Smells like a pipe dream

by wh4t_ev3r

Summary:

Andrew Minyard always knew he was different, but he chalked it up to being a troubled kid without a family or a home. Instead, he finds out he belongs to a world full of magic and spells and everything he never really believed in, a world where he has a family to protect, where he has power and hope for friendship and love. But nothing is ever as good as it seems.

Notes:

Well, hello there.
My name's Martha and I'm the author. I'm from Italy, so I'm writing this note mostly to let you know that English isn't my native language. The fandom for AFTG in Italy is very small, so, in order to reach more people, I've decided to write this in English. Any and every correction about grammar and spelling are welcomed in the comments!

I also wanna warn you that somethings may sound a little off about the characters, as the story develops. That's because these are not the grown adults we all met in the original trilogy by Nora Sakavic. These are children, teens, so their personality may not be quite exactly like the original. They are younger, more naïve, more prone to have stronger, deeper feelings and not be able to control them. This is an AU, so not everything will be precisely as canon.

That said, enjoy the story!

Chapter 1: Enchanted

I batted away the hand that was hovering over my face. Maybe a little too hard, since my cousin let out an audible gasp and a “ouch!”, but it was enough to stop him from pressing my eyelid.

“Would you stop touching me? It’s getting frustrating,” I hissed at him from across the booth, baring my teeth.

“I wouldn’t touch you if you didn’t look like you were in a bar fight!” he replied, hand over the one I slapped away as to massage it.

I sighed and let it slide for the moment. I looked out of the window, watching the landscape flying by so quickly I couldn’t even really grasp where we were, the details of this journey. Maybe that was the whole point, maybe you’re not supposed to understand how to get to this shitty school. How would I know? Until a few days before, I didn’t even know magic existed. I was not an idiot, and I was not oblivious to the fact that I’ve always been somewhat special. I didn’t go as far as thinking that my wishes getting true were some kind of superhuman power in my bloodstream.

“I was in a fight,” I clarified, “I was in a fight, in juvie, where your dad picked me up from.”

That shut Nicky up, at least for a few minutes.
He was nice, really. He wasn’t the kind of guy I expected to be part of a negligent family, but what kind of people even are those? He didn’t know I was even a person until his father looked me up and found out I was being raised by humans – or muggles, as they call them – and was in jail at the dire age of 14 years old. That was the reason my face was battered: I had a cut on my top lip that kept opening up and bleeding, a black - purple-ish, really - eye, and some bruises here and there.
All the same, I could tell Nicky liked me, maybe just for the sake of my brother who was still studying us like we were some kind of freak social experiment, and someone was about to jump out and tell us this was all a joke, and we weren’t actually family. I did get it, in some ways. It was hard to think of them as family, flesh of my flesh. They were never there and they just kind of appeared in my life, spawned where previously there was nothing. It was easier than I expected, to come to terms with that, especially since Nicky was some kind of human firework and Aaron did look exactly like me, but it was still a hard concept to fully grasp. I never had family. Or, at the very least, someone who loved me, who cared for me and my education. I never felt the need to have someone like that anyway.
But that was well before I went to Hogwarts.
So, there I was, on a magic train, headed for a magic school in a magic land. What could be so magical about Scotland?
My uncle gave me luggage and clothes and books and a cat, for some reason. Nicky named him King Fluffkins, and I went on, boarding a train in an invisible train station in the middle of London. I get why people don’t believe in magic: this shit sounds bonkers.

I was petting King when the train jumped and so did he, scared. He leaped off my lap and started running away when I tried to catch him.

“That looks like a you problem,” Aaron stated, still looking at me like I was about to disappear from before his eyes.

“Thanks, Gretel,” I replied, getting up so I could chase the cat.

As I walked through the train hallway and passed the booths where the students were seated, I examined their looks.
They were colorful and seemed to be happy, all wrapped up in red, blue, green and yellow. They looked like they were on the trip of their life, to the most beautiful place, and they didn’t seem to mind the wait. They didn’t seem to mind the fact that we were in the middle of nowhere, traveling at the speed of light. And they all looked at me like I was some kind of ghost, flabbergasted and shocked.
I didn’t really pay attention to that and kept searching the floor for my new, black cat, until I passed a booth and heard a gasp and a screech and a voice saying:

“Woah, Aaron! What the hell happened to you?”

I looked up and saw a very – emphasis on very, because his legs took up the whole booth – tall, black man, surrounded by two girls and guy.
They all looked at me in disbelief and utter panic.

“To me? Nothing, luckily” Aaron, who apparently followed me, answered from behind, “to him? A fight. Muggles like throwing punches.”

“Yeah, they don’t value their faces nearly enough,” the blond, tall girl in the booth confirmed, looking at her reflection in the window and scrunching up her nose.

“Okay, but who exactly is he?”, the black girl beside her asked.

I was about to reply that it was a stupid, rather rhetorical question since Aaron and I were twins and it wasn’t really shocking that we might be related, but then I noticed a petite, pale, blond girl crouched down at my feet.
And she was stroking King’s belly.

“That’s my cat,” I simply said, tilting my head to the side.

“I didn’t quite catch your name,” she just replied, a smile on her face as she looked up at me.

“Well, I don’t know any of yours either, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are indeed petting my cat.”

“Uh, feisty! I like him,” she said, standing up and handing me King, “and I’m Renée, by the way. Now, can I know your name?”

“He’s Andrew”, and that was Nicky.

Was this a band reunion of some sorts?
It was, in fact.

“Sorry for mistaking you for Aaron,” the black guy said, “I’m Matt, nice to meet you.”

He then pointed and added:

“That’s Danielle but you must call her Dan, or you will be slammed into a wall, trust me. And then we have Allison and Seth, weirdest couple on campus, and you have met the lovely, lovely Renée. And that’s the most of us,” he smiled, like he was proud of himself.

“Most? Us?” I shook my head.

“One is missing, actually. You’ll meet him tonight at dinner, though. He sent me a letter some days ago saying he wouldn’t be able to catch the train,” Danielle – or Dan, apparently – said, eyes fixated on me as she talked, “and yes, us. We are a group, or a clique, or… whatever you want to call us. We are friends. People don’t necessarily like that, Merlin knows why, but we make do. Is that a problem?”

“Have some pity,” Nicky replied, launching himself into the booth and on Matt’s lap, who giggled in response, “I don’t think he ever had any friends.”

“Yeah, he’s not exactly a social butterfly,” Aaron added, stepping into the booth himself.

“Well, I still like him,” Renée stated and winked at me.

“I bet Neil will like him,” Allison pounded on, finally looking away from the window and at me, taking in the whole image of me and smirking, “I bet he’s just his type.”

“That’s just nauseating,” Aaron said.

“Neil doesn’t like boys,” Nicky answered, “I would know. I asked him, like, a lot of times.”

“We know that” everyone replied in unison.

And that was enough for me to decide it was time to take off and return to my booth.

“Well, I’m going to go, now,” I said and turned away from them.

“Coming, Hansel,” Aaron rolled back his eyes and followed me again.

But when Nicky widened his eyes, and Matt straightened his back and they all looked up, I felt a chilling sensation down my spine.
I turned around just to see a group of people, all in black and red and gold, pale as it is possible while still having blood circulating in your body, looking at us like they were predators, and we were mere flesh.
A small, Asian guy stepped apart from that crowd, taking us all in as he smiled and sighed.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t our favorite freaks,” he started, “who is the new guy?”

The group stayed quiet, and Seth hugged Allison as to protect her. I didn’t quite understand why they were so afraid of him, but it seemed like it was an over-exaggeration, considering the guy couldn’t be so strong and intimidating as he seemed to be to them. So, I just shrugged.

“You must be really dumb,” I replied, “for you not to see I’m identical to my twin brother. Take a guess, Addams family, it’s not that hard.”

Some of the guys behind him let out a gasp, some chuckled and he just got angry. He pointed his finger at me, jaws clenched and body tense.

“I’ll let it slide because you’re new,” he whispered, “but next time, you’re going down.”

“I’ll be waiting, Mulan,” I said, smiling at him like he was doing just a few moments ago.

As he walked away and his cult followed him, I pointed back and looked at the group, who was staring at me like I was better off dead at that point.

“Who was the little douchebag?”

“That was Riko,” Dan said, “and please, never do that again.”

“Why? What’s so special about him?”

“Just trust us, okay?” Renée looked terrified, “he’s not good news. Stay away from him. For your own safety.”

“I can watch my back,” I replied, petting the cat who was still held against my chest, “don’t worry about me.”

I then finally turned away and went back to my booth, where I laid on the seat, looked outside and thought about everything that was happening.
It was hard to keep track of the news in my life, the changes I had to make so suddenly, so quickly. So unexpectedly. I was just a boy who made very wrong choices for some very good reasons, I was just some dude who was fighting for his life with his teeth and nails. I never expected to be anything more. I never expected to be somewhat important. I was raised by twelve different families, never too long and never too lovingly. I was never enough, never educated, always beaten up and abused. I lost hope, growing up, to ever be free and live my life like it was actually mine.
Then the guard came, said I had visitors when I didn’t even really know anyone besides my cell buddy and took me to the family room. My uncle said my mother never admitted until some days before that she had a second son, that she was mentally ill and made a wrong decision many years before. He said that they would be happy to pay for my freedom and take me in and send me to a school that was appropriate for people like me.
I thought he meant a school for troubled youth. I thought he meant I had to change before I could be accepted into their house. I never would had thought he could bring me in a magical alley full of wizards and witches and tell me I was one of them, too. That all my family was pureblood, that I should have been raised to be the fantastic wizard I probably was.
I only had a few days to comprehend the extent of the deal before I was put on this train. I still didn’t know a lot about this school, and some 11-year-olds knew so much more than me. I still didn’t know how or why my wand was different from Aaron’s, or what was magic and how do we cast spells and was everything real? Were ghosts, and fairies, and vampires real?

How could this be happening?

Before I knew it, it was dark outside, and we’d been traveling for hours. Nicky and Aaron came back to our booth shortly after me and started chatting about the subjects and the courses they’d be taking this year. I couldn’t believe neither of them mentioned math or science. It all revolved around magic, somehow. Did they even know how to do basic math?

When the train stopped, we got off and had to leave our luggage and King Fluffkins behind. I assumed somebody would collect it afterwards.
We reunited with the rest of the group. Only then I noticed they were all wearing different attire, and that was probably why people didn’t like them hanging together.
Every group I laid my eyes upon had the same clothes, the same color. They were mixed up and of different ages, so they didn’t fit the standard.

“Oh, my sweet children!”

I looked up… and up, and up, and up.
The most gigantic man I’d ever seen, big and tall and with long, brown hair and beard, stood just before us. He had his arms wide open and a smile going from ear to ear.
The group just screamed and jumped and ran towards him, latching onto his body like he was some kind of big, fluffy teddy bear. I stayed distant, observing the scene.

“I missed you so much, kiddos,” he added, patting Renée’s head, “and who are you?”

“People seem to be asking that a lot,” I just said.

“Ah, we got ourselves someone with a bit of an attitude! That’s not going to be a problem,” the giant – half-giant, or so Dan would say to me later – smiled at me and signaled me to join the group hug. I just shook my head.

“He doesn’t do hugs,” Nicky explained.

“Well, if that’s the case, I’m Hagrid, little one,” he presented himself, and did a bit of a bow as the others left him alone, “if you follow me, I’ll lead you to the castle and then we part our ways.”

I nodded and started to follow him and the group. They were chatting away about everything and anything when I felt something by my side.

“Nervous?”

It was Renée, arms crossed behind her back and gaze fixated above, to the stars and heavens. She walked graciously and silently, like her feet didn’t really touch the ground. When I looked ahead, I saw the reason she was asking.

Hogwarts was, indeed, a castle. It was so high I couldn’t really see the top of some of the towers without my glasses. It didn’t look like a school, a least not the schools I was used to go to. It looked like a medieval fort and, I have to be honest, it scared me a bit. So, I looked at the girl beside me, who was smiling at me.

“I know, it’s intimidating,” she whispered, “that’s what I thought when I first saw it, too. But you’ll change your mind, in time. Hogwarts is home for those like you and me.”

“Like you and me?”

“For those who don’t belong anywhere,” she explained.

I nodded, searching for air in my lungs and finding none. That’s when she grabbed my hand and I went numb, shocked, angry, and cold.

“Renée.”

“Yes, Andrew?”

“I… I have a bit of a problem with touch, but I think you're nice and I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, “let go of my hand.”

She hastily let go of it and looked at my trembling limbs.

“I’m sorry,” she said in return, “I’ll never touch you without asking first ever again. I’ll make sure the others know about it, too.”

“Thanks. And, by the way, I do think you're okay, I guess,” I whispered, strength gone and lost.

“I also think you're okay,” she smiled again, “You’re safe here, Andrew, I promise.”

And I believed her, for the first time in my life.

 

---

 

Hagrid left me and the guys at the entrance, where they also parted ways from me.

As stated in the letter of my admission, I was to have the tour of the school with the first-year students, so I could participate in the sorting ceremony without attracting attention upon me. It really helped that I was as short as they come, because I blended easily into the group of children three years younger than me.

We were greeted at the door by a professor, and she presented herself as Minerva McGonagall. She was really, really old and honestly, I wondered how she was still alive. She probably witnessed the French revolution with her own eyes. She had stern eyes, a severe look on her face and grey hair tied in a very slick bun. But she seemed kind and loving as she took us from room to room, explaining the details of this magical school and how it worked. There were a few warnings, too: don’t explore too much, the stairs like to change – whatever that meant – and the paintings hear and watch everything and anything we do in the corridors, so we better watch our mouths.
I bet that was particularly aimed towards me.
As we stood before the entrance of the dining room, she turned to us and smiled.

