- Chapter One -
"Dude, I swear to you, I have no idea what you're talking about."

THE SCENERY WAS DARK and his feet hit the ground with a small pat when he arrived at his destination. The gates before him stretched far higher than needed, just like he remembered and the long path from the gates to the doors of the house was still ridiculous as always.

Lawns of grass surrounded a straight and clear path all the way to the large mansion before him, going all around the house, accompanied by some hedges stationing themselves at the edges of the grass patches.

The sight of the dark stone that made up the house sent chills through his spine, spreading throughout his entire body. There was no fear, only haunting memories of what had happened just days before.

Sebastian's eyes travelled to the windows on the ground floor to see if his parents were looking out at him like they normally did when someone was coming down the path.

Sebastian reached the gates and flicked his wand, waiting for the black steel to slowly open for him. But they didn't, his magic did nothing.

So he tried again, still nothing.

For a moment he wondered if because he had gone missing, his parents had immediately removed his magic from the lock system that allowed them all to open the gates. As soon as every Hargreaves turned 17, their powers allowed them to open the gates - it must've been removed.

No matter how horrible his parents were to him and Elladora, as soon as he knocked on that door and he returned, they would be relieved to see him alive and well. His living meant that he could continue through life as a pureblood, require a wife and then birth an heir to the Hargreaves name.

Sebastian didn't want a wife or a son, he was still only young, but he knew his mother was looking to set him up with Alecto Carrow.

She was beautiful, truly, but not his type at all.

Despite the prospect of forced and arranged marriages he wanted no part in, Sebastian couldn't wait to get in the house and take a nap for the afternoon.

He was drained and the blistering heat of the day was starting to get a bit much for what he was wearing, a black blazer and slacks shrinking to his skin because of his journey through the water in that cave he had no idea how he got into.

Since his magic wouldn't let him through his own house gates, he supposed that the secret door he had created for him and Elladora around the side wouldn't work for him either, so he decided to do the next best thing.

Sebastian gripped the steel with his hands that had long since dried off from the cave water and hoisted himself up, he didn't like to brag but his upper body strength was outstanding.

He placed one foot in the gap of two bars and onto a decorative horizontal bar so that he could stabilise himself before he pulled himself up further, grunting in effort as he climbed further up the large gates to the pathway.

Careful of the spikes at the top, he lifted one leg over the other side and then the other, scaling the gates back down to the ground until he had successfully made his way over.

If his parents were watching from the windows, like they often did when they were bored, he made sure to make it look as casual as possible. Impressive and calculated. Sebastian adjusted his blazer jacket and set off walking down the large path.

The house was terrifying, even in the summer sun, but Sebastian Hargreaves stared it down like it was an enemy. Elladora's bedroom faced the other way so unless she was in the music room or the dining room, she would not be able to see him.

It was an incredibly narrow but an infinitely long path he had to travel down, his shoes clicking against the cobblestone beneath his feet whilst the large doors to his home got closer and closer. Black, like everything else in their house but Sebastian didn't mind that much.

His room may be dull and commonplace but it was damn comfy, as he wanted it to be.

Punishment for fainting and being captured at the alleyway fight was surely awaiting for him but Christmas should be coming soon, despite the warm day. He and Elladora had been waiting for it to start snowing but it didn't look like it would that year, Sebastian was slightly disappointed but his Christmas gift he had bought for her would surely make it up.

Up until the ball that Sebastian had to attend in the evening, he would make this Christmas better than the last.

Flipping his wand skilfully in between his fingers, Sebastian reached the front door and wrapped his hand around the doorknob, pulling it open but being stopped by the fact that the door was actually locked.

Again, his touch that normally opened the door immediately thanks to certain enchantments, did nothing. Seb sighed and used his wand to open the door, he didn't know why he was surprised that his parents had blocked all of his magic.

They definitely thought he was dead.

The entrance hall of the Hargreaves home looked a little lighter than the last time Sebastian had been there a couple of nights ago. Confused at what the change seemed to be, he stood himself in the middle of the hall and turned around slowly whilst his eyes took in every square inch of the room to find out what was wrong with it.

Same old wallpaper, same old tables and decorative wardrobes, same old antiques. He furrowed his eyebrows as he stared at one particular vase that he was sure he had never seen before.

It wasn't like he often took notes of every interior change that his family made so he supposed it was something from Borgin and Burkes that his father had taken a fancy to and decided to put in their hall to impress guests.

It was then that Sebastian finally found something wrong with the hall, the necklace that usually sat upon the top shelf of a display cabinet was gone. He supposed that his mother had taken it to wear for the ball coming up.

This made him groan, he hated balls. Being introduced to every single woman about his age was tiring, especially because there were hundreds of them. Loads. Tons. All of them fighting for his attention, his looks and his status.

