Chapter Text
Albus Severus Potter had always felt he was different.
Ask him why and he couldn't tell you, at least not at first. He wasn't lonely. He had a brother and a sister, a whole litany of cousins, aunts and uncles, and more besides. His house was never quiet and there was always something going on. It was enough to drive anyone to distraction.
But despite that, the feeling persisted that something was—off. Off about him. He didn't realise at first. Not for a long time, in fact. Only when his little sister, two years his junior, began to display accidental magic, did something hard and cold that he identified as panic stick in his chest for the first time. Because Albus had never done anything. He hadn't lit a small fire or made something levitate, or animated a toy and set it to march about the living room, as Lily had done.
And Albus wasn't the only one to notice; two months before his eleventh birthday was the third occasion that nine-year-old Lily's magic showed itself in some grandiose way. As the family gathered around to ooh and ahh, watching the magazines on the table flip and turn their own pages, Albus, grimacing, turned his face away—
Meeting his dad's evaluating gaze instantly. He froze. Harry's head twitched like he considered briefly pretending to have not been looking, but in the end they simply stared at each other, something assessing in each of their expressions.
He wasn't surprised when, later, Harry asked for a private word with Albus, and the two of them went to sit in the family car; the only place they might find privacy in their madhouse. He spotted his mum standing by the window overlooking the driveway, arms crossed, anxiety written into her features. She only went away when his Uncle Ron pulled her away, arm around her shoulders.
It wasn't just his dad who had noticed.
The car, a Honda CR-V in pale gold, was rarely, if ever, actually driven anywhere, and he was pretty sure that his parents kept it only because Aunt Hermione pestered them to. Maybe she knew what Albus was before anyone else, and knew they would need it.
The seats had an ugly pattern and were uncomfortable in the heat. It had a thing for music in the dashboard that his Granddad Weasley once identified as a dape teck, and that Aunt Hermione re-identified as a tape deck later on. They didn't have any tapes to play in it though. And even though his knowledge about the muggle world was limited, he knew that it was considered to be extremely old. 1999. His parents never thought to upgrade.
Staring out at the driveway, neither of them said anything at first. Albus was determinedly thinking about anything else. He couldn't even think the word.
Then Harry said, "Al, you know you can say anything to me," and somehow, as if by enchantment, the floodgates opened.
"I've never done anything magic," he whispered hoarsely. "Not anything, ever."
Father and son were as uncomfortable as each other. Harry, grimacing, rested a hand atop Albus' head, but he didn't seem to know what to say to him. How was he meant to; what did the Wizarding world offer to people who veered from the norm? Despised caretaker of Hogwarts? That was all Albus could call to mind.
Heart hammering, he tried to formulate a follow-up thought as his dad's fingers ruffled the hair on the crown of his head restlessly.
"I think I'm—"
"Al, I—"
"I don't think I can do magic."
The car, already baking in the summer heat, became an airless vacuum.
"You don't know that," Harry said. "It isn't your birthday yet, is it? Your letter still isn't due to arrive."
But it won't, he thought. That feeling of off-ness he had always felt, he knew instinctively, told him that it wouldn't. He couldn't say the word outloud, couldn't even think it, but he felt that electric connection all the same. That spark of two things being pulled together.
"I mean, if you are—If you are a—a squib," Harry said, stumbling over his own tongue, and Albus slammed his eyes shut, "then you know it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me and it won't matter to any of your family."
But it would. Look at his family, full of world-famous heroes; war heroes, Quidditch heroes, heroes of every stripe, and their rising stars in sports and adventure and derring-do. His siblings and cousins surely fated to dazzle and wow. Some of them already were; Teddy Lupin a renowned heartthrob and werewolf rights activist. He made activism sexy, according to Victoire, but Albus thought that was a bit stupid.
And then him. Albus the—
You know.
"At least we know what's wrong with me now," he muttered, eyes still firmly shut.
"There's nothing wrong with you, Al."
"I mean, we're a family of wizards and I can't do magic," he said. "That's a definite aberration."
"You don't even know what that means," Harry said, sounding pre-occupied with something in his head. Probably how he was going to handle his weird son. But Albus did know what it meant.
Aberration: a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected, typically an unwelcome one. He learnt it from Rose the last time he realised that he was different to everyone else. The only one of his siblings not named after their grandparents; the only one who never felt the need to erupt with chants of Gryffindor! and jump around the living room, pretending to slay a basilisk with the man's legendary sword. He'd always felt like he wouldn't be sorted into Gryffindor and now here was the reason why.
