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Chapter Text

None of them were quite sure how it happened, all they knew was that one minute, they were sitting around eating some Thai take-out (or, at least, that's what Ianto had said it was; Owen was of the opinion that it was actually Italian as made by three year olds using Play-Doh, and everyone had agreed that they weren't ordering from this place again), then there was a flash of light, and... they had shrunk. Not a lot in some of their cases (Tosh), and quite a bit more in other cases (Jack).

"Anyone feel like telling me why we're suddenly pre-teens?" That was probably Jack's voice, but it couldn't be Jack, Ianto thought, because it was coming from a kid who looked like he was maybe eight. If he stretched.

"What do you mean, 'pre-teens'? You're not nearly that old. You're barely out of nappies." That was definitely Owen.

Mini-Jack, or whoever he was, pouted in response. "I'll have you know that until I was thirteen, I was very small for my age!" It came from growing up in space, where the lack of natural resources made everyone incredibly small, but he wasn't going to tell them that. It would totally ruin his dark and mysterious persona.

This settled (not that anyone really believed Jack), they went back to the 'what just happened' problem. But alas, nobody knew how they'd all suddenly became children all over again. Or, more importantly, how to fix it.

Tosh and Ianto searched the inventory and archives for anything that might have caused the regression, while Owen performed multiple tests using blood samples from each of them, and Jack and Gwen sat around and kicked their heels for a while before deciding to play with Myfanwy (Owen was trying to figure out if this was a side-effect of the age regression, or just Jack and Gwen being themselves; Ianto's vote was on the latter).

A good five hours of work later, and... they had come up with nothing. Ianto had an idea of how to help them get back to normal, but it was sort of a last resort. Because he really didn't feel like telling the others that he was a wizard, even if he could Obliviate or retcon them after all this was over. And anyway, how likely was it that this was caused by something magical, as opposed to technological? That never happened.

They all worked through the night, but Owen couldn't find anything wrong at all with their blood compared to the samples they had given when they first began working at Torchwood. According to every piece of alien technology they'd ever salvaged, and the best human technology ever developed, they were exactly the same. Only younger. And, Owen found to his annoyance, the years of orthodontic work that had been done on his mouth during his teenage years was totally reversed.

Tosh found a few pieces in their collection that had less than full descriptions and might be responsible, but each was eventually ruled out through a lengthy and boring testing process that made Jack's eyes cross whenever he tried to pay attention. When it hit seven in the morning and they still had no clue to what happened (and Jack had given up on trying to keep his pants up and was just running around in a shirt that came to his knees), Ianto sighed and decided to pull out his trump card.

"I may," he told the others reluctantly, "have a way to get us back to normal."

"And you didn't tell us earlier because why?" Owen snapped at him, nerves worn down by a combination of staying up all night and running every test known to mankind (and a number that weren't), and Jack refusing to let anyone have coffee, saying it would stunt their growth.

Ianto didn't answer, but instead shuffled over to the fireplace (ignoring the mutterings of, "Why do we have a fireplace in the Hub? Wasn't this an old train station? Who puts fireplaces in train stations?"). He opened an inconspicuous jar next to the fireplace, tossed a handful of powder into the fire ("Okay, how is the fireplace lit if we didn't even know there WAS one?"), and called out, "Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts."

Eyebrows were generally raised in amusement at the evident psychotic break Ianto was undergoing, but those eyebrows shot towards the roof when a face suddenly appeared in the fire. It was the face of an old man, with half-moon glasses and long white hair and beard. And a pointy hat. Everyone but Ianto stared at him in disbelief. (Well, really it was only Owen and Gwen; Jack just had a small smirk on his small face, and Tosh was sure there was a technological explanation – why, she could already come up with a number of them!)

"Mr. Jones, is that really you? Why, you look exactly the same as you did thirteen years ago!" the old man sounded astounded, but looked just slightly amused.

"Yes sir," Ianto said, kneeling in front of the fire, still ignoring the rest of the group. "You see, my colleagues and I were somehow turned into eleven year olds. We haven't been able to figure out a cause for it, and I was wondering if you might be able to help."

"Yes, yes, my dear boy! Step back from the fireplace, I'll come through and see what can be done."

And sure enough, a second after Ianto scrambled away from in front of it, the man stepped through the fire and into the Hub. Jack and Gwen immediately went for their guns, only to remember that they weren't actually wearing them (Gwen had managed to keep her pants on – a situation that Owen had many a snarky thing to say about – by tightening the belt to a ridiculous amount and rolling up the cuffs, but the weight of wearing a gun would pull them right back down).

"Nice dress," was Owen's only reaction. Tosh elbowed him, since she had actually been taught to respect her elders, and Ianto rolled his eyes.

The weird old guy in the dress has brandishing a stick, and when he muttered a few words it began to glow. He ran it over each of them and studied them carefully, frowning a little. He opened his mouth to say something, but Owen – ever snarky – interrupted. "Lemme guess, you have some good news and some bad news."

Dumbledore smiled, eyes twinkling. "Well, yes. The good news, as you put it, is that I know the spell that made you children again. The bad news is that it can't be reversed, it has to wear off." He paused. "And the worse news is that it takes a year to wear off." For someone delivering bad news, his eyes were twinkling a disturbing amount.

Reactions were varied. Ianto dropped his head, looking resigned – it would figure that the one time it was magic's fault, it would be something like this; Owen rolled his eyes and mouthed, 'Magic?' at Tosh, who elbowed him again; Gwen looked panicked; and Jack... looked amused. Again. Ianto glanced suspiciously between his boss and the headmaster, mentally noting that they seemed to have the exact same expression.

"I have some other news for you, as well," Dumbledore said after a moment. He'd been watching their reactions, and was pretty certain it was, indeed, news to them. "You two," he gestured at Owen and Jack, "are wizards, and the young ladies here are witches."

Jack and Ianto didn't react, but Owen snorted and Gwen and Tosh both looked highly skeptical.

What followed was the typical display of magic given to equally skeptical Muggleborns and their parents every year – around the same time, as well. Ianto reluctantly assisted, pulling his own wand out to the surprise of... well, no one, really, since the old guy had recognized him.

After having convinced them of magic (Owen was particularly stubborn about it, and had to actually be given Ianto's wand and perform a spell – bad as it was, given that it was a borrowed wand – before he began to believe), Dumbledore offered them all a place at Hogwarts. As Ianto pointed out, no one was going to let a group of primary schoolers into crime scenes to investigate Torchwood-related crimes, so they might as well go to Hogwarts and learn things that would be useful in their normal activities rather than just sit around and play with shiny objects and the pterodactyl.

Jack cheerfully accepted Dumbledore's offer, not seeming at all perturbed by both the news that magic existed, and that he was going to be stuck at eight – eleven, Ianto reminded himself – for a full year. But then, he was Jack. For all they knew, he could have planned it.

That was why, two days later (and a call to the Prime Minister informing her that they were magically eleven years old again and going off to study magic in Scotland, which she took surprisingly well), the five members of Torchwood 3 were standing in the alleyway behind a dingy pub. Ianto glanced around and carefully tapped a brick with his wand, not blinking as the doorway to Diagon Alley formed. Tosh was muttering under her breath possible scientific explanations, Gwen was staring open-mouthed, Jack was... smiling again, and Owen just decided to ignore everything and walked through the hole. "Well? Come on!" he snapped at the others, who hadn't moved.

