Eyes on Me PV - Aamon Athanatos

The first thing Aamon Athanatos noticed was that the world had the audacity to still exist.

How rude.

The second thing Aamon noticed was the ceiling: white... very white... aggressively white. The sort of white that suggested the oh so familiar hospital wing and experience told him what would come next. Next he would be approached by several judgmental nurses who ask questions like "how many fingers am I holding up?" After growing a seventh finger. "Who was the president of England?" They were getting trickier with each head injury, treating him as if gravity was somehow his fault. As though he had made a personal decision to collide with the ground at high velocity.

He blinked slowly. The white ceiling refused to stay still and there was this annoying flesh-colored blob breaking up some of white. He knew that blob didn't he? Yes, it was one of the house elves, their bulbous head and bat-like ears. He blinked again and again, the image slowly fell into focus.

"Uruag," he complained rather clearly. His brain felt like someone had stuffed it into a sock and gently shook it for several hours and filled his cranium with soup. "…Hurmmatasauce," Aamon declared as the Seer who totally did not see this coming, attempted to sit up and the his body immediately tried to file a formal complaint. Every rib, including what might be a new one, protested. His shoulder objected. Something in his lumbar spine made a sound reminiscent of breakfast cereal. The Athanatos paused halfway upright like a folding chair reconsidering its life choices before sinking back into the pillow that smelled like detergent with the quiet dignity of someone pretending that had absolutely been intentional.

Yes, he was 'resting.' It was a hard quidditch match of mostly snacking and a brief attempt at an ascent. Rest after such a showing was necessary. Rest, this rest, was the plan. Aamon turned his head slightly, wincing as the room tilted a few degrees to the left, then reconsidered and laid supine again .

"Right," the snake murmured hoarsely to no one in particular. There was an empty chair next to his bed, one of those uncomfortable chairs that could probably flank a middle-class dining table in the 1980s. Cutting edge his flat ass. It was better empty than full, he silently reasoned. Unconscious next to anyone that might consider visiting him would be more damage than benefit - Gideon, Mathias, other Matt, the uncaring gaze of the numerous girls he had somehow pissed off. "Excellent, so the ground wins again," he sighed out loud.

Aamon lifted his hand and inspected it carefully, as if confirming all the necessary pieces were still attached. Fingers: present. Wand hand: still mostly functional, can even do a fist. Ego: slightly dented, structurally sound, probably could not hold water.

His eyes drifted toward the edge of the ward, where he vaguely remembered a crowd of spectators, teammates, possibly an almost girlfriend who had looked deeply unbothered by the concept of gravity doing its job. They were gone, it looks like they left when the person or people they were waiting on were ready to leave.

It was then that Aamon Athanatos had reached a very reasonable conclusion: he was all better, remaining in the hospital wing was completely unnecessary. In fact, it was insulting. Aamon had been conscious for nearly seven minutes now, which by all known magical and medical standards meant he was essentially healed and just keeping a bed warm. The lingering dizziness, blurry vision, faint ringing in his ears, and sense that his ribs had been rearranged alphabetically were clearly just dramatic aftereffects, not unlike the side effects of a pharmaceutical.

Nothing serious. Certainly nothing worth the humiliation of being fussed over by nurses or, Merlin forbid, being told to "rest." So, with all the stealth of someone who had just been hit by a bludger and lost an argument with the ground, Aamon attempted to roll out of bed. The room tilted and Aamon paused at the precipice. The teen teetered there for a second, before he assured himself: "this is fine... Normal even. Floors do that sometimes," wiggle and then dart away like the slenderman in his periphery. Aamon stood and then immediately regretted it.

Aamon's knees briefly entertained the idea of folding like decorative lawn chairs, but that ancient, stubborn Athanatos pride forced his legs to cooperate. With slow, careful movements that suggested a man pretending not to be injured while being extremely injured, Aamon straightened his battered uniform and brushed imaginary dust from his sleeves.

Perfect. Dignified. Totally inconspicuous. Aamon started to walk towards the door if the infirmary. The door to the hospital wing loomed ahead like a glorious portal to freedom, representing not only independence but the absence of medical supervision. Aamon placed a hand on the handle, pushed it open, and stepped through with quiet triumph.

Freedom. He had made it approximately two strides into the corridor before the universe decided to intervene and Aamon walked directly into someone. @Harlan Montgomery.

