slashed the air in a familiar pattern. Green light flashed from across the room, and Ares had to sidestep a Killing curse the next moment. Another growl, and he twisted out of the path of the Cruciatus.
Ares could have smiled. Use of the Unforgivables from a suspect sanctioned a proportional response. As the man's wand lit up emerald green one more time the first stone dog rammed him on the knee, throwing him to the ground. The disillusionment fell, and the dog latched on the man's thigh, inch long stone teeth tearing through skin and muscle.
The man howled on the wooden floor, part scream of pain, part snarl of anger. His leg thrashed like a rag doll in the dog's mouth.
Ares allowed himself a shiver at the sound, drinking it in. He saw the man turn his shaky wand at the transfigured beast, but the other dog took the opportunity and lept from the side, biting him before he could utter a spell. The bones in his wand arm snapped audibly with a sickening crunch.
The screams intensified from then on, and Ares watched impassively for another minute until the man's pain-filled howls became gurgles, then desperate sobs, and finally soft, pathetic whimpers. Only then did he approach, slowly, cautiously, shield still up.
All proper procedure.
Ares' boots thumped heavily against the floor boards as he walked, raising small clouds of dust behind him. The air this side of the room was rich with the smell of ozone from the Killing curse, sweet and pungent and electric like the coming of a storm. When he finally stood above the downed wizard, Ares took him in for the first time. The man looked to be in his forties, with a full head of graying blond hair slicked back so it stuck close to his skull. His skin looked waxy and deathly pale, though how much of it was due to blood lost Ares didn't know, and an angry looking scar ran from his upper lip up to his left eyebrow, giving him a menacing look.
He moaned in a language Ares didn't understand—Old High German, he figured, given they'd been sent to deal with a growing pro-germanic death cult of some sort—then switched to English when he saw it wasn't working, croaking something that sounded a lot like please.
Ares didn't listen.
Looking at the man dead in the eyes, he swung his wand in a downward arc, whispered "Lacero," and watched as the man's head rolled off his corpse in a gush of beautiful scarlet.
Without his whimpers, the room became eerily silent. Ares just stood there for a long moment, transfixed, staring at the dead man. Blood and ozone mixed, suffusing the air around him, and he could almost feel the metallic taste of it on his tongue.
He hadn't noticed the lack of fighting outside the room until heavy footsteps sounded from the hallway, quickly approaching. Cursing his inattentiveness in the middle of a mission, Ares turned, wand raised. The steps paused just outside, and his muscles tensed in preparation for another fight.
Then a familiar voice called from beyond the door, "Lunar!"
Ares let out a breath. "Solar!" he replied evenly.
The door swung open and Leo's grinning face peeked out from behind it. "Wonder boy!" he greeted cheerfully, moving into the room. He whistled as he saw the body. "Seems like you're all done here, then?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Ah, don't be like that when it's just us." He sidled up next to Ares and slung an arm around his shoulders. The american wizard towered over everyone in the Program, and was easily a head taller than Ares despite him being tall for his age. "Job's over anyway. Fuckers didn't even have the decency to give us a proper fight, just flung spells left and right like school children." He poked the corpse's mangled leg with a boot clad foot. "How was your friend here, anyway? Anything good?"
"Not good," Ares said. "But fast, very fast."
"Really?" Leo raised an intrigued eyebrow. "Well, if you're saying, I'll believe it then. Maybe he was this cell's leader or something like that."
Ares shrugged. "Maybe."
Leo simply hummed. "Let's just go. Diana and Vidar already picked up the souvenirs we're bringing home for questioning." He turned to leave the way he came but stalled mid-stride when he caught Ares' staring at the dead wizard's severed head. He smiled knowingly. "Maybe you want a souvenir of your own, eh? Stuffed and mounted on your wall… I never knew you had an eye for fancy decor," he teased. When Ares kept silent, he leaned forward, tilting his head to get a good look at Ares' frowning face. "What? This wasn't your first one, was it?"
Ares made to answer—then stopped himself short. He'd killed before, yes, but that was in the heat of a fight, a duel to the death. This one had been different, more… personal. He turned to Leo. "In this… manner, yes, I suppose he was."
Leo barked a laugh. "And there are manners involved in chopping heads now, are there?" He shook his head, locks of curly brown hair coming to rest on his face. Leo's hair was never up to Program standard. "You're a weird one, wonder boy."
Before Ares could mount any form of protest, Leo was pushing him out the door and towards the meeting point in the ballroom. They walked in comfortable silence through the many halls of the manor, kicking away recent debris and coughing out old dust. The walls were still lined with damaged marble statues of past descendants, faded golden-lined tapestries of old battles and dormant paintings resting in gilded frames. Whoever lived here had been rich once, Ares decided, very rich.
