Okay, this is the sequel to Keep Your Enemies Close. I hope you all really enjoy it as much, if not more than KYEC. I'm not even going to pretend to know how long this will be this time, since I had to take it back every two chapters in the last one. All I'm going to say is that I'm shooting for that length or longer. Take into consideration that I might not have time to update every day. I'm starting school in another month, and I have to move to a new city. I'll try to update as quickly as I can, and I swear every spare minute I have, I'll be sitting here typing, but I think I'm going to shoot for four a week at least. Right now it'll be more, but later, probably not.
Rating: Pg-13 to light R. Same as everything else that I write.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, or any of the characters in J.K.R's books. All other characters are mine. I am not profiting in any way from this work.
Summary: Sebastian and Carys are in their seventh year at Hogwarts. For the last decade a new threat has been rising, and their parents have been fighting it constantly. When they're forced by circumstances to join the fight, they find in themselves a strength they never knew they had, and a love they never thought could be real.
Title: Darkness Rising
Dedication: To all those people who reviewed KYEC. I really thought I was done writing. The amazing response I got from that fic was absolutely amazing and convinces me otherwise. And to Kali. Who believed in me long before anyone else.
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Sebastian Albus Finn Potter was seventeen. He'd passed his Apparating test with flying colors, was Captain of the Quidditch team, Head Boy, and in his final year of study at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was happy. All was right in his world. His younger brothers Alastair and Gabriel were also in Hogwarts, as fifth and fourth years, and his little sister Abigail was starting her first year.
His Godfather's eldest child Carys Malfoy was also a seventh year, and Head Girl. She also played Quidditch, and was Captain of her house's team. Carys, though, would be turning eighteen in two days. She'd barely missed the cutoff to be in the year before him. Sebastian was nearly always torn between thinking that was a good thing, and wishing she'd come earlier.
His best friend was Carys, and they were always getting into trouble together. His Uncle Ron and Aunt Luna Weasley's triplets were very nearly always involved in some way as well. They were all three brilliant Chasers on Sebastian's Quidditch team. Josh, Noah and Caleb. They were inseparable and unstoppable. His aunts also played Quidditch. They were mere hours older than he was. Gwydion and Artemis Potter. They played Beaters. That meant that six of the seven Gryffindor players were seventh years and practically family. Carys, to her father's delight and mother's sorrow, was in Slytherin. She, however, spent most of her time in the Gryffindor common room. She didn't much care for her house.
Sebastian loved being at school. He missed his parents, grandparents and family, certainly, but he liked being away. Had since his very first year. His father, Harry, had told him that Hogwarts almost felt more like home than their house did. Sebastian agreed, though he wouldn't tell his mother that. Hermione hated sending her children off to school, despite the fact that she was their Transfiguration Professor. He insisted on calling her Professor Mom. It drove her crazy.
Things in the wizarding world had been relatively quiet since the fall of Voldemort twenty years earlier. Until Sebastian had been seven. That's when the stirrings had started again. A dark wizard, gathering followers, gaining power, slaughtering those who wouldn't join him. Those who remembered how Voldemort had started were instantly scared to leave their houses. Some went into hiding, and the Order of the Phoenix was reinstated. The number of Aurors had been doubled.
While his parents had always been open with him about what was going on, they'd always refused to let him have anything to do with it. They always said he was too young, which was when he would point out that they'd begun fighting Voldemort at the age of eleven. After a while though, he'd decided the best strategy was to wait until he was of legal age. That had happened six months earlier. Carys, who had fought similar battles with her parents, had agreed.
The new dark wizard was simply being called The Black Knight. No one knew his name. Except for those who had joined him. Most were left over Death Eaters, and their children. Some others had power complexes. Everyone had their theories on who he was, but no one would know for sure until he revealed himself. Sebastian and Carys had decided that they were going to find out.
The train left for Hogwarts on the morning on August 31st. The new term would start the next day. As Head Boy and Girl, Sebastian and Carys had to do the rounds of the train, making sure that no one was where they shouldn't be, and then meet with the Professors aboard the train before retiring to their car. Sebastian was okay with the arrangement, though he would have liked to have set with the seventh year girls.
"I don't see why you insist on leading them on like that." Carys grumbled, tossing her hair over her shoulder and swerving to avoid a first year trying to find a car. They'd just left the car that most of the seventh year girls had been sitting in. Sebastian was a favorite among the females. A situation he found to be to his immense liking. He nearly always had a girl on each arm and two waiting in the wings.
Sebastian lifted one eyebrow at Carys. "You aren't a stranger to leading people on yourself."