The Slytherin rebounded slightly, blinking as his brain attempted to remember how vision worked. "Oh," Aamon said, steadying himself against the nearest wall before looking up at the unfamiliar figure. His voice carried the airy calm of someone who had absolutely not just escaped medical supervision. "Salutations," a completely normal, inconspicuous meeting. Then, with perfect sincerity, "I believe the hospital wing is behind me, if you're here for the scenic concussion tour."

"Aamon? Athanatos," The stranger announced his full name. That was never good. His mother sometimes used it, adding a middle for good measure. That always meant he was in trouble, so with the Pavlovian conditioning of a war crime victim, his blood froze. His mismatched eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the stranger. The face didn’t immediately slot into any of the mental categories he kept for Hogwarts inhabitants: rival, nuisance, professor's favorite, person who had once thrown a dungbomb near his shoes.

Harlan was unfamiliar. Which meant new, brave, or very dangerous.

"I've been looking for you. Pity about your game about Hufflepuff, they kicked our ass bad last game too."

The mention of Quidditch drew a small wince he tried to disguise as a thoughtful nod. "Mm," Aamon kinda-sorta agreed or at least made some sort of confirmatory noise. "Yes, the Hufflepuffs demonstrate a certain… enthusiasm for hitting things. Sometimes me."

He straightened a little, though the motion was careful, measured. There was still a faint stiffness in the way he held himself, like a porcelain figure recently reassembled with magical glue.

"I think I saw you at that wedding this Summer."

Harlan claimed, but as soon as his half-brother's wedding came up, Aamon's expression flickered. "No" he announced quickly, but not quickly enough to actually be timely. The concussion had delayed the transmission of the lie from his brain to this throat. "I don't think so I mean... Yeah, there is, there are quote a few weddings in the world. Statistically speaking, it is hard to keep track of guests and attendances," he let out a laugh that he immediately regretted as it rattled his chest. "You surely know how it is," he rambled nervously.

"I just had a couple questions about Augury Cloister if you'd appease a curious teen looking for answers."

Aamon would take a half step back, a sponge bath sounding pretty good right about now as he swallowed hard. "I've never heard of the Augmented Oyster," he claimed. "There are plenty of water-side wedding venues... hypothetically." Yeah, sure, hypothetically, "I’m fairly certain if I had attended a wedding I would remember it," Aamon added, voice a little too bright. "Ceremonial robes are extremely uncomfortable, you see. Very memorable garments." Shutting up would have been far too beneficial for the young idiot. He waved a hand dismissively, as though the topic had already been resolved by the sheer force of his reasoning. "But no, I don’t believe I was at any wedding this summer," Aamon concluded confidently.

Then, as if he had not shot himself in the foot enough times, he had to ask. "…Why?"

The tall boy blinked. There was nothing dramatic about the Slytherin's reaction, it was more the effect of a boy who had to place mental effort into what should be automatic tasks like blinking and swallowing. It took the teen a moment to recalibrate when a question landed somewhere it wasn't meant to. Aamon's posture stiffened a fraction, shoulders drawing in like he was deciding whether to step back or stay exactly where he was. For a young man such as Aamon, even existing required frequent consideration and recalibration.

" Your father's Thaddeus, right? "

Harlan asked, the name sent a sharp sensation through the young snake. "…I call him Mister Athanatos," Aamon replied, the correction soft but deliberate. Some call their parents 'mother' or 'father' but 'Thaddeus' as Harlan called him, was not close enough to any of his sons to be on a first name or nickname basis. Aamon's tone was defensive, just… careful. The Athanatos' gaze flicked briefly past Harlan, as if checking who else might be listening, before returning to the Gryffindor.

" At the wedding, there were some strange things happening and I haven't gotten any answers about it and I'd like some... I got attacked in the Reading Room in Augury Cloister by magic I've never seen before. "

Harlan explained. The mention of the Cloister made something in Aamon's expression shift. A subtle tightening at the corners of his mouth, like a thought he didn’t want to finish had just been forced to.

"I..." Aamon hesitated, fingers curling slightly at his sides. Just another anxious habit. "There were… things moved around before the wedding." That sounded bad, he had a habit of firmly inserting his feet in his mouth. He bit his lower lip to ground himself before he clarified, "the bad books were taken out." The Augury Cloister was a religious retreat first and foremost, built upon one of the birthplaces of prophecy, a site of power modernized to a place that has forgotten its past. Before the blood union, ahem, wedding, the house was scoured for any artifact that could be deemed 'problematic.' In a place like that, there was plenty not meant for the public gaze, and they did not find it all...