His parents would arrange a betrothal soon enough, he only hoped that it was one of the more tolerable heiresses that they decided to pair him up with. He then wondered if they would do the same with Elladora when she was of age.

The thought of this made him recoil, every single ten-year-old of other families he had met were carbon copies of their father except for one. A Black. Sirius Black, a rather obnoxious ten-year-old who Sebastian didn't know what to feel about him.

On one hand, he was probably going to go a very different direction to the way his parents wanted him to. On the other, he was annoying as shit and he wasn't sure whether he would want Elladora to be tainted by that.

There was always the prospect of him murdering whoever lay a hand on his sister because no one would ever be good enough for her, but he supposed he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Speaking of Elladora, Sebastian needed to see her.

He took one last look of the weird entrance hall, stared at the doors that lead to other rooms warily as though his parents were going to march out of there at any moment and yell at him before he turned to the marble staircase and took the normal route up to the first floor on the unchanged stairs.

At least something was the same. The whole house just seemed to have a terribly odd energy to it that Sebastian wasn't accustomed to.

As he took the stairs two at a time, he whistled an old Hobgoblins song to himself on his climb, miming the air guitar a little whilst no one could see him.

He hoped Elladora was in her room and not out at Diagon Alley or anything, then he would just have to wait around and awkwardly see his parents when they returned, he would prefer to just see his sister and show up to dinner like everything else was normal.

All of the curtains on the first floor, where his and Elladora's rooms were, were open and letting daylight seep into the corridor from the end of it. Seb raised a hand to block out the sun from hitting his eyes too harshly, they never opened the curtains down here and slowly, his whistle trailed off a little.

Too many changes had been seen in too little time and a slight bubble of concern was beginning to rise within him.

Maybe Elladora had done it. With that as his reason, he went right past her bedroom and his until he was right in front of the curtains at the end of the corridor. Quickly, he closed them before their parents could see them open.

He didn't know why they didn't allow much light in, probably to make living in a stuffy house very miserable for their children. Once he had closed them, he walked back down the corridor and stopped at his little sister's room.

"Elladora..." He said in a little sing-song voice, a smile on his face whilst he wrapped his hand around the doorknob and pushed open the door to her room. Fully prepared to see her sat at her desk with a quill in her hand and parchment in front of her, he was shocked to see no one in there. "Woah, what-"

He was even more shocked to discover what the room looked like. The bed that was once a black-curtained canopy with dark sheets was now a metal bed frame with pillows and a duvet that was dark blue.

Above the headboard was a poster of some band called the Weird Sisters and some sort of signed Quidditch merchandise pinned to the wall. In the middle of the room was a circular blue rug the same colour as the bed.

Where there used to be an oak wooden traditional desk, there was a smooth white one with a mess of paper and pens on top of it, almost falling off of the desk.

Pictures had been stuck to the wall above the desk, groups of boys and a family grinning with one another at a beach. A radio sat at the side of the desk too, softly humming some song that Sebastian had never heard.

Slowly, he walked further into the room. The curtains were open once more and instead of black, they were blue with some sort of comfortable blanket area made on the windowsill with pillows and a closed book lay there with a presumably cold cup of tea there too.

Sebastian breathed heavily as he looked around the unfamiliar hell he had walked into.

The wardrobe was different too, a white one again instead of the normal oak. There was a mirror on it, one that he warily walked over to and stared at himself.

He looked the same but everything around him was different, maybe he was a bit pale but that was just the shock of the room having completely transformed itself. He rushed to the bathroom connected to the room and gasped, the mirror in the bathroom was dirty, modern and not at all what it had been.

A brightly coloured toothbrush sat on the side of the sink, there were candles around the room and even brightly coloured soaps. Sebastian stumbled backwards out of the bathroom, a little bit disorientated at the unfamiliarity as he grasped the doorway and sent himself back into the normal room.

He jumped a little at the sight of more posters and decorative garments on the wall opposite the desk, rushing to the door of the room.

Hurriedly and breathing quickly, he rushed into his own bedroom but didn't get halfway across it before he ran back out again.

Pink.

Everything had been pink. His double bed had turned into one fit for a child or a goblin. Change. What the hell had happened? He knew he must be in some sort of dream or nightmare. Sebastian raced back into Elladora's room, running to look out of her window at the outside.

There were flowers planted outside, brightly coloured tulips sprouting from the ground and Sebastian felt a swirling in his stomach.

It was like he could throw up everywhere, he didn't know where his stuff was, he had no idea where his sister was and he had no idea how to get out of the hellish nightmare he had landed in.

There was whistling again, but this time it wasn't Sebastian. It was someone outside of what he knew to be his sisters room and Sebastian felt a mix of anger and fear coursing through his veins, someone had done something to his house and to his sister and they would not get away with it.