"Look, for all we know you're just a late bloomer, okay? You know Neville was as well?"
Albus muttered, "Yeah, his family threw him off a cliff or something, because they thought he was a—like me."
"They did not—" Harry broke off with a rough sigh. "Squib or not, everything's going to be okay, Al. I promise." The hand on his head gave him an extra-hard wobble, and Albus' eyes flew open so he could cut his dad a very scathing look. Harry didn't appear affected by it. "I'll ask Hermione, see what lines of assistance there are... We are going to figure this out, Albus Potter."
But Albus already had it figured out. It was fast becoming his greatest fear that much like the forgotten Honda CR-V, it was his fate to linger at the periphery of the family consciousness, left to gather dust.
So, because his family's home was so chaotic and it's magic all-consuming, and because it was generally agreed upon by the grown ups that Albus was becoming an absolute misery, it was decided that his parents would purchase a second home—a more mundane one, as his mum accidentally said once, and then, flaming red, immediately took back and never said again—where they could make a life that centred around him and his—
"Mundane-ness?" he asked snidely.
Ginny Potter's face crumpled as Harry's hardened.
"That's enough, Albus. Your mum didn't mean it like that." Pinching his eyes shut, Harry breathed in deep through his nose; Albus watched on resentfully. "It's what's best for everyone, but you especially." He forced a smile onto his face. "You'll like the house! Only five minutes away from a lake, where we could take a boat out, beautiful forest, really peaceful—"
"And the bedroom we thought could be yours has a little—a platform thing," Ginny added, smiling too much to compensate for her earlier slip-up. "You always wanted a room with a platform when you were a kid, didn't you?"
Albus stewed silently over this. He didn't like that the best descriptor that his dad could think of for this place was peaceful. His mind went, invariably, to the legendary halls of Hogwarts and the chaos that James always bragged of, as if it were something he was responsible for himself, before he would rein his ego in and his vision would shift to one that included Albus.
Not anymore.
He looked out of the window that his brother's letter had arrived at, that several of his cousins' had arrived at, that his sister's would one day arrive at, but that would always remain empty for him. His anger was beginning to subside into something more quietly dreadful and he knew, instinctively, that this was a fight he had already lost.
He turned to his mum, with her big pleading eyes, and hated that he had her looking that way, because his mum never pleaded for anything. He looked then at his dad, whose expression was open and earnest. All the patience in the world. Yeah. Albus was not winning this fight.
He ground the toe of his shoe into the floor. "Where is this house?" he mumbled.
"We'll take you there," his mum said, brightening a smidge. "You're going to love it."
He wasn't so sure about that, but he couldn't throw his mum's optimism back in her face, not when she was looking so hopeful. She had been quiet and low ever since they first visited the physician and had it confirmed that Albus was—what he was. Not in the sense that she didn't love him anymore, she reminded him of that every single day, but in the sense that she obviously didn't know what to do with him now.
His dad had been a bit better at handling the news. Maybe because he spent the first ten years of his life as a muggle. Maybe because he was a better actor than Mum. But Albus' condition was a blindside to the whole family and this was the first time in weeks that any one of them had looked at him with something resembling real hope.
"I s'pose we can try it out," he said at last, because the thought of having to stay around all the magic he would never get himself, especially as his eleventh birthday approached, made his stomach twist in dread.
And so he was sent, with compassion, into the muggle world.
Their chosen locale was one of the lesser known lakes of the Lake District. One of the really lesser known ones. No one was skipping over Lake Windemere or Lake Buttermere to go to Lake Winsome. Which was kind of a funny metaphor for the way he knew people felt about himself and his siblings. No one at Hogwarts was going to mourn the loss of Albus Potter when James and Lily were right there.
Harry insisted that they make the five hour drive to the Lake District, which made James moan and groan, and Albus sink down into the seat of the Honda before they were even moving, but Lily wasn't upset.
"We can play Red Car, Yellow Car," she chirped from the middle seat, between Albus and James.
Neither of her brothers were very keen on the idea but her parents played along with her games happily enough. And there were a lot of them; every time one game ended she was asking them to play a different one. Each time this happened his parents sounded less and less enthusiastic to participate, but Lily had them nicely entrapped.
Albus slumped miserably in his seat, only moving when road signs signalling the Lake District began to appear. His spine straightened slightly as they passed the brown sign denoting a cultural landmark. A while after that came green signs for Lake Winsome. Lily was still playing her car game and James seemed to have fallen asleep out of sheer boredom, but Albus was suddenly on high-alert.