Aamon winced faintly at his own wording, like he knew how that sounded and didn't have a better version ready.

"I don't mean..." Aamon started, then stopped, exhaling through his nose. How was he cursed with language. "I mean, I don't know what attacked you. I wasn't..." There was a flicker there, something uneasy, like memory catching on something sharp. He was no longer him by the end of the wedding, but it was more like he blinked for an extended period of time and several months had passed. "I wasn't really… present for most of that night."

Aamon's mismatched eyes searched Harlan's face now, trying to understand what he was being accused of, or pulled into. "The Reading Room isn't supposed to do that," Aamon added quietly. "It doesn't do anything," he claimed with a hollow sort of confidence in the words, like he was repeating something he'd been told rather than something he believed.

Aamon shifted his weight, just slightly, like the ground under the conversation wasn't as stable as it should be. "…What kind of magic?"

For the sake of abundant clarity - the image above was created with the assistance of AI within the scope of allowance on the site.

@Harlan Montgomery

Aamon did not answer immediately. The snake rarely did when it mattered, yet he prattled on endlessly when there was nothing to gain or lose. His foot finding his mouth more often than not.

Outwardly, the Slytherin tried to appear composed, his shoulders squared, posture exact, expression arranged into something politely neutral. The sort of face that suggested he was listening, considering, perhaps even mildly sympathetic. That was the image held by the boy's inner eye, in reality the boy looked like he was having a juvenile stroke.

Harlan kept talking. Of course he did. Books. Portals. Possession. The wedding. Aamon's wedding. No, he was not getting married. He had better sense than Pride. Mathias' wedding.

No, that was an incident he was absolutely not going to discuss in an open corridor in the middle of the afternoon like this is a casual anecdote.

Aamon blinked once. Slowly. His stroke-like expression did not crack. His mind, however, was sprinting toward the nearest exit. He remembered bits of it: Three women, ancient magic, possession. Yes, wonderful. Excellent. We are now saying the quiet parts out loud.

"Mr. Athanatos, then." Ah, and there it was. The formality, the distance, the expectation. It felt more comfortable than normal, human interaction. The coldness of it all seemed more like home than a cup of cocoa and a hug.

Aamon inhaled quietly through his nose, the motion controlled, deliberate, like the teen could breathe himself back into a version of reality where this conversation was not happening. "Right," Aamon said at last. His voice was higher than it should have been, it was not his normal tenor. The word however was completely unhelpful.

"I'm going to stop you there," he raised his hand, as if asking for a pause. "Because what you are describing," Aamon continued, "is either a gross misinterpretation of events, a stress-induced hallucination, or something you should very seriously reconsider repeating aloud." Yes, his family was filled with masters of misdirection, that was probably genetic.



Something clever, perhaps a small felony, some gas lighting. Something Aamon understood in concept but failed in practice.

Aamon was unfortunately no Mathias. "You were at a wedding," the teen began. The statement was safe, grounded... neutral, harmless. It gave him time to fabricate a socially acceptable answer or a clever diversion. "There was music and alcohol. There were a number of highly excitable individuals with questionable judgement," he went on. The Augury was packed with guests from the upper echelon and any other elevation that might garner the necessary publicity to bolster his father Thaddeus' burgeoning political career.

"And, um... ritual--" Aamon stopped. No. No no no no no no no. "Not ritual," the young snake quickly corrected. "I meant traditional elements," he let out a nervous laugh. "Cultural. Decorative. Entirely benign." An obvious lie.

Inside Aamon's head, that internal narrator was scolding him: Stop talking. Stop digging. Where the hell did you find that shovel! Stop saying words that lead to other, even worse words.

Of course Harlan had read about their secret, that book of herbs detailed herbs with cursed or dark connotations. That would have been concerning enough, even if someone had a mundane 'academic interest' in forbidden horticultural cultivation. But there was something specific that he had missed those months before.

The Almanac of Weeping Herbs mentioned the Bloodmire Yew, a tree given a few specific location in Scottland. In fact, that very tree was a short jaunt from where they stood.