He may have been a caring boy but if someone messed with his baby sister then there would be hell to pay.

Slowly, he skulked behind the door and pullled his wand out of the waistband of his pants, clutching it tightly with a clenched jaw as he waited for someone to arrive. The whistling slowed as the culprit got closer and Sebastian fought to stay still and not attack the person right there and then for messing with his family.

"Rosa, stay out of my room!" The voice yelled, right behind the door and the boy hiding took a deep breath in, ready for action. "And if you do come in, close the door behind you when you leave!"

"I didn't go in your stupid room." Another voice said, passing by. This one belonged to a girl whereas the other was owned by a boy, however the girl was not Elladora.

There were more people. Sebastian would have to take them down one by one and then demand what they had done with his sister. Force would be used if necessary.

The male's voice heaved a sigh as a door slammed further along the corridor, not Sebastian's old room but another one that had been previously uninhabited.

As a hand wrapped itself around the side of the door, ready to close it, Sebastian cast a non-verbal invisibility spell on himself. Then the door swung shut and he stared right at one of the people who had changed his whole house.

It was a boy, no older than Sebastian. He had red hair that seemed to be wet from the shower as he was also holding a towel around his waist, half-naked as he sauntered into the room and threw the smaller towel he had in his hand onto the bed after giving his hair a quick ruffle with it.

Sebastian stared at him, he didn't look too evil but you could never be sure with these type of people

"Isaac's gonna do his essays now..." The boy started to sing to himself under his breath, not looking at all like a threat but Sebastian kept his guard up as he sauntered around the room, observing this redheaded boy. "Books are gonna tell Isaac how..."

Sebastian watched curiously as the boy walked over to his bed, looked underneath and pulled out two thick, old books before he deposited them on his desk and left them there for a moment.

Continuing to whistle his own little tune, the boy walked over to his wardrobe, opened the doors and pulled out a long-sleeved shirt as well as some sweatpants and boxer shorts. The invisible boy looked away as the redhead got changed but kept a close eye on him as soon as he was covered up.

He didn't expect a thing and Sebastian knew it was his time to attack.

"Isaac's gonna do his essays now..." The strange boy repeated in a higher octave, shaking his head and letting wet drops from his hair fly everywhere around the room. "Books gonna tell Isaac ho- AHH!"

Sebastian launched himself at the redhead boy, taking him off guard and tackling him to the ground as the boy screamed in fear and tried to squirm out from underneath him. As quick as anything, Sebastian had removed the invisibility charm from himself so he could try and stun the boy but 'Isaac' scrambled towards his bed and grabbed what looked like his own wand from underneath it.

"Stupefy!" Sebastian cast before Isaac could get a word out of his mouth and he froze by himself on the floor for just a few seconds whilst Sebastian ran over and hoisted him up with one hand.

Isaac was just beginning to melt out of his statue as Sebastian slammed him against the wall and put his wand to his neck.

"Woah, woah, woah, stop!" The boy raised his hands in defence, wide-eyed and fearful as Sebastian held him against the wall. "What- What is happening right now? Why are you in my house?"

"This is my house!" Sebastian yelled, digging the wand deeper into Isaac's neck and the boy's face simply crumpled in confusion before falling back to fear as he whined and attempted to escape from Sebastian's hold. "What have you done with my sister and her room?"

"Dude, what-"

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

"Nothing, nothing, I swear to God. I have no idea what you're talking about right now!" Isaac said hurriedly and Sebastian glared at him, digging the wand deeper. The boy whined again and prayed that someone would walk in and save him. "We only moved in a couple of years ago and before that, no one had lived here for like a decade. I swear!"

"What?"

"Dude, I swear to you, I have no idea what you're talking about." Isaac fussed again and Sebastian jolted him against the wall so he would shut up as the gears turned behind his eyes his brain worked at speeds unknown to man. "I'm sorry that I have no idea where anyone is but-"

"Shut up." Sebastian seethed and Isaac winced, frowning and looking over at his wand that had been abandoned on the floor near his bed when he had been stunned by the stranger in his room. "She must be here. Elladora has to be here."

"Wh- Elladora?" Isaac asked hesitantly, in fear of triggering the murderous attitude of the stranger in his house again.

Though name rang a bell of his and his sibling's exploration of the forest beyond the mansion. The man seemed to be thinking for himself but after Isaac had muttered that, he scowled at the boy again.

"So you do know her." Sebastian said through gritted teeth.

"No, no, no, not personally no, I haven't done anything to her. In fact, uh..." He glanced nervously at the man holding him against the wall and Sebastian cocked an eyebrow at the boy, daring him to continue. "I think, I think she's...how do I put this?"

"Kind of...dead."

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A/N: isaac <3