Some minutes more passed until the tops of tall trees came into view. They were at the lakes. Windemere was the largest and most famous, a tourist trap with ancient roads clogged up by cars and backpackers. They drove through and out of Windemere and were onto big empty roads surrounded by hills and fields.
Sign-posted were more of the lakes, and amongst them was Lake Winsome.
39 miles.
29.
19.
It was upon them before Albus could believe it.
"Do you think we can go out on the lake straight away?" Lily asked, nudging him repeatedly in the side to provoke a response.
She was the most excited of the family for the adventure, and the one who took the news about Albus the best. Whereas his brother and cousins responded with awkward silences or platitudes, conversations suddenly cutting off if Albus walked into a room, Lily seemed genuinely chipper after her initial surprise passed.
Albus thought it was because she was just glad she wasn't the only one not going to Hogwarts. In a couple of years, when that changed, he expected her attitude to shift. But for now she was his most enthusiastic ally.
"Lily asked you a question, Al," his mum said gently from the front passenger seat.
He heaved in a great sigh, batted away Lily's still-nudging hand, and said, "Maybe, Lil. I mean, we don't have a boat."
"We can find one!"
"You mean steal one?"
"There will be no boat theft," Harry said, very quickly and forcefully.
Lily flopped back against her seat, kicking it with her heels restlessly, as the hardest stretch of the journey—the final few minutes—began. Albus kept his eyes glued to the window, feeling his throat dry up as they moved closer by the second—
Until at last a road sign declaring Welcome to Lake Winsome. In slightly smaller letters, below that, Please drive carefully through our town. Then, in the smallest letters of all, at the bottom, Twinned with Meersburg. Two flags, of the United Kingdom and Germany, crossed over each other.
They were driving down a road forested on all sides with tall trees that stretched as far as his eyes could see. Then up ahead, through the trees, came a large, tranquil body of water; Lake Winsome itself.
The car turned left onto the lakeside road. They passed two, three, four houses, scattered without much forethought across the landscape because they had been in situ for a very long time, since before careful placement of houses was something people thought much about. Then his dad was switching on the indicator, starting to slow down, and Albus found himself leaning forwards to get a good look, as they turned and pulled into the driveway.
It was a white plaster house with an old front door and lively garden growing all around, and the word that came into Albus' head, despite the house being fairly big, was quaint.
His parents twisted around in their seats to look at him. Identical smiles; only a little bit strained.
Maybe they had practiced in the mirror this morning.
"We're here, mate," his dad said. "You want to do the honours?"
And his mum dangled the front door key in Albus' face. He took it only after it became obvious that this wasn’t really a question.
Conversely to the twittering nature of the lake and woods, the silence inside was gaping; wide open and hollow, leaving him liable to fall into it. The combined Potter-Weasley household was so alive with noise. The house at Lake Winsome was silent as the grave.
Albus tried to huff, and choked on ambient dust instead.
He walked slowly through the rooms of the ground floor; the living room to the left of the front door, which led out onto a patio and a small garden, which was itself hemmed in by forest. The kitchen was small and hadn't been updated in a few years but Albus didn't care about something like that. Leading on from there was a small dining room.
To get to either of those rooms he had to go through the living room first, which Albus didn't think was very good floor planning, and he told his parents this.
"Yep. Echoing floorboards, bad spacial planning, toilet and sink squeezed in under the stairs," his dad said wryly, wrapping his knuckles against the door to said toilet. "All the trappings of a proper old English cottage."
His family were walking around the place like it was all very exciting, and Albus didn't appreciate that none of them were being nearly as miserable as him. The floors were aged oak and creaked underfoot, the walls all cold white plaster. Ancient. The house seemed to grow from the forest floor like the trees around it.
Lily joined them in the hallway then, leaving her first-floor bedroom—the last room on the ground floor, to the right of the front door and next to the toilet under the stairs—looking absolutely delighted. Traitor.
"I get to sleep downstairs," she sang, moving past them all to get to the back garden, which lay beyond a set of sliding glass doors.
"Is that a good idea?" Albus asked his parents.
"The room isn't big enough for us," Ginny said. "And we don't trust James enough to let him sleep so close to the front door."
Not that either of his siblings would be at this house often enough to get into any sort of trouble. Looking around at the town's dead atmosphere as they drove through it, he was sure they were safe.
He trailed up the winding stairs, his parents' eyes following him silently, to the door at the top which he knew was his.
