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Cryptophasia or Lack Thereof
Chapter 3

“SLYTHERIN!”

The Sorting Hat’s cry echoed in-between Harry’s ears for a long second, so loud had its voice been. At first he believed the following silence to be the Hat’s doing also, just as it had quieted the Great Hall entirely as it fell over his ears; then he took the hat off with his heart in a frenzy, and realized that the silence was real.

No one clapped at first. For a dreadful moment, Harry thought no one would clap for him at all. But then Professor McGonagall shook the shocked look off of her face and took the Hat from him, and the hall erupted into clamors. Continue reading →

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Cryptophasia or Lack Thereof
Chapter 2

Tom the bartender was even happier to see them arrive the second time around, as if he could not imagine a more joyful thing than to watch Professor Dumbledore and Harry walk past the threshold of his door. He clapped his thick hands together. His toothless grin was wide and sincere, although the thick skin of his face was unbending, and made it look as if he were forcing it out. Continue reading →

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Cryptophasia or Lack Thereof
Chapter 1

After the aptly-dubbed ‘snake incident’ of Dudley’s eleventh birthday, Harry was confined to the cupboard for almost two weeks.

It was not the longest he had been made to stay inside and make his presence all but unknown, but it came very close. The record was still held by the time his teacher’s unfortunate hair color change had been attributed to him, and he was locked night and day in the cupboard for an impressive seventeen days in a row, the full duration of winter break. Even Aunt Petunia had felt bad for that time, however, and made him full breakfast and dinner each day. Harry had not been confined for longer than a week since then. Continue reading →

Index: Prologue – Chapter 1 – Chapter 2 – Chapter 3

Rating: T

Words: 33,000 total

Warnings: referenced child abuse, canon-typical violence.

Cryptophasia or Lack Thereof
Prologue

Minerva McGonagall had not spent longer than a handful of hours into the Muggle world since her father’s funeral.

It had been a quiet affair, over thirty years prior, in the deeply mournful Scottish countryside. A day of rain and black clouds over the mountain town where his presbytery had sat for centuries. Minerva had not taken the time to visit the little house in which she had grown and known him—in which her pureblood mother had died, scorned by her still-living sister for having married him—and only taken to the cemetery in silence. After the burying was done, after she had paid her respects to the somber, stern-worded man who had raised her stiff and upright, she had said her goodbyes to the world of non-magical folk. Continue reading →

Rating: T

Words: 2,900

This Has Bite

His mother used to have a name for it. For It. ‘The Issue with Hyakunosuke,’ she called it, when reports would come out of his primary school of him doing all that was asked except what was asked. She was not one to shake or scream, not for such base violence as to hit him either, but she would pinch her lips and suck in her cheek and talk of The Issue with Hyakunosuke. Continue reading →

Rating: G

Words: 1,500

Warnings: internalized homophobia.

Outside the Realm of Gratitude

It is past midnight.

Lorenz knows this because this is the precise time he has set for himself to bathe since the very first day he came to the Officers Academy, six years ago now. A time when the bathhouse is empty and dark, when the only people roaming the shadowed grounds of Garreg Mach are guards on duty or professors tending to their last nightly tasks. There is never anyone within the bathhouse after midnight, although the doors remain open, and Lorenz likes it that way. He has always preferred it that way. Continue reading →

Rating: G

Words: 2,600

Sharing

“What do you mean a strike?” Ryuuji asks.

The lady in front of him doesn’t seem impressed in the least by his tone. It makes him feel faintly bad; she looks like she’s had to deflect the same question for hours, and technically, it’s not her fault the cafeteria is closed. His cheeks grow warm.

“I mean a strike,” she replies curtly. “No one’s going to be serving meals here until it’s over.” Continue reading →

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Venture Out Of Boredom
Chapter 5

There is something about watching a group of very powerful people emerge from the shadows like they’re posing for a photoshoot of doom that makes one’s problems feel very, very insignificant. Hyacinthe feels crushing fear for all of thirty seconds before his brain gives up on trying to feed him such intense levels of emotion and settles on blank, with side bad. Continue reading →

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Venture Out Of Boredom
Chapter 4

Hyacinthe blinks, and the white cogs disappear.

His heart is beating in his throat, almost suffocating in its intensity; around him the room is spinning because of all the blood rushing to his head, and soon enough he starts seeing things again—shadows and dark spots, like bugs flying around—before he realizes that he’s not breathing at all. Continue reading →

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Venture Out Of Boredom
Chapter 3

Are you still in Japan?

This is the first message Hyacinthe has gotten from Mammon in almost a week, now. It’s what greets him when he opens his eyes to one of the Sawada household’s many guest rooms this morning. For a couple minutes he blinks tiredly at the screen of his phone and regrets that he stopped wearing glasses when he was fourteen. Continue reading →