“Children,” she began, “very few people are lucky enough to attend this beautiful school, and I’m very proud to say that here, you are at home. This will be your house and school and family until you are brilliant young adults who will shape the future of magic. I hope you will find here the harmony and the joy we are willing to give you. Now, if you follow me, the sorting ceremony will begin.”

We stepped into the dining room, following McGonagall and everyone, all at once, looked up.

I was stunned.

The ceiling wasn’t there, or it probably was, but it was surely covered by an incantation that depicted the night sky so beautifully, it almost looked real. It was identical to the one Renée and I were looking at just minutes before, in awe at the magnificence of the stars and moon and the deep, blue sky. I then looked around me to see four parallel tables that were basically as long as the room itself, which ended in a short staircase and a horizontal table were the professors sat. There was a little bookstand at the top of the staircase, and a chair next to it.
We were headed there.
McGonagall pointed at the tables and explained how they were divided per Houses, so that, when we’d be sorted out, we would know where to go and sit. She went up the staircase and held another little monologue so the other students would listen and stop talking with each other.
I looked back to recognize the familiar faces of Nicky, Matt and Renée sat together at the very start of the table just beside me. They were all in the same House, then. Whatever that was. They smiled and waved at me, and I guessed that was what made them similar: they were warm, and accepting, and they valued nothing more than loyalty and friendship.
Dan was sat at the table next to theirs, where red reigned: not too far from her there was Riko’s group and friends. I didn’t know how such a fierce, strong woman as Dan appeared to be, could be put in the same position as Riko and his little cult of zombies, but all the same, I guessed.
Aaron was alone at the table across from them, where everyone wore blue and black: most people there were silent and absorbed in the ceremony, and I guessed they were the group that valued knowledge and intellect.
Behind him, at the green table, hugging and holding hands were Allison and Seth, who were too quiet and self-absorbed to actually gain some information about them.
As I watched all of them in what was supposed to be their natural element, people were being called and sorted out into those same Houses. People so young, how can they have an actual set of values? How can they know what that little child was supposed to be?

“Andrew Minyard,” called McGonagall.

I looked ahead, where she was waiting for me at the bookstand.

I popped out of the crowd, walked up the staircase and sat on the chair. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but certainly it was not a hat. A simple hat.

That talked.

“How interesting,” it said, “someone who really doesn’t know who they are.”

“I…”, I began, but it didn’t let me finish.

“Oh, child, your thoughts are so loud! What do you feel? What do you think?”

I sat there in silence, heart pounding as I didn’t know how to respond and how to act. I grasped the chair, nails digging into the wood.

“I see someone who is smart, but cunning, loyal and brave. I see someone who is not afraid to do something wrong if it is to protect someone they love… or maybe just themselves. A mystery, indeed, because you walk in here and you don’t even know why… or how. How can I sort you out? How can I decide?”

“Why did you put my brother there?”, I asked, closing my eyes, and thinking about Aaron.

“Ah, yes! Your brother… the Ravenclaw. Do you wish to be with your brother?”

“I guess…?”

“Well, that could put you in Hufflepuff. I have to be careful with you, my child. I have the feeling if I put you in the wrong place, I could ruin you…”

“Why?”

“Because everyone who values everything is too fragile to endure heartbreak and strong enough to be feared. You are powerful and you are curious, you are loving, and you are cold-blooded. You could be anything, any one of those Houses. So where do I put you? Where do you stand?”

“Why are you asking me? Isn’t this your whole job, stupid talking hat?”

“I see why you say that,” it said, then took a minute to think about it in silence, as the whole room stayed quiet, “Then, it’s settled. Ravenclaw!”, the hat shouted, and the table in blue rose and applauded me.

I walked in a trance towards my brother and sat beside him, looking at the food on my plate.

“Why did it put you here?”, Aaron asked as soon as I picked up a fork.

“I don’t know, ask the bloody hat.”

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

We sat in silence throughout the rest of the ceremony and the dinner, which was accompanied by the annual welcome speech by the headmaster, Dumbledore.

When everyone started scattering away to their beds, the group reunited around us, and Aaron started chatting away with them.
I moved away just a little, focusing on the food: I hadn’t had something in my stomach that felt like real food in years. I hadn’t eaten like this ever.

“You seem awfully quiet for someone who just got in the most famous magical school in the world,” an unfamiliar voice beside me said.

I lifted my gaze from my plate and pointed it at the guy beside me.

And my food caught in my throat.
He was stunning. Ocean blue eyes and red, fiery hair that curled a bit at the ends and fell in front of his eyes, a face so symmetrical it was almost scary and two full, rosy lips pressed together in a small, cunning smile. He was the most beautiful person I have ever laid my eyes on. He was so pretty I almost forgot what he said.

“I’m not the chattery type,” I replied.

“You and the hat talked quite a lot, what was that about?”, he said, grabbing a plate and stuffing it with food.

And then, I noticed he wasn’t using a fork. He was lifting stuff. Like, with his mind.

“What are you doing?”

“Magic, dummy,” he smiled again.

“But… you’re not saying spells. And you’re not using a wand,” I pointed out.

“Yeah… sometimes I don’t need to do that. So, what was the hat telling you?”

“Who even are you?”, I asked, returning to the food in my plate so I could go on about my life and avoid this ridiculous, pointless conversation.

“I’m Neil,” he said, and extended a hand towards me.

“I don’t…”

“Oh, I didn’t want to shake your hand. I just… wanted the salt. Could you pass it? It’s like, right beside you. Thanks.” 

I tilted my head to the side and looked at him, really looked.

“Did Renée talk to you?”

“No, why?” he said, grabbing the first big bite of food with his fork and stuffing it in his mouth. I pointed at his hand as I passed him the shaker.

“Oh, yeah. No, I just noticed you weren’t really a touchy guy. It’s fine, really. I don’t like touch either,” he kept rambling on.

“You… talk a lot.”

“Well, it’s just damned luck that you don’t talk at all, then,” he smiled all teeth at me, and I nodded.
It made me smile a little too.

“Why weren’t you on the train?”, I finally asked after quite some time.

“I came by foot,” he said, not lifting his gaze from the food.

“Do you live near here?”

“Let’s say that,” he nodded.

He talked to me about how he transferred the year before from Durmstrang, where his mother and father enrolled him. So, he knew all about being the “new kid”. He told me how the group of friends took him in, outcast with other outcasts, and they all became friends. They all played a game, a magical game that was like rugby but in the air. Quidditch, it was called. He told me the tryouts were in a month and I could try to play if I wanted to.
He kept talking and talking, never really saying anything about himself or his family. It was extremely clear that, while the group thought they were all alike, he was different in some ways. It was like he talked in fear I asked something about him, something he didn’t know how to reply to without telling me a truth he didn’t want to say out loud.

“Did the puppy get a new friend?”

Suddenly, between my face and Neil’s there was Riko’s, smiling wickedly at the both of us. Neil sighed, and batted Riko’s hands away from his shoulders.

“Leave them be, Riko,” a guy from his group said. He was tall and pale, just like the others, but he had a little “two” tattooed on his cheekbone. Riko had a “one”, in roman numbers.
So, it didn’t surprise me when he ignored the first guy.

“I’m having a lot of fun tonight,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t come here and joked around with my little doggy.”

“It’s our first night,” that was Renée, coming closer to us, as to protect us from him, “don’t you like, have some holidays? Is tormenting us a full-time job for you?”

“Shut it, pixie,” he yelled, and Matt was quick to hug her so she wouldn’t be scared. But the only thing I saw in Renée eyes was pure rage.

“So, do you like your new pet, puppy?”, Riko kept going, looking at Neil. He just clenched his fists and squeezed as hard as he could, “is this a no? So, what if I do this?”

He put a hand on my shoulder. The other ran to a knife.

I was quicker.

I grabbed his hand, the knife, stood up and flipped him onto the ground, over my shoulders. I was tiny and short, but I didn’t go to juvie because I was fragile as a flower. As Riko laid onto the ground, I knelt on his chest and pointed the knife at his throat.

“Touch me again, samurai,” I hissed, “and I will rip out your windpipe and use it as a flute to play at your funeral, do you understand me?”

He just stared at me blankly, but I took it as a win, so I pierced the floor right next to his throat with the knife and got up. I started walking toward the hallways, not looking back at the people I left behind.

“Where are you going?”, that was Dan.
“To my bed. I need some sleep,” I shouted back.
“But you don’t know where the common room is,” Aaron.
“And you don’t know the password,” Matt.
“Don’t go alone, Andrew,” Renée.

“I’ll ask around,” I lifted my hand to signal them to stop caring.
When I was about to exit the dining room, though, I turned around. Riko was gone, and the group was talking like nothing happened, not caring about me or where I was headed. But two blue eyes were studying me like I was the most interesting thing that they’d met in a while.

Chapter 2: What else can I do?

“Wake the hell up, Leia!”

The curtains around my bed were snatched open, yanked away, and the feeble sunlight hit my face. I squinted, covering my head and eyes with the duvets, but Aaron pulled those too. I jolted up, sitting straight and glowered at him. He was already dressed in robes, the clean white shirt and his Ravenclaw tie. Apparently, I had one too. No clue where it was supposed to be, but I did have it.

“What the actual fuck, Aaron? What time is it? That’s the bloody crack of dawn!”

“Honestly, why do I bother?”, he growled, “I don’t even know why you were put here! Get up, you’re going to miss breakfast and lessons start today!”

He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him and the other two boys that were in our same dorm. I wondered who they had to kick out just for me to sleep with my twin brother. I was very much willing to give up the spot, considering I didn’t even enjoy the company of the short-tempered blond boy in the first place. He didn’t like me, and that meant I didn’t have to put in much effort to like him either. We were at a stale mate of our relationship, but that didn’t bother me. It’s not like I wanted to be his brother. I’d had enough of “brothers” for a lifetime, thank you very much.

It was the first week of lessons, which meant I had been in this castle for almost a week already. I didn’t have much to do, except observe, learn the place, walk around. So, that was what I did. I woke up every day, went to have breakfast – who the hell can eat that much food? – and the strolled around, keeping track of the tricks and kinks of the castle.
The stairs did indeed move, and that was a big problem. I already caught prefects doing levitating spells on first years who were falling to their doom because they didn’t catch the stair moving in time, twice. I wondered how one was supposed to know when and where the stairs were going to go, and how one was supposed to move around this castle without the fear of dying. I guessed people just took their chances. Either way, the stairs were the least of the problems: the castle had hiding places and secret passages, which were not that hard to find when you were specifically looking for them.

There was a ghost – or rather, Nicky explained, a poltergeist – named Peeves who just flew around tormenting students and teachers. He was fun – until he tried to hurl a roll of toilet paper at me. Then, there were the four ghosts of the Houses, but I guessed they weren’t the only ones around the grounds. The statues could move, the portraits could open to passages and recesses to hide if you said the right words. Most passages lead to other parts and wings of the castle, only a few outside the grounds, into the little wizard village that the students visited some weekends a year.

The outside, the grounds and the lake, were a little difficult to explore without rising suspicion, so I waited, but still studied them from the Ravenclaw tower. Apparently, to see the other common rooms, I had to have the password. I guessed that if I asked Nicky, Neil and Dan I could easily have access, but that ruined the fun of it. So, I waited for someone to just drop it casually while I was standing around, probably hiding.

Lunch and dinner were the most annoying moments of the day. I had to spend them with Flitwick, the Charms professor, who was also the Head of Ravenclaw and the one who was supposed to put me up to speed with students my year. I guessed people found that hard, because he spoke to me like I was a baby, the first few times.

“You have to be careful with your wand, the movements must be exact and precise and…”

He stopped right on his tracks when he saw I was levitating the feather. Mind you, it was still hard. Took all my focus. But he said some students took a whole term to learn that spell. I couldn’t see how that was possible.

He said only one student was as gifted as I was: Neil Josten, the Slytherin.

Neil was impressive. He used wandless and wordless magic all the time. He could use spells so advanced they weren’t even in the set books for the seventh year. He was flawless and charming, and I could see everyone in our little group – with the marvelous exception of Aaron, who seemed to loathe the guy – looked up to him like he was a superstar. He was very modest and usually answered with something like ‘it’s just a silly trick’ or ‘it’s really not that difficult’. He was perfect.

But he was lying through his pearly, sparkling, beautiful teeth.

I could understand it was difficult to see, when you didn’t look, just like the passages and secret hiding spots in Hogwarts. But if you really looked and listened, it was kind of obvious. He never talked about himself, he never told anyone why Riko was so obsessed with him, he never really spoke about his father and mother, especially the former. And there were the scars.

Hogwarts was kind enough to have uniforms that included sweaters, long-sleeved shirts and robes. It was difficult – thank God for that – to see anyone’s skin and body underneath those. But it was impossible to cover everything up when you have that many scars. He was covered in them. Some were little, beautiful rivulets of silver streaming down his body, on his throat and wrists. Some were deep, red, and it was almost scary to think of how he could’ve possibly got them. I guessed it had something to do with his father. I never really asked. I knew what it meant to have scars and not want to show them around.

Nevertheless, I noticed. I didn’t understand how the others, who spent so much time with him, didn’t.

