Divided

Chapter 2 Author’s Note: I’m happy to be past the sadness of the last chapters of Gilded Soul and onto a new adventure. I changed the first chapter of Divided just this morning, because it was lovingly pointed out that I didn’t look it over before I posted it and it was riddled with errors. I fixed most, though probably not all of them and reposted it. I didn’t change any of the story line though, so no need to re-read unless desperate to find my repairs. :) Chapter 2

I really needed to stop pacing. There would be a giant fissure in the floor where I was trailing back and forth soon if I didn’t cut it out. Unfortunately my brain and my legs weren’t speaking. I did that a lot when I was upset - pacing. It usually let me focus my thoughts on the issue at hand, but this time it wasn’t enough, not remotely.



This was too big a problem.



I’ve been expertly avoiding the entire wizarding population for ten long years, and now he was about to ruin it. Draco Fucking Malfoy is going to ruin my life… again. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone? Why couldn’t he just ignore the professorship and let me live my life here in solitude?



I’m happy here, the long-standing professor in defense against the dark arts. It was as if I was born for this career, born to teach children to defend themselves against dark wizards. I only did it myself for the first time at age eleven, right?



I had the respect that I earned as Professor Evans, not as Harry Potter. I loathed that name as much as I loathed Voldemort. It brought undue fame. Destruction and death seemed to fall in its wake. I thought it would be best to leave it behind when I left after the war.



It was a hard choice to leave at all, harder on the people I loved than on myself, but still difficult. I had seen so much death, so much pain that I just had to leave. I had to get away from this place before I lost my mind to the grief.



Hermione and Ron took it the worst, thinking that I was running away from them and that they might never see me again. Mrs. Weasley almost forbid it, but I think she saw the haunted look in my eyes and finally even she conceded that it was the best thing for me at the time.



I might have been okay, but for that final moment, the night of the memorial services, the night Draco plunged the final knife into my already fractured heart. I could have withstood it all, the pain, the death, the heartache even the unwanted fame and glory, but not after that night. Not after what Draco did.



And now, here he is, practically sitting on my doorstep begging to come in. I should have just told her no, I should have just let Minerva ask the next best person. I’m too unselfish for my own good sometimes. All I could think about were the students, and that they would get a better education from him, then anyone else.



Although I wasn’t completely unselfish. There was also the fact - or at least I thought it was a fact - that Draco wouldn’t come near this place ever since the war, let alone work here. I wondered ever since the moment that McGonagall told me his decision what made him change his mind.



For that matter, I wondered what made him feel that way to begin with. He obviously loved the school, donated boatloads of money to it, but he hadn’t set even one pale foot on the grounds until that day. Most likely it was just the war, it made a lot of people uneasy to walk through a battlefield.



No matter what his reasoning though, he defied it in one fail swoop, and I could feel my new life crumbling away at the edges. The day I saw him trailing beside the Headmistress in the corridors I almost lost my mind. I had to practically run down the hall to keep him from seeing me, and even still, I could have sworn he whispered my name. That elegant pink tongue calling out… Harry.



“Ugh! This is ridiculous.” It’s only a few hours now before the staff orientation, and I need to pull myself together. He won’t even recognize me, and as James Evans, I can easily keep out of his way. I hardly see any of the other staff members on a regular basis; I can avoid him easily enough in a castle this large.



Easy.



--



“Harry, stop pacing you’re making me nervous.” Hermione shot me a scathing look, but I returned it just as quickly.



“Stop calling me that! I hadn’t heard it in nearly eight years, and now you and Minerva can’t seem to keep it to yourself. If you slip up in front of him so help me Merlin I will…”



“You’ll what?” she interrupted. “Flog me? Hex me? Doubtful, James. You and I both know you would do nothing to hurt me.” The look on her face did not diminish, and only intensified when she said my name. She hated it, not the name really, but just that I was hiding. She thought I should accept my honor and live like a normal wizard. What she never understood was that Harry Potter could never be a normal wizard. I’d tried that.



I rolled my eyes at her and threw myself roughly onto the tufted loveseat in my sitting room. “Better?” I grumbled.



“Much,” she nodded in reply. “Now, Harry, I was thinking. If you really have any chance of fooling Malfoy you’ll have to change your eye color.”



“No,” I said it before I even realized what I was saying. It was a big deal to me though; my eyes were the one feature I carried of my mother’s. “He probably doesn’t even know what color my eyes are, Mione.”



She chewed on the bottom lip and it made me fidget. Whenever she chewed on her lip like that she was either lying, or thinking something she didn’t want to say out loud. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know about it either way. “Do you know the color of his?” she asked, seemingly polite and nonchalant, but I knew the difference.



“No,” I lied.



I knew exactly what color his eyes were. It all depended on his mood, sometimes, for instance when he said the word ‘mudblood’, they were a dull gray, slightly hazy even. Then other times, like when he was racing me for the snitch, they were silver, very metallic looking. When he was really angry, they took on the coloring of ice, almost white, but with flecks of intense stormy light, and then that once, the time I remember them the clearest, they were a smoldering pewter, so dark, like shimmering mercury.



