AN: *whispers* Here it is. Take this away from me.

Enjoy!

WISPS OF SMOKE AND COLOURFUL SOULS

II

6 – Heir

Harry was glad that he had asked for the extra enchantments when he bought his trunk.

Hedwig's cage alone was enough to call attention to himself, and Harry honestly didn't like it. With his trunk shrunk inside his backpack, he had an easier time of waving through the masses until he reached the barrier which separated platforms 9 and 10.

He took a deep breath and calmly walked through the seemingly solid wall. He counted seven steps and stopped, figuring that he had already crossed the barrier. He peered around with one of his eyes half-open. Only when he realized that he was, in fact, in front of a humongous scarlet train and in no danger of stamping his face against a brick wall did he exhale. Loudly.

He smiled slightly and relaxed his posture, adjusting the straps of his bag over his thin shoulders, and then started curiously making his way around the deserted platform.

As per Ren's request, he had arrived a good hour earlier to inspect both the platform and the train before the place became full of noisy wizards and witches of all ages. Harry didn't mind. Sure, he didn't have it that bad at his relatives', and it had improved a lot more since Professor McGonagall's visit in July (he had his own bedroom now!), but he had been rather eager to remove himself from the house and get as far away from its inhabitants as he could, anyway. It would be nine full months before he had to see them again, and Harry couldn't be happier.

Well, actually, he could.

It would have been nice to have Ren there to see him off, but Harry had understood that it was impossible.

The eleven-year-old didn't know what exactly Ren did for a living, but he knew that it was really dangerous. He also knew that sometimes it required Ren to leave Italy altogether and hide. (Harry suspected that he was some kind of super-secret-spy, like those in the shows he sometimes caught a glimpse of whenever Dudley was watching them on the sitting room. It fit. The man was always dressed in black and very nicely, and when he wore his hat—"it's a fedora, kid. A fedora. Not a hat"—he looked really mysterious and cool. And the gun. One just couldn't forget the gun.)

When Ren told him that he was not going to be able to make it in time, Harry had been understandably upset, but accepted it as a fact of life. Ren had sworn that they would meet one day and that after that they would never be separated again, and Harry believed him. He could be patient. (That didn't mean that he couldn't be sad.)

Harry looked around the platform for about five minutes and, after surmising that there was nothing particularly interesting about it, he decided to scout the train and select a compartment.

At eleven, he was glad he had chosen to do so.

Hundreds of Hogwarts students had crossed the barrier, in many cases accompanied by their entire families, just with fifteen minutes to spare. The crowd was lively and not a little bit frantic, with tearful goodbyes and last minute warnings being exchanged at the top of their lungs.

The smaller kids were struggling to walk around their older classmates to get inside the train, Harry noticed absently, and then he grimaced in sympathy as he saw one chubby blond boy trip and let go of his toad. He would have a hard time finding it, Harry mused.

Then, the door of his compartment opened and someone addressed him. "Excuse us. Do you mind if we sit here?"

Harry turned away from the window and assessed the one who spoke. It was an older boy with dark skin and messy curls, who was carefully holding a cardboard box. He was smiling cheerfully and his eyes sparkled with mischief. Harry liked him immediately.

"I don't," he said sincerely and motioned to the empty seats with his hand. "Be my guests."

"Are you sure?" Another voice questioned from behind the first boy. A redhead teen with a wicked grin poked his head over the dark-skinned boy's left shoulder. "We wouldn't want to impose—"

"—as you are obviously a little ickle first year—"

"—and we have a big scary spider right there—"

"—in that box."

"We wouldn't want to spook you, you see."

Harry blinked bemusedly at the second redhead that looked exactly the same as the first. He would be lying if he said that he had been expecting the weird and slightly confusing twin-speak, but Harry could not say that it wasn't interesting and even fun.

The three boys were expectantly waiting for Harry's reaction, but if they thought he was going to bolt at the mention of a simple spider, they had another thing coming.

"Oooh, a spider! Is it a tarantula? My Hedwig loves snacking on them, and I imagine most owls are the same. You'll have to be careful with it if you don't want it to get eaten at Hogwarts! I've heard that there is an owlery full of them!" The small boy grinned brightly at them, almost pulling his completely innocent act while delivering the subtle threat. In fact, the boys didn't seem to notice it for a full minute in which they just blinked at him uncomprehendingly. When the words finally sunk, three eerily similar and dangerously devious smiles stretched upon their lips.

"Oooh, I like you," redhead number two declared grandly as he fully entered the compartment, carrying his luggage behind him. "I guess you're not just a regular little ickle firstie, I judged you too quickly. Mmm… no. Not regular. Gred?"