As always, the group was already there when I showed up for breakfast. I sat next to Renée, who smiled gently at me and then turned to eat her breakfast. People around shot glances at us, scowling and whispering at each other. They probably didn’t like that such a heterogeneous group sat together at the Hufflepuff table, smiling and enjoying themselves. I was starting to wonder whether the Houses were like cults, and you couldn’t live outside them.

“Slept okay?”, Renée asked, not lifting her gaze from the food.

“Yeah, whatever,” I scooped up some eggs and put them on my plate.

“He better have, he was about to miss lessons,” Aaron hissed.

“Not everyone is used to wake up as soon as the Sun shows its face, Aaron dear,” Neil finally arrived, ruffling Aaron’s hair as he sat beside him and across from me.

“Also, I’m totally Luke. You can be Leia,” I told Aaron, sticking out my tongue at him, and Neil laughed lightly.

He looked up and smiled at me, slightly inclining his head.

“Ready for your first official lesson? I think we have Defense Against the Dark Arts together, today after lunch.”

I nodded, not particularly interested in the topic – and, also, trying to avoid his eyes. Flitwick was able to put me up to speed in Charms, Potions, History of Magic, Transfiguration, and a few others of the core subjects, but I still had to decide three other ones I was supposed to pick up for the rest of the year at least. I was interested in Care of Magical Creatures, just because it would’ve told me more about this strange world I now was a part of, and then Runes and Divination. There were a few others that caught my eye, though, and I wanted to actually give time to the choice.

I stood up, having finished, and shrugged.

“I better get going. Charms first thing, and I have to pick up a few books from the library.”

Renée smiled again and waved at me, while Neil just looked down at his plate and said nothing while I walked away. Whatever. It’s not like I was expecting him to do anything.

Nicky noticed I was getting up and followed me, I rolled my eyes. He matched my pace – of course he could, seeing he was twice as tall as me – and began talking, hands in his pockets as he walked. People waved at him in the corridor and smiled, calling his name. His yellow and black tie was loose on his collar, and I thought he ought to adjust that before lessons but wasn’t about to speak to him any time soon. He’d had to figure that out himself.

“So, how are you? How’s Aaron?”, he finally spoke up.

“Great,” I just said.

“How d’you find the group?”

“Fine.”

“You can say more than one word at a time, y’know?”

“Really?”, I spat, pointedly. He didn’t seem to mind and kept walking beside me. I grunted, “The group is fun. Whatever.”
“What do you think about Neil? He seems to spend a lot of time with you.”
“He’s okay, I suppose. He talks so much sometimes I want to rip my ears off and throw them inside the lake, but he is fine-”, my eyes widened, and I swallowed down the embarrassment in my voice, “I mean, you know, kind and cheerful, not like, beautiful or… you know.”

“Neil what now?”, Nicky yelled, stopping in his tracks and putting a hand on my shoulder so I would stop too. I slapped that away, narrowing my eyes.

“Do not touch me, Nicky. And yes, Neil talks a lot. What about it?”

“Neil never talks. He’s the shiest person I have ever met!”, he kept screaming. People were looking, so I rolled my eyes and sighed, walking away. I could see the entrance of the library by then, and I hoped that once we were under the strict jurisdiction of Mrs. Pince he would finally stop talking.

“Well, maybe he just doesn’t like you,” I suggested.

“Everyone likes m-”

“Langlock!”, I whispered, pointing my wand at him. He finally went quiet, but his hand ran to his mouth to check why he couldn’t speak. If the spell worked, his tongue was stuck at the top of his mouth.

“There, Nicky. We’re in a library, have some respect,” I smirked at him, who just scowled and followed me further into the large, airy room.

I went straight to the Charms section, picking up some books that were mentioned in the bibliography of our set text for the year. It’s not that I cared, really, but those kinds of things were really interesting for someone who didn’t know wizards existed for most of his life, while simultaneously being one of them. So, I wanted to know more about this world, what it comprehended and what the muggles knew about it. I wanted to know everything, because that was just who I was.

I listed the books on a piece of parchment to bring to Mrs. Pince. I put my bag on the little desk near the shelves.

“Capacious extremis,” I flicked my wand at the bag, and watched its inside expand as I said it. I then levitated the books so I could put them inside the bag and whispered a weightlessness spell, just for my comfort. Alas, the jinx on Nicky wore out by then.

“How the fuck do you know all of these spells? It’s your first week of school! It’s your first week as a wizard,” he whisper-shouted at me while I picked up my bag and I went to look for Mrs. Pince.

“What do you mean? They were all on our Charms text,” I just said, confused.

“You read it all?”

“Wasn’t I supposed to? I also read the Transfiguration and the DADA one, just to be safe. Couldn’t be bothered with Potions, I already hate it. I suppose it could be useful, though.”

“It’s that what you do when you’re not with us? Last week, when you disappeared?”

“Oh no, then I just went walking around,” I replied, shrugging.

“Do you ever sleep?”, Nicky was utterly shocked. I smirked at him again, but I finally found Mrs. Pince.

“Oh, Andrew! What did you want to check out? Same old deal?”, she asked, extending her hand to collect the small piece of parchment.

“Yes, I wrote all the titles. Should have them back by the end of the week, maybe I’ll keep one or two,” I stated, passing her the paper. She looked at it, then raised an eyebrow, concerned.

“Mr Minyard, there’s at least ten titles here.”

“Ten? Are you insane?!”, that was Nicky, and he was yelling again, much to my distaste.

“As I said, by the end of the week. It’s almost nine, I have to go to class,” I announced, turned on my heels and headed back out of the library. Nicky just followed me in silence, his face a mix of confusion, shock and terror. It made me want to laugh, but we were running late. Unfortunately, he was in my Charms class, as all the Hufflepuffs fourth year.

Seth was in seventh year, while Allison, Dan and Renée were sixth year, so we only had breakfast, lunch and dinner together. For the remaining part of the day, classes were divided per Houses and subjects. Usually, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were paired so teachers could push this ridiculous House war between Gryffindors and Slytherins. The most mixed classes were the elective ones, that people chose out of interest for a future career.  

As we entered the room and took our places besides Matt and Aaron, Flitwick began the lesson. That first term we were learning Summoning spells, and they were rather easy in my opinion. He asked to give a look at the set text for the year, then try the most basic spell and wait for him to come to us for some corrections on the form. I took advantage of this time to check the syllabus for Care of Magical Creatures and the document I had to hand to Flitwick at the end of the day about the elective subject I chose.

The classroom was wide, and the desks were put in a horseshoe kind of structure, so that Flitwick desk was precisely at the center and he could look at all of us. Besides me I could hear Aaron whispering the spell to himself as he tried to get the movement right, glancing from time to time at the book beside him. Nicky was reading the paragraph and Matt was looking at the same page, while balancing a quill on his nose, feet on his desk.

After an hour, while I was checking the little box besides ‘Care of Magical Creatures’ on the document, finally Flitwick spoke.

“Alright, lads,” he said, “who wants to try and summon this book on my desk? Do not worry or feel ashamed if you can’t, this is your first try and it is indeed a difficult spell.”
All the class began muttering, flicking their wands left and right and saying the spell out loud. The book didn’t even flinch. Half an hour passed, and I was deep in the syllabus of Ancient Runes. I looked up to see a bored Flitwick reading the book everyone was trying to summon, presuming no one was able to cast the spell at that point.

I saw it as an opportunity, really.

Summoning spells were the first topic of the fourth-year book, and they were fairly simple if you didn’t take the movement presented on the pages too literally. What they were lacking was the skill to move the wand a little more freely. I was able to cast the spell the week before, summoning my quill during the night while my dorm mates were sleeping.

“Accio book,” I said, lazily moving the wand. The book was snatched from Flitwick hands and came flying at me, but I was able to levitate it so it wouldn’t smash on the wall behind me or on my face. I hadn’t mastered it completely, yet – the quill almost blinded me, the previous week. But the book landed easily on my desk, and I read the title. It was one of the books I checked out of the library. That made me feel a little proud and I smiled at the professor.

“How?!”, Aaron screamed.

“Yeah, I know. He’s been doing stuff like this all morning,” Nicky added beside him.

“Good job, Mr. Minyard! I suppose this means you have no business in doing the homework due next week. I do, however, need that document by the end of the day, if you please,” Flitwick arched his furry, white eyebrow.

“Sure, sir,” I nodded, while still looking at the syllabus. I was definitely taking Runes.

“All right, then, chaps. Class dismissed, you can go,” the professor waved his hands towards the door and students began squirming away.
I was starting to put my things in my bag and pick out a book to read while I waited for the Transfiguration class to begin when I felt hands on my shoulders. I looked up to see Matt, a grin so wide his face was nearly splitting in half. I groaned, signaling him to move his hands.

“Oops! Sorry, dude,” he said, lifting his hands in a gesture of surrender, “but you are a bit of a prodigy, I must congratulate you.”

“I’m nothing of the sort,” I simply replied, getting up and slinging my bag on my shoulder. I did a levitating spell on the book so I could read while walking and didn’t have to hold it in my hands.

“Yeah, see? I can’t do that. I bet Seth can’t do that,” Matt said, on my heels.

“Well, you have to admit Seth is a little dense sometimes,” I hissed, looking forward to the end of that conversation.

I walked faster, trying to lose the weird mob that was following me trying to get help on the charms. Fourth-year students tackling me, asking me questions, patting me on my arms and shoulders and hands, snapping fingers in front of my eyes to get my attention. Nicky, Matt and Aaron were only adding to that.

“How do you know so many spells?”

“Who taught you? Was it Flitwick?”

“How did you learn them in less than a week? Were you secretly raised by wizards too?”

“Andrew, what was the movement?”

“How did you know how to do that so precisely?”

“Silencio!”, I shouted, turning around and facing the crowd. All of them fell quiet in a moment of pure, utter bliss and I sighed of relief. As I pointed the wand at them, the book I was reading fell to the ground with a thump.

“I am not your teacher, and I am not going to explain to you things you should be able to do yourselves. This is not Dead Poet Society, for fuck’s sake. If this is my first week as a wizard and I know more than most of you combined, well, maybe you lot are the problem, not me. Leave me alone and, for the love of Christ, shut the hell up!”

McGonagall was a little shocked and confused as to why her whole class was forced into a deadly silence, but she was able to reverse the charm immediately and no one spoke a word about it, even when questioned. She just began her lesson, assuming we had read the first chapter of the book. She explained fondly with her calm, gentle voice what was the goal of the first term: cross-species switches. She began to explain the theory, and all the books flew open at the flick of her wand to the exact page she was talking about. I tuned her voice out – I had already read that.

Transfiguration wasn’t my forte nor of my particular interest. Either way, there was something about transfiguration that did really prick up my ears: the animagi community. While I was checking some books in the library to do some research on the topics of the current term, I stumbled upon a book about animagi: apparently, there were wizards around the world that could transform themselves into animals, so much so that part of their brain could absorb characteristics of the animal as well – increased sense of smell, hearing or eyesight, even speed and athletic abilities. That was before I learned that McGonagall herself was an animagus, and she could easily transform into a cat at any time. On that same book, though, was written that becoming an animagus before coming of age – seventeen years old – was illegal.

Well, something being illegal never actually stopped me from doing it.

The lesson ended without a fuss and there was no test for practical skills, so after that the crowd left me alone. I scribbled the homework on my notebook and scattered away to the Great Hall, hoping to have a little time by myself.

I was acting aloof and calm, but the whole thing was just overwhelming. A castle? Magic? Spells and ghosts? Turning myself into an animal, not having any choice in which one? This place was impossible, and I was just acting like I felt I belonged there. I was panicking most of the time, I was fighting the urge to scream and cry and run away. Because what the fuck even was this? My personality urged me to know more about Hogwarts and the people in it, about the wizarding world and the way it worked because I was scared and I was out of my element, like, really out. I didn’t care I was gifted or capable – even though I didn’t understand how that could be possible – because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just rolling with the flow.

So, I needed peace and quiet and calm for a little while, I needed to breathe and think and realize what I was actually doing there.
I sat at the Ravenclaw table in silence, hoping that nobody saw me arriving. I took a quick scan of the lunch offering and started filling my plate, my book floating mid-air in front of me. It was about cross-species switches and I started dog-earring the pages that were useful for the essay I was supposed to write as homework. However, there was nothing like ‘peace and quiet’ at Hogwarts.

Renée sat beside me, much to the disgust of some Ravenclaw folks who sneered at her, but she stuck her tongue out in response and then smiled at me kindly. I nodded as to acknowledge her presence but kept reading the book and eating in silence. She stared, and stared, and stared, still smiling and, finally, I sighed and turned to look at her. Her hair was so blond it was almost platinum, but the ends were colorful and made her face light up. She was wearing a bright yellow robe, the Hufflepuff crest embroidered on her chest. I tilted my head to the side.

“All right, Renée?”

“Yes,” she basically screamed, “I just finished my first quidditch practice of the year! I missed flying. I live in all muggle neighborhood so I can’t use my broom when I’m away for the holidays. It’s annoying but, what can you do?”

“I guess.”

“Are you trying out for the Ravenclaws, like Neil suggested?”, she finally turned to the food and began eating. I sighed again, either for relief or exhaustion, I couldn’t tell.

“I don’t even know how to fly a broom. I don’t know how to play, Renée,” I replied, raising my hand to the book so I didn’t lose track of where I was reading. I was positive I read the same sentence thrice already.

“I could teach you,” she said, a little too excited for my liking.

“You don’t have to bother with that,” I closed the book, giving up, and summoned the document for Flitwick from my bag. I took a quick look at it before summoning my quill, too, and going to check the box besides ‘Muggle Studies’, guessing it would have been fairly easy for me to pass.