Carys was beautiful. Carys knew she was beautiful. She was not above exploiting her beauty to get what she wanted. She had a gorgeous face, soft and feminine, with big blue eyes, long thick lashes, a lush mouth, sharp cheekbones, and a strong jaw and slightly pointed chin. That with her blonde hair and razor sharp brain made her a match for anyone. "No, but I don't always have two with me and two more begging to take their places." She tugged her hair back into a ponytail. "I mean, honestly Sebastian, have you heard of a meaningful relationship? They aren't just about big boobs and fake blonde hair, you know."
Sebastian peered into a sixth year car. "I am well aware of that." He grinned wickedly at her. "I'm seventeen, Carys, love. I don't particularly care if a relationship is meaningful at this point in time."
"Only because you've never been in one." She sighed deeply. "I don't care what you do normally, but if we want to have a prayer of stopping this Dark Knight person, then you need to be focusing on the task at hand, and not how many fifth years you can lure up to the Astronomy Tower."
"And you, my hypocritical friend, need to do the same."
Carys didn't want to admit that Sebastian was right. They were both popular with members of the opposite sex. They knew and enjoyed it. Carys liked always having someone to carry her books to class and to take her out on the trips to Hogsmeade.
"All right. I'll make you a deal. You don't date anyone this year, and I won't date anyone this year."
Sebastian thought about that for a moment. "Deal."
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
The beginning of the year was always boring. It was getting settled into classes, and finding your way around the huge castle. To Sebastian and Carys, it was auditioning people for any open spots on their respective Quidditch teams. Sebastian typically only had one spot. The spot of Keeper. Carys had to put together an entire team. So their focus was taken off of beginning their research for the first two weeks of term. After that, it was class, and practice, and training, and studying for NEWTS. The next time either surfaced for long enough to think about the Dark Knight, it was after Christmas, and they had to think about midterms and the Quidditch Cup and the House Cup and their Head Boy and Head Girl speeches, as they both had perfect marks for all of their seven years. That was when Sebastian suggested that they wait until after graduation to do anything other that study and theorize. Reluctantly, as she was more interested in proving herself to her father than anything else, Carys eventually agreed.
They dedicated two hours each night to the library. Sebastian had inherited his father's Invisibility Cloak and they made use of that much of the time, sneaking in and out of the Restricted Section. Of course, they both had their fair share of relationships, despite the fact that neither were supposed to. Since they weren't doing any progressive work on the Dark Knight, they both chose to look the other way. Noah, who was also in on the whole thing, simply rolled his eyes and let them go. He'd been dating his girlfriend, Olivia Wood, for two years, and was damned if he was going to break it off just because Sebastian and Carys, the habitual singletons, decided that it was bad for their work.
Graduation came and went, they left Hogwarts and went back home. Sebastian and Carys had two weeks before they reported for Auror training. Their parents were torn between incredible pride, and total terror. Josh and Caleb were going into business with their Uncle Fred and George, and Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. Gwydion was accepted into the MediWizard training program, and Artemis took a job working in the Spell and Curse development division of the Ministry of Magic. Lily and James were as proud of them as they'd been of Harry.
Sebastian was determined to move out and into his own apartment. There was no way that he could go to training and do his research on the Dark Knight with his parents and aunts and uncles just down the hall. No way. And he knew that his parents would never go for it. He had his trust fund, yes, which was quite substantial, but technically his parents controlled it until his twenty-first birthday, which was when he would graduate from his Auror training. Which meant he had to talk them into it.
"Come on, Aunt Ginny. You left the Burrow and Gramma Molly and Grampa Arthur when you were seventeen."
Ginny stopped pounding out a piecrust, and looked at Sebastian. "Yes, and that was in the middle of the war. My parents were safer with me gone, and I was safer with Harry and Hermione and Ron and Draco. There's nothing that could be accomplished by you leaving."
"I'm eighteen, Aunt Ginny. I'm an adult in the wizard world, and in the Muggle world. I'm going into Auror training, and I need my own place. I have to grow up sometime."
Ginny moved her crust into the pie pan. Despite the fact that it would take a quarter of the time using her wand, she liked the Muggle way. It calmed her. "Sebastian, I love you. You know I love you as much as if you were one of my kids. But, with the Dark Knight gaining power, and your parents working day and night to stop whoever it is, it's more dangerous for you to be out on your own than it is for you to stay here. We want to keep you safe."
"And I have to learn to keep myself safe. Aunt Ginny, come on, would you want to be stuck here? I just graduated Hogwarts, I had offers to join any branch of the Ministry that I wanted at just about any level. I got a perfect score of every single NEWT that I took."
"And that doesn't mean a thing in the real world, Sebastian. You know that."