The room was way bigger than his one at home, with big windows that let in lots of lights and, indeed, a bed placed upon a wood platform. He had wanted one of them when he was younger. He thought they were fancy. The appeal was dulled in light of why he had one now.
Wooden floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he stepped further inside.
"No way you've got such a cool room." James had followed him inside and was peering around with his eyebrows raised. "Mine's way smaller than this."
Albus was glad that his brother couldn't see the way his mouth quirked up into a smile for a moment.
The house at Lake Winsome was to be magic-free, because the squib sensitivity expert, who his parents consulted for help, said that it was best not to surround him with the things he would never have himself. All they could have was floo powder by the fireplace, and invisible enchantments to keep intruders out. Beyond that magic was banned.
This made James groan like he had been left to bleed out, Lily to wilt like a dying flower, and Albus to once again feel even worse than he already did.
His mum insisted that it was actually so that no one in this all-muggle community noticed anything odd about them. He knew she was lying and when he put this to James, his brother agreed.
"Muggles would never notice us anyway," he said.
Albus rolled his eyes, dropping onto his new bed with a small bounce. "That isn't what I meant."
"Still true though," James said, looking very self-satisfied. "All sorts of people at Hogwarts live surrounded by muggles whenever they're not at Hogwarts. They do magic all the time. The muggles don't know about this whole world that's parallel to theirs. It isn't their fault but it does make them kind of ignorant."
He was so smug, so undeservedly, that Albus realised he wanted to defend the same people he had been slandering a moment ago.
"If any of the grown-ups heard you talking like that, you'd be in trouble," he said, realising as the words left his mouth how weak a response that was. James didn't pick him up on it, just smirking, stretching his arms up over his head, yawning.
He and Lily both had bedrooms here, but they were much smaller than Albus'. Lily was moody over not being given the room with the best view and, she said, the cool bed platform. Albus wouldn't pretend that didn't give him a small bit of pleasure. Maybe the squib sensitivity expert wasn't a complete quack.
He didn't even know why James and Lily got to have bedrooms in the new house. Why did they get to have a place in his world when he didn't have one in theirs? But he knew that voicing something like that aloud would only land him in trouble, so he kept the thought to himself. They wouldn't be here most of the time, off at Hogwarts with their four poster beds and moving staircases and portraits you could have a conversation with.
James was still snooping around the nooks and crannies of Albus' new room. Albus rolled over on the bed until he was facing the window, so that he didn't have to see, and willed the curtains to sway at his command.
Of course, they never did.
Thank Merlin for Rose Weasley. She insisted on hopping right on over to the new house, as soon as their ETA had been passed, and floo'd into the new living room without warning only minutes after the front door was unlocked for the first time. Without his cousin's steadying presence, Albus would have been utterly overwhelmed. Her almost belligerent determination to "handle the situation" with logic was a needed familiarity.
Her plan was for them to explore Lake Winsome together and figure out where in this strange place Albus was to fit in. He hadn’t really listened, but there had been a lot of talk about him getting in with the right people, making the right first impression, starting as he meant to go on.
Rose moved with power and confidence, like she could feel her magic flowing in her veins every day, with every step she took, and for all Albus knew, that was true. Maybe the power did flow like blood and if anyone had ever bothered to describe the feeling, he might not have spent so many hours of his childhood trying to make his magic manifest itself in rocking chairs that rocked by themselves or taps that turned themselves on.
He walked beside her down the road, turning his head half towards the ground and half towards the lake that the road ringed around, shoulders hunched. Power did not run through his veins, and it never would, so he could not yet stand to look at Rose and see how she moved.
Like magic manifest.
She was talking, as she had been doing non-stop, since she first arrived.
"You need to establish yourself as a fun and cool person," she was saying. "Most of these people have grown up with each other, like we did, and their friendship groups will already be formed, so it might be tricky for you to integrate yourself."
"Yeah," he mumbled. He kept staring at the lake. The water gleamed like mercury in the setting sun.
"It would be best if you could do it before September. Where is your new school, by the way? We haven't seen it yet."
They hadn't seen anything yet. The walk into Winsome’s supposed town centre took fifteen minutes and they were only just beginning to spot establishments up ahead, after nothing but the occasional house amongst the trees on the way up the main road.
His new school, Winsome Comprehensive, was a half an hour walk away, or ten minute drive, on the outskirts of the forest on the opposite side of the lake to his house. He hadn't been to see it yet and he wasn't looking forward to it.