“Oh, don’t do that, Flitwick is going to make you change it,” Renée cooed, reading from over my shoulder. I rolled my eyes, “I mean it! I tried to do the same, but Sprout said they don’t like when muggleborns choose muggle studies because it’s too easy for them.”

“Ugh, I don’t know what else to take,” I rubbed a hand over my face, pressing my fingertips on the closed eyelids. Maybe Nicky was right about that sleeping thing.

“Nicky and Matt take Divination, and I think Aaron and Neil are in the Arythmancy class,” she suggested, pointing at those two subjects on the parchment. I tilted my head again, biting my lip.

A chance to humiliate Aaron again? Yes, please.

“Thanks, Walker,” I smiled a little at her, just pressing together my lips and curling the corners. I wrote a little check sign besides ‘Arythmancy’, even if I didn’t have a clue of what that was, and pushed the document and the quill inside my bag again.

“No worries, Minyard,” she nudged me with her elbow, grinning widely, “so, about the Quidditch practice? Are you up for it?”

“When would I even do it?”

“Well, we usually start before breakfast but there’s a rota for the teams. I can check when the pitch is clear, and the trials are not till two weeks from now. Plenty of time to get good at it!”

“I guess… do you all play for opposite teams? How does that work?”, I asked, returning to the food.

“We don’t take it personally, it’s as simple as that. When our team loses we are still happy for the others. With the exception of Gryffindor, of course,” she whispered that last phrase. I turned to her, confused.

“What about Gryffindors? I thought Dan was in that team.”
“Oh no! Dan is in Hufflepuff with me. Hooch made an exception for her because she was a very good beater and Riko wouldn’t have her on the team because she’s a half-blood. Stupid, little, nasty-”

“Ok, easy there,” I said, giggling to myself.

“Sorry. He’s just… I mean, sometimes I wish they didn’t allow people like him in the school. He’s such a bully, and he treats Neil like shit, like he’s his little lapdog,” she whispered, tucking her hair behind her ear as she lowered her head. Like she was ashamed of having talked so badly about someone who clearly didn’t deserve her pity.

“It’s fine, but I never heard you talk like that about anyone,” I said, hesitantly patting her shoulder to comfort her. I decided it was better to change the topic, “is Aaron on the Ravenclaw team?”

“Yes, he’s a beater too… I’ll explain the roles to you when we get to our first practice,” Renée nodded to herself. I nodded too, still smiling a little.

That girl was pure joy bottled up, and she made me forget a little about my troubles.
Just as we fell into silence and enjoyed the pure comfort of our own company, we heard Filch scold a student. We looked up to see him holding a small, golden, round object in his hands, and pointing menacingly his finger at a fair-skinned, curly headed girl at the Slytherin table. She was looking down, hair covering her face, and I couldn’t make out her expression. From what I could tell by the shiver in her shoulders, she was either laughing silently or crying. Either way, Filch left with the object in hand, Mrs Norris on his heels.

“Poor Tessa,” Renée shook her head, sighed and tried to get a better look at the girl, but her Housemates were already comforting her.

“What was that about?”, I asked, ready to leave. I still had to give the document to Flitwick before the afternoon classes.

“Tessa was kicked out of the Slytherin team last year because of a mean foul during a match with Gryffindor. One of Riko’s minions was to blame, of course, but just her luck: the Head of Slytherin is Riko’s uncle. He can get away with anything when it comes to that House. She kept the snitch of that match as a token but Filch found out, apparently,” Renée explained, getting up herself to follow me out.

“Why is that such a bad thing, though?”

“Oh, that snitch is lost. Once Filch has it, nobody can touch it anymore. His office is like the strongroom of a bank or something,” she waved her hand as to dismiss the subject, starting to walk towards the archway of the Hall. But that caught my attention.

“Are you telling me there is a room, somewhere in this castle, with everything Filch confiscated ever?”

“Yeah,” she answered, nodding slightly but with a very confused look on her face, “why?”

“Oh, nothing,” I smiled widely at her and kept walking, “just an idea.”

Notes:

Hiyaaaa
Sorry for the delayed update! I got busy with university stuff and my co-writer had an exam yesterday so she wasn't feeling up to reading/editing till today. Anyway, I'll try to drop the third chapter "early" to make up for the time lost!
Hope you enjoy, see ya soon! ;)

Chapter 3: Angeleyes

Summary:

TW!!
mentions of rape and child abuse

please read the disclaimer in the notes at the end of this chapter, thank you ;)

For the following days, I made up a plan to break into Filch’s mystical and mysterious office. It took more than a few strolls around the castle to find the entrance, but once I found it, it wasn’t an impossible task. At least, so I thought.

It’s not like I actually had the time to plan anything, really. I had still a lot to read, a shit-ton of homework and once I turned up the document to Flitwick, I had to resume the lunch-time lessons to make up for the year I’d lost in the elective subjects. I didn’t have a moment to spare, if we also add the fact that my brother’s group of friends followed me like I was some kind of freak show, even though I made it extremely clear I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

Renée honored her promise and woke me up every day – apparently, she was smart enough to solve the bronze eagle riddles every time – at the crack of dawn to teach me to fly with a broom. It was fairly simple, once I got the thing to actually float and got over my crippling fear of heights. But it was nice to feel something so rush and intense, for once. She lent me some books about the sport and how it worked, and she told me that Ravenclaw was missing a keeper. I shrugged and feigned apathy, but those practices actually made me quite interested. So, I decided to give that a try, too.

When I went back to the common room every night, I was exhausted and barely able to stand on my own two feet. But as soon as the bedcurtains were closed, I whispered a silencing spell and began to look up ways to access the inaccessible office in a book I found in the library – Hogwarts: A History. Much to Mrs. Pince distaste, I assumed, the book had many notes in different writings and inks, but I gathered they belonged to the same group of people. They seemed old, old enough that I knew I wouldn’t find the owners casually walking around in the hallways.

‘Thank you, Moony, for actually listening to me!!!’

‘Shut it, Pads, he’s only reading it to cause some mischief’

‘You wound me, Prongs. Why else would I read it?’

‘Both of you piss off, I’m trying to read and you’re writing on the pages’

‘Does anybody want to play chess with me?’

That was only the first page. Notes like this were scattered throughout the whole book, making me cackle and imagine a time when a group of four people wondered around the castle, pulling pranks and practical jokes on anyone. Must’ve been fun, being young and carefree, I thought. It looked like they didn’t have a problem in the world but to fool everyone on their path.

I wanted a life like that, I also thought, peeking through the bedcurtain at the sleeping, prone figure of my twin brother. I wanted a life where you don’t have to worry about anything, anyone. Where love is the least of your worries and family isn’t something you have to conquer or admire for afar, something that hurts you and casts you away like you were nothing. Nothing.

I was always nothing. To everyone.

At that point, I usually closed the book and laid on my bed looking at the ceiling. It was near the dawn anyway, so I’d just wait for Renée to come and pick me up.

Then it was practice and lessons with the Hufflepuffs and Herbology with the Gryffindors, who, apart from Riko and his group of delinquents that constantly cost points to their House, actually behaved quite nicely and politely.

I did good in all the core subjects. Potions was utterly boring and tiring, but it was easy to remember the doses and the ingredients by heart. Herbology was a drag, but the Gryffindors managed to make the lessons bearable with some jokes most of the time – unless it was Riko talking.
History of Magic was a strange class taught by an even stranger little professor, and my interest in his tiny, weird person was really what didn’t make me doze off during the classes. I did, on the other hand, fall asleep most of the time during Charms and Transfiguration, mostly because I already knew the topic and contents of each lesson before even entering the classrooms. I loved reading about those subjects, and I actually found out most charms and spells were so useful and made life so much easier, I didn’t even know how a wizard could ever have a problem.

The elective subjects were a little harder, but with Flitwick’s help I was beginning to be on top of things in those too. The Care of Magical Creatures professor was a man held together by staples and tape, at that point, and he only ever talked about anecdotes concerning creatures and beasts who somehow mangled him. But the classes were fun, and the books were interesting. I was looking forward to the XXXXX creatures, but those were debated during fifth year, so I had to wait.
Runes, or the Study of Ancient Runes – as professor Babbling wanted us to call it –, was a tiring and constant exercise and the homework were as boring as they came. But at least it was somewhat useful to my knowledge of the wizarding world, while Divination had seemed pointless without the gift of the vision – whatever.

It was my sheer interest in this strange world which I was catapulted in without the slightest warning that kept me going. I wasn’t mad about the professors and sometimes I thought my muggle teachers could be actually better. But I found the castle and the world around it fascinating, and it was easy to retain information so useful to me. Also, I had a whole library at my disposal, and it was my deep, dark secret that I loved reading more than anything in the world. Actually, I thought at some point somebody ought to catch on about that, given the constant pop-culture remarks I made, but no such luck.

And then, there were the Arythmancy and DADA classes. And I couldn’t even think during those.

I knew I was gay when I was eleven and I found out it wasn’t a normal thing for boys to stare for too long at some men’s body parts, or that I didn’t necessarily want abs, but I did like them, that boys my age and older were thinking of girls’ lips and bosom and legs, and I was just… not. I knew I was gay and that caused a great deal of trouble in my head.

I wondered if Drake knew I was gay. I wondered if he was, or I was just a pastime activity for him.

Either way, I wasn’t shocked anymore, after three years, when I found boys attractive. But he was just too much.

He was so effortless, raising hands and asking questions with his perfect, pink, pouty lips and his slender, deep, blue eyes full of excitement. People liked him, even though he mostly kept to himself, but they followed him like ducklings that had imprinted on their mother, and he was always kind enough to give everyone a little of his time, before dismissing them without even sounding rude. He was so gentle in everything, he moved like he was a bloody ballerina and seemed like he could hear you arriving from miles away.

He always found a way to get to me.

“How are you, Andrew?”, he usually asked me.

“Fine,” I said, breath caught in my throat as I watched him smile at me.

I didn’t know if it was a real crush, or I was just impressed by how perfect he was.

He never sat next to me, but always close enough to observe me and keep me under his nose. He always looked like he was fresh out of a fight, with messed up hair spiking in every direction and a tired, annoyed expression on his face. He was excellent in Arythmancy, though he told me it actually took him a lot of effort to be that good and he only put up with that because he really like the subject, and was first of our class in DADA, but I never saw him actually doing homework.

Neil was like everything in the world was made for him, to accommodate his every desire and wish. He just smiled and the world fell to its knees for him. I didn’t understand why, or how, but the only ones who were not wooed by his perfect charm were Riko and his gang of brainless minions.

Kevin, the tall one with the II on his cheekbone, was also the only one who seemed to have conflicting feelings over his relationships with both Riko, whom I gathered was like an adoptive brother to him, and Neil. Whenever Riko thought it was time to finally unleash something brutal on Neil, a feeling similar to guilt, regret, maybe understanding flashed in Kevin’s eyes for just one quick second. He just turned away and forgot he saw anything, maybe he tried telling Riko to stop but with no results.
Kevin was as spineless as any of them.

But Neil, fortunately, had enough sarcasm in his brain and petty little mouth that he could wipe away an entire town just with his snarky remarks. He always knew what to say, or what not to do, which drove Riko insane. But I suppose that was his purpose anyway.

Either way, I tried to stay as far away from him as possible. He’d seemed to think I was the most interesting thing in the whole damned castle and watched my every move. I was almost positive he could hear my thoughts, so whenever I was around him, I urged myself not to think of anything. I obviously failed, being the queer idiot I’ve always been, because I only ended up thinking about him, and his freakishly perfect hands and his perfect smile and his perfect button nose and his perfect freckles and- ugh.
I hated his guts.

I tried, God – Merlin? Was I supposed to say Merlin now that I was a wizard? Was he the biggest authority here? – knows I tried to ignore him and leave him to bathe in his own popularity.

But my gal Renée apparently had other plans.

“Oi, sunshine! Time for practice,” somebody whispered in my ear. I groaned, “is that how you welcome Renée every morning? How rude, Andrew. I thought you were the polite brother.”

I jolted upright, covering myself with the duvets but logically acknowledging that he’d been standing there long enough to take a very good look at all my torso. I cursed myself for not having locked shut the bedcurtains the previous night, falling asleep as I read the book about Hogwarts, which was right beside me on the bed.

“What are you doing here, Josten?”, I snapped at him. Someone from the other side of the room shushed us. I looked outside the window: the sun hadn’t risen yet.

“Muffliato,” Neil whispered, and I felt my ears throb as he created a bubble of sound around us, then sighed, “Renée’s busy. She asked if I could take you up to practice today. Trials coming up!”

“Busy doing what? I can skip a day. Won’t kill me,” I crashed down on the mattress again, ignoring the redhead’s slight laugh.

“Oh, come on, Andrew. We’re going to have fun,” he snatched the duvet off my body, and I felt my cheeks pink up as he looked at me in my boxers’ briefs, taking in the image. I cleared my throat, and his gaze calmly and slowly rose to my eyes, then he tilted his head to the side.

“Coming, then?”

“If you insist,” I said, getting up. I put on my armbands first thing, and I saw him study the thick pieces of cloth with his narrowed, deep blue eyes, “can you at the very least wait for me in the common room?”

“Sure thing,” he nodded, but took a quick glance at my forearms as he walked away.

I sighed in relief, a placed a hand on my chest to feel my heart racing. What was this guy doing to me? Was it just anxiety, because he seemed to know so much when I said so little? Was it curiosity, because he himself said nothing but he seemed to be everything? Was it that he was just so cute and my gay-ass thought it best to gush over a boy right then and there? Who the fuck knows. But it was driving me mad, for goodness’ sake.

