*squints* the hell did I just write.

I don't own D. Gray Man or Harry Potter

Allen tried not the fidget. The tension in their little apartment was palpable, his two mentors glaring each other down. The fifteen-year-old wasn't sure what was going on – the two had already been deeply locked in a staring contest when he had sat down for breakfast.

A breakfast that consisted of a half-full glass of water and a napkin. There wasn't even a plate yet, as the set of three were cracking dangerously under Harrick's inhuman grip.

Allen hunkered down, praying for invisibility.

"He needs to know," Harrick finally said, breaking the silence. His smile was paper thin and as tense as his fists. "He'll meet them eventually."

"The Bookmen are stationed at the Order," Cross argued, arms crossed as he stared down the smaller man. "They can fill him in if and when he meets them."

"If you had your way, Marian, Allen would barely know how to tie a bow." Harrick pried his fingers from the plates, placing them on the table to match Cross's pose.

"I guess that's why he has you, doesn't he?" Cross shot back, his smile loose in a way his body was not. Allen tried to make himself as small as he could without actually hiding under the table.

The struggle of living with two mercurial mentors.

"He has both of us and it's time you started acting like it," Harrick demanded, leaning forward with the flash of teeth as if wanting nothing more than to take a bite out of Cross's throat.

"He knows how to invoke his Innocence and how to fight, how to work his curse; where did I fail in my duties? Isn't that why you kept me around?"

Allen seriously contemplated the merits of throwing himself out the window and spending the day swindling fools at a bar. Maybe buy Master some wine and Harrick a new knife?

"This isn't about you, Marian." Harrick slashed his hand downward, cutting through that defensive argument like the bullshit it was. Even Allen knew Cross taught him more than that, for all he was a selfish satanic alcoholic bastard. "This is about Allen and keeping him safe. Keeping him alive. We both know the Order won't waste a single thought on him."

"In this case, Harrick, him knowing is more likely to get him into trouble than out of it," Cross stated, his volume dropping to a more civil level. Allen tried not to think about his Master's ego or how Harrick was both masterful at managing and manipulating it.

As long as he never said it out loud, though, he was probably safe.

"Do you think I haven't noticed, Marian?" Harrick let his arms drop to his slides, looking suddenly exhausted. "The Oaf's family is nearly whole again. He's making more akuma than ever. I can feel it." Harrick rested a hand over his heart, fingers curled in as if he wanted nothing more than to claw it out.

Allen let the change happen quietly, Harrick's body shifting as his left eye pinpointed. He shook it off immediately and tried to shake away the image of fingers – too many to have come from one person – scrabbling at a small hole oozing shadows.

It was getting harder and harder to feel any disgust at the sight of akuma souls when he merely had to look at his protective teacher to see unimaginable horrors.

"He's stepping up his game," Harrick continued. "He's taking risks and setting up his little play. I might not know what you want from him, but I know it'll send the Oaf after Allen one way or another. And I want him to walk away from this nonsense at the end."

"Knowing about the Noah won't save him, Harrick," Cross tried to reason, his expression having noticeably softened. "It won't change anything, when or where he learns it."

"Then it should be from us, people he knows he can trust," Harrick concluded. Allen didn't like how Cross didn't say anything to that.

Allen measured their tempers and decided now was the perfect time to butt in before they managed to rile themselves up again. He did not like how Harrick's expression was threatening Cross's evisceration following his silence. "Who are the Noah?"

"No one important," Cross remarked.

"The natural enemies of Marian's Order," Harrick said at the same time.

"Harrick."

"Shush, Marian, before you choke on your foot – it's so far up your ass already," Harrick snapped, not bothering to even look at his partner. He, instead, canted his head, taking in Allen's slightly defensive position but curious expression. "The Noah are led by the Millennium Earl and are considered his family. Think of them as a sub-species of human, if you want to get technical."

"Sub-species of human?"

Harrick hummed, reclining in his usual chair like a throne as he thought it over. "Much like everyone has the potential to use magic, everyone has the potential to be a Noah. It's in the genes – and possibly connected, seeing as spells utilizing Dark Matter are some of the strongest mortals can harness. Most of the time, a Noah's ascension is random. And each Noah has a specific ability associated with their title. Some are very creative with their power, while some are helplessly boring. The Oaf, thankfully, is the only one of the family who can create akuma, but each Noah can control akuma. Remember that, if nothing else, Allen."

