The Emerald Terror

Loathed Magic

The Emerald Terror

Summary: It wasn't supposed to end like this. The light was supposed to win and everyone should have continued on living peacefully. Too bad the muggles don't seem to believe in happily ever after... nor coexistence it seems. "Goodbye Magic". Time travel fic.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Chapter Two: Loathed Magic

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Half an hour and three dozen potions later I remember why I disliked the hospital wing when I was younger. To add salt to the wound Riddle stays there reading a book from his bag throughout the whole thing but at least I can fully see him again. It must be the potions talking because the thought that he was actually rather attractive before seven Horcruxes and at least one illegal dark ritual won't leave my mind. Eventually, the women are satisfied and leave me alone with the order not to get out of bed.

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--- POV Tom Riddle ---

A month has gone by since that strange boy had woken up and truthfully no one knows what to make of him.

With injuries like the ones he had he should still be in the Hospital Wing but he managed to escape both Healer Clearwater and that annoying apprentice of her's after only two days. How he had managed it no one knows. Another mystery is how he managed to actually keep his past a secret at Hogwarts. Anyone who has ever been here realizes that the gossip vine literally has an ear on every wall, and yet Heath has managed to keep everything mere speculation about him. Even the teachers and the Ministry are clueless about anything he doesn't want them to know. The current favorite is that Potter's dad had a squib for a brother and Heath is this mysterious sibling's descendant. Being proven to be completely false sure, but it's better than the love child idea that came before it. And then there's the fact that the hat seems to have gone completely senile.

Heath Hermes Potter is no Slytherin.

Slytherins are powerful, cunning, ambitious, clever, traditional, and think only of themselves. They lead the wizarding world with the resourcefulness and determination to back them.

However, Heath Potter isn't a single one of those things. It's actually rather disappointing since when I first met him I had thought he would be interesting and don't get me wrong he is, but a different kind of interesting. Abraxas was talking about doing a Samhain ritual this year in the common room and on the eighth I had wondered if it would actually be OK for a name to appear before me. Now I'm back to insisting that I don't need to have someone by my side to rule.

Heath Potter wasn't a Slytherin. He was beyond the comprehension of Hufflepuffs, not bookish enough for Ravenclaw, and didn't quite fit with the Gryffindors. He treated the house elves as if they were his friends, talked about magic as if it was its own entity, and never actually looked at anyone. He refused to wear the robe that was part of the uniform, seemed physically incapable of following the hierarchy, visibly checked his food and drink for tampering before he consumed it, talked in riddles on the rare occasions he talked at all, wouldn't glamour any part of his body himself (nor would he let anyone else do it for him) and seemed to struggle in most of his classes. In short, he didn't belong here.

And Slytherin made sure he knew that.

Much to my annoyance, I don't know where he sleeps now but after two nights he packed his things and walked out of the dormitories. Since then the only times he has regularly been seen is at lessons and the occasional meal. Why should I care though? He hasn't lost the house any points he himself hasn't regained at a later point, snitched on anyone to a teacher, or caused any actual trouble what so ever. So why does that knowing emerald eye seem to haunt me?

It wasn't like Dumbledore's. His gaze was judgmental and hypocritical. Everything about him screaming that he had decided everything I would become before I had even opened that first letter when I was eleven. It infuriated me as did everything else he did and allowed to happen. But Heath's gaze was cold and piercing. As if he saw through every one of my masks to the person beneath but rather than using up his energy in order to be surprised or disgusted he simply didn't care. Then I would turn to look at him and it would disappear as if I was imagining it, replaced by a happy go lucky idiot that didn't line up at all with the story he had fed us in the hospital wing that day. Healer Clearwater said he had probably repressed most of those memories but I can't help but believe differently.

It wasn't his expressions, mannerisms, or speech patterns. It wasn't any one interaction with the people around him, that day in the hospital wing, or the fact he seemed to prefer creatures to humans. It wasn't how he always seemed to know how to get to places without help or how he'd just stop at times and stare off into the distance without warning as if he were seeing something that no one else could. It wasn't how he would unsystematically sit down near random students and just observe them for a while or how he made a point to be friendly with each and every Hogwarts' ghost far beyond the normal survival tactics of first years. It wasn't any one item from the long list that one of the Slytherin fourth years had decided to compile of things that were wrong with him.

It was his eye.

No matter how cheerful and unfocused it seemed there was always that one emotion there, buried under the illusion but clear as day to me. After all, I was no stranger to concealed hate. But Heath Potter didn't hate.

He loathed.

And not just a few. Not just Dumbledore's little pet Gryffindors or the harsher pureblood Slytherins that had attacked him for his blood status or lack thereof. Not just the snootiest of the Ravenclaws or the more opinionated Hufflepuffs who hated him for simply being a snake. It wasn't even simply a whole house. No. Nothing as natural or expected of him by society as that.

Heath Potter loathed every single one of us equally.

He was great at hiding it. Actually, I hadn't figured it out until yesterday. We all knew that Heath went into the Forbidden Forest at times. It was simply a fact that everyone knew but no one could prove. Well, Care of Magical Creatures had just ended and I was taking a short cut to Herbology when I had spotted him just on the edge traveling further in. Dumbledore would have had a field day, he seemed to have it out for Heath almost as badly as he did for me. Not that I can truly say mine is undeserved anymore after last year...

Following him in I came upon the most strange and breathtaking sight I ever saw.

Heath was barefoot and shirtless, pant legs rolled up to his knees, as he knelt on the ground. His hair, which the professors had made him wear down to hide the tattoos he refused to cover with a glamor, was up revealing the owl and wolf cub on the back of his neck. Bangs naturally hid the scars on his face without being clipped out of the way for potions, and his small calloused hands stroked the mane of a young Thestral who lay with its head resting in his lap.

I noticed a few things in observing this scene. Some I wish I hadn't.

Like the fact that on his right wrist was another mark that I hadn't noticed in the Hospital Wing. It wasn't clean and clearly done, giving the impression that he fought for all that he was worth as it was being branded onto his restrained self. The line of uneven bars blurring a bit around the edges and the small numbers under them almost savagely dug into his skin. Or the fact that there were scars on the soles of his feet as if someone had slit the tendons. Not only once either, but over and over again. Then there was the fact that Heath could clearly see the skeletal creature and had been around them enough that he not only wasn't repulsed by them but felt more comfortable out here around them then with the human witches and wizards inside the castle.

There was that eye again, seeming to pull me in and drown me in a bottomless sea of emerald. But it was far from piercing and cold or cheerful and unfocused. No. It was sad and full of that equal hate for every humanoid creature. Nothing I could think of backed up the feeling and yet it wouldn't go away.

The feeling that Heath Hermes Potter wasn't going to be here for much longer.