Wiping at his watering eyes, Leo muttered something about dark wizards and their unexplainable aversion to cleaning spells under his breath.
"Maybe there are rules," said Ares, eyes drawn in as if in deep thought. "For all dark wizards. Like… like a handbook."
Leo started, turning to look at Ares as if he was another person entirely. "Sometimes I forget you can actually joke, too," he said, chuckling.
Ares only nodded. "That is an ability within my skill set, yes."
"There! I can't tell if it's banter or not. It's disturbing."
Leaving behind another corridor, they turned the last corner and arrived at the grand doors of the ballroom. The grand double doors hung askew on their frames, with green flames still licking at their bottom half. The deep red wood was charred near black, and the family's crest of two rampant hippogriffs facing each other in the middle was half covered by a thick layer of soot.
Inside the room, Ares could see the rest of his team, the six of them standing around the two prisoners Leo had mentioned. Diana, the team leader for the mission, pulled out a long piece of cord from her coat—the same knee-length black overcoat they all wore, and passed it around their circle, before looping the end of the cord around the prisoners.
Ares and Leo approached them with nods and took up positions where they could reach the portkey. No further words were traded as Diana prepared for their departure. While Ares had a good relationship with most of his Program comrades, he only counted Leo as somewhat of a friend. Being a few years older, Leo had taken Ares under his wing soon after Alayne arrived to be the new Director when Ares was eight—the year everything changed for him.
Pointing a spare wand at the far end of the ballroom, Diana whispered, "Fiendfyre," and the malevolent flames burst forth from the wand, pouncing at the walls in the form of blazing lions and griffons and basilisks.
Ares felt the oppressive heat of the cursed fire start licking at their team, then the portkey activated with a twist to the navel, and they were gone.
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Ares stepped into his room within Vogelberg Castle with a towel hanging around his waist and a rush of hot steam from the adjoining bathroom trailing in his wake. They were allowed hot showers following missions, and Ares only tolerated the luxury after much insistence on Alayne's part.
With a flick of his wand to dissipate the steam, Ares moved to the plain dresser sitting on the corner directly opposite the door. Aside from the single nightstand next to his bed, it was the only piece of furniture present in his boxy room. Alayne affected many changes when she took over as Director, but after her persistence with the hot shower, Ares had had to put his foot down when it came to decorating his room with sports posters and useless trinkets—something she insisted boys his age should do. He suspected she gave up without a fight on purpose, as she knew there was little he wouldn't do if she only but asked.
Despite it being the middle of summer in Switzerland, the air at night was icy cold inside their hilltop castle, and the stone beneath his bare feet colder still, but he didn't let himself hurry getting dressed. That would be the way of the weak, and Ares could never let himself be weak. Not even in something simple as this.
Unbidden, his eyes flashed to the small chest tucked neatly under his bed. With his responsibilities over for the day, he had been able to finish his nightly rituals before the shower, and the deep calm that came with the purging still resonated in his mind.
As he finished dressing, Ares tensed when something triggered the proximity wards on his end of the corridor. His wand was in his hand not a second later. Even inside their remote and heavily-secured castle, he knew to never let his guard down. Then a quick, six-part knock came at the door, and he relaxed his ready stance.
"It's me," Leo called from the other side. "The Director tasked me to accompany you to her office. All very official and whatnot."
"Very well," Ares said, already moving. "Just a second."
Quickly, he put on his boots, grabbed a heavy jacket, and was out following Leo through the dimly lit halls of the castle a moment later.
"Do you know what this is about?" he asked.
Leo shrugged beneath his overcoat. Being the second most senior member of the team, he must have still been with the Director reporting on their mission. "Dunno," he said. "I don't think it's to do with what we're working on, though. She didn't mention anything in the meeting."
Ares nodded absently. They took the serpentine stairs down to the first floor in quick time, with Leo nodding and waving at other graduates lounging in their common room, then left Blackcoat Tower behind and took the covered bridge over to the main keep. Ares had gained his own room in the tower the day he had risen from a novitiate to a graduate at eleven-years-old, the same age most magical children around the world started their schooling. Alayne awarding him his black overcoat was still his happiest memory, the focus he used for the patronus charm.
"I have had some thoughts about this cult," Ares said, looking out at the inner bailey of the castle from the bridge. Vogelberg Castle was not a large one, only a square keep with two stone towers flanking it's sides and twenty-feet high curtain walls surrounding the property on the summit of a mountain. After the last owner died, a recluse wizard who had sequestered himself on the Lepontine Alps to continue some obscure research, it had been left vacant for hundreds of years before the ICW had appropriated it for the Program. Now, with liberal use of extension charms and rune clusters, the castle housed almost a hundred people at all times, divided between the Blackcoat Tower for the graduates, the Children's Tower for the novitiate, and the Keep for all the common areas, which included a whole wing for the Director and their quarters.