"I don't know how you're going to get yourself in with anyone," Rose said. "I mean, if you were going to Hogwarts it would be easy. Harry Potter's son? People would be falling over themselves to get to you." His heart missed a beat, and not because of the four-wheel drive that just zoomed past them. "But here? You're anonymous. It's going to take some work, but we'll do it!"
She said this bracingly, and with the unimpeachable confidence only possessed by a Granger-Weasley, but Albus would have felt more buoyed if she weren't talking about how hard he was going to find making friends without his dad's influence.
He could make friends just fine, thanks. Not that he wanted to. Or planned to.
To the best of his ability Albus was determined to be miserable.
Rose glanced back at him—he was deliberately trailing behind her—and she raised her eyebrows. "Have you thought about what you're going to do yet? I was looking into Winsome last night, on Mum's computer, and there's not much going on here. Winsome Comprehensive has a football team that you could join, I guess." Neither of them were particularly sporty. "There wasn't much to find out about the place, to be honest. The only news article I found was from six years ago; Psycho Badger Rampage."
She didn't sound very impressed.
"Eight years ago a child from Buttermere went missing, and the police were in Winsome for a while looking for her. She never turned up. The Department of Energy has a set up not far from here," she added. "Maybe you could ask for a tour."
"Yeah, I'm sure I'd be beating potential friends away with a bat if they knew I was asking for tours of government buildings in my free time," he said.
She glared at him. "It could be interesting!" He gave her a flat look and eventually she turned to face the approaching town again. "I'm just saying..."
The heart of Winsome was the Market Square, ringed round with shops and inns. There was a pedestrianised area at the centre which Rose headed straight for, rather than go down the less populated path which continued to follow the lake, and the road around the outside of the town. Albus wished they could have just taken a stroll around the lake; he was not in any mood to be perceived.
An ancient monument sat at the centre of the Square, mounted with an equally ancient clock that had only one hand—the hour hand—which invited visitors to explore the area.
A gathering of signs with confusing directions indicated a crazy golf course, a lido pool, and several national walking paths, one of which went through the mountains that Rose said the Department of Energy was behind.
"Are you sure you don't want to have a look?" she asked him.
"I am," he said. "But you seem keen enough."
They spent the afternoon exploring the town, which didn't really have all that much going for it. The buildings were similar to his house; white plaster with attractive black sat roofs, but they didn't have the crowds of Windemere, that was certain. All of them were very old, that he could tell, and it seemed the sort of place where well-off middle-aged people who hated children, yet each had 2.5 of their own, would settle down.
They stopped by a corner ice cream shop built of gray brick, with a green roof—freshly painted, Rose pointed out—and bought themselves ice cream.
"They obviously think an awful lot of their town," Rose said quietly to him as were handed their ice creams. Strawberry for Rose, mango for Albus. It was actually pretty good but he wouldn't admit that. "They look after the buildings very well."
They were attracting some curious stares as they went, but Albus didn't care if people stared, and Rose actively saw it as a good thing.
"It means people are taking notice of you," she said, catching drips of ice cream from the melting cone in her hand. "You'll get yourself in here easy. There's not much going on, I mean, you might be the most excitement Winsome's seen in years. Or ever..." she added quietly.
Albus didn't say anything.
It took them a while to actually find any other people their age, and the sun was on it's descent in the sky by then. His mum had told them to be home by four o'clock and they hadn't found anyone to talk to yet. Not that Albus wanted to do the whole tell the class something about yourself thing until he absolutely had to.
They walked right through the town and back out onto the original path they had been following, where they carried on down to a break in the metal barrier running along the road, separating it from the lakeside. There was a long stretch of lake here that could be driven up to, the shoreline vast enough that you could walk up and down for ages. The presence of proper sand pricked his interest for a heartbeat.
A group of kids their age were hanging around by the water's edge.
When they noticed Albus and Rose, they went quiet. A boy and a girl, who seemed to be watching over a small gaggle of even younger kids playing some kind of role playing game in the shallows, splashing around and shouting made up words at each other. Sprays of water were caught beneath the sun, like fistfuls of diamonds being thrown about.
"Hello," Rose said, all confidence. "My cousin's moving in today so we're exploring the lake. He's Albus and I'm Rose. And... you are?"
The boy turned away quickly, like he was frightened of her, but the girl offered a hesitant smile.
"I'm Nancy. This is Jonathan," she added, nodding at the boy whose attention had turned back to the kids in the water. Nancy looked at Albus curiously. "Will you be going to Winsome Comp?"
He nodded, only speaking when Rose jutted her elbow into his ribs. "I—Yeah! Yeah, I will be..."