Jack, of course, immediately took control, looking intently at the supplies list they'd each been given. "Okay, let's get fitted for robes first, then get potions supplies, then books and we'll finish with the wands." Everyone agreed with this strategy, and they followed Ianto to Madame Malkin's.

Things went far better than Ianto ever could have hoped – until, of course, they went to get their schoolbooks. Tosh's eyes lit up at the sight of all the books upon books upon books, and somehow managed to slip away from the group without anyone noticing. Owen found the section on magical medicine and healing techniques and was soon entirely lost, as was Gwen when she stumbled across Quidditch. They all seemed relatively harmless, wrapped up as they were, so Ianto kept his attention on Jack – who was, after all, the most likely to get into trouble. Didn't matter how much your world gets turned upside-down, you could always rely on Jack to piss somebody off.

Which was why Ianto was rather surprised that when a fight did start at the bookstore, Jack had nothing to do with it. They had been standing off to one side of an incredibly long line while Jack criticized the guy the line was for – a 'Gilderoy Lockhart'. "My hair," Jack whined, "is so much better than his!" He had just moved on to complaining that he had a better sense of style (post-Dumbledore, Ianto had shrunk all of their clothing down to a normal size, so Jack was dressed in his typical World War garb) and nobody ever lined up for him like they did for this guy, when a fistfight broke out between two adults nearby.

Ianto, his first time through Hogwarts, had been in the same year as the oldest Weasley child (different house, but same year). So it wasn't exactly a great intellectual achievement, figuring out who at least one of the duelers was.

"I've seen better fighting at nursery schools," Owen remarked over Ianto's shoulder, causing a miniature heart attack in the Welshman – er, boy. "Just because they've got magic is no excuse to fight like a baby." His tone was quite scathing.

And also just a bit too loud. "Hey!" shouted one of the younger redhead gathered around (with two non-redheads next to him, which was a bit of a shock).

Owen rolled his eyes. "Oh please. I bet Mr. Frilly up there-" he jerked his chin in the direction of Lockhart, "-could fight better than these two are doing." The blond boy nearby, who was likely supporting the other side of the fight, made a face that looked like agreement, but didn't speak.

"Professor Lockhart is a great duelist!" proclaimed the bushy brown-haired girl standing with the redheads. "Haven't you read his books?"

"Right, because nobody could ever lie in a book. That's why there's no such things as fiction." Owen's voice was dry and sarcastic, not that this was any change from its usual tone. He glowered at the girl while Ianto surreptitiously reviewed the information he'd been able to turn up on de-aging spells. There was much disagreement between experts in the field, but the one thing they had all agreed on was that victims of the spell would rather quickly be subjected to the emotional and rational states of their original younger selves. Owen appeared to be regressing faster than the rest of them.

"Oi, what's going on?" Gwen said, marching up with her hands, balled into fists, on her hips and glaring at the irate looking twelve year olds. She positioned herself directly in front of the guys with the look of a guard. Jack, Ianto noted, was doing his level best not to snicker uncontrollably.

Tosh had followed Gwen, a curious look on her face and her arms loaded with books. Ianto groaned at that. "Tosh, you don't need all of those," he tried to tell her, but she just gave him the widest-eyed look he had ever gotten, and he sighed and refocused on trying to keep his teammates from attacking a group of underage wizards. "We still have to get wands," he remarked calmly, going into what he had always privately thought of as butler-mode. He then eyed Owen and Gwen, undeniably the hot-heads of the group. "And I'm sure if we finish early, we could get ice cream. The wizarding world has far more flavors than you can imagine."

Neither of them were stupid, but Gwen allowed herself to be pulled away by the promise of ice cream, and Owen wasn't about to get into a fight without any back-up. Besides, it would take away from the hilarity of two full-grown adults brawling in the middle of a bookstore. So he shrugged and followed the rest of Torchwood to the front, where they paid for the books (all of them, since Ianto hadn't been able to talk Tosh out of more than two of the books).

Behind them, the fight stopped, and as they left the store, Ron Weasley muttered darkly to his the other, "I bet that arse is a Slytherin."

"No bet," Harry said, shooting his friend a smile.

Gwen turned out to be a special case, with the first wand she held reacting to her (in a positive way, not a blow-out-all-the-windows way). It was alder, unicorn hair, nine inches – great for wards and shield spells, Ollivander had said. Gwen had practically snuggled the wand after paying for it, and did start bouncing around the store while everyone else were trying wands.

Tosh was a little harder, but within the first ten minutes she had received a willow wand, core of phoenix feather, flexible and suited well for Divination work. Obviously thinking of the Mary incident, Tosh had grimaced and not looked quite as fond of her wand as she had previously.

Next was Jack, who took perhaps as long as Tosh to place, but who also managed to turn half the store into smoking ruins by the time he got the right wand. Hawthorn, thirteen inches, dragon heartstring, good for hexes.

Owen, though, they'd been there for at least a half hour. The pile of wands he'd tried and failed to do anything with had grown to the point where Jack, far shorter than the rest of them, was edging away in fear that the pile would fall on him and crush him. Ianto, fingering his own holly wand, wondered something... "Accio Owen's wand!" he whispered, and sure enough, a wand box from the back came zooming out. Ianto immediately took his hands out of his pockets and smiled innocently at the suspicious look Ollivander gave him.

Owen gave a similarly suspicious look at the box, but pulled out the wand. He flicked it, and a full rainbow of sparks came out the tip. "Ah, yes!" Ollivander said, clasping his hands, "Another hawthorn wand! Eleven inches, phoenix feather, perfect for charms."

Having decided that Ollivander was a completely crazy old coot, the Torchwood crew headed back to the Leaky Cauldron. Nobody had really felt like hanging around Cardiff until September 1st , and the wizarding world was a lot more accepting of a group of little kids running around without parental supervision for weeks on end. So they'd gotten two rooms at the Leaky Cauldron, above the pub, one for the girls and one for the guys (and, Jack had said, giving pointed looks at Owen and Gwen, they would be sticking with that sleeping arrangement).

Chapter Text

They had been on the train for about two minutes when Owen disappeared. Well, 'disappeared' might have been a strong word for it, since it wasn't like they were all watching him and he was completely gone. They just hadn't been paying attention, and glanced up, and Owen was nowhere to be seen. This probably wasn't a good thing, considering the number of times so far he'd come close to getting in fights. It appeared that wizards found Owen even more objectionable than Muggles did, something Ianto never would have believed if he hadn't seen the evidence with his own eyes.

When they realized that Owen had wandered off, Jack just grinned. "I'll go find him!" he chirped. This would be worse than just Owen on his own, since (although they'd all emotionally regressed by now) Jack was still just as prone to hitting on everything in sight. Most of the guys he'd flirt with would restrain themselves from smacking him, since he was barely above four feet tall, but that didn't mean that all of them would.