"Akuma are controlled by the Noah," Allen repeated. Harrick pinned him with his inhuman eyes, but seemed satisfied that he would remember.

"While Noah can look perfectly human if they so wish, their true forms have grey skin, golden eyes, and a crown of stigmata," Harrick continued. "They are naturally repulsed by Innocence and humans, their life goal being some sort of peaceful heaven."

"Presumably," Cross cut in, his frown severe enough to cause wrinkles. "For the sake of a return to Eden."

"Eden?" Allen asked, confused.

Harrick knocked his heel against Cross's shin. "You did do Bible studies with him, didn't you? You cannot possibly be that irresponsible."

"I had Mother teach him all that." Cross slapped away Harrick's foot and sat beside him at the head of the small table.

"That woman deserves sainthood, dealing with you," Harrick mused, tapping the wooden surface.

"Why does the Millennium Earl want the Garden of Eden?" Allen clarified.

"Why does he want anything?" Cross wondered, leaning back on two legs of his chair to stare at the ceiling. "He's immortal and powerful."

"He wants what he can't have, I suppose," Harrick said. "Humans have always had that fault. And Adam shared so many similarities with his wife."

"If she was still around, Eve would have stopped this before it got out of hand," Cross claimed, still not sitting like an actual mature adult.

"Presumptuous. But not even I know what happened to Eve," Harrick reminded his partner.

"You have a few ideas."

Harrick smiled, his lips thin and his eyes tired.

Allen raised his gloved hand, his head spinning as he tried to keep up. Harrick and Cross quieted, if only because Harrick casually smacked a hand over Cross's mouth.

"The Millennium Earl is Adam – the first man. But the family is named after Noah, of Noah's Ark. Eve is missing and Adam wants to return to the Garden of Eden." Allen laid out the facts, seeing if there was any logic left to be found.

Harrick gave him a small smile of sympathy. "I am not actually sure where the other Noah come from either. I can guess they were Adam and Eve's first children and the rest of humanity are simply their descendants. I would have to ask the Oaf for a straight answer and he has been steadily becoming more and more unstable over the last millennia – not that he was stable to begin with. And in these past fifty years he has been particularly alarming in his insanity."

"They used to meet up for tea," Cross explained, his arms crossed.

"He was particularly good at checkers before he lost what little was left of his mental facilities," Harrick defended himself, faced with Allen's horrified look.

"And Lustol was a poker god," Cross recited. He rolled his eye at Allen with a perturbed frown. "He's tried the same argument before, as if he doesn't have a kill-on-sight order from the Clown himself."

"What?" Allen slapped his Innocence-imbued hand on the table with a loud bang. Harrick and Cross blink at him, the immortal surprised and the General amused. "What do you mean a kill-on-sight order? Manon, what did you do?"

"I didn't –" Harrick tried with a pout.

Cross cut through with a shit-eating grin. "He called the Clown a pathetic child knocking over towers to get the attention of Daddy and making a bigger mess when no one came to calm down his temper tantrum because he was a waste of brain matter that never learned in his millennia of existence how to grow up. And then blew up his mansion. Twice."

At Allen's stare, Harrick shrugged. "That was before he started destroying akuma the moment he caught whiff of my presence. It was almost worth watching him prove my point."

Allen pinched his eyes closed. He really had no desire to tell either of his mentors that they weren't all that mature themselves.

That one day Harrick magicked Cross's hair pink was more than enough for his already damaged sanity.

"Is there anything else I need to know about the Noah?" Allen asked. Someone had to be the adult in the family – he wasn't going to get maturity from Harrick or Cross tonight.

Harrick thought the question over, tapping his pointer finger against his chin as Cross watched on, an eyebrow raised in his typical amusement.

Allen could count on one hand the number of times he had not seen Cross amused – and all but once, Harrick was at the center of the trouble.

Allen had better be invited to the wedding or he wanted a refund on the two years he has had to sit round while his guardians blatantly flirted – badly.

"Seeing as I can't get close without the Oaf being a brat, I don't actually know the identities of the current or even the previous iterations. There was a strange hitch fifty years ago and again thirty, but that only tells us that the Oaf is faltering. There have never been more than thirteen Noah – not counting the duplicates of course. A Noah like Bondom more closely resembles a split soul than two separate beings –" At Allen's questioning look, Harrick waved his hand dismissively but explained with no complaint. He was Allen's teacher, after all. "Terribly complicated process that ends in severe mental instability and explosive mood swings more often than not. Bondom started as a split soul, however, like twins, and got to skip the teetering insanity and obsessive desperation."