Leo snorted beside him. "Of course you did," he said, his breath misting in the night. "Do go on and enlighten me, wonder boy."
Ignoring Leo's usual teasing, Ares continued, "The wards we broke through. They were too good to have been put there by those thugs. Not only that, but I think I recognized the crest on the ballroom. The manor must have belonged to the Lichtrem family. They were some of Germany's best warders before they fell to Grindelwald. Even after years in stasis, I do not think it possible for men such as those to bypass their family wards."
Leo raised an eyebrow. "So you think they have some backing? Good backing?" He seemed to actually think about that for a moment. "Maybe," he allowed. "Maybe. But even if they do, that ain't our job. The ICW has their fancy investigators on it, far as I know. They'll send us in whenever they get a sniff of something and that is that."
Ares eyes widened. "Of course," he said, then cleared his throat. "Of course, Leo. I apologize."
"It's alright, junior." Leo laughed and tousled his hair. "Just keep it in mind, yeah?"
As they came into the keep, they passed the few novitiates still practicing in the cavernous expanse of the Great Hall, their wand movements uncertain and their spells shouted loudly, while further into the castle on-duty graduate guards mingled around the cafeteria during their break, slapping each other over the shoulder and laughing over bawdy jokes. Ares never saw the point in all the socializing. Whenever he wasn't on a mission, he could be found buried in books in the library or flinging spells against both practice dummies and live partners in one of the keep's private training rooms. Years ago, when Ares first asked Leo why the others wasted their time like that, he had only said, "You'll understand, one day." He hadn't, as of yet, but he trusted his friend.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Leo asked, amusement dancing in his eyes. Before Ares could answer, the other boy shook his head. "Whatever. Come, the Director is waiting."
He led Ares away from the main area and down a long corridor lined with openings on both sides, until the noisy racket of the hall grew fainter. A few turns and a set of stairs, and they soon arrived at a great set of double doors with the Program's crest carved in relief at the center—crossed wands over a hooded figure. Leo rapped on the door, announced him, and turned to leave with a smart smile on his face.
With the Director expecting him, he had only to put his wand against a small indentation on the wall, and he was given access into her office. When he entered, he swiftly moved to the foot of her desk and snapped a salute, closed fist thumping against his chest. "Reporting, Madam Director." He kept his face expressionless as he stared at the wood-paneled wall.
He heard the scratch of a quill and the rustle of parchment for another minute before it came to a stop and she acknowledged him, "At ease, operative." Ares let his arm fall to his side, but kept his feet exactly shoulder-length apart. She gestured across the desk. "Sit, if you will."
He moved to pull out a chair. "How can I be of service, Madam?"
When he sat, the Director fixed him with sharp, golden-brown eyes from across her desk. "I have called you here to… reassign you."
He frowned. "To another team?"
"No," she said. "I am temporarily removing you from the Program."
At those words, dread seized his body like a troll's hand. It was all he could do not to keep his suddenly raving magic reigned in. Had he done something to deserve this? Was he being punished for some perceived disobedience? He wasn't. He couldn't. Questions and desperate pleas flashed through his mind in a second, but a life of obedience and conditioning meant he only gave a stiff nod of acceptance.
In the end, he knew he would follow her orders as was his duty. Always.
As perceptive as she was, the Director quickly noticed his uneasiness. "Yes, operative? Is there anything you want to say?"
Ares swallowed a lump in his throat. "Have I… have I displeased you, Madam Director?"
The Director regarded him for a long moment, before she let out a deep breath, and her stern face seemed to melt away. "No, Ares," she said softly, as one would to a skittish animal. "That's not it at all. I simply have another mission for you. Something only someone with your profile would fit, and that will require your temporary discharge from our ranks."
Ares promptly bowed his head in an effort to hide his reddening cheeks. "Of course, Madam," he whispered. He wanted nothing more than to curse himself for doubting her. "Forgive me."
He heard her sigh. "There's nothing to forgive," she said. "Perhaps I should not have phrased it that way. I know how much the Program means to you."
It is not the Program, he wanted to say, but thought better of it and kept his quiet. This was still an official meeting between subordinate and superior. There was a moment of silence in the room, then she coughed into her hand.
"Well. Now that that is over and done with, let me tell you where you are going. This—" she bent down, reached into a drawer and produced a thick envelope of tanned parchment, with the name Ares Prince written in green ink "—is your Hogwarts acceptance letter. I picked your codename to make things easier."