"No," Ianto told him, beyond caring that he was ordering his boss around. Because Ianto had regressed too, and eleven year old Ianto was a force to be reckoned with. He had all the Slytherins in his year and the one above obeying his orders by the time of winter holidays, he remembered fondly. Good times. "I'll go and find him, and you three will stay here and try not to get yourselves hexed." He gave Tosh a significant look – not because she was likely to get hexed, but to let her know that she was now in charge of keeping Gwen from doing something stupid, and keeping Jack from using that as a distraction to do something equally stupid. If he had only one prayer at this point, it would be for Owen, Gwen, and Jack to all land in different houses where their influence on each other would be minimal at best.

Just to be on the safe side, he put a locking charm on the door of their compartment as he left. Tosh knew Alohomora, but he could trust her. Well, somewhat. At least he knew if things progressed to the point where she would unlock the door for the others, all hope was lost anyway.

The first compartment he found contained a group of seventh years. He left rather quickly, even though they were just Ravenclaw seventh years and therefore not prone to attacking or mocking confused first years. The second compartment held an assortment of second years, who all shook their heads to the negative when Ianto asked them if they'd seen a boy of Owen's approximate description.

Five compartments later, Ianto was getting very fed up and was quite ready to just Accio Owen, despite the numerous times in school they'd been told not to ever, ever try to Summon a human being. It would serve Owen right, running off like that. He decided one more compartment, just the one, then he'd Accio and damn the consequences!

However, the next compartment's door was already open. He stuck his head in, and was somehow unsurprised to see Owen deep in argument with that bushy-haired girl they had run into at Flourish & Blotts'. A redheaded girl who looked about their age – er, that is, the age they were right then, not their legal age – was glancing back and forth between the two brunettes with an expression halfway between amusement and worry.

"...and so's your mum!" Owen snapped, with the air of someone who has just won an argument, at least in his own mind.

Ianto blinked. Would it be worth it to ask Owen what in the world they had been arguing about? Probably not. He also finally noticed the fourth person in the room, a boy with mouse-brown hair who was probably Jack's size. Jack would be pleased to know that he might be tied for smallest kid at the school.

"Owen?"

"What do you want, tea boy?" Owen snapped at him, not bothering to turn around. Owen, at eleven, appeared to be a complete arsehole. What were the odds?

"Mostly, I want to make it to Hogwarts without having to put you in a full body-bind. Didn't we agree that there would be no wandering off?" Ianto asked, aware that he sounded more than a bit like a parent (or at least a much older brother).

"I didn't wander," Owen scoffed. "I escaped. Like I want to be stuck in there with you lot for hours. I've had enough of that." He crossed his arms and glared at Ianto.

He actually had a good point for once. Did the rest of them really want to be stuck in a room with Owen for a couple hours? The answer, for all parties involved, was an emphatic no. And besides, it wasn't like Ianto was going to be able to watch over all of them at Hogwarts – he rather doubted they'd all end up in the same house.

Ianto shrugged and sat down. Owen stared at him. "What? You had a good point," he said, stretching a bit and making himself comfortable. Which didn't last very long, since he caught sight of a rather large number of wrappers all over the floor. He didn't even think, just immediately began to clean them up. Sure he was emotionally eleven again, but years of cleaning up the Hub had ingrained certain behavior patterns in him.

Owen rolled his eyes, and flopped back down next to the tiny boy, who was practically vibrating in place with excitement. "This," he said, in world-weary tones, "is Ianto Jones. My self-appointed keeper and professional tea boy."

Ianto raised an eyebrow and smiled politely at Owen. "What, did you introduce yourself as Owen Harper, complete wanker?" he asked sweetly.

Rather than laughing at his expense, as most would have done, Owen's verbal sparring partner made a noise that sounded a bit like 'harrumph' and included Ianto in her disapproving look. Ianto would have been confused, but... he really didn't care, so he just finished cleaning up the litter and then pulled out a pack of cards (ones he had gotten the very first time he'd gone to Diagon Alley). "Exploding Snap, anyone?" he asked, innocently.

Owen, who was a bit obsessed with the game (not as much as Gwen was obsessed with Quidditch, granted), immediately counted himself in, dragging the other boy (who he introduced with a distracted, "Colin, he's Muggleborn,") in with him, and after a brief hesitation the Weasley girl joined in as well.

"You know," Ianto mused as they began to change into their uniforms for the final approach to Hogwarts, "I probably should have gone and told Tosh and the others that it was fine to leave the compartment." Owen snorted.

The bushy brown-haired girl – Hermione Granger, he'd finally managed to get out of her – sent them all one last glare before she hurried over to the carriages that the upper years would take.

"What the hell are those?" Owen cried, also staring at the carriages.

"Thestrals," Ianto remarked, just a bit uneasily. "You can only see them if you've seen death." When he'd first gone to Hogwarts, of course, he'd thought they were horseless carriages pulled by magic. He'd learned otherwise in Care of Magical Creatures, but he still had never seen them.

"Oh." Owen looked a little freaked out. But, Ianto thought, glancing back at the carriages, that was probably because he had caught sight of Jack, who had run over to the carriages and was petting one of the skeleton horses while cooing at it. Ianto shook his head, but resisted the urge to march over and drag Jack away.

Thankfully, when Hagrid called the first years over, Jack came along of his own free will. Ianto waved at Tosh as he joined Owen in a boat with Colin and the Weasley girl; it appeared that the others had made a friend, a dreamy-eyed blond girl who immediately leaned over the edge of their boat and began talking to the water.

If there was one thing, only one thing, you could count on about Hogwarts, it was that the introductory speech given to the first years was always going to be exactly the same every single year. It was amazing, Ianto thought, how so much could change, and yet everything stayed the same. For instance, Peeves came by and heckled them, just as he had done in Ianto's first first year, but this time around Ianto had to put himself in between Owen and Gwen to keep them from killing each other, rather than just finding a quiet alcove to people-watch from.

"Bloody PC Cooper," Owen muttered, crossing his arms and pouting. Ianto tactfully did not point out that until just a few weeks ago, Owen had been shagging that 'bloody PC Cooper'. Colin bobbed his head, although he didn't really have any idea what was going on, and Weasley just sort of scooted closer to them as anxiety began to set in.

Whispers filled the room, the same, "We have to fight a troll!" and "We have to do calculus!" that was always rumored. Ianto muttered, "It's a hat," under his breath, but didn't speak up. The panicking was all part of the process of being sorted.

McGonagall gave the same speech as always, and the Slytherin in Ianto bristled at the dark undertone in her voice when she listed Salazar's house. Everyone was forever insulting Slytherin, and they all wondered why Slytherins tended to turn to the Dark Arts.

Ianto didn't realized that he was grumbling darkly until Owen smacked him on the back of the head. "Oi, tea boy, quit scaring the kids!" That was the one main difference between pre-teen Ianto and adult Ianto – pre-teen Ianto had a bad tendency to say most of what he was thinking. It was a horrible habit he hadn't broken until he was in uni, and he wasn't looking forward to babbling in front of his coworkers. Really, he was going to just Obliviate everyone after this, otherwise he'd never live it down.

(Or, the Slytherin part of his mind said, he'd have to get blackmail on the rest of them. It would certainly be a lot less strenuous.)