"What, my dear Forge?"

"I think this firstie has it. You know? The aura."

"The aura?" Redhead number one asked as he helped his brother to put the trunks on the racks over their heads. He eyed Harry critically for a second while the boy with the spider took a seat across from the first year. "Yeah, I agree. I totally agree."

"He has the aura."

"He does."

Harry lifted an eyebrow and looked questioningly at the boy across from him, but his only answer was an amused quirk of the lips and an annoyingly knowing wink. The twins exchanged glances and then nodded decisively before turning their intense gazes towards Harry, who was suddenly hit with the urge to run.

"It has been decided. You, my friend, have been declared eligible to become the fourth heir of the marvellous—"

"—amazing—"

"—genius—"

"—incomparable—"

"—incredible—"

"—inspiring—"

"—troublemakers of all times!"

"My friend, you have just proved yourself worthy to inherit, together with my twin George here and my good friend Lee there, not to forget my beautiful self, one of Hogwarts' most sought after legacies!"

"One of the most coveted!"

"You have been chosen to become one of the heirs of the Marauders!" they finished dramatically, crying in unison, and Harry could almost picture the chaos that would befall the castle once term started.

(… He couldn't wait.)

7 – Fraud

"—betrayed!"

"Cruelty, I tell you! Cruelty!"

"He must have done it on purpose, he's devious like that!"

"I knew it. I knew we shouldn't have trusted those sparkling green eyes!"

The morning of September second encountered Harry, new proud member of the House of Ravenclaw, blinking owlishly as he was suddenly ambushed outside the Great Hall after he had finished eating breakfast. His assailants were none other than two melodramatic and much too energetic red-headed twins.

"Wha—?"

"But really, Gred. We should have known better. When the little lad introduced himself as none other than Harry Potter, we should have know that we were barking up the wrong tree."

"I know, Forge, I know. But who would have imagined the Wizarding World's Golden Boy was not to be sorted in Gryffindor?"

"I cry fraud! The Sorting Hat must have made a mistake!"

"We must demand a resorting!"

"Please, ignore the idiots," Lee Jordan said as he took the boys by the back of their robes and forced them to get away from Harry's personal space. He gave him an apologetic smile. "Sorry. They are still smarting from the fact that their chosen heir was sorted into another House. Don't worry, they'll get over it sooner or later."

"But Lee!" Fred Weasley whined childishly. "You don't understand, he had to be Gryffindor! He was supposed to be Gryffindor! How are we going to prank everyone if one quarter of the quartet is in another House?"

"But—Aren't we covering more bases this way? I mean, now I will have inside information of my House, which would surely help. And I'm sure that if we work our way around our different timetables, we'll even have more options in regards to alibis…"

His comments were met with stunned silence. Harry studied his friends with curiosity. Suddenly, their eyes started sparkling with unholy glee and their smiles became honestly terrifying.

"I knew it! I knew we had taken the best decision in our lives!" Fred cried excitedly, hand pumped up in victory while his twin started swaying from side to side in a ridiculous parody of a victory dance.

Lee rolled his eyes heavenwards and visibly prayed for patience, but the subtle smile at the corner of his lips revealed his amusement. Harry shrugged and then laughed.

(He felt this was going to be a great year.)

8 – Classes

The first class of his first year of magical education should have been mesmerizing. It should have made him gape and stare and 'ooooh' in the way that learning about Flames had been. Harry had been prepared to be witness to more amazing feats of magic like those he had seen Professor McGonagall do when she came for him at the Dursleys.

Having to suffer through double period of monotonous warbling about Goblin Wars without any kind of introduction what-so-ever to the subject was not something that Harry would ever consider even remotely interesting.

(Even when he knew for a fact that the subject was interesting—he had read the textbook beforehand, and also been thoroughly quizzed on it by Ren—and wasn't that just sad? How could a professor be so boring to reduce a bloody, aggressive piece of history to something similar to a lullaby? And the man was dead! He was a ghost, but not even that seemed to make it more interesting! Harry was honestly aggravated.)

The less-than-stellar start of his Hogwart classes was mostly redeemed when second period started—it was Transfiguration, with the Hufflepuffs. McGonagall was great, and started the class with a bang when she jumped from her desk while transforming back into human form after having been watching the class for a while, disguised as a tabby cat. Everyone had been suitably impressed. Ernie McMillan even screamed and fell from his chair, having been really startled as he had been sitting on one of the first seats.

(Transfiguring a matchstick to a needle wasn't half as fun as turning into an animal, but Harry was driven to perfect it because it was the very first step to reach the point in which he could do something like that. He wondered which kind of animal would he be able to turn into? Did he even have a choice? Would he be able to prank Ren with it? Oh, the possibilities!)