Ares looked at the letter with no small amount of consternation. "What will I do in… Hogwarts?" he asked.
"There are… concerns about events happening in Hogwarts this school year. They are set to host the Triwizard Tournament, the first in almost two hundred years, and we have intelligence that an unknown entity will try to use the confusion created by the tournament to enact some form of plot. That is what you are going to investigate and, if possible, prevent."
"That seems rather vague," he said warily.
The Director made a faint sound, settling back against her chair. "It is," she allowed. "Our sources believe this entity is most likely to act through the traditionalist families, which is why we crafted the pureblood persona of Ares Prince for you. The Prince family absconded out of England many years ago," she explained, "before your supposed birth even, so your late admission to the school, as if you were only now returning to the country, shall not raise too many questions. The family had an outlying debt with the ICW, so we even had them formally adopt this non-existent Ares Prince. Any persistent inquiry into your legitimacy will thus be met with a positive result."
Ares' mind was turning, and he felt a bead of sweat running down the length of his back. "I… I am not sure that I am the best suited for this, Madam." He couldn't even imagine himself going to a normal school, eating meals and sleeping around normal children, learning cleaning charms and levitation spells from normal teachers. When he felt her eyes on him, staring, watching he quickly looked away. He just couldn't meet her eyes. He hated to disappoint her more than anything. "I don't think I can do it," he said weakly, staring at the ground.
"Oh, Harry," she murmured.
His head snapped up. She only called him by his real name when she became Alayne for him—just Alayne. Harry followed her graceful movements with his eyes as she stood from her seat and crossed the room. She was a petite woman, no taller than five and a half feet, and young despite her position, though she walked with the self-assurance of someone a decade older. When she lowered herself on the end of the deep burgundy leather couch set against the wall, his heart started pumping wildly on his chest.
"Come sit with me, please," she said.
He looked at her uncertainly for a moment, but she only nodded back. Slowly, he waded after her and laid down atop the couch, his head rest resting on her thighs. Atop him, her brown hair cascaded down around her face like a curtain of the sweetest caramel, tickling at his neck. He took a deep breath, telling himself it was meant to be composing, and not so he could smell her scent, lavender and vanilla and home. Whenever they did this, it felt to him as if every problem in his life disappeared, all the aches in his muscles faded, all his demons were put to rest, and there were just the two of them in the world.
Her hands soon found their way to his hair, and she ran long fingers through his black locks. "You should not be ashamed of who you are, Harry." She brushed a thumb across the faded scar on his forehead. "No one must know of your identity, yes, especially since they will be there—but there is nothing wrong with who you are as a person. People are different from each other. You will see that when you go to Hogwarts. Perhaps you will find someone who accepts you other than Leo and I."
Harry wanted to deny it. Nobody would ever be her equal, not in his heart. "I don't want to go," he said. "I don't want to leave you."
"I know," she said softly. "But you must do this, Harry. Do you understand?"
He nodded, even if he didn't.
"Will you do this for me, Harry?" she asked again. Then she started singing a soft lullaby. He closed his eyes, and her voice washed over him entirely, warmer than the summer sun, and he easily acceded to going to Hogwarts and leaving her behind for most of a year. When he finally opened his eyes and looked up, she was smiling impishly at him, and he loved the small dimples on the corner of her lips.
She knew the effect she had on him, but he could never begrudge her anything, not even being his weakness.
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I would always hope for reviews, though if you have the time and inclination, I would ask for a few specific things.
For example, what do you think about the characterization? It's clear he's a deeply flawed character, with a very unhealthy relationship with the one in charge of him, but what did you think about it? Also, did the voice of the character come out at all? And if so, was it too much or too little?
What about exposition? Too much to the point where it's boring and you're just skimming?
Chapter 1
The wizard was fast, Ares realized, lightning fast—a half-dozen curses and jinxes flew his way in the span of just seconds: sickly yellows for the entrail-expelling curse; dull reds for the blood-boiling; purples for an illegal castration jinx. Each was as vicious as the wizard's snarls, yet they all splashed uselessly against Ares' shield in a shower of colored energy.
From the other rooms in the manor, screams and pleas echoed like a deathly chorus, fueling the dark wizard's mindless aggression, and his casting became sloppier and nastier as their duel lengthened. Ares could see the emotions building in the man's eyes: anger, desperation, the onset of fear and doubt.
Good, he thought. Emotion is weakness of will, and weakness precludes only death.
Staying true to his training, Ares remained calm despite the spell barrage, his feet planted in a ready stance, knees slightly bent, wand glowing with power. From the corner of his eyes he saw the transfigured stone dogs advance slowly along the walls, their disillusioned forms shimmering close to the floor. In the dim light of one of the manor's drawing rooms, the other wizard wouldn't know what got him until it was too late.
