"So, I heard you two were the people to see regarding pranks," said a smooth, dark voice.

It scared the living shit out of the twins, who were heartily glad they weren't working on any potions at the time.

"Sweet merciful Merlin!"

"How the bloody hell did you get past our wards?!" demanded George, holding his chest.

Harry Potter smirked at them.

"Your wards are decent enough, but they were ridiculously easy to bypass. Anyway I came to see about spreading unholy amounts of chaos, anarchy and all-out headaches for the teaching staff."

Seeing the unholy gleam in their eyes, his smirk deepened.

"That and far be it for me not to continue my father, godfather and honorary uncle's tradition of being unholy pranking menaces that drive McGonagall to drink from the hard stuff."

That got the twins to blink.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Fred confused.

"James Potter was Prongs," said Harry simply.

Dead silence for all of five seconds, before the twins exploded in glee.

"You're the son of a Marauder?!"

"Technically you're third cousins to one. Sirius Black is Padfoot, though it was Wormtail that actually betrayed the Marauders," said Harry calmly. "Which reminds me, I want to set up an anonymous arrangement with your youngest brother."

"What sort of arrangement?" asked Fred warily.

"The kind that would give him enough gold to buy a real pet and possibly a wand," said Harry. "I need a test dummy and I would be more than happy to buy that half-dead rat off him."

"Oh. In that case we'll mention it to him," said George. To be fair the twins could care less about what happened to Scabbers and this might get Ron's head out of his ass.

Two days later, Ron rather cheerfully handed over his rat to Fred and George who produce an actual bag of real galleons just for him. Percy was kind enough to verify their authenticity for him.

Scabbers...or rather Pettigrew...knew he was well and truly fucked when he saw the expression of dark amusement on the face of his friend's son.

"What do you have there, Black?" asked Blaise. The 'boy-who-lived' was far more Black than a Potter, so Blaise treated him accordingly.

"An illegal animagus who is going to learn the hard way why it was a bad idea to sell out his friends for the false promise of power," said Harry blithely. He had already made the cage escape proof, he was just waiting for the weekend so he could devote his full and entire attention on the rat.

Blaise paused, and stopped to look at him.

"What."

"If you have any poisons that cause excruciating pain that you would like to try out, let me know. I can get my hands on some bezoars so he won't die quickly and we can heal him up for further testing," said Harry.

The rat squealed loudly hearing that. It clearly didn't agree with his plan in the least, which was making Black's claims of it being an illegal animagus even more likely if he understood human speech to that extent.

"What are you planning to do with it?" asked Blaise, eyeing the rat warily.

"I plan to use it as stress release and a way to kill boredom until it no longer amuses me or he's too damaged for me to discreetly heal him for further torment. Then I'll dump him at St. Mungo's with enough veritaserum that his ability to lie is destroyed and a sign saying 'Ask me about the Dark Lord and my involvement with the death of the Potter family' with a compulsion charm."

Blaise looked at the other boy with some respect. If he had any doubts that Black was a mafioso, this would have dispelled them.

"So do you have a place for us to have...fun...in private where the teachers won't stumble across it?"

"I do, but I need to deal with an...infestation...first," said Harry.

The basilisk was impressive, but it was too much of a liability for him to tolerate and he had no idea whether or not it would obey him or Riddle. Better to kill it first then harvest the remains for the venom and some quick cash. Besides, he wanted to investigate the hole that thing came from...there was no way someone like Slytherin went through all that effort just to make a nest for his pet snake.

He planned to deal with that first, and stole a rooster from Hagrid's little roost. If he did it right then the man would never know he had taken one at all, as he was out patrolling the forest at the moment with Fang.

The half-giant was nice enough, but he was Dumbledore's Lightning through and through and couldn't keep a secret to save his own life.

It was child's play to find the alternate entrance to the Chamber. Ironically enough when the soul shard had been forcibly evicted it had left behind the ability to speak to snakes.

Reborn wasn't surprised in the least the old magics had decided that he was now Slytherin's heir, as his core had easily accepted the bloodline gift after Voldemort foolishly killed his own father and pinned it on his uncle.

Old lines like Slytherin didn't tolerate kinslayers, much less idiots stupid enough to pervert their own magic to create abominations like soul shards.

It didn't help that the Blacks practiced blood magics and rituals, or that it was just as powerful as the line of Slytherin.

Reborn had already claimed the Black heir ring, and the ring belonging to the head of the Potter family since he was the last living member of the main line.

It was only sensible he kept them hidden at all times, which was why they were currently being worn on his toes and hidden under his socks. Nothing said they had to be worn on fingers after all.

First things first...that snake had to go.

"Speak to me Slytherin, Greatest of the Hogwarts Four!" said Reborn, before waiting by the side with his eyes closed.

The snake never saw him coming. It smelled him first and opened it's maw to eat him whole, never suspecting it would lead to it's own demise.

Reborn latched on to the fangs and pushed as much of his Sun flame into it's venom sacks as he could. He focused on the acidic nature of the basilisk's venom, and it didn't take long for his bastardized version of Storm flames to reach the snake's brain and eat it from the inside out.