I put on the Ravenclaw's Quidditch uniform and lazily headed for the common room. Neil was waiting there, hands on his knees tapping a tune while he was sitting in silence on a sofa. His head snapped towards me when I entered the room.

“Ready?”, he asked.

“Whatever,” I rubbed my face and yawned. I went towards the tall, arched door and past him, who was quick to stand up and follow. I was beginning to ask myself whether his feet touched the ground or if he was just floating around. Bet he knew a spell to do that, the intelligent, cunning bastard.

“Up all night reading?”

“Yes,” I said, suspicious, “how do you know?”

“The book on your bed,” he said, falling into step beside me as we exited the common room. I raised an eyebrow at him. There were Slytherin prefects doing rounds, and he waved at them, then continued, “You seem like an organized person who wouldn’t just consciously fall asleep with a book next to him, I suppose.”

“Thank you?”

“It was a compliment, Andrew.”

“If you say so.”

“Why are you so detached?”

“Why are you so bubbly?”

“Am not.”

“You are,” I answered, hand in my pockets, “you are bubbly and exuberant and a little bit flamboyant.”

“I am not gay, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I heard. Nicky talks about it all the time,” I rolled my eyes, then I sighed dramatically, back of my hands against my forehead, and said, “What a waste!” in a flawless Nicky impression. Neil laughed.

“Why do they care, by the way?”, I asked, just to know a little more about this unknowable kid.

“Because they don’t understand my answer to the question of who I fancy,” he shrugged. We began descending the stairs and heading for the outside grounds.

“Which is?”

“That I don’t swing,” he just stated.

“So, you don’t like boys nor girls?”

“Suppose you can say it like that.”

“Why don’t you say it like that?”

“Oh, Minyard, and where would be the fun in that?”, he winked at me, and I felt my heart fall to my stomach.

Yep. Definitely had a crush on him.

But it was indeed a crush. It was a feeble thing, a nothing, something not worth twisting the knife in the wound for. I was just attracted to him, because he was gorgeous and funny and smart, but I still didn’t know anything about him so how could I really fancy him? He was a stranger for all thoughts and purposes. I’d get over it, sooner or later.

Having completed that process of thought, I sighed. Neil obviously noticed but didn’t ask. He just kept walking towards the entryway and took a deep breath in as we walked outside.

“I like the smell of the earth, don’t you?”, he said, smiling again.

“I guess,” I trailed after him as he hopped towards the pitch.

The said Quidditch pitch was an enormous circular field surrounded by high, high stands. The stands, divided in sections for all the Houses with a special one to accommodate the professors, were on the same eye level of the six hoops that functioned as goals. I was supposed to guard three of them, while simultaneously being up in the air on a bloody stick. Fucking fantastic.

But I sucked it up while Neil ran to the storage to grab some brooms for the both of us and the balls. I took a look around, breathing deeply to calm my nerves as I always did when I was about to deal with heights. I hated heights so much that I loved them, because they made me feel alive. They filled my empty chest and made me feel like I wasn’t stealing air from those more worthy to breathe.

Neil came back soon after, the brooms tossed over his shoulder and the little box, already wriggling, held by chains in his other hand. He had a grin so wide even the purple hue of the sky reflected on his teeth. God, I hated him.

“I think we can let the bludgers rest for this one. I will just take the quaffle and the snitch.”

“What for?”, I asked.

“I’ll let it fly around so I can practice too,” he said, dropping the brooms on the ground and crouching down to free the little golden ball. The bludgers were thrashing around, chained in with a spell but still willing to be free. Neil took the quaffle and summoned his broom. He waited for me to climb mine.

“Let’s go, Minyard,” he smiled at me wickedly and I felt something in a corner my brain telling me this wouldn’t be an easy practice.
And it wasn’t.

Neil was faster than anything I’d ever seen in my life. One moment he was in front of me, throwing the quaffle with every drop of energy in his bloodstream, and the next he was on the opposite side of the pitch, snitch in hand, all smiles and giggles. He let go of the small golden object another time and came back to me in a matter of seconds, just for him to fly away again as soon as the snitch appeared in his peripheral vision.

He was insane, and it took everything inside of me to keep up with his pace. Not only was he fast in a physical way, but he was also thinking fast. He hurled the quaffle at me from every angle, at any speed or aiming at any of the hoops. He wasn’t as kind and understanding as Renée, and took it all out on me.

It took me a few more minutes than it normally would to catch up, but it wasn’t impossible.

I hovered over the main hoop, waiting for him to come back after finding and catching the snitch for the fifth time. I passed him the quaffle that I was still holding in my hand.
“Score,” I said, “I won’t guard.”

“What? Why?”, he seemed lost, but a sparkle of excitement lit up in his eyes. He looked wild, hair tossing and turning all over in the wind and the smallest crack of a smile on his lips.

“Just do as I say.”

“Aye aye, captain.”

He circled the pitch, picked a place to shoot from with his eyes, got there and put all his speed and strength in the shot. He threw the quaffle into the big, central hoop and scored. I quickly retrieved the ball and tossed it to him, who caught it with both his hands.

“Do it again,” I said.

He tilted his head to the side, bit his lip and nodded. Something told me he was really enjoying this.

He did the same routine as before, circling the pitch once or twice. But I could see it clearly now: the way his eyes twitched when he found the spot, the way they narrowed when he was about to throw, the way his feet bent when he was about to gain speed, the way his arm rose, differently every single time, signaling where he was aiming to.

I rushed to the right hoop, in the upper left quadrant, and stopped the quaffle with one hand extended in front of me. The ball had gained so much speed it kept spinning in my palm and the gloves covering my hand got a little hotter. I tossed the quaffle in my other hand and lifted my gaze upon Neil, who was now directly in front of me, mouth slightly agape.

“You were there when I didn’t even decide where to aim,” he just stated.

“So?”

“How did you know?”

“Why would I tell you?”

“Because that’s what good sportsmen do?”, he tried, giving me his best smile. I scoffed.

“Good thing I’m not one of those, then,” I said, wryly.

He just nodded, then looked directly at the sun and sighed.

“Better go and get changed. The Hufflepuff team will be here soon to practice, and you really don’t want to hear Danielle scream at this time of day.”

“Fine by me,” I shrugged, beginning my descent towards the ground. Neil followed suit and then we headed towards the changing room. We put the balls and the brooms back into the storage room, then Neil announced he was going to shower first since, in his own words, ‘he was fast’. After that practice, I was inclined to believe that.

I knew there was more than one shower inside the bathroom of the changing room – after all, it was supposed to house a whole team of people – but I also acknowledged that if he told me so sternly to go second, there must’ve been a more than valid reason to wait outside. I took a guess it was about his scars, and I was reluctant to admit I had noticed them, since I worried he might cover up more and decide he would close up around me, too. I was having a very hard time accepting the fact that I liked being the only one he talked so much to, that he somewhat trusted.

He promptly came back, his school uniform – probably stashed away in one of the lockers – on and ready for the classes of the day. Only his hair, dripping wet, signaled he had been in the shower just minutes before. My hair was almost brown when wet, but his just went a shade darker. It was still fiery red, though, matching those sparkling blue eyes.

He nodded to me, as a greeting, and I watched him as he searched his robes for his wand, then began stripping down myself – it was not like he hadn’t already seen my body that morning. Still, I kept the armbands and my underwear on, for me to take them off just as I entered the shower in the other room.
I felt the burning sensation of his eyes on me and sighed.

“Josten, God knows I’m one pretty motherfucker, but stop staring,” I said, not even turning back to check if I was right. I felt the air shift as he flinched, surprised.

“How did you know I was looking?”

“You’re always staring at me when you think I’m not noticing, but I have another set of eyes on the back of my head, just so you know” I replied, shrugging.

Before he could answer, I moved towards the bathroom. I heard him sigh loudly and a part of me hoped he would just leave for breakfast or his common room to chat with the others.
I stripped off my underwear and armbands and got in the shower, turning on the water and letting the boiling stream hit and burn my damaged skin. I looked down at my forearms, the outline of the scarred slits getting redder already. I swallowed and closed my eyes, letting my head bump into the wall behind me. The cold tiles gave me shivers along my spine and I sighed.

I hated that he knew. I knew about his, yes, but I didn’t know why he had them, or how he got them. He knew everything, now. Well, obviously not everything, but he knew enough for him to ask about it. He knew enough to guess I was a mentally unstable kid who enjoyed hurting himself on his free time.

But how do you answer the inevitable questions? How do you gather the courage to look into someone’s eyes and say ‘my biological mother abandoned me, and when I thought I had found one who was going to love me like she was my actual mother, turns out her biological son liked me so much as a brother that he decided to rape me and I was in so, so much pain I thought it would be best if I just disappeared from this planet and every time I cut a little deeper, a little stronger and a little more blood poured out, and I still thought well this hurts less than what Drake does to me anyway. He wasn’t even the first one to do it but maybe before I was too young to acknowledge what was being done to me. He was the last, though, because I decided that I had to get away from there, so I went to fucking jail instead’.

I know how you say stuff like that. You simply don’t.

So whatever Neil had in mind about my body and my scars and why I did it, he could keep it to himself. I wasn’t going to say shit.

I bumped my head against the wall one more time – physical pain is always better than psychological one – and began washing myself and my hair.

I walked out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry myself with. As I finished, I put on my underwear, and I picked up my armbands. They were drenched in sweat, and I made a face of disgust. I didn’t know how to do laundry in this godforsaken castle but I had to find out so I could wash those before they began to grow mold or something. Still, I ran them under the shower and gave them a squeeze. I put one on and shivered at the feeling of wet cloth against my teared-up skin. I swallowed my discomfort and sighed.

“Why do you wear those?”, Neil appeared out of nowhere behind my back, and I jumped, placing a hand on my chest.

“Christ, Josten, a bit of warning!”

“Sorry,” he said, but his face was blank – he didn’t feel sorry at all. He knew he had to ambush me for me to spill the tea about my armbands, “still, why?”

“You saw why, why are you asking me?”, I shook my head and put on the other armband.

“Why would you do that to yourself, though?”, he tilted his head to the side, big blue eyes watching me like a curious baby from a stroller. I grunted and turned around to face him, bare torso and all. I had enough already, and my good intentions went away in the blink of an eye. My reluctancy to speak snapped in two like a fragile twig.

“Listen, you don’t ask about my scars and I don’t ask about yours, deal?”

“How do you-”

“You’re not the only one with a good set of eyes, Josten! And you’re not the only one with a shitty life you’re not willing to talk about. Fucking drop it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think I’m stupid? You never talk about your family, or where you come from, or why you were transferred from Durmstrang. And why is Riko so obsessed with you? Why, out of all the students, he chose to pick on you so much? I don’t understand who you’re trying to fool by shamelessly avoiding these topics, but ain’t going to be me. If you want me to talk, you have to talk first. Didn’t go to jail for nothing.”

“You went to jail?”

“God you’re impossible,” I pushed past him and went out to changing rooms. I immediately found my clothes – the Ravenclaw Quidditch robes I had on before, I didn’t have my personal locker yet – and put them on, panting and trying to get ahold of my anger.

“Oi, you’re the one who caused this! If you know about my scars you must also know I didn’t give them to myself. Do you know how much I wish I had a normal body? That I could stroll around without a shirt like you’re doing?”, he yelled, following me.

“Then you have your bloody answer, don’t you? I wear these so people like you who seemed to have taken a particular interest in me don’t see what I do to myself. Happy, now?”

“You’re still doing it?”, his eyes widened and his lips curled a bit downwards. There wasn't judgement in his voice, only concern. 

“Sometimes,” I swallowed, my hands started to tremble as I buttoned up the robe. He knew, might as well know it all.

“I wasn’t trying to upset you,” he said, sheepishly, now… embarrassed?

“Well,” I wheezed, out of air – both because I was angry and because I was surprised by his change of tone – and I scrambled out the first thing that came to my mind, avoiding his pleading, sweet eyes, “Next time mind your own damned business!”

I stormed out of the room, walking fast and in long strides to get out of there as soon as possible. To get as far as I could from his angel eyes. Beautiful, sad, hurt eyes.

A group of bright yellow robes were arriving to the pitch from afar and, as Renée ran to me, I glared at her.

“Next time you’re so busy, Walker, send Matt or even my bloody cousin.”

Nicky and Matt stopped at that and turned around to see what was happening. Danielle’s eyes shot to the changing rooms entrance, where Neil was standing gnawing at his lip.

“Wait, what happened-”, Renée tried to speak.

“Shut it,” I raised my hand to stop her and kept walking away, “I don’t care. I’m done with Neil Josten.”

Notes:

Hello, just wanted to pop by and explain the Marauders characterization.
Some details are extracted by the amazing fanfiction - which you can find on this website and I invite you to read it, if you haven't already - All The Young Dudes by MsKingBean89, for example the book Andrew reads in this chapter. Other stuff will remain more in the Harry Potter canon, for instance Remus's childhood.
As Remus - and, at some point, Sirius - will become a more prominent, focal character in this fanfiction in the future, and indirectly also during Andrew's fourth year, I just wanted to make sure I'd give credit where due and specify where I got my inspo from.
That's it, thank you for reading this disclaimer!