As if realizing his dire situation, something shifted in the man's posture. He growled and spat on the floor, then his wand slashed the air in a familiar pattern. Green light flashed from across the room, and Ares had to sidestep a Killing curse the next moment. Another growl, and he twisted out of the path of the Cruciatus.
Ares could have smiled. Use of the Unforgivables from a suspect sanctioned a proportional response. As the man's wand lit up emerald green one more time the first stone dog rammed him on the knee, throwing him to the ground. The disillusionment fell, and the dog latched on the man's thigh, inch long stone teeth tearing through skin and muscle.
The man howled on the wooden floor, part scream of pain, part snarl of anger. His leg thrashed like a rag doll in the dog's mouth.
Ares allowed himself a shiver at the sound, drinking it in. He saw the man turn his shaky wand at the transfigured beast, but the other dog took the opportunity and lept from the side, biting him before he could utter a spell. The bones in his wand arm snapped audibly with a sickening crunch.
The screams intensified from then on, and Ares watched impassively for another minute until the man's pain-filled howls became gurgles, then desperate sobs, and finally soft, pathetic whimpers. Only then did he approach, slowly, cautiously, shield still up.
All proper procedure.
Ares' boots thumped heavily against the floor boards as he walked, raising small clouds of dust behind him. The air this side of the room was rich with the smell of ozone from the Killing curse, sweet and pungent and electric like the coming of a storm. When he finally stood above the downed wizard, Ares took him in for the first time. The man looked to be in his forties, with a full head of graying blond hair slicked back so it stuck close to his skull. His skin looked waxy and deathly pale, though how much of it was due to blood lost Ares didn't know, and an angry looking scar ran from his upper lip up to his left eyebrow, giving him a menacing look.
He moaned in a language Ares didn't understand—Old High German, he figured, given they'd been sent to deal with a growing pro-germanic death cult of some sort—then switched to English when he saw it wasn't working, croaking something that sounded a lot like please.
Ares didn't listen.
Looking at the man dead in the eyes, he swung his wand in a downward arc, whispered "Lacero," and watched as the man's head rolled off his corpse in a gush of beautiful scarlet.
Without his whimpers, the room became eerily silent. Ares just stood there for a long moment, transfixed, staring at the dead man. Blood and ozone mixed, suffusing the air around him, and he could almost feel the metallic taste of it on his tongue.
He hadn't noticed the lack of fighting outside the room until heavy footsteps sounded from the hallway, quickly approaching. Cursing his inattentiveness in the middle of a mission, Ares turned, wand raised. The steps paused just outside, and his muscles tensed in preparation for another fight.
Then a familiar voice called from beyond the door, "Lunar!"
Ares let out a breath. "Solar!" he replied evenly.
The door swung open and Leo's grinning face peeked out from behind it. "Wonder boy!" he greeted cheerfully, moving into the room. He whistled as he saw the body. "Seems like you're all done here, then?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Ah, don't be like that when it's just us." He sidled up next to Ares and slung an arm around his shoulders. The american wizard towered over everyone in the Program, and was easily a head taller than Ares despite him being tall for his age. "Job's over anyway. Fuckers didn't even have the decency to give us a proper fight, just flung spells left and right like school children." He poked the corpse's mangled leg with a boot clad foot. "How was your friend here, anyway? Anything good?"
"Not good," Ares said. "But fast, very fast."
"Really?" Leo raised an intrigued eyebrow. "Well, if you're saying, I'll believe it then. Maybe he was this cell's leader or something like that."
Ares shrugged. "Maybe."
Leo simply hummed. "Let's just go. Diana and Vidar already picked up the souvenirs we're bringing home for questioning." He turned to leave the way he came but stalled mid-stride when he caught Ares' staring at the dead wizard's severed head. He smiled knowingly. "Maybe you want a souvenir of your own, eh? Stuffed and mounted on your wall… I never knew you had an eye for fancy decor," he teased. When Ares kept silent, he leaned forward, tilting his head to get a good look at Ares' frowning face. "What? This wasn't your first one, was it?"
Ares made to answer—then stopped himself short. He'd killed before, yes, but that was in the heat of a fight, a duel to the death. This one had been different, more… personal. He turned to Leo. "In this… manner, yes, I suppose he was."
Leo barked a laugh. "And there are manners involved in chopping heads now, are there?" He shook his head, locks of curly brown hair coming to rest on his face. Leo's hair was never up to Program standard. "You're a weird one, wonder boy."