With a start, Ianto realized they were moving. He really had to cut out these long inner monologues.

"Cooper, Gwen."

Hm, quite interesting. You're much older than you appear, aren't you? No matter. The Sorting's the same whatever age you are. Let's see... a good deal of curiosity, oh yes, and courage and empathy. Not terribly cunning, and you're not very interested in learning, are you? I suppose it had best be...

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Harkness, Jack."

...well. This is certainly unusual. It's not every day I get to sort someone over a hundred years old, you know. Too bad this is such a straight-forward sorting, takes hardly any time at all. Well, I must get it over with, but do come and chat with me again!

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Harper, Owen."

Ah yes, another one of you. Fairly intelligent, decently ambitious, not too noble... You do seem to look after your friends, though, don't you? You'd do well in Ravenclaw, I think, and Slytherin wouldn't be too much of a stretch, but you'll do much better in...

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Jones, Ianto."

I've already sorted you, you know. But my, how things have changed in the past thirteen years! You're still cunning, of course, but it appears that love and loss have changed you more than I could have predicted. This time, I think you'll fit in with...

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Sato, Toshiko!"

Ah, this is a far simpler one than I've had so far. You're very loyal, but your love of learning is far greater than anything else.

"RAVENCLAW!"

Chapter Text

Gwen hadn't really given any thought to the house system in the weeks between their regression and the first of September. She probably should have, but she'd just assumed that the Torchwood employees would be in the same house. After all, weren't they all drawn towards Torchwood for the same reasons?

It seemed like the answer was no, and now she'd be staying with a room full of eleven year olds for the next year. Stuck. With primary schoolers. She groaned, and smacked her head on the table, not noticing the looks her housemates were giving her.

Next to the Gryffindor table, Tosh was finding out that she fit in surprisingly well. Perhaps not surprisingly, given what she had read about the school before arriving. But after years of dealing with only Torchwood employees (and Mary, she thought with a wince), it was nice to chat with people who were both intelligent and enjoyed learning. Even if they were children. A small part of her was already wishing that they could stay children, stay here, for longer than just a year – but an equally sized part of her was already yearning for her laptop, and technology in general.

The Slytherin table was in a bit of an uproar, as Jack told yet another of his many stories (passing it off this time as something his 'older brother' had said). Jack had no problem with being a Slytherin and had expected it. There's only so long you can live without becoming a little mercenary, and since he didn't have a time machine he could skip in and out of situations with, he'd also had to become cunning. (He liked to think he was cunning to begin with, but then he'd remember that one time where he almost destroyed the human race, and... not so cunning.)

The final table in the Great Hall, however, was definitely the most interesting. To say that Ianto had been surprised to become a Hufflepuff would be an understatement. A vast understatement. An understatement so large it could contain the entire galaxy with room to spare.

Owen, for his part, didn't much care. He was too busy feeling vaguely insulted by what the Sorting Hat had told him, and the Hufflepuffs looked like a nice enough group. Not exciting, but he figured they'd be fine to live with – he could always find his own excitement during the day, after all. He was a bit concerned over the fact that Ianto was in the same house, given how mothering Ianto had been lately, and also over the way Ianto was looking. Shock didn't do the Welshman's complexion any favors, he thought.

"Come now, Hufflepuff's not that bad!" a pig-tailed girl a bit further down the table said, trying to cheer Ianto up. It did jerk Ianto out of his daze.

"Oh, no, I know, I just... rather expected another house, that's all," he tried to explain politely.

The girl nodded solemnly. "Come from a house family, don't you? Megan here," the girl patted the shoulder of a half-asleep girl next to her, "Her family's been Ravenclaw for generations, she acted a bit like you when she was first sorted. My own family's been mostly Hufflepuff, with a few Ravenclaws and Gryffindors scattered in, and when my brother got Slytherin, there was a complete uproar!"

"You don't say," Ianto said weakly.

The next morning, Owen made a horrible discovery. "No coffee?" he cried, staring at the Gryffindor Prefect who'd seen him rooting around the table in search of something, and had come to help him out.

Percy Weasley winced at the shrill tone. "Well, no. It can stunt your growth, you know," he tried to tell the small Hufflepuff, but the boy was too busy wailing and lamenting the lack of decently caffeinated beverages. "You should try the pumpkin juice, it's really quite good."

The glare he got for that comment sent him scuttling back to the Gryffindor table. Whoever thought that Hufflepuffs could be so scary?

The second another member of Torchwood walked through the door – this day, it was Tosh, in the midst of a crowd of first years from her house, all of them discussing the lack of actual, solid information in Lockhart's books, and bemoaning the fact that they would be taught by such a person – Owen launched himself at them. "Tosh!" he wailed, "There's no coffee!"

Tosh awkwardly patted him on the head. While she did enjoy coffee, she wasn't as dependent on it as some of her coworkers were, and would be fine without it. Actually, without the need to stare intensely at a computer screen for hours on end, she'd probably do better without coffee. Gwen was the same way – fond of, but not reliant upon, coffee.

Owen, on the other hand, was a bit of an addict. Jack wasn't much better, but he did have more self control (of course, it could be argued that a rampaging hippopotamus has more self-control than Owen Harper). As for Ianto – she realized with a start that she didn't actually know how much he liked coffee (that one time he'd tried to enlist them in a coffee cult aside). Speak of the devil, here was Ianto now! "Ianto!" she called out gratefully, dragging the whiny Owen over to him, "Owen says there's no coffee!" With that, she quickly dumped Owen on him and made her escape.

Ianto sighed and dragged Owen over to the Hufflepuff table, where he did a quick transfiguration spell on a pitcher of pumpkin juice. "There, coffee."

Owen hugged him – actually hugged him. "Thank you!" he cried, before grabbing the pitcher and sipping from it. Ianto rolled his eyes and went over to the Slytherin table to do the same (with instructions to the few Slytherins who were up already to give Jack the pitcher if he started to whine over lack of coffee) before taking a seat with his fellow Hufflepuffs. Which was still a very disturbing phrase to think of. Fellow Hufflepuffs. He shuddered a little. What would his old housemates have to say about that?

"So what've we got first?" Owen asked, mouth full of banana (oh, the comments Ianto could make about that...).

"I wouldn't know, we haven't gotten schedules yet."

"Oh yeah." Owen considered this for a moment, then reached for some bacon. "I just hope it's not Defense. Potions would be nice."

This statement caused a choking noise from one of the older kids seated nearby. "Are you insane?" spluttered a second-year that Ianto had noted as being rather pompous at the opening feast. "Potions is taught by Snape!"

Owen blinked at the boy for a moment, then stuffed more bacon in his mouth. "Buh Poshuns ish fun!" he proclaimed.

The older boy – Macmillan, Ianto thought – gaped at him, and Ianto felt the need to explain his friend's behavior. And Merlin, when had Owen become a friend? "He's got delusions of becoming a Healer," he said in what his old study group (three Ravenclaws, and one rather psychotic Hufflepuff – of course, as the joke went, how could you tell a psychotic Hufflepuff apart from a normal one?) had dubbed his 'Slytherin' voice. Subtlety mocking, with a hint of honey. Just the way he liked to make cookies.