"Hey Will!" Jonathan shouted to the kids. "It's time to go!"
A short silence overtook, during which time the kids moaned and kicked the water, but one of them waded back to shore and went up to Jonathan.
"Can the boys come over tomorrow?" Will asked, as Jonathan tugged him away by the arm.
"Ask Mum when she gets home," Jonathan mumbled, keen to get away now he had his brother in tow. "Bye, Nancy."
Nancy watched him go without much familiarity. It looked as though they only knew each other through their little brothers. She turned to Albus and Rose again, smiling.
"I guess I'll see you around, then," she said.
"Very good!" Rose said, before he could say anything himself. "I won't be around for him—I'm going to school in Scotland you see—and I don't want him to be alone here."
Albus wanted to die. He wanted to wade out into the water, past the kids still splashing about, and keep walking until his head was submerged. Then he would stay down there, or else wait for the lake bed to open up and swallow him whole.
Perhaps, as his lungs filled with water, he would be able to rid himself of the embarrassment. Perspective, and all.
Nancy looked between them. "I see."
"We should be getting home," Albus said, before Rose could dig his grave even deeper, and perhaps even push him into it. "It's nearly four. Bye," he added to Nancy as an afterthought, before he turned away from the lake and started stalking back the way they had come.
He left Rose to catch up with him.
He got the feeling that she was so determined to find him a friend because when she stopped, if she let silence invade the space for even a minute, she was afraid that she would stop speaking to him forever. Because he could tell that she was flustered in her own way. She didn't know how to speak to him any more than his other cousins did. She just covered it up with action while the rest of them offered him awkward smiles.
If she could find him a friend then she had done her duty and successfully positioned herself as a supportive cousin. Albus didn't want to bring it up because he was recently trying out this thing where he pretended that he actually didn't care about the magic thing. His magic situation. Obviously he did or he would be able to say it.
He was completely turned around but doing his best to style it out.
By the time they were back at the house, Rose had caught up with him, and was chattering on about—something. He didn't know what.
In the hallway, by the front door, his gaze landed on a stock photo on the wall that the estate agents had forgotten to remove; a still image of Lake Winsome. Nothing in the frame moved. Albus took the frame by its edges and removed it from the wall, hiding it in the cupboard behind him. The hall was a bit duller for it.
That was fine.
At fifteen years old, Albus Potter cut a spiky and isolated figure. He preferred the company of his four bedroom walls to any party going, hadn’t cried in his grief for Hogwarts since he was twelve, and he’d never read a one star review that he didn’t wish was longer.
It was a late Sunday afternoon. The mercury was higher than expected for the time of year, the school term was nearly over, and Will Byers had been officially missing for a day and a half.
The town stood in a hesitant standstill as half of it's population tramped around the woods in search of him, despite the heat, and the sun reflected strong off Lake Winsome, sending Albus blind for a few seconds. He flapped his arm in front of his face trying to block it out.
"Fucking hell," he muttered, at last just shoving his sunglasses in place. "Bloody—sun."
It was springtime, four months until his sixteenth birthday, and Albus was waiting by the lake for his dad to get home from work so he could go driving. He was allowed to apply for his provisional licence when he was fifteen years and nine months old. That was only a month away. Albus was clinging to the thought like a life jacket. Until then he was tiding himself by with very slow trips around the lake, his dad in the passenger seat with a hand on the handbrake, his knuckles usually insultingly white.
James learned to apparate a year ago, and Albus had been itching to get his hands on his own freedom of travel as soon as he could. A driving licence was the best he was going to get, unless he stole a jetboat, as Lily occasionally egged him on to do.
He was pretty sure Nancy's parents had a fancy boat somewhere but he wouldn't tell Lily that. He didn't need stealing their boat added to the list of reasons his girlfriend's parents hated him. The only thing worse than a moody bastard was a thieving moody bastard.
Plus, he would only crash it, and then his parents would owe them money, and probably be pretty pissed about it.
They were tense enough since yesterday morning, when the news about Will Byers first broke. Everyone was. Albus had no idea how he was meant to handle news like that; it was only a couple of days ago that he had last seen the kid, when he was walking Nancy back to her house after school.
Her brother and his friends nearly bowled them over in their haste to get back home and keep playing their Dungeons and Dragons game. Will was the only one who stopped, and shouted, "Sorry!" before he sprinted after them.
Next he was hearing of Will was that the kid was gone, vanished, into thin air.
Albus stared into the water, a frown etched deep into his face, and tried to process the idea that something had happened to him. But it was too confusing, it made something in his chest twist, and he was glad he had the sunglasses on to cover the look on his face.