Chapter 4: Secrets

Summary:

TW!
mentions of self-harm and child abuse

Neil didn’t try to follow me everywhere after that, and even if I caught him staring from afar, as long as he didn’t make any attempt at talking to me, I was completely fine with that. Practices with Renée, lunch-time lessons with Flitwick, normal lessons, homework and the constant research for a way into Filch’s office kept going as per usual. I only saw Neil at dinner time, and I often preferred barricading myself in my dorm during those hours so I could read then and get a good and proper amount of sleep after.

I also finished my last pack of cigarettes, and that didn’t help the stress building inside of me.

I had tried my first cigarette in juvie, where they were the most frequent and popular currency for exchanges and called-in favors. I didn’t like it, but I was little and short, and people used me quite often to wriggle my way into some rooms and sneak out stuff for them, so I ended up with an ass-load of them and I didn’t know what to do but to… well, smoke.

The first drag I took almost took me out with it. It burnt my throat all the way down to my lungs and then back up again. I coughed so hard I thought I was about to spit some of my organs out, but it did pass eventually, and I began to enjoy the flavor. Also, it was a more social-acceptable self-destructing practice than self-harm, so I took it as a palliative while I couldn’t get my hands on razor blades – those came for a higher price.

It was a terrible vice that I couldn’t seem to shake, but I guessed it didn’t matter anyway. I liked it, sort of. And even if some drags always took the life out of me, like heights, they reminded me that I was still alive. Which was not necessarily a relief, but it was a fact that I rarely registered.

Anyway, the first few days after the last cig were the worst and I thought I vomited my soul at some point, but I made it out of withdrawal just in times for the trials.

I was lucky enough to have gone last, so that I could study the Ravenclaw’s captain, some guy named David who was also a chaser, routine and game. He was a big bloke, all shoulders and muscle, and he used his strength to crush the opponent’s keeper with meteor-like shots. I was curious as to why he ended up in Ravenclaw, but I couldn’t judge the decision-making of the Hat, since it still was a mystery to me why was I a Ravenclaw myself.

The trials went fairly well, and I was able to block five shots out of five. I didn’t even break a sweat, and when I landed on the ground David was appalled. He said ‘of course the spot is yours’ and ‘you’re even more talented than your brother’ and ‘where were you all these years, man?!’ but I just shrugged and shook his hand and agreed to take a look at the rota for practices and inform myself about the matches calendar. I believed we both knew I’d let Aaron take care of that.

As I finished talking to David, I was assaulted by what I began to call the Aaron-mob. And Renée, whom I secretly liked.

“How did you learn so fast?”, Matt spoke first, grinning as always. I was longing for the day his mouth would just fall out.

“Oi! He had a good teacher,” Renée slapped him on the shoulder lightly, and Matt giggled but she was quick to turn to me and give me a knowing look. I rolled my eyes but nodded. She threw her arms around my neck and held me tightly, which, much to my surprise, made me smile.

“Ok, that’s enough,” I said, cackling a little as I gently removed her from my body. I closed my eyes to drown the awful, burning sensation of guilt and panic and fear and when I opened them again, the gang congratulated me and asked me if I was down for dinner. I shook my head.

“I have some catching up to do on homework,” I shrugged.

“Sounds like you’re avoiding us, Minyard.”

That voice. That cold, low, trembling voice from the redhead with the tilted head made me shiver and I looked at him. He just looked back, eyes expressing nothing but tension, and we stayed like that for a while. I could just make out Nicky whispering ‘what the hell is going on there?’ and Allison, whom I pictured with a curious smirk on her face, replying ‘I don’t know, but I like it’ to which Seth said ‘of course you do’.

Dan broke the silence clearing her throat and gave Neil a confused look as he lifted his gaze from mine and turned to her. He bit his lip but said nothing, then he turned around and began to walk away. The others followed, throwing quick goodbyes at me over their shoulder as they caught up with Neil, probably with some questions.

“He hasn’t talked with you lot, too?”, I asked, knowing Renée was still close by.

“You were they only one he was really talking to anyway,” she had a compassionate tone, “I guess you two really got into it, huh?”

“You could say that,” I crossed my arms on my chest and sighed.

“If I come by Ravenclaw’s tower later, will I find you?”

“S’pose you have to come and see, Walker,” I smiled at her. She nodded, and I knew she could tell she wouldn’t find me there.

That was true. When I wasn’t locking my dorm’s door shut – which, by the way, drove Aaron insane – I was up in the owlery till late. Since I walked there when everyone was busy with dinner, nobody really knew where I went: they just saw me come back to the common room from the outside grounds. Nobody, not even Nicky asked: after a month I gathered they knew they wouldn’t get much information from me.

As Renée and I parted ways at the entrance, I sprinted to the common room – accurately avoiding the moving stairs, that by then I had memorized – and collected my stuff for a bit of homework and the book about Hogwarts. I was set on finding that office before Christmas break, and we were in October already. I sighed as I waited for the common room to clear so I could get to the owlery in peace.

When I got there, I sat on the ledge and let my feet dangle in the dark void. I felt the rush of excitement and fear circle through my veins and once it was settled, I opened up the Potions book I brought with me. I sat there for hours, and I listened to the quiet, shushed calls of the hundreds of owls around me. I sighed when the Lumos I casted was no longer enough light to make me keep reading: I looked outside the window and saw the lights in the castle go out as the students reached their dorms and went to sleep. It was almost past curfew, and I didn’t want to get detention, so I stood up.

I promised myself to come back the next night.

 

---

 

As always, when I got to the Great Hall, the gang was already there. That morning they chose to disturb the Slytherin table's peace, and they were also making an unusual amount of fuss. Not that they were silent and collected most of the time, but they were screaming and toasting like they were celebrating something.

As I was making my way to the Ravenclaw table, Renée waved at me like she was signaling me where they were. She knew I’d notice them already; it was only a way to force me to sit with them. I sighed and crossed the room, then I sat next to Renée. I didn’t speak a word. I could already feel Neil’s eyes on my skin, and they burnt.

They kept talking and chatting away and nobody seemed to notice or care that I wasn’t participating to the conversation. I just tuned them out and focused on eating whatever I could ingest. I hadn’t eaten like that in days: I was too shy to go and ask the domestic elves where the kitchen was and if I could bring up some food, and I was avoiding the Great Hall like the plague, so I hadn’t had a proper meal in a while.

“What about you, Andrew?”, Renée finally asked, nudging me with her elbow.

I lifted my gaze upon the group of people, and I saw they were all observing me, waiting for an answer. I shrugged.

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening. What did I miss?”

“Our first weekend in Hogsmeade falls on Aaron’s birthday and we were thinking we ought to celebrate that with some butterbeer,” Matt said casually, eating what I believed was an entire egg in one single bite.

“I understood half of the words you said, Boyd,” I replied, “either way, I don’t think I’ll come. I have homework.”

“Party-pooper,” Nicky muttered, and I shot him a venomous glance. How could he be so thick?

“It’s your brother’s birthday, you have to come,” Seth stated, voice as cold as ice, while Allison took a nap resting her head on his shoulder.

“Wait,” Dan whispered, and everyone turned to her, confused. I winced.

Fuck, she noticed.

“What?”, Nicky asked, eyebrows so high they were touching his hairline. Dan was staring at me, mouth open and guilt in her eyes. Neil caught on a second later.

“They’re not brothers,” he said, frowning at me, “They’re twins. It’s Andrew’s birthday too.”

Goddammit.

“Oh, shit! I’m sorry, Andrew,” Nicky rubbed the back of his head.

I sighed.
“It’s fine. I don’t celebrate my birthday, so I won’t come anyway. And it’s a month from now, how do you know you’ll have the time to go?”, I shrugged again, returning to my food and averting my eyes from their pleading, sorry ones.

“How do you know you won’t?”, Renée pounded on. She was watching me sternly, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

“I don’t want to go, ok? Enjoy your wizarding trip without me,” I snapped.

“Fine by me,” Aaron said.

I scoffed.

“Of course, you’re fine with that,” I rolled my eyes and got up, “not hungry, see you later,” I muttered, pushed my plate aside and walked away.

The hallways were lit by the burning light of the sun. Scotland was rarely appreciated for its weather, especially in the middle of autumn, but it was indeed a nice day. Two first-years ran past me, one was holding a piece of parchment and waving it around while the other whined and asked to give it back. I cackled at the sight and kept strolling around.

It was not like I had the time for that kind of peaceful walk, but I’d had enough stress and rage for the day already. I went outside and enjoyed the sun, the gentle breeze and the feeling of the tall grass tickling my ankles.

Having a normal brother was an overwhelming sensation. I was used to cruel jerks who looked at me like I was scum and beat me senseless most of the time – and I wasn’t even counting Drake. Aaron was different, and I kind of liked that we were more alike: I didn’t know how much genetic had to do with characters and personalities, but ours ware pretty similar. We were both lone wolves, both curious and smart, both competitive and irritable. Aaron, though, lacked what I had gained from my childhood experience: the urge of belonging to and with someone, the relentless search of something to call family, the instinct to protect it once you’ve found it.

Aaron liked his family, because he grew up with it: he grew up with a mother who, even though she could be better, actually tried to raise him, he grew up with uncles and aunts and he had Nicky, who was like sunshine and rainbow and everything nice. Aaron’s life was not perfect, but it was better than mine, which granted him the privilege of not liking me just out of spite.

I wanted to be his brother, because I wanted a normal brother. I wanted someone to build pillow forts with and scream and cry and watch movies and fight in a way that didn’t end up with my face buried in a pillow, crying in pain and desperation as something despicable was being done to me.

Aaron’s mother – who, I was adamant about it, was not my mother – used to beat him. She was not mentally stable, she did drugs most of the time, and in the brief period of time I stayed at her house before being catapulted in Hogwarts, I noticed sometimes she made him take them, too. It was horrible, to get a person so young addicted to those things. I supposed it was her way of parenting, which was completely wrong. I wanted to stop it, I wanted to save him, to hold him in my arms and assure him that nothing of the things that I had endured would ever, ever, be done to him.

But how could I do that if he didn’t even want to talk to me? If he didn’t even want to celebrate our birthday together?

“Andrew, wait!”

I turned around just as the mass of red hair stopped in front of me. He had his hand extended in front of him and, much to my surprise, I didn’t flinch. He wasn’t touching me: the hand was hovering just above my sleeved wrist, like he wanted to grab it but wouldn’t dare. He ruffled his hair with the other hand and sighed but didn’t move. He bit his lip, sighed again, or maybe he was just breathing loudly, and opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out, so he shook his head and tried again.

He was so pretty I thought I could die.

“What is it, Josten?”, I beat him to it.

“I wanted to apologize, you don’t have to avoid the group just because I’m there, I know you hate me and I think we started off on the wrong foot, I wasn’t implying I had it worse than you and you shouldn’t suffer, I can listen if you want to talk about it, and I don’t need to do it if you don’t want to do it, but I think everyone deserve a good birthday and it would kill me if you didn’t go to Hogsmeade only because I was there too,” he said all in one breath, eyes darting here and there.

I blinked a few times, surprised.

“Please, talk to me?”, he asked, pleading blue eyes now locked on mine.

“Don’t say that,” I told him, sternly.

“What?”

“That word.”

“Please?”

“That one.”

“Why?”

“I hate it.”

“You can’t hate a word,” he pouted a little. He looked like a lost little child.

“Watch me,” I shrugged and walked away. He followed me.

“You hate a lot of things, don’t you?”

“You can bet on it.”

“You hate me?”

“So much I couldn’t even describe it.”

“Why do you talk to me, then?”

“Lately I’m not.”

“You are now.”

“Piss off,” I rolled my eyes.

“Come to Hogsmeade for your birthday party and you never have to talk to me, ever again,” he rushed a little to stop in front of me, blocking both my walk and my view. He was all I could see, and his face was so close to mine I felt like I could melt right then and there, like I wanted to push him away and make him cry as his head hit the ground, like I wanted to punch him and hex him and torture him and like I wanted to kiss him so much, until my lips were sore and his were red, redder than usual, until his gorgeous cheeks became pink with shame and excitement and my hands became tangled in his red, burning mass of hair.

“Andrew?”, he whispered. I could feel his breath on my skin.

I was going to pass away.

I took a cautious step back. God, my hands were trembling. God, I hated him. God, I fancied him so much my heart could burst.

“Tell you what,” I cleared my throat, trying to regain control over my mind and body, “before the Hogsmeade weekend there’s a Quidditch match, isn’t it?”

He nodded, perplex.

“We’re up against Ravenc- oh.”

“Ok. If you win, I'll come to the stupid birthday stuff, I’ll even pretend I enjoy it. If we win, you will leave me alone all my birthday weekend,” I said matter-of-factly. He nodded again.

“That means…”, I swallowed, “That means you don’t have to avoid me forever. We can talk, if you care so much, just… just not about…” my hand ran to the opposite wrist, clutching hard.

“It’ll be a secret. Between us,” he smiled gently.

Did he try to be the most perfect human being on this godforsaken planet, or did it come natural to him? I couldn’t stand it.

“You’ll miss lessons if you don’t go now,” I said, voice lower than a whisper.

“What about you?” he asked, getting closer again.

“I think I’ll pass, I… need to lie down,” I lied.

“Do you want me to take you to the Ravenclaw tower?”, his hand hovered again over my arm, so, so close to mine. But he didn’t touch me. He never touched me, if he could help it.

“I’m fine,” I shook my head and averted my eyes, preferring to look at my feet than him.

“Yeah, I say that a lot, too,” he smiled softly again, but didn’t insist as he walked past me and went inside the castle.
At that point my joints gave in, and I fell to the ground, exhausted.

What on Earth was that boy doing to me?