Before Ares could mount any form of protest, Leo was pushing him out the door and towards the meeting point in the ballroom. They walked in comfortable silence through the many halls of the manor, kicking away recent debris and coughing out old dust. The walls were still lined with damaged marble statues of past descendants, faded golden-lined tapestries of old battles and dormant paintings resting in gilded frames. Whoever lived here had been rich once, Ares decided, very rich.
Wiping at his watering eyes, Leo muttered something about dark wizards and their unexplainable aversion to cleaning spells under his breath.
"Maybe there are rules," said Ares, eyes drawn in as if in deep thought. "For all dark wizards. Like… like a handbook."
Leo started, turning to look at Ares as if he was another person entirely. "Sometimes I forget you can actually joke, too," he said, chuckling.
Ares only nodded. "That is an ability within my skill set, yes."
"There! I can't tell if it's banter or not. It's disturbing."
Leaving behind another corridor, they turned the last corner and arrived at the grand doors of the ballroom. The grand double doors hung askew on their frames, with green flames still licking at their bottom half. The deep red wood was charred near black, and the family's crest of two rampant hippogriffs facing each other in the middle was half covered by a thick layer of soot.
Inside the room, Ares could see the rest of his team, the six of them standing around the two prisoners Leo had mentioned. Diana, the team leader for the mission, pulled out a long piece of cord from her coat—the same knee-length black overcoat they all wore, and passed it around their circle, before looping the end of the cord around the prisoners.
Ares and Leo approached them with nods and took up positions where they could reach the portkey. No further words were traded as Diana prepared for their departure. While Ares had a good relationship with most of his Program comrades, he only counted Leo as somewhat of a friend. Being a few years older, Leo had taken Ares under his wing soon after Alayne arrived to be the new Director when Ares was eight—the year everything changed for him.
Pointing a spare wand at the far end of the ballroom, Diana whispered, "Fiendfyre," and the malevolent flames burst forth from the wand, pouncing at the walls in the form of blazing lions and griffons and basilisks.
Ares felt the oppressive heat of the cursed fire start licking at their team, then the portkey activated with a twist to the navel, and they were gone.
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Ares stepped into his room within Vogelberg Castle with a towel hanging around his waist and a rush of hot steam from the adjoining bathroom trailing in his wake. They were allowed hot showers following missions, and Ares only tolerated the luxury after much insistence on Alayne's part.
With a flick of his wand to dissipate the steam, Ares moved to the plain dresser sitting on the corner directly opposite the door. Aside from the single nightstand next to his bed, it was the only piece of furniture present in his boxy room. Alayne affected many changes when she took over as Director, but after her persistence with the hot shower, Ares had had to put his foot down when it came to decorating his room with sports posters and useless trinkets—something she insisted boys his age should do. He suspected she gave up without a fight on purpose, as she knew there was little he wouldn't do if she only but asked.
Despite it being the middle of summer in Switzerland, the air at night was icy cold inside their hilltop castle, and the stone beneath his bare feet colder still, but he didn't let himself hurry getting dressed. That would be the way of the weak, and Ares could never let himself be weak. Not even in something simple as this.
Unbidden, his eyes flashed to the small chest tucked neatly under his bed. With his responsibilities over for the day, he had been able to finish his nightly rituals before the shower, and the deep calm that came with the purging still resonated in his mind.
As he finished dressing, Ares tensed when something triggered the proximity wards on his end of the corridor. His wand was in his hand not a second later. Even inside their remote and heavily-secured castle, he knew to never let his guard down. Then a quick, six-part knock came at the door, and he relaxed his ready stance.
"It's me," Leo called from the other side. "The Director tasked me to accompany you to her office. All very official and whatnot."
"Very well," Ares said, already moving. "Just a second."
Quickly, he put on his boots, grabbed a heavy jacket, and was out following Leo through the dimly lit halls of the castle a moment later.
"Do you know what this is about?" he asked.
Leo shrugged beneath his overcoat. Being the second most senior member of the team, he must have still been with the Director reporting on their mission. "Dunno," he said. "I don't think it's to do with what we're working on, though. She didn't mention anything in the meeting."
Ares nodded absently. They took the serpentine stairs down to the first floor in quick time, with Leo nodding and waving at other graduates lounging in their common room, then left Blackcoat Tower behind and took the covered bridge over to the main keep. Ares had gained his own room in the tower the day he had risen from a novitiate to a graduate at eleven-years-old, the same age most magical children around the world started their schooling. Alayne awarding him his black overcoat was still his happiest memory, the focus he used for the patronus charm.