Then the rest of the week he had had his other classes. Thankfully, none other was as boring as History of Magic had been, so he was fairly happy that his first impression had been wrong.

Professor Snape was weird though. The man didn't seem to like him for whatever reason, and called him out during the very first lesson. Harry was then really, really glad that Ren was such a Spartan teacher, because he very much doubted that he would have been able to answer the rapid fired questions correctly if he hadn't memorized the book already. He had answered calmly and correctly, which earned him a disdainful sneer but no more singling out in class, at least. He brewed his Boil-Cure Potion with much care and it didn't receive another word than a 'passable' from the stern teacher when he had finished it, but Harry actually took it as a compliment. That had been the highest praise, if he considered that most of his classmates had been corrected and reprimanded rather harshly for either using the equipment incorrectly or crushing the snake fangs in the wrong way, among other things.

(He left that class in a state of confusion. Had he done something to deserve Snape's dislike? He didn't think so—he had been polite, and he hadn't even made his debut as a prankster with The Troublesome Three. In any case, Harry would wait and see. Perhaps the Professor simply had a prickly personality and that day it just happened to focus on Harry. It was too early to judge.)

And for the record, he didn't think that Snape was the weirdest of his Professors.

Quirrell won that place single-handedly and without any real contestant. Harry hated how his curse scar hurt whenever he was near him, and he felt horrible when he was inside his classroom. He would be sharing his concerns with Ren whenever he saw him again.

He was the only one he trusted to talk about it.

9 - Worries

"Are you sure he's fine?"

"Uh—"

"Madam Pomfrey checked him and said that there was nothing wrong with him."

"Except he looks like a zombie."

"A what?"

"A zombie. You know…? Dead brought back to life, rotten flesh, eat brains?"

"Ah, Inferi! But… Inferi don't eat," Boot said, watching his companion dubiously. Finch-Fletchley groaned and hid his face behind his hands. Harry listened with half an ear from his own table in the Library, and some part of him recognized that he would have found that funny normally—honestly it was such a pureblood thing to say—but he was not in the right state of mind to do so now.

To be completely frank, he was worried sick.

It had been over a month since he had started school, thirty two days to be exact, and in that time there had been not a single dream shared with Ren.

He was starting to panic.

Harry knew that it was not really normal to share as much dreams with his soulmate as he had been doing all his life. In fact, most of the students in his age group had not seen their soulmate even once yet, and probably wouldn't until much later in their lives. Harry was an exception, and he had never been more thankful for being abnormal. He didn't even like to imagine what could have become of him if Ren hadn't been there to hug him after a bad day, and he honestly didn't want to find out.

There had been times in which the dreams spaced for over a week, but that was a rare occurrence. Not being able to contact him for more was—

Excruciating. Painful.

Terrifying.

(Because… what if something happened to Renato? What if he was hurt? What if he was dead? Harry could not bear to think about it.)

His worry had been slow to appear, and slower to be reflected on his appearance or his mannerisms. He had learned from the best, after all, and while he was in no way close to imitating the way Ren carried himself and was able to control his body, Harry was proficient enough to deceive the eyes of his peers.

The firsts to note something was different were, of course, his troublesome friends. Fred and George, for all their goofing around, were very sharp and attentive. They had to be, to get away with as many pranks as they did completely unscathed. They distracted him as much as they could since the moment he became obviously taciturn, and had even made him genuinely laugh many times. He was grateful.

If only he could lie his fears to rest.

(If only that night he would finally dream of Ren.)

"—and, I'd be g-grateful if-if you do."

Harry blinked and focused his gaze on the person in front of him. Longbottom, a first year Gryffindor Harry had met in the train when the boy had been looking for his escapee toad together with the Granger girl, was fidgeting slightly with the hem of his robes as he watched Harry from the corner of his eye. He had asked something. Ooops.

"Er, sorry, Longbottom," he apologized sheepishly and the boy's hopeful face crumbled. Harry winced internally. "I wasn't paying attention and I don't know what was it that you asked."

"Oh," he exhaled, and his disappointment vanished and was replaced by a slight flush on chubby cheeks. He moved his weight from one foot to the other. "Okay. Um."

"What was it?"

"Ah! Well, I don't know if you've heard but—Potions I am—not really good at them and…" the boy stuttered out. Yes, Harry had heard. Ravenclaw had Potions with Hufflepluff on Fridays right after the double Slytherin-Gryffindor class ended. It wasn't weird for them to be warned off with a sneer not to follow Longbottom's example and melt the cauldron, or similar things. "I heard that you were good. And I've seen you here studying and I was wondering if—if you'd be able to tutor me?" He finished in a hopeful but strangled tone, as if he were completely expecting a quick turn down.