Fucking hell.
"Al?"
He turned around; his dad was crossing the shoreline to reach him, the Honda CR-V idling at the mouth of the road. In the sunlight the pale gold paint made it impossible to look at directly.
"Hi, mate." Harry came to stand at Albus' side, and they stared at the water together for a few seconds. Then his dad said, "They find the Byers boy yet?"
"Not as far as I know."
His dad exhaled slowly through his nose, his jaw working silently, and at last he tossed Albus the keys to the CR-V.
"Let's go for a drive," he said.
Albus was getting pretty good at taking the circuit around the lake. They had only been doing these lessons for a month, but he was a decent learner, and his dad a good teacher. Nearly five years they had been at Lake Winsome, and he knew the road that ringed the lake well, well enough that at this time of the afternoon he was safe to drive around it without having to deal with other cars on the road.
All the kids from school who could drive were long gone, to one of the nearby towns with a bit more life in it.
"That's good, Al," his dad said, after he remembered on his own to give way when they approached Albion Street, one of the roads that fed into the road around the lake. As he waited there he glanced up it and saw a police car parked at the edge of the woods.
"How are you doing?"
Albus put the car back into gear and slowly drove on. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"I know you know Will Byers," his dad said. "I know how scary this stuff can be."
"I'm fine." His foot pressed down on the accelerator a bit harder than he would have liked and had to ease off. "I'm fine," he said again. "I don't even know the kid, not really."
His dad was quiet for long enough to process this, and then he said, "I know better than to try and make you talk. But you know you can, whenever you need to."
That wasn't strictly true. His dad had been getting busier at work since Christmas, dark magic raids of some sort. He'd missed dinner more than once recently, leaving Albus and his mum to make idle talk over a dining table with space for six. Sometimes one of his various Aunts or Uncles joined them, but not often. Then his dad would come falling through the fireplace in a blaze of green, at eleven o'clock at night, sometimes bleeding, sometimes not, but always bone-tired.
"I know," Albus said.
A little further around the circuit, he asked, “How’s the James thing going?”
His dad’s heavy sigh should have been answer enough.
”Your brother is going to get himself expelled,” he said, audibly restrained. “With a month to go before he’s due to leave school as well.”
”We’re so proud,” Albus said, and Harry’s lips twitched.
”Plus, Lily was caught out of the common room after hours last week. You’re my only well-behaved child, Al. Please never start doing drugs.”
”Don’t check the space under my bed,” he said.
”Oi.”
”James is really in trouble then.”
”McGonagall was furious. It’s one thing to mess around with the Quidditch balls, and another thing completely to do it on the night before a match. Served him right though; he messed up the enchantment, set the bludgers to badger the Gryffindor players instead of the Hufflepuffs.”
”Imagine trying to rig a match against Hufflepuffs,” Albus said. “They have it bad enough just being in Hufflepuff to begin with.”
"Albus Severus—"
"I know, I know, Cedric Diggory was a Hufflepuff, Dad, you might have mentioned that before."
His dad was giving him a very hard stare, and Albus was working very hard not to start laughing. Then they drove past one of Will Byers’ search parties, and he didn’t have to try at all. In the trees, with their bikes, he saw Nancy's brother, Mike, and the other two who were friends with Will. Mike caught Albus' eyes across the distance, and his unhappy countenance became a full-on glare.
“Poor Joyce,” his dad muttered, staring at the party as the car passed them. “We need to check in on her.”
”You don’t even know her.”
”It’s still the right thing to do,” he said sternly. “It’s important Joyce doesn’t feel alone right now.”
Albus didn't say anything. When he had completed his slow track around the lake—only stalling once—he parked up in the driveway and headed for the front door.
"Hey." He turned around, one foot inside the house. His dad was still standing beside the car, frowning at him. "I meant it, Al. You can talk to me or your mum whenever you need to."
He nodded, wanting to avoid his dad's eyes, and went into the house, shooting straight up the stairs and into his bedroom. He closed the door with a bit more force than intended. A mess that he described as modest was gathered on the floor and he had to kick it aside to reveal the old floorboards underneath as he made his way to the desk that overlooked the road and the lake.
Nancy kept trying to beautify the room because apparently he made it look like something from a penal colony. She had hung voile curtains from both the big windows in the room last week. They blew gently in the breeze.
He struggled to hear about life at Hogwarts. It still hurt. Was still a world he was not and never could be a part of. The exclusive club that he knew all about but was denied entry to.