"I also know that my parents started fighting Lord Voldemort at age eleven. They didn't know a charm from an Unforgivable Curse, and they managed to muddle through it just fine. I can do this, Aunt Ginny. You know I can."
Ginny felt herself giving. Those silvery eyes and messy black hair always made her give in. she ran a hand through her hair. "All right. I'll talk to Harry about it."
Sebastian hugged Ginny, lifted her off the ground. "Thank you, Aunt Ginny." He grinned. Phase one, complete.
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Carys darted into Harry's room, cornered her uncle in front of the closet. "Uncle Harry, I need to talk to you."
Harry turned around, two shirts in his hand. Hermione wanted to go out to dinner, and he had no idea which one to wear. "Blue or green?"
Carys shouldered past him and pulled out a silky silver one. "Neither. Here you go. Now, I want to move out."
Harry lifted an eyebrow. "How did I know that was what this is about?" he sighed. "Carys, your parents don't want you moving out for the same reason I don't want Sebastian to leave. It isn't safe, you're more protected here than you would be anywhere else, and you have three years of training ahead of you."
Carys nodded. "I know all that." She took a second, let Harry entertain thoughts that he'd won. "But you were my age when you and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron moved out and into your first apartment."
"That was quite different. We were being targeted and if we had stayed with Molly and Arthur, then they would probably have been killed because of us. You're perfectly safe here, and there's no reason that you shouldn't live here with us until you finish your training."
Carys sighed. "No, but there's no reason we should either. Uncle Harry, I've been here all my life. Mom and Dad smother me. They want me safe, and I know that, but I'm not in any danger. I aced all my NEWTS, I was Head Girl. I am better at Potions than Dad and better at DADA than you were in school. For crying out loud, Aunt Hermione taught me everything I know about Transfiguration. There is nothing for us to be afraid of. And it's important, Uncle Harry. We're grown up now. We have to act like we're grown up."
Harry was not going to give in. He was determined not to give in. He changed his shirt from the t- shirt he'd been wearing to degnome Hermione's garden into the button down. "Carys, I understand that, but we can protect you here."
"And I need to learn to protect myself. I'm going to be an Auror. I'm starting Auror training. You and Mom and Dad and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron and Aunt Luna aren't going to be there to protect me then. I need to learn, Uncle Harry. It's time for me to grow up."
Harry sighed. He could feel himself caving. "I'll talk to your father."
888888888888888888888888888888888888
Ginny marched into Harry's room as he was tying his shoes. "Harry, can we talk for a second?"
Harry nodded. "I was just coming to talk to you or Draco."
"I think you should let Sebastian move out." She said, just as Harry spoke.
"I think it's time to let Carys out of the house."
The two looked at each other, the pieces clicking into place. "I take it Carys came and talked to you."
"And Sebastian got you."
Ginny nodded. "They got us good." She stuck her head out the door. "Draco! Hermione! Come in here please." She waited until her husband and Hermione had entered the room before closing the door. Draco lifted one eyebrow, ran a hand through his perfect blonde hair. He was nearly forty, and still looked like he was twenty. All of them had aged well.
"This is quite kinky, Ginny, love."
Ginny smacked his arm. "We need to talk about our oldest children."
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Carys and Sebastian were taking on Jordyn, Julian, Gabriel, and Abigail at Monopoly when their parents walked in. They looked at each other, hopeful that their efforts had worked the way it had been meant to. Both were thrown slightly off when Ron and Luna entered the room next, Noah, Josh and Caleb in tow.
Draco spoke. "All right. You win. You can move into an apartment. But," he added, just to let them know they hadn't entirely won. "There are some conditions."'
Harry took over. "One, you live together. With Josh, Noah and Caleb. That way the five of you will be able to look out for one another."
Caleb stuck up his hand. "But Josh and I are supposed to move into the rooms above the store to run the one in Hogsmeade."
Harry acknowledged the point. "Fine. Then the three of you will live together. We will pick the apartment. That way we know it's safe and properly connected to the Floo network. There will be wards placed on it. No objections. We can't just have anyone busting in there any time that they want to."
Hermione's gaze settled on her son. "You will go to training, you will do your homework, but you will not have duels in the apartment. If any dueling goes on in there, the Auror office will be contacted, and you will come back here. Understood?"
Sebastian nodded, nearly grinning. He knew how to bypass wards and alarms and all that stuff. Draco had taught him five years earlier. "Understood. Is that all?"
Ron nodded. "Go pack."
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
This will get more exciting as it goes on. I need the first couple chapters to set the stage, introduce all my characters, and explain the situation. This is pretty much a prologue, explaining how everything started. Stay tuned for the next chapter. And don't forget to review.
-->