“Harry, what if all this was just a big misunderstanding?”



Okay, now she had my attention. “How so?”



“What if the ki- the incident wasn’t exactly how you keep playing it out in your head, what if…”



I laughed, and it was harsh and unnerving even to me. “Hermione, I remember exactly what happened. I’ll likely never forget it as long as I live.”



She didn’t like my answer. I learned not to leave any room for doubt when it came to that conversation, otherwise she would argue with me until she was blue and I was livid. I was trying to keep my temper in check; in a couple hours I would need all the self-control I could muster to sit at the same table with him. “I won’t change my eye color, but if you have any other suggestions, I’m open to them.” There, smooth change of subject, she probably didn’t even notice.



Okay, so she noticed, and the look on her face told me it wouldn’t be the last time she would bring it up, but I already knew that before I cut her off. “Fine, I still think that’s the most Harry-like physical trait, but if you feel certain –“



“I do.”



“Then I can’ think of anything else. You look like an other ordinary wizard.”



I nodded, satisfied. It was a long shot that he would have recognized me anyhow, but it wouldn’t hurt to take any precaution needed. If hundreds of students over the years never recognized me, Draco stood a slim chance of doing so.



It’s not even that I looked that different, it was more that it had been ten years, and almost two of those had been spent in exile. You could still faintly see the Gryffindor boy that I had been, but now it was rougher, like someone had gone and rubbed out the adolescent and replaced him with a hardened cynical man. I guess that wasn’t even too far from the truth.



My power grew stronger every day; I haven’t needed a wand since I came back. I still use it in class, but sometimes I don’t even carry it around with me. Minerva says that wandless magic is an abnormal trait, but there isn’t much about me that isn’t abnormal.



I love this school, but love in people is nearly impossible for me. Hermione sometimes seems like her heart is breaking when she looks at me, and I wish I could help her, tell her that I’m fine, but she’d never believe it.



--



I watched him approach from my quarters in Gryffindor tower. Technically I was no longer allowed to call it that, but I can’t seem to make myself stop. Maybe I should be less hard on Minerva and Hermione for still trying to call me Harry. Nah.



He still looked the same to me, tall, thin and haughty, his blonde hair longer than it had been in school but otherwise the same. Granted he was about forty meters below me. Maybe up close he would look very different. Either way, I was about to find out.



I made my way form my lofty quarters down to the great hall, where some of the staff members already gathered chatting amongst themselves. With a quick wave of my hand the entrance door opened and everyone filed inside.



The head table was already set up for us; sterling goblets featuring the Hogwarts seal lined the front of each place setting. I walked quickly up to my own, to the right of McGonagall’s chair, and took a seat. I didn’t wish to be standing and milling about when he walked in.



My goblet immediately filled with a deep red liquid that smelled like elderberry wine. It was my favorite, though the House Elves surely knew that. Others started taking their seats and I groaned inwardly when I realized that the chair to my right was left available for our new potions master. I was going to hex Mcgonagall for this, straight into next Tuesday.



It only took moments; my breath froze in my chest as I saw him. He was walking side by side next to the Headmistress and looking at the faces lined up at the table. I looked down at my goblet, swishing the liquid around in circles, trying not to look up and meet his gaze.



I could feel it though, like a vise clamping onto my skull. He was staring at me, and wouldn’t look away. I remained vigilant, and was rewarded by him removing his steely gaze from me. Only momentarily however, because he soon proceeded to sit beside me, sliding out his chair and gracefully occupying the chair just a hairs breadth away from where I sat.



He smelled sweet, like almonds and lilac. I lightly shook my head to chase away the thoughts. There was nothing about this man sitting beside me that was sweet. Nothing. He leaned in toward me and even though I wasn’t looking directly at him, I could feel his smirk.



He held out his hand, pale and tender looking, and extended it for me to shake. I didn’t look over at him, suddenly afraid of what Hermione had said about my eyes. Instead I took his hand, but continued to look down. His hand was soft, and pliant wrapped around mine and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck to be touching him. “You must be Professor Evans I presume?” It was more of a statement than a question, but I nodded once and finally looked at him. I couldn’t help myself.



His eyes were silver now, and he looked as if he were trying to figure something out. His pale eyebrow was arched just slightly and his mouth was turned into an off-putting smile, a look I had never really seen on him before. His features were just as sharp as I remembered them, his skin just as smooth, but his jaw was a little squarer, just slightly. His hair was darker, not as pale as it was in school, but a little more golden like his mothers. He looked genuinely perplexed as he studied me in the same manner as I did him.



“James… you can call me James,” I said at last, still gripping his hand in mine. He looked down at our clasped hands and his smile quirked a touch higher. I dropped my hand immediately and looked back up into his face. It was then that I saw it, the recognition that crossed his delicate features when he looked into my eyes.



I turned my head abruptly and blinked three times, knowing that when I opened my eyes the forth time, they would be closer to blue than green. How handy wandless magic was. Some trick of the light I would tell him… if he asked.