He was kept sheltered from it, out in the middle of the Lake District, but he knew the reality of his condition had caused a seismic stir in the Wizarding world. When he went to the Burrow for dinner, his Granny's hugs were more crushing than usual. His Granddad kept him under close watch as he interrogated Albus about all the muggle things he was surrounding himself with now. Their defensiveness of Albus ramped up for seemingly no reason.
So he bugged his cousins for the truth, asking one of them to tell him what was being said about him, hounding them all for weeks. Once Hugo cracked, and the truth came spilling out, he wished he had never asked. The gossip. The headlines. It had been years, and it still made him bitter.
Albus Potter, son of the great Boy-Who-Lived, and a squib.
He had at least known better than to go looking for these headlines himself.
James responded to the scandal with brashness, reminding the Wizarding world that the Potters were no joke, by making one long nuisance of himself. Like enchanting Quidditch balls the night before one of the last matches of the year.
At Hogwarts, it sounded like the children were free-range for the most part, allowed to roam the castle and expansive grounds as they liked.
His parents were concerned with allowing Albus that same sort of restricted freedom, and so they had come to an agreement a while ago that would allow him, within reason, free rein outside of the house. He was allowed to come and go as he pleased up until ten o'clock at night, and as long as he always answered the phone if one of them rang him. He was grateful for it.
They wanted him to feel as similar to his siblings as he could.
Albus stuck his Spotify on shuffle, emptied his backpack onto his desk and fished out his homework diary from the mess of books, pens and empty crisp packets. He had three worksheets to complete for Double Sciences. He decided to get started on them before dinner. They were all due in first thing tomorrow.
The sounds of the Seventies and Eighties dominated his music charts; osmosis from listening to the things Nancy liked, punctuated occasionally by bands like Gorillaz. Sam Fender. It was easy to lose himself in the sound. The only time it was easy.
Layla, by Derek and the Dominoes, blasted from his speakers at ear-piercing volume until he felt a broom handle bumping against the floor—the ceiling of the dining room—in warning. He turned it down slightly.
An hour later he was called downstairs, to the dining room, where his parents were sitting down to eat. A third place was set for him. As he took his seat, he tuned in to what they were talking about.
"And no one's heard anything yet? Oh, how awful," his mum was saying, and she turned to Albus. "Has there really been no news of Will Byers yet?" He shook his head, mouth already full of pasta. "The boy's poor mother. She works at the grocery shop in town. Lovely woman."
Albus turned his head down, concentrating on his dinner rather than the thought of Will Byers, because it still made his stomach twist.
His parents seemed perfectly capable of talking about it. As dinner progressed they talked of joining the search in the woods, offering what services they could to the police put in charge of the case, going to Joyce and her older son, Jonathan, to offer them help.
Albus didn't think appealing to Jonathan would bear much fruit. If he had worried five years ago that he would be the odd one out at Winsome Comp, he was wrong to; Jonathan managed to take the title despite a lifetime spent in the town. Albus had never spoken to him much. He felt bad for him now, obviously he did, but that didn't translate so easily into doing something about it.
"Anyway, until Will turns up, I think we need to talk about restrictions on when you're out of the house."
It took Albus about ten seconds to realise his mum was talking to him. He paused, fork hovering halfway between his mouth and the plate, and stared between his parents. The lights flickered in their wall brackets. At last, what she had said sunk in.
"What?"
"Albus, if something's going on, I don't want you to get caught up in it," she said. "I'm not talking total lockdown, this isn't Azkaban, I just want to make sure you're safe."
"But we don't know that something's happened to him!" he said. "He could have just—I don't know, I mean—I'm meant to be going to the cinema tomorrow night!"
"Oh, are you? With who?"
His dad sounded neutral enough, but it was obvious this was fast becoming an interrogation.
"With Nancy," Albus said hotly.
"Well, what time is this film on? We want you in the house at eight o'clock—"
"Eight o'clock?"
"Yes, Albus," his dad said sharply. "We don't know yet whether what's happened to Will is something more serious than a young boy running away from home. Until we do I don't want you out past sundown."
"This has to be a joke."
"I hope this film you're seeing has an early showing," his dad said, stabbing a piece of pepper with great force. "Because you're going to be home for eight."
The lights flickered again, more strongly, and Ginny's hand went to Harry's arm. His glare didn't lessen, and neither did Albus'. Then the lights stabilised, if anything shining stronger than before, and Albus threw his fork down onto the table, knowing he had lost. His dad kept on eating, his expression set in grim satisfaction.