Ouroboros || harry potter

Chapter Ten

(Neville)

"You'd burn the trees down?" asked the silver-eyed boy in the treetops.

"Of course not! Not on purpose," he responded with a scoff.

"Then why would they not like you?"

Neville looked away with a flush. This all felt sharper than past dreams. He could think clearer. It felt real. Words fell from his mouth without his agreement, but that wasn't new. "They can feel it, the fire in my magic."

He frowned.

Fire? His magic had felt warm and wonderful (wild and desperate to be freed of the gunk holding it back). It felt right—and yet not. His magic was fiery, it was a truth he had always known but had forgotten somehow—except that wasn't right, not quite. It felt different than he remembered (but forgotten). Different and yet the same.

The boy dropped from the branch. He was shorter and thinner and overall weaker than him. (His silver gaze held no fear at his words. Stubborn strength gleamed in those eyes.) The boy's hand came up.

"I'm Sa–"

The world jerked as they clasped forearms.

Silver eyes stared widely into his. Their right arms were clasped together and a liquid pressure of magic—thriving, twisting like vines, like slithering snakes—flowed up his arm. It withered up his right arm and burrowed into his veins and arteries, claimed his heart, and flowed through his entire being.

The silver-eyed man grinned, grimaced, at him. "I see what you mean about the fire. Your magic burns."

He looked down, breaking eye contact.

Runes surrounded them in circles on the floor. More runes glowed and pulsed in the air around them, spinning in some predetermined pattern. His gaze moved to their arms and found other runes and markings swirled around their arms and wrists, tying them together. Ogham and fuþark glowed gold. Swirls and circles, dashes and triangles —meaningless symbols that whispered of arcane powers glimmered around the runes, just as powerful and meaningful to their grapher.

The markings flared.

Something settled inside him, like a piece he had been missing. The withering, slithering magic curled about his own fire and faded. The ritual, as it was most definitely some form of ritual they had participated in, turned dark and the markings faded away until they were indiscernible.

They moved their arms apart, revealing the dried blood and the swirl of silvery gray and blood-red runes covering their right forearms. He brushed a finger over the raw skin and hissed softly at the ache. The skin was already turning red and puffy, irritated from the magic embedded within each mark.

He looked up and knew what ritual they had done as he stared at the young man across from him. "Brother."

A smirk stretched across his brother's face as he answered, "By blood."

The world jerked and twisted. Neville shuddered as moments flew by his eyes of his brother, of his sisters, of war and conflict, of laughter and friendship. His brother's death, his marriage, his children, and his own death slammed into him the hardest. So many memories of his brother circled to the surface—something pulled them forward, teasing him, torturing him. It blurred together for but a moment.

At that moment a lifetime of memories poured into his mind and buried him whole.

He was in another ritual circle but the room was stifling hot, the sun beat down from the sky. There was no ceiling. His head was fogged and he had the distinct impression they had gotten very, very drunk. His brother would never live down them completing a ritual while drunk. If they survived this foolery, he'd make sure of that.