Harry thought about it for half a second before shrugging.

"Sure, why not? Sit."

Perhaps this could help distract him a bit from his worries. He could at least try.

Longbottom beamed at him and left to find his things before hurriedly coming back and sitting in front of Harry. He looked so eager, and Harry felt a little bad about not warning the boy of his tutoring methods. He had been tutored by Renato, after all. Harry was bound to recreate at least some of his teaching methods.

(Poor Neville did not know what he had just signed up for.)

10 - Reunion

Harry blinked, and blinked again.

His eyes grew wide as he recognized the colourful space in which he was now standing. A warm sensation bubbled in his stomach and spread throughout his whole body, and he could feel the massive smile that had blossomed on his face stretching his cheeks almost painfully.

"Ren?" he whispered, out of breath. He then took a big gulp of air and bellowed again, "Ren? Are you here?"

Without knowing where he was going or why, he started running. Renato had to be here somewhere. He just needed to find him. If he ran, then he surely would.

"Ren?! REN?!"

"Harry!" The voice called from behind, and Harry stopped in his tracks and brusquely turned around. He was immediately engulfed in a hug and lifted off his feet, and Harry clung to him with both arms and legs like a monkey.

"Ren!" He was aware that he sounded a bit hysterical. Clutching the back of the man's shirt, he struggled to keep the tears at bay. "Ren. Ren. Ren."

"Shh, I'm here. I'm finally here. We are here," he shushed, voice rougher than Harry had ever heard it. "Thank God."

They didn't say anything else for a solid ten minutes, content in being in the other's presence. Then, Renato put him down and both of them sat on the floor, eyes making sure that the other was in fact in front of them, safe and sound.

"You've grown, bambino."

Harry frowned and looked down at himself, evaluating. "Really?" He looked at Ren, who nodded. "Uh. I don't feel much different. Though there is much more food here than at the Dursleys', so maybe that's it."

Ren smiled, though it had the slightly dark ominous tint his smile usually acquired once Harry's relatives were mentioned. "How is Hogwarts? How much have you learned?" He said, changing the direction of the conversation to safer grounds.

Harry perked up. "Hogwarts is—it's great, actually. I don't like my History professor much, he's a ghost and makes Goblin Wars boring, Renato! But Professor McGonagall is just as amazing as I thought. And then there is flying lessons, which are just incredible. Ren, I need to get a broom and take you on a flight sometime, I know you'll love it. Oh! We had a Halloween Feast tonight and everyone panicked because apparently a Mountain Troll entered the castle, and a Gryffindor girl would have been in trouble if I didn't tell McGonagall that she was missing, oh, and I'm a Ravenclaw, and I'm almost sure that it was Quirrell who let the Troll in, I don't like him, he's—"

Ren cut him off with a hand over his mouth and an amused chuckle.

"What have I told you about breathing while you talk, Harry? You are babbling."

Harry batted the offending appendage away and then smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. I just—there is so much to tell you, Ren!"

"I can imagine, it has been two long months, after all."

Harry lost a bit of his cheer at that. "What—why do you think this happened? We've—Never before we've been separated this long."

Renato grimaced and tugged his fedora down, obscuring his eyes as he usually did whenever he was thinking deeply or when he was uncomfortable with something. He then sighed and took it off, letting his spiky hair be free.

"I don't know, Harry. I have only half-cooked theories at the moment, and none of them can really be tested because there is so little known about soulmate bonds," he admitted bitterly, and Harry knew how much Ren hated not knowing things.

"Oh, that's—I mean—everything at school was okay, I even made friends! But I was scared something happened to you, when I didn't see you for so long."

"It was the same for me, kiddo. Don't worry, though. Nothing bad happened to me. In fact, these last month I've been negotiating a contract with a big employer, which means that hopefully I soon may be able to take you away from the Dursleys for good."

Harry's eyes sparkled at that. That was amazing! "Really! I can't wait!"

"Me neither, bambino. Me neither," Ren chuckled and messed up Harry's hair with his hand. "Now, you mentioned friends and a professor you don't like at all. And a Troll. Care to elaborate?"

Grinning, Harry started to tell Renato all about Fred and George Weasley, his other friend Lee Jordan and his pet tarantula, and the whole lot of mischief they've been up to since they met at the beginning of term and until the quite strange Halloween Feast that same night.

I honestly can't wait for first year to be OVER. Interesting things start at the second!

Thank you so much for putting up with me and my messy updates! :') I hope you enjoyed this silly thing, even when I don't know when I will have more for you.

Let me know what you think, please? :-)