It was a good thing he waited for that thing to fully leave the statue. Harvesting it would have been a pain in the ass otherwise.

As it was, he got to work. He would wait until he had enough phoenix tears before he attempted to regain his lost immunity to most poisons and venoms. While it had been a bitch and a half to live through it the first time, the fact was that the incident had saved his life countless times until he had fully cast aside the identity of Harry Potter and became Renato Sinclair, the World's Greatest Hit Man.

Though it still pissed him off that the memory spell Blaise had been kind enough to place on him after the curse had broken the second he ended up in his seven-year-old body. He had hidden his memories for a reason, the main one being that he never wanted to lead that bastard Checkerface or any of his enemies to what little family he had left. It would have broken him to lose Teddy and the others because he was too weakened by the curse to protect them.

Reborn paused to settle his nerves. Being stuck in his actual child-body and in a past he had been more than happy to forget was making his nerves shot to hell.

Not that anyone would really notice it...he was the unflappable Reborn, the epicenter of chaos and trouble.

But magic had the worst habit of opening up long-forgotten scars.

He was really hoping that idiot Riddle would resurrect himself already. He wanted to play merry hell with murdering the man's minions. It wasn't like anyone would miss the fools, and he knew for a fact that the Goblins had rite of conquest so long as he was discreet about it.

Actually with how his reputation was going, he could probably convince the Malfoys he had leanings towards the 'dark' side of magic. It would be tragically easy to infiltrate their social circle and even easier to find out who was part of Voldemort's minions or who supported them.

It wasn't like he gave any damn whatsoever about the magicals once he left last time, and he still didn't. Once he became Renato Sinclair again, he would wash his hands of these idiots once more.

He would have to wait to properly investigate the place until later. He had spent too much time killing the snake and trying to avoid being eaten.

Oh how he hated Halloween. Most of those he considered 'friendly acquaintances' thought he loved the holiday, but he had nothing but horrible luck every year and thus loathed it.

As such he tended to try and make everyone else's lives hell on this day to make his own mood better.

The number of times his 'friends' had been horrified to learn the hot chick they were eyeing up was him... he couldn't wait to get new blackmail once he was old enough to really enjoy it.

Flitwick had noticed his dark mood and waited for the end of class to comment on it.

"Mr. Potter, you seem to be distracted today."

Harry's expression went black, there was no other word for it.

"I loathe Halloween, so having to hear everyone talk about it is pissing me off," he said bluntly.

That made Flitwick blink.

"Whyever would you say that?"

Harry gave him such a flat look that it made him wince.

"I don't know, maybe because my parents were murdered on Halloween and I have absolutely no good memories of them? Or how about the students are all so happy to remind me that I survived and they didn't?"

Flitwick felt like an absolute fool. Even he had forgotten that Potter's parents were killed on the holiday, and that he had every reason to not want to celebrate in the least.

"Sir, is there any way I could avoid the feast entirely and stay in the tower? I really don't feel festive in the least," asked Harry.

"Under normal circumstances I wouldn't allow it, but considering your situation I'll make an exception," said Flitwick.

He could hardly blame the poor boy for wanting to avoid everyone's festive behavior when he was trying to quietly mourn his parents.

What he didn't know was that his student was going to use the excuse to deal with a pest.

Just because he wanted Voldemort to come out of hiding didn't mean he was going to make it easy for him. He was sick of Quirrel's fake stuttering and the horrendous smell in the classroom.

As everyone filed into the great hall for the food and festivities, Reborn was waiting for Quirrel to head into the forest to get the troll.

The shot rang out in the quiet night, though it was drowned out by the noise in the great hall so no one really heard it.

Reborn felt a dark twinge of satisfaction as Quirrel went down. A second shot blew his head clean off, as Reborn had made sure to line up the first to take out his right kneecap. It was so much easier to deal with a target from a bad angle when the victim had limited mobility.

He took apart his gun and began to clean it. The others wouldn't be back for a few hours at least.

He felt the urge to smoke, but sadly he had none available. On the other hand he did have the bottles he pilfered from Snape's personal stash, so that would have to do instead.

He poured himself a generous glass and took out a book from Ravenclaw's private library.

Unlike the main library, the private one in the tower had far more advanced books including spell research that had been left incomplete. The one he was reading was for an arithimatic equation that looked promising, but would need a mastery in the subject to pull off. Never mind the ability to perform high-level equations.

Reborn was rather interested in what the ritual would do when completed, and was tempted to try it out if only to kill his boredom.

Hours passed with no notice from him, outside of the fact he polished off the glass of bourbon.

He went to bed early, and set the wards to keep everyone out. The next morning was a day off, to let the children process the amount of sugar they had consumed the night before.

The prefects were less than amused Potter had been missing during the feast, and it wasn't until Flitwick overheard them talking that he gave them a severe chastisement over it.

All in all it cemented the half-goblin as a superior head of house over McGonagall.

And since he took out Quirrel, Granger was never in any danger from the troll.

It was a considerably less annoying Halloween than the first time around. Though he was still debating on whether to kill Ron. The boy was becoming a nuisance and it was irritating having to listen to him.