"I have had some thoughts about this cult," Ares said, looking out at the inner bailey of the castle from the bridge. Vogelberg Castle was not a large one, only a square keep with two stone towers flanking it's sides and twenty-feet high curtain walls surrounding the property on the summit of a mountain. After the last owner died, a recluse wizard who had sequestered himself on the Lepontine Alps to continue some obscure research, it had been left vacant for hundreds of years before the ICW had appropriated it for the Program. Now, with liberal use of extension charms and rune clusters, the castle housed almost a hundred people at all times, divided between the Blackcoat Tower for the graduates, the Children's Tower for the novitiate, and the Keep for all the common areas, which included a whole wing for the Director and their quarters.
Leo snorted beside him. "Of course you did," he said, his breath misting in the night. "Do go on and enlighten me, wonder boy."
Ignoring Leo's usual teasing, Ares continued, "The wards we broke through. They were too good to have been put there by those thugs. Not only that, but I think I recognized the crest on the ballroom. The manor must have belonged to the Lichtrem family. They were some of Germany's best warders before they fell to Grindelwald. Even after years in stasis, I do not think it possible for men such as those to bypass their family wards."
Leo raised an eyebrow. "So you think they have some backing? Good backing?" He seemed to actually think about that for a moment. "Maybe," he allowed. "Maybe. But even if they do, that ain't our job. The ICW has their fancy investigators on it, far as I know. They'll send us in whenever they get a sniff of something and that is that."
Ares eyes widened. "Of course," he said, then cleared his throat. "Of course, Leo. I apologize."
"It's alright, junior." Leo laughed and tousled his hair. "Just keep it in mind, yeah?"
As they came into the keep, they passed the few novitiates still practicing in the cavernous expanse of the Great Hall, their wand movements uncertain and their spells shouted loudly, while further into the castle on-duty graduate guards mingled around the cafeteria during their break, slapping each other over the shoulder and laughing over bawdy jokes. Ares never saw the point in all the socializing. Whenever he wasn't on a mission, he could be found buried in books in the library or flinging spells against both practice dummies and live partners in one of the keep's private training rooms. Years ago, when Ares first asked Leo why the others wasted their time like that, he had only said, "You'll understand, one day." He hadn't, as of yet, but he trusted his friend.
"You still don't get it, do you?" Leo asked, amusement dancing in his eyes. Before Ares could answer, the other boy shook his head. "Whatever. Come, the Director is waiting."
He led Ares away from the main area and down a long corridor lined with openings on both sides, until the noisy racket of the hall grew fainter. A few turns and a set of stairs, and they soon arrived at a great set of double doors with the Program's crest carved in relief at the center—crossed wands over a hooded figure. Leo rapped on the door, announced him, and turned to leave with a smart smile on his face.
With the Director expecting him, he had only to put his wand against a small indentation on the wall, and he was given access into her office. When he entered, he swiftly moved to the foot of her desk and snapped a salute, closed fist thumping against his chest. "Reporting, Madam Director." He kept his face expressionless as he stared at the wood-paneled wall.
He heard the scratch of a quill and the rustle of parchment for another minute before it came to a stop and she acknowledged him, "At ease, operative." Ares let his arm fall to his side, but kept his feet exactly shoulder-length apart. She gestured across the desk. "Sit, if you will."
He moved to pull out a chair. "How can I be of service, Madam?"
When he sat, the Director fixed him with sharp, golden-brown eyes from across her desk. "I have called you here to… reassign you."
He frowned. "To another team?"
"No," she said. "I am temporarily removing you from the Program."
At those words, dread seized his body like a troll's hand. It was all he could do not to keep his suddenly raving magic reigned in. Had he done something to deserve this? Was he being punished for some perceived disobedience? He wasn't. He couldn't. Questions and desperate pleas flashed through his mind in a second, but a life of obedience and conditioning meant he only gave a stiff nod of acceptance.
In the end, he knew he would follow her orders as was his duty. Always.
As perceptive as she was, the Director quickly noticed his uneasiness. "Yes, operative? Is there anything you want to say?"
Ares swallowed a lump in his throat. "Have I… have I displeased you, Madam Director?"
The Director regarded him for a long moment, before she let out a deep breath, and her stern face seemed to melt away. "No, Ares," she said softly, as one would to a skittish animal. "That's not it at all. I simply have another mission for you. Something only someone with your profile would fit, and that will require your temporary discharge from our ranks."
Ares promptly bowed his head in an effort to hide his reddening cheeks. "Of course, Madam," he whispered. He wanted nothing more than to curse himself for doubting her. "Forgive me."
He heard her sigh. "There's nothing to forgive," she said. "Perhaps I should not have phrased it that way. I know how much the Program means to you."
It is not the Program, he wanted to say, but thought better of it and kept his quiet. This was still an official meeting between subordinate and superior. There was a moment of silence in the room, then she coughed into her hand.