 

---

 

The bedroom door slammed shut and I lifted my gaze from the book I was reading. It was about summoning spells, Flitwick recommended it to me during one of our lunch lessons. I was liking it, and I was finally able to master the Accio spell completely, without needing to levitate the object so it didn’t hit anything with violence.

Aaron was in front of the door, glaring at me. I used the locking spell again so he couldn’t get in for quite some time. By his expression I could see he’d had enough.

Some days had passed since my encounter with Neil and the gang deciding what to do for my birthday. Since then, Aaron and I hadn’t really talked, avoiding the topic as much as we could, as well as avoiding each other. I knew he couldn’t stand me, but the fact that we didn’t speak to each other somehow made the gang kind of split between me and him: we weren’t able to keep things civil between us, we snapped at each other most of the time and so everyone had to ‘pick a side’.

It wasn’t like they weren’t all talking to each other or that there was a full-on war going on, but it became usual for Neil and Renée to spend more time with me than they did with Aaron. Renée also dragged along Matt, Dan and Nicky, and that was what made Aaron even angrier with me. But I didn’t want that. I just didn’t want to talk to him, that’s all.

“Do you have to lock yourself inside?”, Aaron screamed, but I remained unmoved.

“I suppose there’s no use if you still barge in here like you own the place, Columbus,” I muttered, eyes turning again to my book.

“You do that just to make my angry, don’t you? You just want to piss me off and make me throw a tantrum, so you look like the cooler twin!”, he snapped.

I closed the book and looked at him with indifference. I sighed, seeing that he was really, really mad.

“Aaron, I told you this once already and I’ll tell you again, if you’re so dense: I don’t care about your little group of friends. You can have them, take them. I am not the cooler twin nor do I want to be. Stop being such a prima donna,” I rolled my eyes.

He scoffed, then literally laughed like a maniac for a minute. I was beginning to be scared, but he just shook his head and went into the bathroom, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.

When he came out, he switched off the lights – the candles, I didn’t know how – and climbed on his bed. As I was closing my bedcurtains so I could use Lumos and not disturb his sleep, I turned around and saw him staring at me.
“What?”, I said, exasperated.

“I think my life would be better if you didn’t exist,” he whispered.

I was taken aback, and I winced like he just punched me in the stomach.

“Aaron…”, I began, but he didn’t let me finish.

“I wish you were never born. Or that you died before Uncle Luther found you,” he whispered again, but his voice trembled. He was clearly crying. I didn’t know what went on at dinner, but evidently something’d happened with the group. He wouldn’t just say stuff like that, surely. Something had upset him, and I had locked the door, so it was a coincidence he was taking it out on me, right?

Right?

“Don’t say those things, you’ll regret it,” I said, voice as soft as I could master while my heart was breaking in a million pieces.

“I won’t, Andrew. I hate you. I wish I never met you.”

He tugged at his bedcurtains so they would close, and I looked at them, eyes filling with tears as I closed my own.

I did a silencing spell so my horrible twin brother wouldn’t hear me sob.

 

---

 

“I knew you’d be up here.”

It was mid-October, the air was fresh and cool and pungent, and the owlery was calm as the Sun came down for the last goodbye of the day. It had rained all day, and it had just stopped in time for dinner, so I ran there for peace and quiet and calm and to cry undisturbed.

“Leave me alone, Renée,” I whispered.

“Not a chance,” she replied, sitting next to me.

I was laying down, looking at the ceiling, waiting for a big block of rock to detach from there and smash my head. No such luck so far.

“You are really annoying,” I told her, and she chuckled.

“I just care about you, Andrew.”

“Why?”, I sighed, closing my eyes.

“Because you are obviously in a lot of pain, and I can understand that. I wish you talked about it more, but it doesn’t really matter. I just want to help you as much as I can,” she said.

“Same question as before.”

“Because I know what it’s like to feel like you’re a terrible person and I want to make sure you know you can become a good one. I’m trying, so should you,” she stated.

When I opened my eyes, she was looking up at the few owls that were still flying around, waiting for someone to use them to get a message to someone, somewhere.

“How did you know I was here?”, I asked, voice so low I could barely hear it myself.

“I’d noticed it was your hiding spot some time ago. I didn’t want to ruin it for you, but today I felt like you could use some company,” she shrugged.

“Thank you,” I said, and I closed my eyes again.

“Neil is worried about you. Said he’s going to demand they reschedule tomorrow’s match if you don’t feel up to it,” she scoffed.

“Ha! He’s just shitting his pants. We have a bet going on and he doesn’t want to lose,” I cackled, but thinking about Neil left a lingering smile on my face.

“So, is tomorrow why you’re up here?”

“No, I’m just avoiding Aaron for a while.”

“Did he say something to you? I can hold him while you punch,” she said, a hinting tone in her voice. I laughed and slapped her arm lightly.

“Stop it! I’m not hurting my brother,” I answered, still laughing lightly.

“He hurt you, though, didn’t he?”, she was gentler now, like she was trying to approach a more searing subject. I took a deep breath. The smell of wet soil filled my nostrils. I missed smoking.

“Not in the same way,” I replied, biting my lips.

“What did he say?”

“Regular brotherly stuff. That he hates me and wishes I wasn’t born,” I shrugged.

“That’s just horrible. I’d give up my left kidney for a brother and he just treats you like this? I would be in the seventh heaven,” I felt her lay beside me and our hands slightly touched. I didn’t flinch or scoot over: I'd grew accustomed to her skin by then, and it didn’t scare me anymore. She was the only one in that castle that was able to touch me freely, and I liked her for that. I liked her loyalty and her frankness and the way she smiled so easily even though she'd clearly had a rough life too. I liked her so much I was beginning to think she was my only friend.

“What's the history between you two, by the way? I know you were in juvie, but he didn’t mention you anyway,” she said.

“That’s a long story for another time, Walker; let’s just assume I was as much of a surprise to him as I was to you guys,” I waved my hand in dismissal.

“Fine. But you know Neil’s going to ask. He’s worried about you, I’m serious.”

“What about?”

“You’re not talking to him, but you talk to me. I think he believes you hate him. He also thinks you have a crush on me.”

“Of course, he does,” I laughed again, softly, “poor boy doesn’t have a clue in the world.”

There was a moment of silence. The air filled with tension and stood still for a while. Then she let out a yelp, slapped me on the arm and jolted upright. I opened my eyes, looking at her in disbelief. She had her mouth open in half a laugh, half an expression of pure amusement.

"Ouch?!", I said, pointedly, as I rubbed my sore arm.

“You fancy him!”

“Oh shit.”

“You fancy Neil? You have a crush on him! I can’t believe it. Oh my God, you’re gay?!”, she was yelling.

“Ah, yes, say it a little louder. I don’t think the Prime Minister heard you.”

“Oops, sorry,” she said, hand shooting to her mouth as she covered her laugh, “I’m sorry, really. You just… never said!”

“You never asked,” I shrugged, “Also, it’s not like I hide it. I always thought I was kind of… obvious.”

“Yeah, but you have to admit you’re not open about it like Nicky is.”

“I’m not open that much about anything, Renée,” I said, pointedly.

“Point taken. Does Neil know?”, she was filled with excitement now. It made me laugh again.

“Why does it matter?”

“Well, maybe he likes you back! He always talks about you.”

“He doesn’t like boys. Or girls.”

“I know, I know. He doesn’t swing. Whatever. I just think you’d be a cute couple. The mysterious boys of Hogwarts,” she chuckled, laying down again as she took a deep breath to stabilize herself.

“Do you like boys?”, I asked, trying to avoid the topic of Neil. His blue eyes flashed before mine and I couldn’t stand the feeling that rose inside of me.

“I don’t really think of it that way. I mean, I do like boys, but I also like girls… It’s really the person that matters, I think. Like, it’s not like I fall in love with genitals, right? So… I think the best answer is sometimes I do.”

“That’s good to hear,” I sighed.

“Why? Do you have a crush on me, too?”, she said, and I heard the smirk in her voice even though I couldn’t see it.

“Piss off,” I elbowed her, “I want to tell you another secret.”
“Ooh, yes please.”
“I…” I swallowed and sighed.

It was something I always felt. I knew what my anatomy suggested, and I knew what Aaron was and I knew what I liked. I just felt differently, I acted differently, and I wanted to be different. Not exactly a woman but…

“I don’t think I’m a boy,” I said in one breath, “but I don’t think I’m a girl either. I’m both, maybe, and... neither? Sometimes I am more one than the other. I really don’t know. But I think the Hat knew. It never called me something either masculine or feminine, he kept things neutral…”

“You’re not a boy?”, Renée repeated.

“I’m not,” I sat upright and looked at her, waiting for a reaction. She rose too, and placed a hand on my shoulder. She had a genuine smile on her lips, cheeks pink and comforting understanding eyes.

“It doesn’t matter, Andrew. You’re still my best friend.”

I wrapped my arms around her tightly and she squeezed me back. It felt good.

It was the first time in quite some time.

Chapter 5: Birthday cake.

Summary:

TW!
mentions of child abuse, self harm and suicide.

I was standing in the middle of the common room, pretty positive I was still dreaming, or maybe hallucinating. I rubbed my face with my hands twice and blinked once. Twice. Thrice.

What the fuck?

“Happy birthday, Mr Minyard,” the house elf said, voice cheery and excited. He had a birthday party hat on his head, the elastic string tilting ever so slightly his ears backwards. He was very different from the ones I’d seen at Nicky’s house. He seemed to be happy of working there. He seemed healthy and carefree.

He snapped his fingers and a coffee table appeared in front of me, as well as a chair behind me. More like an armchair. It looked comfy. I never had comfy chairs before.

He snapped his fingers again. On the table, a plate was created out of nowhere. In it, there was a crêpe with a ball of ice cream on top, and a mug so tall and filled with something that was fuming hot. It looked like cocoa. I loved cocoa.

“Your breakfast consists in chocolate crepes topped with cookie-dough ice cream and mug of hot chocolate to the side. Miss Walker said they were your favorite things.”

Of course, Renée. She couldn’t let the fact that I never received anything for my birthday slide. I was dumb enough to answer a question about what would my last meal on Earth be if I could pick anything. She was always making questions like that, so I didn’t doubt her intentions.

“She also said that she knew you wouldn’t make it to breakfast with the other students because you wake up late on Saturdays, so she made me deliver it here. She’s such a sweet girl, isn’t she, Mr Minyard?”

“I suppose she is.”

“I’ll leave you to it. If you want another serving, just clap your hands once and I’ll be here,” he winked. Then vanished into thin air.

What the actual fuck?

Did Hogwarts always serve a special breakfast for its students’ birthday or was this all Renee’s work?

Either way, I sat in the armchair. Renée would’ve been distraught If I didn’t eat all of it. Plus, it was my favorite. So, why would I leave it?

Most of the students had already reached the small village right next to Hogwarts to enjoy the morning between good food and shopping. Renée had told me they’d be celebrating our birthday in a place called The Three Broomsticks, which was an all-time favorite of Hogwarts students. I didn’t know the place, and I didn’t care. Aaron would just ruin it anyway.

It was a small comfort that Renée and Neil would be there, and also that Nicky and the others forgot - again - that it was my birthday, too, so they didn’t buy any gifts for me. I didn’t want any. Aaron would ruin them, too.

He’d been ruining a lot of things a lot of the time, lately.

He ruined quidditch practice because he couldn’t stand I was a good keeper, so he threw the bludgers directly at me. He ruined my books by scribbling on them so a couple of time I had to ask McGonagall and Flitwick to extend the due date for homework because I couldn’t write my essays. I wouldn't have minded detention - it was not that I cared, really. It was a matter of principle. Still, they granted it because I was their best student, but I couldn’t bear their looks of disapproval.

Their eyes looked like Cass’s did when I was thrown in jail.

He was determined in ruining my life, every aspect of it, just out of spite, just because I was better than him in some ways. He was better than me at anything else but those couple of things, but he didn’t seem to notice that. He only noticed where he failed and I prevailed.

“Enjoying breakfast?”

I didn’t even need to look up. I had heard the big entrance door creek open, and I knew he’d come to gloat and make sure I honored my part of the bet. It wasn’t a surprise, anymore, when he just appeared out of nowhere. It took some getting used to, but, eventually, I was beginning to like the fact that I could just assume he was always present, just invisible. That he’ll come out eventually, that he was with me all the time, just hidden until he was ready to talk and socialize.

“You really have the habit of sneaking up on people, don’t you, Josten?”

“I just enjoy silence. My ears can’t stand too many sounds so I tune out the ones I can control.”

He was leaning on one of the Roman style half-pillars that decorated the room. His hair had grown a little over the last two months, and it was wilder than ever. He did brush it, he’d assured me, but he just didn’t know how to make it stay in place. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me in silence while I turned to the food again. The cocoa was getting cold, so I rushed to finish it.

“Where have you been yesterday? You weren’t in class for Arythmancy,” I pointed out, finally placing the silverware on the table. The plate was squeaky clean, like no food was ever on it before.

“Fell ill the night before that, spent the day in infirmary. Why, missed me?” he smirked.

Yes, I did. I missed him. He was my competition. He was my partner and enemy. Arythmancy and DADA classes were an open war between us. Which one was faster, which smarter? Once he was no longer an endless surprise to me, once he wasn’t circled by that aura of perfection anymore, I actually enjoyed being around him during our shared classes. He made me want to be better, not because I wanted to be better, but because I liked the idea of beating wonderful, flawless Neil Josten.