He really needed to get out more.

Owen, still stuffing his face, settled for kicking Ianto, hard, under the table for slighting his obviously superior medical abilities. It had taken two weeks for them to stop an eleven year old Owen from introducing himself to everyone as Doctor Owen Harper.

"Timetables, everyone!" a voice trilled happily, as a shaggy-haired boy with a Prefect badge pinned to his inside-out robes bounced to the end of the table with a huge stack of papers. "First years first, second years second, third years third," the Prefect sung merrily, banishing smaller stacks of paper in the general direction of the various years.

The first years, for their part, stared at him for a long moment before one of them finally said, "He must be insane."

Cedric Diggory, an older and highly charismatic student, grinned at the comment. "He's not insane, he's a Seraphim."

As Owen (and other Muggleborns) blinked in confusion, wondering how the crazed boy could be an angel, the purebloods nodded, and Ianto groaned. At their looks, he explained, "I- er, my– brother, he went to school with Ceirwan Seraphim." (The Muggleborns and Owen got looks of understanding on their faces as they realized that 'Seraphim' in this case was a name, not a classification of angel. They were still confused on how the Prefect – who was currently dancing around and singing something about magical lobsters as he flung the seventh years' schedules in the air and then proceeded to mambo underneath the fluttering pages – could be explained by just a family name.)

Cedric caught these looks of confusion, and took upon himself the title of Official Reciter of the Notorious Hufflepuff Lines. "Something you've got to understand first is that there are certain families that traditionally go to a certain house. The Malfoys and Blacks always go to Slytherin, Potters and Prewetts always go to Gryffindor, MacDougals and Belbys go to Ravenclaw, that sort of thing. Of course, there's many more than just those I've mentioned." He took a deep breath. "By the very definition of Hufflepuff, there aren't many hereditary Hufflepuff families. In fact, there's only two who have been entirely Hufflepuff for more than three generations." Cedric paused again, this time to sip some water. "The first of those families is the Smith line," he nodded at one of the first years, a blond who immediately preened at the mention, "And the second is the Seraphim family. Now, the Smiths are descended – however distantly and vaguely – to Helga Hufflepuff. Not to say that blood is stronger than personality, but throughout the generations Smiths have prided themselves on their heritage and instilled the house values in their children."

The older boy shook his head, as if to clear it. "Anyway, then there's the Seraphims. Commonly held belief since the seventeenth century is that Seraphims always end up in Hufflepuff because they're completely insane, so the Hat puts them in the one house that accepts all comers."

"Oh, come on," Owen scoffed. "They can't all be insane. I mean, this one certainly is, but generations upon generations? It's simply not possible."

Cedric smirked, an odd look for the nice boy. "You'd think that, but then you start looking through history books and the Daily Prophet, and you start to notice things. For instance, both Uric the Oddball and Wendelin the Weird? Seraphims. And in more modern times, we can't overlook Hannah Seraphim, the current matriarch." He smirked, again.

"Well?" Owen demanded after a long moment. "What can't we overlook about her?"

Cedric grinned, as did anyone who had heard the story. "It is well-documented that three years ago, dear Granny Hannah became rather incensed about some Ministry proposal or another, and to show her disagreement she marched into the Ministry headquarters completely naked and began to sing, 'I'm a Little Teapot', loudly and off-tune. It went on for about three hours, with her dodging every hex and silencing spell thrown her way, before she got bored and wandered back out."

All of the Muggleborns gaped, dividing their stares between Cedric and the still-dancing Prefect. "Also," Ianto couldn't help but add, "Ceirwan Seraphim was arrested the summer after his sixth year for Polyjuicing into the Minister of Magic and making out with a wizard rock star on stage – a very male wizard rock star." He grinned, and most of the table burst into laughter. It wasn't exactly hushed up, but Ceirwan's incident hadn't made quite the same waves as old Hannah Seraphim's had, so hardly anyone in the house had heard the tale.

"So you see," Cedric continued, nodding at Ianto, "Seraphims are crazy, and they are Hufflepuff's legacy." He considered the Prefect, now face down on the table and snoring lightly. "He's not generally so bad, his brain just doesn't wake up for about two more hours. But if you ever hear him doing a charm, run as far as you can. He's great at hexes and curses, but nine times out of ten, his charms will create giant holes in the floor or walls." Everyone stared at him. "No, seriously. Just ask Flitwick."

"As entertaining as this all may be," Owen said dryly, "I think it's about time for class." While he had been listening to the stories (which really were entertaining, he had to admit), he'd dug through the papers littering the table and found his.

"Which class do we have?" Ianto asked, choosing to read Owen's schedule upside-down than look for his own in the mess.

Owen's voice was grim. "Defense Against the Dark Arts."

While the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff first years were suffering through Defense With a Moron, and wondering if they'd learn anything in the class that wasn't about Lockhart himself (Tosh and Owen had given up on paying attention and were coming up with new, inventive ways to pass notes using magic), the rest of the first years had Potions.

To say that Severus Snape disliked teaching first years was, perhaps, the most understated statement ever made in the history of the universe. First years, as a rule, were easily distracted, messy, annoying, accident prone, and cried a lot. All of which added up to a disaster when combined with potion-brewing, no matter how simple the recipe.

Plus, they were complete pains in the ass, even (or, part of his mind whispered, especially) the Slytherins.

Needless to say, Snape was Not Pleased at having first years first thing in the morning on the first day of classes; however, he was quite prepared to take it out on the Gryffindors.

Then he met Jack Harkness, a tiny little boy who actually winked at him when the professor strode through the door, robes billowing menacingly and scowl firmly in place. Snape purposefully ignored the boy and dived straight into his standard 'Potions is awesome, and shall not be contaminated with silly things like wands, so there!' speech. Then, of course, the fun part: quizzing children who didn't know any better over various bits of Potions trivia! It almost cheered him up. Almost.

"Who can tell me what the most common ingredient used in potions is? Anyone?" he sneered, before picking on one of the confused children. "Mr. Creevey?"

"Er," the boy started, "Water?"

Snape lifted an eyebrow. "Care to repeat that, Mr. Creevey?"

"Water," the Gryffindor said, more firmly this time. "I mean, pretty much all potions start off by putting water in the cauldron, right? So water would be the most common ingredient." He nodded, pleased with his reasoning.

He couldn't help it, he was actually amused by the boy. Horror of horrors. "Technically correct Mr. Creevey, but not the answer I was looking for. Mr. Powell?" he said, calling on one of the Slytherins who had tentatively raised a hand. The boy gave the correct answer, and Snape continued pounding the students with question after question, leaving a few of the weaker students near tears.

Class finally ended, and Snape dismissed the children with a sneer and began preparing for his next lesson, which was thankfully N.E.W.T. level, meaning everyone had already earned an Outstanding on their O.W.L.s and weren't quite as likely to blow themselves up.

To the surprise of no one, Owen had earned himself a week of detention by the end of the first day. Because the incident had occurred in Transfiguration (which he could already tell he was going to detest), he was sentenced to serve it under the watchful eye of Professor McGonagall. Well, the somewhat watchful eye, since she left not long into his first detention after placing a spell on the door so it wouldn't let him out until he served his time.