"Well. Now that that is over and done with, let me tell you where you are going. This—" she bent down, reached into a drawer and produced a thick envelope of tanned parchment, with the name Ares Prince written in green ink "—is your Hogwarts acceptance letter. I picked your codename to make things easier."
Ares looked at the letter with no small amount of consternation. "What will I do in… Hogwarts?" he asked.
"There are… concerns about events happening in Hogwarts this school year. They are set to host the Triwizard Tournament, the first in almost two hundred years, and we have intelligence that an unknown entity will try to use the confusion created by the tournament to enact some form of plot. That is what you are going to investigate and, if possible, prevent."
"That seems rather vague," he said warily.
The Director made a faint sound, settling back against her chair. "It is," she allowed. "Our sources believe this entity is most likely to act through the traditionalist families, which is why we crafted the pureblood persona of Ares Prince for you. The Prince family absconded out of England many years ago," she explained, "before your supposed birth even, so your late admission to the school, as if you were only now returning to the country, shall not raise too many questions. The family had an outlying debt with the ICW, so we even had them formally adopt this non-existent Ares Prince. Any persistent inquiry into your legitimacy will thus be met with a positive result."
Ares' mind was turning, and he felt a bead of sweat running down the length of his back. "I… I am not sure that I am the best suited for this, Madam." He couldn't even imagine himself going to a normal school, eating meals and sleeping around normal children, learning cleaning charms and levitation spells from normal teachers. When he felt her eyes on him, staring, watching he quickly looked away. He just couldn't meet her eyes. He hated to disappoint her more than anything. "I don't think I can do it," he said weakly, staring at the ground.
"Oh, Harry," she murmured.
His head snapped up. She only called him by his real name when she became Alayne for him—just Alayne. Harry followed her graceful movements with his eyes as she stood from her seat and crossed the room. She was a petite woman, no taller than five and a half feet, and young despite her position, though she walked with the self-assurance of someone a decade older. When she lowered herself on the end of the deep burgundy leather couch set against the wall, his heart started pumping wildly on his chest.
"Come sit with me, please," she said.
He looked at her uncertainly for a moment, but she only nodded back. Slowly, he waded after her and laid down atop the couch, his head rest resting on her thighs. Atop him, her brown hair cascaded down around her face like a curtain of the sweetest caramel, tickling at his neck. He took a deep breath, telling himself it was meant to be composing, and not so he could smell her scent, lavender and vanilla and home. Whenever they did this, it felt to him as if every problem in his life disappeared, all the aches in his muscles faded, all his demons were put to rest, and there were just the two of them in the world.
Her hands soon found their way to his hair, and she ran long fingers through his black locks. "You should not be ashamed of who you are, Harry." She brushed a thumb across the faded scar on his forehead. "No one must know of your identity, yes, especially since they will be there—but there is nothing wrong with who you are as a person. People are different from each other. You will see that when you go to Hogwarts. Perhaps you will find someone who accepts you other than Leo and I."
Harry wanted to deny it. Nobody would ever be her equal, not in his heart. "I don't want to go," he said. "I don't want to leave you."
"I know," she said softly. "But you must do this, Harry. Do you understand?"
He nodded, even if he didn't.
"Will you do this for me, Harry?" she asked again. Then she started singing a soft lullaby. He closed his eyes, and her voice washed over him entirely, warmer than the summer sun, and he easily acceded to going to Hogwarts and leaving her behind for most of a year. When he finally opened his eyes and looked up, she was smiling impishly at him, and he loved the small dimples on the corner of her lips.
She knew the effect she had on him, but he could never begrudge her anything, not even being his weakness.
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I would always hope for reviews, though if you have the time and inclination, I would ask for a few specific things.
For example, what do you think about the characterization? It's clear he's a deeply flawed character, with a very unhealthy relationship with the one in charge of him, but what did you think about it? Also, did the voice of the character come out at all? And if so, was it too much or too little?
What about exposition? Too much to the point where it's boring and you're just skimming?
I think you did a great job. Characterization was good. Leo had a strong presence. Ares' flat affect came across well and I liked the fragility he showed with Alayne. The fascination with death felt like it was too extreme for someone who kills for a living and has a team who should have seen his distraction and reported it to the org for 'treatment'. I'm intrigued by the relationships in the story with both Leo and Alayne. I want to know exactly how manipulative, and /or supportive, is she? Exposition was fine for me.
I look forward to more.
Watched.
Also, do you mean comforting here? It felt like an awkward word choice for the situation.
I look forward to more.
Watched.
Also, do you mean comforting here? It felt like an awkward word choice for the situation.