Luck of Nines

46

       "Hullo there, now what brings a little firsty like you up to the fourth floor?"  A bright voice nearly startled him as it broke the previous lull of stealthily quiet footsteps.

     Before he had heard their approach, he had been distractedly following the faint trace of birds, many of them, that he had picked up somewhere on the third floor, Chipped Fang excitedly leading the way at the thought of them, but frequently paused in distraction at movement from the many talking portraits that lined the walls. Hearing their approach though, he had stopped and slipped into an out of the way, shadowed corner sheltered by a suit of armor to watch them pass by. Surprisingly, they had caught on immediately.

       "Blimey!" The second had exclaimed in a similarly overdone way, "Why I do believe it's Harry Potter? Do you think he's lost brother mine?"  Their tone implied they believed he was anything but.

      "Oh, I don't know, he seems rather comfy in that corner of his, not at all lost, perhaps he's doing something... suspicious." Two sets of identical hazel eyes landed on him, staring with an intelligent sort of intensity waiting for his response.

Harry stared back, letting the quiet sit, the two were already getting restless, but not the type most people got when it came to silences, not uncomfortable, more the type that came from boredom, like cats playing with a cricket, only for the cricket to hold still rather than flee. They were wondering if they should up the anti or if he was frozen and unsure already and just surprisingly good at hiding it for someone bad enough at making excuses they couldn't find something to say to explain the current situation. As the tactic wouldn't get him anywhere, he figured he might as well answer before his silence provoked the two far old students to prod at him further.

"No."

"Oh?" The second one asked, both moved closer so they weren't speaking from all the way down the hall anymore, and Harry watched intrigued as they walked in step with each other, switching sides twice in their quick approach, "Then what brings a sneaky snakeling like you all the way up here?"

'Who do they think they are?' Chipped Fang loudly interrupted, twining about his legs, knowing that the two newcomers had noticed both of them, 'You said the elders here say no combat in the halls, yet here these humans are openly challenging you.' 

        Harry shrugged in response to Chipped Fang but addressed the two probably Gryffindor students, "Just looking around."

      They both eyed him skeptically for a moment longer before they seemed to snap back into a more cheery- more human- disposition. "Well! If you say so."

Discreetly, he took a closer whiff at their scents, they smelled near identical to each other, more so than most members of the same pack did or even those from the same 'family'- it was interesting to note considering he'd never met human twins before. The scent similarity went from their base scents to the scents which naturally overlapped onto their own, much like potioneers, they had the smell of fire and many of their ingredients hanging off of them like a cloud- they had brewed something, recently, the strength and freshness of this odor said. But they were human, purely so and without one of those 'animagus forms' like Mcgonagall had.

"Say, if you want to see something really cool, there's a caved in tunnel on the second floor by the East tower stairway... if you can find it that is."

They had flanked him now, and he could easily recognize that the two of them were very distinctly trying to subtly guide him away from whatever it was that they were working on, whatever potion it was they were working on, on the other side of the corner.