He didn’t, he just sat there, startlingly rigid until I turned back around and gave him my best puzzled look, making sure he caught the color of my eyes this time. I hadn’t needed to bother though, for that was exactly where they went the moment I turned back to look at him. When he saw the blue, he shook his head slightly and turned to the person on his right, Professor Flitwick.



Crisis averted. Damn Hermione for always being right.



--



I took a deep breath, looking past the gate toward the castle. My first day, I could do this, I was a Malfoy, I could do anything. I straightened myself up and walked toward the school. I felt like I was being watched. Looking around casually I didn’t see anyone, so I just kept walking.



The Entrance hall was empty, but the large double doors leading into the Great Hall were open, and I could see light trickling out from the doorway. My heart was thudding in a steady rhythm as I walked slowly forward. From my peripheral I spotted the Headmistress, making her way over to the hall from the other direction. “Mr. Malfoy,” she called lightly as she made her way over to me. “I’m so pleased you could make it.”



I nodded slightly. “Of course, think nothing of it,” I replied.



“Excellent, well tonight I will have someone show you to your new quarters,” we were approaching the large double doors now and I could see the long sweeping head table, packed with professors and other staff members, “ but for now, you can take a seat up there next to professor Evans,” she said politely, pointing out the figure to the right of her own chair.



I nodded and she took her leave, walking quickly up to her seat. I took my time looking over the many faces there, trying to see if there was anyone besides Granger that I recognized. Then my eyes drifted back to Evans, something about him was distantly familiar.



He had thick messy black hair, which instantly reminded me of Harry, so I shook the thought away. Plenty of people have messy black hair, I was certain of it. Severus for instance had messy black hair, although his was also quite greasy, and Evans hair was definitely not greasy. In fact, this was almost certainly the same bloke I had seen in the corridors on my last visit.



He was scruffy looking and slightly unshaven, making him seem a bit older than I had originally guessed. His skin was tanned, though not much, but a far cry from my own pale flesh. He looked rugged and a little worn, as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. His clothing was muggle, but suited him nicely. I could tell even from this vantage point that he was fit.



I took my seat beside him, noticing that he smelled faintly of parchment and something else, something that reminded me of my childhood days here. I racked my brain until I could come up with it, and then it finally hit me, he smelled like flying, like the Quidditch pitch on a warm spring evening. I had to stop myself from leaning in to take in more of the fragrance.



He was looking everywhere else but me, and it started grating on my nerves. Who did he think he was? I took a deep breath – marveling in the scent again – and extended my hand for him to shake.



He didn’t look at my face as he took my hand, which I found odd, but not as odd as the familiar electric thrill that ran down my spine when he touched me. I groaned inwardly at the idea that I was destined to be attracted to only scruffy black haired wizards. This predilection did not bode well for me.



I suddenly wanted nothing more than for him to look it me, really look at me. “You must be Professor Evans I presume?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I thought for a moment he was going to continue to be rude and only nod, but then he finally looked over at me.



I felt like I must be going crazy, the resemblance to Harry was uncanny. His skin was soft, but shadowed with stubble; his hair was black as pitch and cut in a jagged mess that fell around his face haphazardly, curling around his ears and at the base of his neck. His mouth was curved into a crooked smile as he studied me. He wore a vintage muggle tee and a black on black pinstripe blazer instead of the traditional wizard robes.



I didn’t understand, aside from the reminders of Harry, I felt sure I had never met this man in my life, yet I felt like I should know him.



“James… you can call me James,” he said, distracting me from my scrutiny. He squeezed my hand slightly and it brought my attention down to his hand, slightly rough in my own. He went rigid for a moment and dropped my hand, looking back up to my face. I could see a slow blush creep across his cheeks and it made me grin.



Aside from the lack of round obnoxious glasses covering up those brilliant green eyes, he would have been a dead ringer for Harry.



It was then that it hit me, like a slap across the face. His eyes, he had hauntingly beautiful green eyes. I could cast aside all the other minor similarities, but there was no way that two different people could possess those eyes. These eyes that floated through my most vivid dreams and nightmares, these eyes that had once stared down Voldemort, these eyes that broke away all my defenses.



I wanted to reach out and grab him, pull him to me, ask him why he left, beg him to come back to me…those eyes ruined me.



A moment later I was snapped out of my reverie when he curtly looked away. I had noticed the odd shock that registered through his face when my mouth must have been gaping open, but I didn’t bother to think about it when I had him, Harry, sitting right beside me.



I was about to reach out, grab his arm and turn him back to me, when he turned back to me on his own. My eyes immediately flicked back to his, but I was flooded with disappointed.



I was mistaken, his eyes were blue, a startling lovely shade of blue, but only blue. I had been projecting my wishes upon this hapless victim of my desire. Poor Professor Evans, I would need to make a point to be less odd around him in the future. I shook the thoughts away as I turned to the tiny professor on my other side, letting Evans go back to speaking with Mcgonagall.



This was going to be a long year.



Author’s Note: I hope to update this story as often as I did Gilded Soul, but this one might be a touch slower because I am trying to make these chapters longer. Remember, send a review, save a faerie.