Bloodmire Yew - "The Root That Hungers"

There is a tree in the Forbidden Forest in Scotland that will not die. The Bloodmire Yew was planted with a sharpened femur in place of a spade and fed not water, but ritual blood. It drinks in the dark. Its bark is veined with red that never fades, even in winter.

Each spring, it blooms once: red flowers with teeth. The villagers whisper it remembers every soul fed to its roots. Even in isolation, the tree dreams of flesh. The almanac warns: if a reader's hand bleeds upon the bark, their name will be known to the tree.

What Harlan would not know from the book is that this tree was still being cared for by Gideon. That some of his peers had fed that very tree.

The other entry of interest being the Widow's Griefcap, a mushroom with dense roots, a pale speckled cap with bright crimson boils. A few years ago, there were myconoids with a similar description flourishing throughout Hogwarts. In fact, the fungal overgrowth had become invasive. These mushrooms mark the grave of a hag.

Widow's Griefcap - "Where She Rots, They Bloom"

It does not grow in clusters, for it does not tolerate company. The Widow's Griefcap rises alone, but appears as a swarm. Thick roots connect these myconids. Pale as candlewax and crowned in crimson spots that seem to bleed when sliced. Its scent is nauseating: iron and rot, the breath of a fresh-dug grave.

Only one thing nourishes it: the decaying flesh of a hag.

The mushroom appears shortly after burial, within a seven-night cycle. The deeper the corruption of the buried witch, the richer the crimson seep from the Griefcap's cap. Consuming it leads to violent illness: retching, blood in the stool, hallucinations of drowning. Those who survive and said to never be right again, but were they truly right in the first place if they consumed the grief cap?

When found, it is advised to burn the mushroom whole at dusk. If it emits a scream or weeps bright red, a coven lies near. These mushrooms do not merely mark graves, they are invitations.

"One hag falls, and the others feel it in their marrow. This is how they call their sisters to mourn - or avenge."

Warning: never collect three. The third always brings something with it. Something old. Something hungry.

There were no more Griefcap, so did that mean that they were gone? Or did it mean that the call was actually answered? The book was a warning that there was something very dangerous going on in the Forbidden Forest and oddly enough, information regarding this was found so far from the Scottish castle.

"It is just exaggeration and imagination," he claimed, like he could patch over that with tone alone. Aamon was no Thaddeus. He could not. And Harlan did not stop. Of course he didn't.

Three beautiful older women. "What beautiful women?" Aamon immediately replied. There were of course lovely women. Most women were of the lovely variety. Not old ones of course, but there was no reason to debate Harlan's taste. Maybe that was his thing, old people. Weird but not his problem and more importantly far from the thing he was worried about drawing attention to.

"…No," Aamon eventually answered. He was not worried about the women, his misguided anxiety was focused on his attempted, and failed, attempt to murder his classmate. The result was something worse than a death at sea, but that was a complaint for another day and a much better therapist than Hogwarts could offer.

Aamon had bee-lined to the back of the Augury Cloister to lubricate the cliff's edge. A juvenile plan to end a perceived rival. That was how Athanatos' managed things: death, revenge, and destruction. Only, Aamon had the murderous sense of a traffic cone. "No," Aamon repeated, slower now, like he could retroactively make that convincing. "I have not." It was not a complete lie, he had not seen the hot old ladies Harlan identified, but he had an idea who they probably were: his aunties.

He did not see what others saw in them. Their hair hung in brittle clumps like wet straw left to rot in a field. Their skin sagged in strange places and stretched too tightly in others, as though borrowed from several different corpses and stitched together with failing patience. Their eyes were the worst part. Clouded. Milky. Blind at first glance, but never unfocused. And their yellowed smiles was what unsettled him the most. Their teeth looked splintered, uneven things shoved into their mouths without care for symmetry or comfort. Not predator’s teeth. Not animal. Those were definitely human teeth, just too many or the wrong size for their mouths. Which somehow made them worse. Their ahem... lady parts seemed to swing when they walked like a pendulum filled with regret. To Aamon, it was like being told a corpse was "fashionable."

"You probably saw my aunts," he eventually admitted. "If you saw three of them," he reasoned. "They're weird and old and... you have messed up taste," he added with a tone of indignity. He had no idea how they would have gotten there, they would not have been invited, but three was a dog whistle to any Athanatos.