"So," Owen said, turning to the others in detention, "What're you in for?"

The twin redheads grinned at him. "You see-" "-we were just having fun-" "-in class, right?-" "-And we may have-" "-accidentally-" "-turned a classmate-" "-into a goat." "But-" "-he was a Slytherin-" "-so who really cares?" Owen, going a little crossed-eyed at the rapid switches, shook his head and wondered what Ianto and his fellow Hufflepuffs were up to, and if they had to deal with crazy people who would talk for each other...

The Hufflepuff first years, at that exact moment, were in the middle of sneaking out to the Quidditch pitch. Not all of them, of course, since Owen had detention and two more had begged off with the excuse that they needed to read up on Potions – they'd all heard about how the Gryffindors and Slytherins had been grilled earlier in the day. But the majority were following Ianto as he marched determinedly down to the broom shed and helped himself to a rather ratty-looking broom. It had been way too long since he'd last flown.

There was a total of nine Hufflepuffs in their year, not counting Ianto or Owen. Of those, three were pureblooded (or mostly pureblooded), two were Muggleborn, and four were some variation of half-blooded. Despite this, however, only one of Ianto's fellow firsties had ever truly flown before; the others raised in the wizarding world, of course, knew of broom flight, and a few had toy brooms when they were younger. Zacharias Smith, though, had practically been born on a broom – his mother was a Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies, had been since he was a baby.

It had partially been Ianto's fault that they were now on an illegal trek to fly around (against all rules listed in the school charter), but Zacharias was just as much to blame. He had reportedly thrown an incredibly dramatic fit when he'd found out first years weren't allowed brooms, and it had only gotten worse when his father informed him that no, he would not be sneaking in a broom for Zacharias.

This would be the reason why a quarter of the Hufflepuff first years wound up in the hospital wing before the end of the first full day of school, and why three-quarters of them would now be joining Owen in detention.

"I'm thick," Owen sniffed, looking miserable.

"Yes you are," Ianto commented automatically, before actually noticing the sickly, snuffly boy. His face was flushed, eyes red and watery, and kept wiping his nose on the sleeve of his robes. He looked completely pathetic, and Ianto resisted the urge to just laugh at him.

"No, I'm thick!" the former doctor snarled stuffily, crossing his arms and glaring.

"So go to the hospital wing," Ianto said, unsympathetic and quite wrapped up in his Astronomy text.

"You thould help be," he whined.

"I have to study."

"You already graduated, you know that thuff!"

Ianto pouted. "Not Astronomy! I got straight Ts, all the way through." He glared down at his book and grumbled, "Such a stupid class."

"Tho take be to the thothpital wing!"

Ianto stared at him. "...what?"

Owen let out a noise of pure infuriation and grabbed a piece of parchment, which he scribbled on for a moment, then held up to Ianto. 'Take me to the hospital wing, teaboy!'

"Are you deaf? I need to study. Don't you know the way yourself?"

'No, I don't!'

"So ask somebody else, I'm busy!" Ianto snapped, and then Incendio'd the paper before Owen could write something incriminating (or insulting). Owen huffed, but finally left him alone in favor of peering up at some of the prefects pathetically. Unfortunately, the only prefect in the room was Seraphim, who thought Owen was asking him to participate in a funny-faces contest, so there was no help in that corner. After a bit of this (and Owen sneezing all over the place and coughing up his lungs), one of the other first years with a better sense of direction came over and led Owen out.

Chapter Text

"Why are we out here? It's horrible! And I can smell grass again."

By this point, seven weeks into the term, Ianto had learned to completely ignore Owen. Why he hadn't learned this from years of working with him, he didn't know. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was too focused on hiding his robotic girlfriend in the basement, or maybe Owen just wasn't such an asshole before. Ianto was pretty sure it was the former reason.

In any case, this bout of whining was brought on by the fact that Gwen had drug them all outside, into the rain, to watch Gryffindor's team practice playing Quidditch. (Eleven year old Gwen was just as insistent about 'team-building exercises' as older Gwen had been. She had never gotten the opportunity to take Jack to a rugby game, so somewhere in its dark depths her mind had decided this was the next best thing.)

Owen, it turned out, was a little bit afraid of heights. Also, he didn't like rain. And, it seemed he could smell grass again, which was hell on Earth for a city boy like Owen. Once the practice began in earnest, however, Owen shut up and nearly fell out of the stands trying to see through the pouring rain.

"So that black haired kid, the one with the glasses, he just has to catch the shiny gold ball, and the game's over? That seems pretty stupid to me, I mean, to win the game entirely on skills you developed reading Where's Waldo."

Then, of course, a Bludger got a little out of control, and decided that decapitating Owen was a good idea. Not that anyone could blame it. It did give Ianto an excuse to ditch the Quidditch practice – someone had to take Owen's stupid body to the hospital wing, after all.

Weeks and weeks went by. Things weren't exactly calm – Jack became the only first year in the history of Hogwarts to be feared by Slytherin upperclassmen (mostly because of his penchant for flirting with them), Owen and Gwen both got a near record number of detentions (mostly for fighting each other, although Owen also got a large number for mocking professors), and Ianto was developing a slightly crazed gleam in his eyes that scared the teachers who'd known him his first time through.

But finally it was Halloween, an occasion that everybody looked forward to, even if there was no dressing up involved. It did, however, give Owen the opportunity to make fun of a few people, informing that they really didn't need to dress up as a hag/troll, when of course no one had.

Owen was sent to the hospital again eventually, this time to have donkey ears and a tail removed. He wined to Madame Pomfrey about how he'd totally missed the entire Halloween feast, but Pomfrey was as unsympathetic as Ianto (who had come to collect him) was, telling him that if he had wanted to attend the feast, he shouldn't have been implying such things about Mr. Smith's looks. Of course he understood the logic in that, but he still pouted and whined, until Ianto finally growled at him that if they left soon, the feast might not have quite ended.

Owen immediately sped out the door, Ianto tailing him to make sure Owen wouldn't run into a Slytherin seventh year and yell, "Get out of the way, you big dumb freak!", like he had two weeks ago. Owen, however, pulled up short of the Great Hall, causing Ianto to nearly crash into him. "Whoa," he said.

"Whoa what?" Ianto snapped in annoyance.

"Whoa, dead cat and a vaguely poetic sentence written in blood, that's what," Owen snapped back at him, pointing.

"What are you-" Ianto started, pushing the doctor out of the way and stopping. "Oh."

The Chamber has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.

With Filch's cat attacked and strung up, and ominous words written in blood, the school went completely paranoid and terrified. And Owen began to mutter about releasing a Weevil in the middle of Hogwarts. It would, he insisted, at least be a practical Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson. Ianto attempted to point out that the Weevils were not Dark creatures, but were, in fact, aliens, but Owen was never one to let logic stand in his way.

"Anyway," Owen argued, "They also wouldn't write something as stupid as, 'enemies of the heir, beware!' on the walls. I mean, come on. We don't even know who the heir is, so how can we know if we're their enemy and should 'beware'? It's stupid!"