Allen could almost feel his teacher's disgust and hatred under his nonchalant words. It was staggering for a being Allen had only ever really seen as a laid-back, if mischievous, observer. "Have you ever met a split soul, Manon?"

"A couple times." Harrick didn't offer anything else. Allen cleared his throat and had to turn away from the burning anger in Harrick's unearthly green eyes.

Allen turned his stare to the ground, hunching his shoulders. The simmering anger and rage and infinitesimal heartbreak that flared around Harrick like a centralized bonfire eased.

"They were known as something else, back then," Harrick relented. "But no less a blemish on the sacred pristine of souls. There is no greater depravity than a soul intentionally split."

Cross didn't say a word.

"I suppose," the immortal continued, thoughtful in a quiet, achingly painful way. "I can understand…the desire not to be so alone."

Allen didn't think about the years Harrick must have spent alone. He didn't think the number of times he must have been Allen, heartbroken and cracked, sitting at that gravestone and wishing.

Allen didn't wonder if Harrick ever tried to bring them back, if he ever decided the pain of a soul being stolen would be worth the balm of a familiar, friendly face after eons of watching everyone age and leave him behind for a place he could never travel to himself.

(Allen knew he would have. He hated the Earl, wanted him to stop twisting grief and sorrow into something disgusting. But, he hated the crushing loneliness of Before Mana more. Those years of Red and distrust.)

Allen didn't ask his immortal teacher if he befriended gods and pseudo-gods like the Earl because they stuck around for just a little bit longer than humans. He didn't ask if Harrick was hurt, lost, devastated when the Earl cut off their tentative friendship and left Harrick floundering and in pain.

He already knew the answer. Harrick's love was just border-lining suffocating, after all.

Cross dropped a hand on Harrick's crown, rolling his head. Allen couldn't stifle his smile at Harrick bewildered blink. "Good thing you had your fall out with the Clown. It would be a pain to have to fight you and your out-of-your-ass powers."

Harrick scoffed, that flirtatious smile Allen was more than familiar with replacing his ageless sorrow. "Is that your way of saying I'm stronger than you, Marian?"

Cross barked out a laugh, going so far as to throw his head back like an asshole. "I can take you anywhere, anytime, Harrick."

Harrick leaned towards his partner in crime, his eye half-lidded. "Here and now, old man."

Allen threw his arms up in the air. What did he say? Maturity – nonexistent.

"With the brat watching? My, Harrick, what kind of man do you take me for?"

Harrick cut an unearthly stare over to his utterly unimpressed student. "Allen, don't you still need to practice your illusions? Go swindle some unfortunate fools and treat yourself. We'll be a while."

Allen allowed it, standing up to leave and properly absorb all of the information Harrick saw fit to drop on him first thing in the morning. Two years of Harrick's nonsensical lessons, thankfully, taught him to pay attention at all times – enough that the lecture didn't throw him as much as it might have when he first met the immortal. Those were some harrowing first few months.

He didn't even want to get into the time Harrick lectured him on human reproduction over his plate of eggs.

"Don't wait up," Allen called. A giggle and the crash of chairs being knocked over was his only response. Allen slammed the door for good measure. "Like bloody teenagers, the both of them."

…they are actually fighting, btw. Like, that building is so not gonna be there when Allen gets back. They're gonna have to move countries again. This is why Allen, Harrick, and Cross are banned from the entirety of Belgium.

Btw, does my Noah Family explanation even make sense? I don't know. I gave up around the time I first name dropped Eve.

Imma call this chapter – Information Dump Before Allen Messes Everything Up. Yeah, Allen leaves for the Order next. I dropped my original plan of Harrick, Cross, and Allen going to a ball where the Noah are, cause, it was way too…idunno, over the top? And unrealistic within the parameters that I have set to expect Cross or Harrick or Allen not to shoot/stab one of them for funnsies.

Also, in a completely unsurprising turn of events, I got dark again. I remember when this was a funny story. In my defense, I cant have an immortal story without a shit-ton of mortality issues. It just doesn't work. For me.

Guest Reviews:

Guest - Haha, thank you! Will do!

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter!