(no subject)
Takes place during the third book.
Twelve years previous when he'd left the British wizarding world behind Sam had promised many people that they'd be lucky to ever see him again. He'd turned his back on them, boarded a muggle plane, and gone to America. Never to return, he'd said. The magical side of his family - his mother's side - was all dead, so what was the point of sticking around? All the members of that side that were worth talking to, at any rate, because Petunia Dursley wasn't worth talking to at all, the nosey little busy body.
Sam had been freshly seventeen at the time so had contacted his muggle father and gotten the man to pull some strings and get him into a muggle high school with a good name. He'd graduated with decent grades and enlisted into the American army the very next day, spending the next few years in one war zone or another, not caring where he was so long as he got to shoot at people. His wand was safely strapped to his thigh, directly underneath his gun holster, everywhere he went. None of the other guys serving with Sam ever questioned the stick of ten-inch Cherry wood after he'd told them it was a good luck charm. They all had their own oddities about them so they allowed him his.
He hadn't missed the wizarding world a single bit. He'd kept in distant contact with Petunia, but only because she was raising Lily's son and Lily had been Sam's favourite of cousins despite whatever Jessica every said. It was through him that Harry had learned anything at all about Lily and James and the wizarding world at large. Harry had understood, eventually, that he had to pretend not to know anything about the world his parents came from because he wouldn't be expected to. He'd been left with Petunia for a reason because anyone that knew Lily knew what her sister was like.
Then one day in the middle of summer - he'd been in the middle of lunch on base in Kandahar with a few guys - Sam had gotten a letter from Harry. Not in the muggle way, as he usually did knowing about Sam's wizard-free lifestyle, but with an owl. A white snowy owl. He'd never seen her before but Sam'd had an idea of who she belonged to. It had taken a few very precise obliviate spells to make them forget only the few minutes when Hedwig was there. He'd waited to open and read it until he was safely tucked away in his bunk that night.
It was a letter that made him break the promises he'd made to so many people on that Halloween twelve years previous. Harry needed his help. Sirius Black, the man that had been his parents secret-keeper, had escaped the inescapable wizard prison of Azkaban.
Sam had handed in his resignation that day, having served his five years already, and was on a plane to the United Kingdom the next day. It only took him a few hours to get a few things from Knockturn Alley that he'd need, then get to Hogsmead before the Hogwarts Express. Hagrid hadn't noticed him at first - disguised in his Rottweiler animagus form as Sam was so not to attract too much attention - but as soon as the Express stopped moving Sam had gone back to being fully human.
The students paid him little attention, eager as they were to get to the carriages. Hagrid had no time to question Sam on his presence while collecting all the first years to bring across the lake. Harry saw him immediately and grinned widely while trotting over, pulling his wide-eyed friends with him. Well, one of them was wide-eyed at least. A bushy-haired girl, looking at the Desert Eagle handgun holstered to his thigh. Sam figured her for a muggleborn, because the red-haired boy didn't seem to recognize the unhidden weapon at all. Harry didn't pay it any attention past a glance to see it was there - he'd been expecting it after all.
"Are you a new teacher?" The girl asked, caution dripping from her every word.
Sam shook his head. He had no intention to answer the girl. Harry told her instead. "This is my new body guard. At least until they capture Sirius Black." Harry said with a smile. "Sam Nixon."
"Bodyguard"? The redhead looked worried now. "I don't think Dumbledore will let him stay, Harry." The girl quickly nodded in agreement.
Sam prodded them to start moving towards the carriages. "You leave the meddling old geezer to me." His name for the Headmaster gained an affronted look from the girl, a small grin from Harry, while the redhead didn't look too sure about which way he should lean.
The three students got into the last carriage in the line, riding inside while Sam hung off the outside. It wasn't a very long ride at all, just a few minutes, but it was made longer from the cold that the icy rain was giving off. His clothes had been spelled to be impermeable, but Sam's skin was still fair game. It made him glad when the carriage came to a stop and it's three student occupants ran inside of the large oak doors to the castle.
McGonagall swooped in almost immediately on Harry to speak with him but Sam was having none of that. He manoeuvred himself into a position between the deputy headmistress and the boy-who-lived. "He's fine, he just needs a meal." Sam told her.
"Mister Nixon." McGonagall's voice was as strict as Sam remembered it. Didn't seem like she'd changed much at all, although he hadn't expected her to. "What on earth are you doing here?"
Sam looked to Harry to see if the teenager wanted to explain. With a shaken head Sam turned back to the deputy headmistress. "I'm Harry's personal guard. There's a wanted madman on the loose, you know."
"That will not be necessary." McGonagall's lips pursed and eyes narrowed in a very unhappy way. The expression made Sam smirk. "Hogwarts is perfectly safe for Mister Potter and the rest of the student body. At any rate personal guards are not permitted for students."
"Um, Professor?" Harry smiled innocently. "According to section three, subsection F, paragraph seventeen of the school's charter any student wishing it and able to afford it is permitted to have one personal guard and/or attendant with them on the grounds at all times if they so choose." the boy explained easily. "As I'm the sole surviving heir to the most noble and ancient house of Potter I can more than afford it." Skip the fact, Sam thought, that he was doing this for free.
"I go, he goes. Salem academy's perfectly happy to have him, I've already checked." Sam told the woman looking at him with well-hidden anger. The students around them that hadn't gone into the Great Hall for the feast were staring at them, keeping McGonagall from losing her temper. "You can go and tell His Headness that, too. C'mon, Harry."
They walked around the professor and into the Great Hall. Harry happily sat down next to a few friends - the bushy-haired girl suspiciously absent - at one of the four tables. Sam stood behind him, watching everything and anyone that could pose a threat. Headmaster Dumbledore looked at him strangely but all that Sam let the man see was the memory of the porn movie he'd watched the night before. Let the old meddler play peeping tom.
Before long McGonagall returned, sitting down in a previously empty chair next to Dumbledore. It wasn't easy to tell but the elderly wizard wasn't happy with the reasoning behind Sam's presence in the school, forget that the reason Hogwarts originally had the reputation of being the safest school in the world because a century ago nearly every other student had a well-trained bodyguard so attacking the school would have been suicide for anything less than an army.
Sam just sent a shit-eating grin up at the old man. It was going to be a fun year.
Twelve years previous when he'd left the British wizarding world behind Sam had promised many people that they'd be lucky to ever see him again. He'd turned his back on them, boarded a muggle plane, and gone to America. Never to return, he'd said. The magical side of his family - his mother's side - was all dead, so what was the point of sticking around? All the members of that side that were worth talking to, at any rate, because Petunia Dursley wasn't worth talking to at all, the nosey little busy body.
Sam had been freshly seventeen at the time so had contacted his muggle father and gotten the man to pull some strings and get him into a muggle high school with a good name. He'd graduated with decent grades and enlisted into the American army the very next day, spending the next few years in one war zone or another, not caring where he was so long as he got to shoot at people. His wand was safely strapped to his thigh, directly underneath his gun holster, everywhere he went. None of the other guys serving with Sam ever questioned the stick of ten-inch Cherry wood after he'd told them it was a good luck charm. They all had their own oddities about them so they allowed him his.
He hadn't missed the wizarding world a single bit. He'd kept in distant contact with Petunia, but only because she was raising Lily's son and Lily had been Sam's favourite of cousins despite whatever Jessica every said. It was through him that Harry had learned anything at all about Lily and James and the wizarding world at large. Harry had understood, eventually, that he had to pretend not to know anything about the world his parents came from because he wouldn't be expected to. He'd been left with Petunia for a reason because anyone that knew Lily knew what her sister was like.
Then one day in the middle of summer - he'd been in the middle of lunch on base in Kandahar with a few guys - Sam had gotten a letter from Harry. Not in the muggle way, as he usually did knowing about Sam's wizard-free lifestyle, but with an owl. A white snowy owl. He'd never seen her before but Sam'd had an idea of who she belonged to. It had taken a few very precise obliviate spells to make them forget only the few minutes when Hedwig was there. He'd waited to open and read it until he was safely tucked away in his bunk that night.
It was a letter that made him break the promises he'd made to so many people on that Halloween twelve years previous. Harry needed his help. Sirius Black, the man that had been his parents secret-keeper, had escaped the inescapable wizard prison of Azkaban.
Sam had handed in his resignation that day, having served his five years already, and was on a plane to the United Kingdom the next day. It only took him a few hours to get a few things from Knockturn Alley that he'd need, then get to Hogsmead before the Hogwarts Express. Hagrid hadn't noticed him at first - disguised in his Rottweiler animagus form as Sam was so not to attract too much attention - but as soon as the Express stopped moving Sam had gone back to being fully human.
The students paid him little attention, eager as they were to get to the carriages. Hagrid had no time to question Sam on his presence while collecting all the first years to bring across the lake. Harry saw him immediately and grinned widely while trotting over, pulling his wide-eyed friends with him. Well, one of them was wide-eyed at least. A bushy-haired girl, looking at the Desert Eagle handgun holstered to his thigh. Sam figured her for a muggleborn, because the red-haired boy didn't seem to recognize the unhidden weapon at all. Harry didn't pay it any attention past a glance to see it was there - he'd been expecting it after all.
"Are you a new teacher?" The girl asked, caution dripping from her every word.
Sam shook his head. He had no intention to answer the girl. Harry told her instead. "This is my new body guard. At least until they capture Sirius Black." Harry said with a smile. "Sam Nixon."
"Bodyguard"? The redhead looked worried now. "I don't think Dumbledore will let him stay, Harry." The girl quickly nodded in agreement.
Sam prodded them to start moving towards the carriages. "You leave the meddling old geezer to me." His name for the Headmaster gained an affronted look from the girl, a small grin from Harry, while the redhead didn't look too sure about which way he should lean.
The three students got into the last carriage in the line, riding inside while Sam hung off the outside. It wasn't a very long ride at all, just a few minutes, but it was made longer from the cold that the icy rain was giving off. His clothes had been spelled to be impermeable, but Sam's skin was still fair game. It made him glad when the carriage came to a stop and it's three student occupants ran inside of the large oak doors to the castle.
McGonagall swooped in almost immediately on Harry to speak with him but Sam was having none of that. He manoeuvred himself into a position between the deputy headmistress and the boy-who-lived. "He's fine, he just needs a meal." Sam told her.
"Mister Nixon." McGonagall's voice was as strict as Sam remembered it. Didn't seem like she'd changed much at all, although he hadn't expected her to. "What on earth are you doing here?"
Sam looked to Harry to see if the teenager wanted to explain. With a shaken head Sam turned back to the deputy headmistress. "I'm Harry's personal guard. There's a wanted madman on the loose, you know."
"That will not be necessary." McGonagall's lips pursed and eyes narrowed in a very unhappy way. The expression made Sam smirk. "Hogwarts is perfectly safe for Mister Potter and the rest of the student body. At any rate personal guards are not permitted for students."
"Um, Professor?" Harry smiled innocently. "According to section three, subsection F, paragraph seventeen of the school's charter any student wishing it and able to afford it is permitted to have one personal guard and/or attendant with them on the grounds at all times if they so choose." the boy explained easily. "As I'm the sole surviving heir to the most noble and ancient house of Potter I can more than afford it." Skip the fact, Sam thought, that he was doing this for free.
"I go, he goes. Salem academy's perfectly happy to have him, I've already checked." Sam told the woman looking at him with well-hidden anger. The students around them that hadn't gone into the Great Hall for the feast were staring at them, keeping McGonagall from losing her temper. "You can go and tell His Headness that, too. C'mon, Harry."
They walked around the professor and into the Great Hall. Harry happily sat down next to a few friends - the bushy-haired girl suspiciously absent - at one of the four tables. Sam stood behind him, watching everything and anyone that could pose a threat. Headmaster Dumbledore looked at him strangely but all that Sam let the man see was the memory of the porn movie he'd watched the night before. Let the old meddler play peeping tom.
Before long McGonagall returned, sitting down in a previously empty chair next to Dumbledore. It wasn't easy to tell but the elderly wizard wasn't happy with the reasoning behind Sam's presence in the school, forget that the reason Hogwarts originally had the reputation of being the safest school in the world because a century ago nearly every other student had a well-trained bodyguard so attacking the school would have been suicide for anything less than an army.
Sam just sent a shit-eating grin up at the old man. It was going to be a fun year.