People were still whispering about the legend of the Chamber, as learned from Binns, when the first Quidditch match of the season rolled around. Gwen and Jack were of course going to the game, given that it was their houses involved; Tosh had decided to go, but brought a book along in case it dragged on; and Owen and Ianto didn't so much decide to go as they were carried out in a wave of hyperactive Hufflepuff firsties.

Owen had to admit, however, that he was glad he'd been caught in the stream. Quidditch was awesome, although the near misses of the Bludgers made him wince as he thought of the severe bone and tissue damage one of those could cause. They got a view of that, too, when one caught Harry Potter in the arm.

The other advantage of attending the match was to watch the few people (read: girls) who still thought Lockhart was great lose all faith in him as he completely removed the bones of Potter's arm. Owen was laughing about that the rest of the day, or at least until Ianto cast a silencing charm on him.

Hufflepuff tradition, the two boys soon learned, was to party after every Quidditch match, even ones they hadn't played in or had lost. Ianto had heard of the legendary Gryffindor parties, and the Ravenclaws and Slytherins weren't exactly shabby either, but Hufflepuff definitely had the best ones. And, since it was a weekend night, it went on until Sunday morning. It would have gone on longer, but when Owen came back from the latest snack run, he was pale and trembling, and pissed off as well.

Ianto raised an eyebrow at his friend (still weird to call him that), and Owen said in a flat voice, "Colin's been petrified."

Spirits were lifted at the announcement of a Dueling Club, however, even if Lockhart was in charge. Spirits soon fell when they realized that Lockhart being in charge meant the club was nothing but pure chaos – even the best duelers in the world would have a hard time hitting their specific target in the crushing mass of bodies, and Hogwarts students definitely didn't qualify as 'the best duelers in the world' (or, some might argue, even as 'the best duelers in your average Muggle nursery school').

The professors then decided they needed to perform a practical demonstration – using students, of course, Lockhart hastily explained. He quickly called Harry Potter up to the stage, beaming and prattling on and on about Potter this, Potter that. Owen, quite sick of anything to do with Potter after putting up with Colin's sycophantic babblings since the start of term (and the fact that Colin had been petrified despite Potter being a 'hero'), instantly decided he was rooting for whoever Potter was up against.

Snape picked out the second combatant – everyone expected him to pick Draco Malfoy, his favorite second-year. Which is why there was a number of strangled noises when Snape instead snapped, "Mr. Jones, up here."

Because, of course, for a good portion of Ianto's original years at Hogwarts, and in Slytherin, were spent with Snape as his head of house. And being a Slytherin – and furthermore, being a Muggleborn Slytherin – Ianto had learned a vast number of curses. All of which he still remembered. Even though he was now a Hufflepuff, Snape's main concern was humiliating Potter, not glorifying Slytherin (although that would be a bonus).

And what better way to completely humiliate the savior of the wizarding world than to have him soundly defeated by a Hufflepuff a year younger then him?

The one thing Snape had forgotten about his former-and-now-current student was that of all the spells and curses Ianto had learned, he'd never been able to master Expelliarmus. So a duel where that was all they were supposed to do? Bad idea.

However, Ianto was ace at dodging. So when Potter fired off the disarming spell, Ianto neatly dodged it, and continued to dodge nimbly around the stage. This got boring after a short while, so Ianto glanced at Snape. "Permission to move the duel past the disarming charm?"

Snape smirked. "Permission granted."

Ianto landed from another jumping dodge and spun around elegantly, wand at the ready. "Petrificus totalus!" he cried. Potter, although he had been observing (and being annoyed by) Ianto's dodging, hadn't actually picked up any spells in that area himself, so he went stiff as a board and fell over... and off the stage. "That was not on purpose," Ianto commented calmly, leaning over to look at the boy who was now on the floor.

Snape was gleeful at this turn of events, and for once the entire school was in agreement over something: Snape grinning was the scariest sight in the universe.

Thus, history diverged from its predicted path: Harry Potter was not revealed as a Parseltongue to the school at large, and no one thought the Boy-Who-Lived was the Heir of Slytherin. Justin Finch-Fletchley was still petrified the next day, however, leading to a house half-full of terrified, weepy types, and half-full of the extremely pissed off. Owen was showing that he did, indeed, have Hufflepuff qualities, as the combination of both his friend Colin and one of his housemates being attacked made him into a vengeance-seeking machine. (Well, not machine, definitely not machine; he was still terrified of Cybermen, as was anyone sane.)

He called a meeting of all the former Torchwood members. "We need to find out what's doing this," he ordered immediately.

Jack just shrugged. "Not our jurisdiction." With that, the Slytherin left their little alcove, and Owen made some choice comments about Jack's parentage. Tosh had looked at him apologetically, and said she'd try to do some research, but without her computer... she shrugged helplessly. Owen glared at her, and then included Ianto in the glower when Ianto pointed out that even with a computer, research would be difficult, given that the wizarding world didn't co-exist peacefully with technology.

Gwen hadn't actually been paying attention, instead blowing bubbles with Droobles. She had managed to create something that looked sort of looked like a snowman, if you were half-blind and ingesting numbers hallucinogens. Quite the artist, that Gwen Cooper.

Owen looked completely crushed as the girls followed Jack's lead and left, which had to be the reason Ianto patted him on the shoulder and pledged himself to the cause. Because Ianto was still Slytherin at heart (or so he told himself).

"The first step," Owen proclaimed, slamming a stack of books down on the table in a cloud of dust, "Is to trace the lineage of Salazar Slytherin." There was an obsessive gleam in his eyes, and Ianto was totally regretting his decision to help. After all, the part of his mind that still cared about its previous life argued, what had Owen ever done for him? He was constantly feeding the pterodactyl things that he knew made it sick, had the audacity to turn his nose up at Ianto's coffee that one time, and left his box full of rat goo for Ianto to clean up. The Hub was hard enough to keep clean without Owen blowing up rats.

So why he was opening one of the ancient tomes, fully intent on researching, was beyond him. Maybe it was because Owen was the only other one who ever thought to use non-technological means to solve problems, and they'd subconsciously bonded through the myriad of 'oh, duh' looks they'd received. Or maybe it was just that they were the only two guys on the team, excluding Jack, who wasn't really a person as such.

Or maybe Ianto was a lot nicer than he'd always thought. Ew, niceness.

Now, if you've ever attempted to trace your family tree further than five generations back, you know how difficult it is. When you have to follow through ten centuries? Yeah, complete pain in the ass. Ianto and Owen worked diligently throughout the holiday weeks, and had managed to get to the twentieth century partially because of stubbornness, but mostly because the various Slytherin branches tended to die off rather quickly, leading down to just one family line in recent times, the Gaunts.

(They also made a point to visit Hermione Granger in the hospital wing – not for any research purpose, but because seeing the half-cat girl was kind of hilarious.)

"That's it, I give." Owen groaned, throwing A Most Accurit Historie of Magyk Lynag (published in the days where spelling was optional, the 1970s) onto the table with a thump, drawing an irate look from Madame Pince. "The Gaunt line looks like it ends with Merope and Morfin Gaunt, and who the hell named those kids, anyway?" he started to rant.

Ianto frowned and grabbed the book. "Look, here, it mentions something about Merope Gaunt... She was in a relationship with some Muggle guy, and it implies that she was pregnant when she disappeared..." he pointed out, sketching a finger under a particular passage.

"So what do we think? Muggle found out she was a witch, dumped her, and she went into obscurity?" Owen asked, still looking fed up.

Ianto shook his head. "The book says that the Gaunts, by this point, were inbred to the point of rampant insanity and disease. I bet that, without magical help, she would've died from childbirth, especially since she wouldn't have turned to Muggles for help."

Head lifting off of the table, Owen began to look hopeful. "So... orphan?" he said. And then quickly dampened. "Do you know how hard it'll be to find one specific orphan in this time span?"

Ianto wasn't listening, the Ravenclaw part of his brain kicking into overdrive as he began to sketch out a plan of action on some parchment. "Okay, first we'll need to gather the Hogwarts yearbooks for the general range that the Gaunt child would have been in. Then we can narrow down the list to Slytherins present in those years, since Slytherin's heir isn't likely to be in another house, and then we can eliminate any whose bloodlines we can trace, and-or any who are no longer alive and have no children. Shouldn't take longer than... a few weeks."

Owen groaned again, and thumped his head onto the table.

Chapter Text

"Look!" Hermione hissed, stabbing a finger at the book she'd had her friends get her from the library a few days earlier. "Ianto Jones, Slytherin, class of '84!" she said triumphantly. Ron and Harry, used to humoring her, glanced at the page she indicated. And were rather shocked because, yeah, that was definitely an older version of the Hufflepuff first year who was friends with that really annoying first year.

"So... what does this mean?" Ron asked after a moment.

Hermione frowned, and gathered her thoughts (while twitching her remaining whiskers in a contemplative manner). "He could be a spy," she finally voiced, although she didn't seem too certain. "We know You-Know-Who still has followers loyal to him. They could be trying to influence children to their cause, build a new army."

"Jones was a Slytherin," Ron added, as if this made him automatically evil. Which, in their experience, it usually did. "But what about that Owen brat he's always hanging around with? Is he in on it, too?"

Hermione shook her head. "I didn't find him, or any of the others that seem to know Jones, in any of the books. It's possible that they went to Durmstrang or another school, however."

Harry's brow furrowed. "There are other schools?"

"Well, yes, Harry! Really. There's Beauxbatons in France, Durmstrang – which is renowned for teaching Dark magic – in Bulgaria, the Salem's Witches Institute in America-" Hermione started off, fully into lecture mode.

"We get it!" Ron broke in.

"Anyway," Hermione said, giving a Ron a dark look. "They could have explained away Jones as a victim of a curse, I believe there's a number of them that give a person the appearance of their younger self, and a few that actually physically turn them into it, temporarily. He would have been chosen for his knowledge of the school, while the others from Durmstrang are probably being passed off as Muggleborns."

The theory made sense. There was definitely something odd about the five first years, who were often found lurking in corners and sharing secretive whispers.

"I bet they're the ones behind the Chamber thing, too," Ron said suddenly, face glowing. "They were standing around Mrs. Norris when we saw them, remember?"

Harry and Hermione nodded grimly. "But what should we do?" Harry asked. "I mean, the adults aren't going to listen to us. They never do." The three friends frowned and tried to come up with something.

"We'll just have to face them ourselves," Ron finally decided. "They're younger than us, it shouldn't be too hard."

Hermione sighed, exasperated. "Really, Ron! They just appear younger than us, they're actually adults! They know far more curses and defensive magic than we do."

"We could go after Jones first," Harry offered. "Ambush him, so he doesn't have a chance to attack us. Then we can question him without the others knowing we're on to them."

Hermione still looked doubtful – probably because of the number of school rules and magical laws they would be breaking – but Ron agreed to the plan enthusiastically. "I suppose we should do something," Hermione finally said reluctantly. The boys shared a grin but resisted the urge to high-five.

"What the hell? The fuck are you doing?" Ianto shouted, struggling helplessly. He knew it was helpless, because hello? Petrificus totalus? Not a rope to be escaped from, but a spell that bound you starting with your very muscles. This thought occurred to him, and he instantly froze his struggles (not that anyone could tell he'd been struggling in the first place). "I mean, what's the point of this?" he asked, calmly this time.

"Oh, you know exactly what this is about!" the Weasley boy – the youngest Weasley boy, Red? No, that would just be mean, naming a Weasley 'Red'. Ron, that was it! - shouted, poking him in the stomach. Ianto stared at him.

"We need to question you," the brown-haired girl that Owen disliked stated, glaring at the redhead.

"'Art thou a witch, viva espana?'" Ianto quoted sarcastically. At their blank looks he said, in a perfectly calm and serious voice, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition."

Evidentially none of the three were fans of Monty Python or humorous books about the apocalypse (an apocalypse?), because they just stared at him for a long moment, before the brunette got back on track. "Who are you working for?" she demanded, although some of the intimidation was taken out of the situation by the fact that she kept glancing at the door nervously.

Ianto raised a slow eyebrow, and decided to tell the truth. "Technically, the government of Great Britain."

Potter looked confused. "The Prime Minister's in league with Voldemort?"

"..." said both Ianto and the girl. The miniaturized Welshman shook his head. "Uh, no. She isn't. She does like to blow aliens up, though." Hm, that probably broke a few secrecy laws. But then, what laws hadn't he broken, what with sneaking a Cyberman out of Canary Wharf and all.

"He's obviously taking the mickey out of us," Weasley decided suddenly. "Harry, give him the you-know-what."

The girl went tight-lipped and disapproving as Potter pulled a vial out of his pocket doubtfully. This, combined with the viscosity of the potion, led Ianto to one conclusion: "Veritaserum?" His voice was full of disbelief. "A bunch of twelve-year-olds up and stole Veritaserum?" Now his voice wasn't so much disbelieving as it was indignant.

"Shuddup!" snarled the redhead. Ianto was beginning to worry about his stability. Although, right now he was too concerned over the whole truth-potion issue to care. They forced his jaws open and gave him a dose.

And then the questioning began.

"The fuck's Ianto?" Owen grumbled, head on the table and headache taking dominance over his soul.

Zacharias Smith was rather amused. "Where or what?" he asked, smirk evident in his voice. He liked being amused. If he wasn't amused, he was bored or annoyed, and neither of those were fun in the least. Not for him, anyway; his mother had professed to being terribly amused with his annoyed moods and the local police were very much amused by his boredom.

"Either, or, and!" Owen snapped.

"For the 'what', I'd have to go with Welsh," John Cadwallader broke in, grinning. "That explains everything."

"Oh, sod off," Zacharias said, flipping him the bird absently. "I think I saw some Gryffindors way-lay him on the way over," he told Owen. "I don't see them here, so I suppose he's still with them."

Owen's head snapped up, headache forgotten. "Which," he said suspiciously, "Gryffindors?"

"The redhead who looks off his rocker, the bushy-headed girl who talks a lot, and Harry-bloody-Potter," Zacharias counted off on his fingers, adding a bit of a sneer at the last one for an unknown reason.

"Oh hell," Owen said. "The Gryffindor Dream Team's kidnapped Ianto!"