And I was pretty sure my crush had passed. Or I was deeply ignoring it to a level I didn’t feel it so strongly anymore. It was easier to find the strength to respond to his snarky remarks.

“Ha, you wish. I just wanted to tell you that now you’re so behind, you’re never going to catch me again. Enjoy being second best.”

He came straight forward, rushing, sat on the edge of the table and leaned forward. The points of our noses were almost touching – never really did - and he was smiling from ear to ear. His eyes were so blue they looked like the open sea, the one where you don’t dive when you’re little because it’s darker than the rest of the water and you’re afraid of the monsters that could be hiding there.

I had noticed a couple days a month when his eyes were darker, his skin was brighter, his hair was messier, and his magic was stronger. Those days he was sharper, nothing could beat him, nothing could ever touch him, he was faster and smarter and more wicked than ever. He seemed to shine.

I hated that during those days we had our first Quidditch match. He caught the snitch in half an hour. He was an exceptional seeker regularly, but that day he wasn’t just ‘exceptional’. He was spectacular. The only goal they managed to score against me was when I was in so much awe, watching Neil fly across the pitch with such velocity I thought I was the only one noticing he was moving, that I completely forgot the fact that everyone was still playing. I just floated there, midair, as the chaser of Slytherin hurled the quaffle through the left hoop. Neil emerged triumphant, snitch in hand, and it didn’t matter how many shots I'd turned away - which was all of them at that point -, because in half an hour we didn’t have enough opportunities to score as many points as needed.

He was a superstar and I was a fangirl, and If his eyes were really the sea I would have liked to see all the monsters beneath them, swim through them, knowing somewhere deep inside of me they’d never harm me if they could help it.

“Andrew?” his voice was low and calm.

“Yes?”

“I asked you if you were ready to go.”

“Yes! Yes. I- I was, uhm, thinking.”

He cackled and straightened a bit, then took a good look at me while smiling.

“Remember that you said you’d enjoy the birthday stuff,” he whispered. I didn’t know why, there was no one else around: even the portraits scattered away when Neil had entered. I didn’t know if it was because they could feel the tension building up inside my body or because they all hated me and there wasn’t a reason in staying around if I was the only one there.

“I didn’t say that,” I answered, getting up, “I said I’d pretend to enjoy it.”

“Whatever, Minyard,” he waved a hand in dismissal, “just smile a little, for Renée.”

“Why do you care what Renée thinks?”, I asked, and I went for the door. He followed. We were about the same height, so he had to run a bit to catch up with me and fall into step as I crossed the hallways.

“Well, you’d ruin your chances with her if you act all distant and indifferent during the birthday party she threw for you,” he shrugged.

“First of all, the group threw the birthday party for Aaron. I just happen to be in it and share his birthday, lucky me. And also, I don’t fancy Renée! How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“You can say whatever you want, but she is the only person who can touch you without having you killing her on the spot. Whether you admit it or not, there’s something going on there.”

You could touch me, I thought. You never do, but you could if you asked. I looked at him, glancing sideways and spying with the corner of my eyes his mass of auburn hair bobbing on the top of his head as he walked. He was observing his feet like they were the most interesting thing on the planet, watching them as they went one in front of the other, while his face was contorted in an expression I could decipher.

He couldn’t really touch me. I knew that, once I rationalized it, of course. On the spot, I would have let him, maybe. Maybe just to seem normal, I would have let him touch my cheeks or my back. Maybe, just so he wouldn’t be scared of me, I wouldn’t tense so much, I wouldn’t react badly, violently. But I knew, deep down, that it couldn’t be like that. I knew that I would just smack him across the face or choke him. It was my response to touch. I supposed I could let Renée touch me because she was a girl, and she didn’t fancy me, so she didn’t touch me the way the others could and did. They way Drake did. Nobody had touched me really since Drake. I’d kissed a few boys in juvie, but I mostly made them keep their hands to themselves.

We walked in silence the rest of the way because I saw no point in reiterating that I didn’t have a crush on Renée since he was so convinced, and because I couldn’t let my thoughts transpire. I was doing my best to ignore whatever took over me whenever Neil was around, while also trying not to look like I was avoiding him because I knew he would take it personally.

He didn’t like me, he never would. I had to come to terms with that, but with his charm and his perfection and my curiousness and the fact that I wanted to know everything about the unknowable, mysterious prodigy of Hogwarts, I found that particularly hard to achieve. I knew, rationally, that I never stood a chance with him. I knew that those thoughts and fantasies about him could never come true, and while it was easy to admit that, to accept that, it was really hard to let go of them.

Our relationship was a portrait of calm and small talk and academic rivalry. It was easy to converse with him about whatever and to spend time in silence, reading and studying, but it was just that: a portrait. A still image of something that appeared perfect but wasn’t, that didn’t show the millions of things we hid from each other, didn’t show the fact that we both knew the face and the person we presented to the world was not who we really were, but couldn’t help but fake it till we made it. The thing was, we had to pretend around each other too: both of us weren’t keen to open up about our secrets, even if we had disclosed some of them previously. I knew there was something about him nobody could see but me, I knew he was lying and living a life of secrecy and he knew my scars had a meaning he couldn’t, literally and physically, get his hands on. We both knew we were lying to each other, but we were fine with that, because being truthful took a courage and guts that a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old couldn’t possibly have.

Once we reached the entrance of the castle, we found Renée waiting. She took a good look at us, both dead-serious and quiet, and tensed up.

“You good?” she asked, worried.

It was like she hit Neil with a frying pan right across his face. He looked at her for a moment, then shook his head and when he stopped, he was regular, smiling, charming Neil. He slid his hands in his pockets and nodded, before walking away. Renée stayed behind, glaring at me.

“What did you do to him?”

“Oi! Why do you assume I did something and he didn’t?” I began walking towards the outside ground and, by extension, the village right next to it.

“Because he’s an angel and you’re a demon in the form of an angry gnome?” she suggested, falling into step beside me.

“If Neil’s an angel, we should all be scared of getting into Heaven,” I stated and fell quiet again. She just looked at me for some minutes – I could see her worried, confused eyes from the corner of mine – and then sighed, following me in silence. I looked at Neil’s silhouette ahead of us and returned to brooding over us, our mechanics, our secrets and our fears.

The Three Broomsticks Inn was a little shack that brimmed with life. Even from the outside, you could hear the music and the overflowing, relentless chat of the students that sat in there, enjoying the few hours of freedom Hogwarts offered. The woman behind the bar seemed cheerful and loud as she greeted the teenagers and offered them drinks and a good dose of laughter. The students, on the other hand, formed little groups around the tables. They were all monotone: all the same year, all the same House. I could spy the little multicolor circle hidden on the far left when I saw Matt returning to the table with four, tall glasses of a butter-colored drink.

“Are you coming in?” Neil shouted as he opened the door. He was looking at Renée with a smile on his face, but I could see his blank stare and the way he was avoiding my eyes. I didn’t know what upset him, but I was positive it was something I did.

“Yeah, but you go first, I have to talk to Andrew,” she said, winking at him. He just nodded and went in, door hitting the loud little bell as it closed.

“What is it?” I asked, still watching Neil from the window as he walked towards our friend group and sat beside Dan and Allison.

“I swear, Neil is stupider than I think if I doesn’t see this,” she said, pointing at my face. I didn’t think I was expressing such an obvious feeling, so I just batted her hand away from my eyes and she sighed, “I have your present. I don’t want to give it to you when Aaron’s there.”

“My what?” my mouth fell open, in disbelief, “I told you I didn’t want any presents!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Take this.”

She could have just grabbed my hands, but she waited for me to put them out as she placed a clumsily wrapped gift on my palms. I opened it carefully, and I looked in awe at the pair of keeper’s gloves that was now in my hands. I tried them on, and they felt warm and comfortable. I opened and closed my fists a few times, then Renée took my hands and smiled.

“The ones in the pitch storage are overused and damaged, they’re too thin to protect your hands. I know that you had damage after the match with Slytherin but you’re too proud to walk up to the infirmary and make them take care of you, and you also don’t want them to touch you, so I bought you a pair of new gloves. They’re the same brand as mine. This way you don’t hurt yourself and you don’t have to be touched by the healers,” she smiled faintly.

“Thank you,” I just whispered.

She bit her lip, then peeled them off my hands and put them in her bags.

“This way Aaron won’t see them,” she explained. I just nodded, still surprised. Joy and thankfulness were such strange feelings.

We went in and sat with the others. They all gave Aaron a birthday present and said they were sorry but didn’t know what to get me. I just said it was nothing, really. They took out a cake and sang happy birthday, and when Aaron and I blew on the candles together and I lifted my gaze, I saw Neil looking at me, a weird, neutral expression on his face. I arched an eyebrow as to ask him silently what was wrong, but he just looked away. When Renée kissed my cheek to congratulate me, he excused himself and got up. We didn’t find him outside later, so they just assumed he’d returned to the castle.

Thankfulness might be strange, but hope is a rare, sickening, lethal sensation.

 

---

 

“Don’t touch my gifts,” Aaron said as we entered the common room. He ran to the dorm room right after.

Hogsmeade was fun, the little village was welcoming and cozy and it had tons of shops. I didn’t have any money, though, so I could just watch as my brother’s friend showered him with presents while he paid them rounds after rounds of butterbeer. I liked the drink, it was sweet and pleasant, but I only had one – which was kindly paid for by Renée, once she noticed I didn’t get up to go to the bar and get one myself.

The sun was almost down when we got back to the castle, but between the cake and the too many drinks everyone had decided to skip dinner. I wondered if the offer of the kitchen elf still stood, because I was hungry but couldn’t be bothered to reach the Great Hall alone during my birthday, surrounded by all the other hundreds of students and their loud, loud voices.

It was also late, I still had some assignments to work on, and I hadn’t had the time to simmer in my own, habitual, customary sadness and confusion for the day of my birth. I wanted to crash in the owlery and sleep there: at that point I couldn’t care less about detention and prefects, I just wanted to be alone.

I went up to the dorm room, too, and found Aaron organizing his shelves to fit his new stuff: some quills, some Quidditch equipment, new clothes. Apparently, my mom, uncle and aunt had also sent him a new broom, which he received this morning at breakfast while I was still sleeping. I had asked him if there was anything for me, but apparently my own birth mother didn’t remember she gave birth to me at the same time as my brother.

But it was not surprising, and I was not bitter about it. I didn’t care about them, just as much as they didn’t care about me. It was Nicky and Aaron I cared about, mostly, but honestly, I still thought they didn’t see me as a person. At least, Nicky didn’t: Aaron saw me as a person, but he despised me for it.

I sat on my bed, looking outside the window, to the Forbidden Forest. At night, it was so dark you couldn’t even make out the faint shapes of the threes, but right then the feeble light of the sun setting on the horizon shone through the leaves, casting rays of sunshine on the tower. When it was really quiet at night, I thought I could hear the sounds of the forest coming to life and its mystical, mysterious creatures roaming around undisturbed.

I dreamt of transforming into something as free as those creatures and running around the forest without having to worry of what my human-self had to deal with once I decided to come back to that form. I dreamt of leaping in the air and chasing other animals, forgetting what love, hate, pain and happiness meant. Forgetting emotions and only allowing myself to feel the nature around me.

Of course, it was a dream. Even though I was still informing myself about the animagi practice, I was very far away from understanding it enough to accomplish such thing without running any risks. I was tempted to try it, just once, just right then and there, as a gift to myself for that awful birthday. But I wouldn’t want Aaron to see, so I just kept quiet and kept staring into the black void of the forest.

“Are you sad?” my twin questioned, suddenly.

“Why do you ask?” I turned my head around, to look at him over my shoulder while my body was still facing the window.

He was standing still in the middle of the room, blank stare in his eyes and arms dangling beside his body. It was like looking into a very damaged, twisted mirror.

“It’s our birthday. They threw us a party; couldn’t you be happier? Hell, couldn’t you just be grateful?” he whisper-shouted, maybe worried our dormmates could return at any moments now. I sighed.

“I told them I didn’t like my birthday and that I didn’t want to celebrate. I came because of a bet with Neil and because it would hurt Renée if I didn’t. If they took it personally, it’s their fault: they shouldn’t have invited me,” I replied, turning back around to look at the sky. It was purple, with hues of orange and pink. I made a point to always look at beautiful things: good memories could vanquish the bad ones, if I made enough of them.

“Why are you like this?” Aaron hissed, “why can’t you just be normal?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that. I feel pretty normal,” I reiterated.

“You’re not, Andrew,” he said, voice unusually calm, “you are sick. Maybe you were better off in juvie. I mean, there was a reason why they put you in there.”

“There was. It was minor, though, so they had no problem in giving me away. Sounds familiar?” I got up and faced him. His cheeks were red with fury, and his fists were clenched so hard his skin became white.

“Don’t talk about mom that way. She did what she thought was best for you!”

“Oh, really?” I cackled, “and what was that? Being raised by no one, ever, when I had a perfect happy family I didn’t know anything about somewhere in the same city?”

“She thought you’d find a home. She told me that, she told me she wanted you to grow happy and healthy and she couldn’t give you that,” his voice was quieter now, scared.

“Well, I guess it was better to change houses every now and then than to be raised one dose of pills and slaps at a time, wasn't it?”

“Maybe that’s the reason she kept me and not you. I know she loves me and she tries her best, while you just shame her for who she is and her mistakes. She is your mother too, you know? You should stop being such an ungrateful bastard and appreciate that she even took you back to begin with,” he was screaming now, tears streaming down his burning face.

“Fuck me, Aaron, that’s rich!” I laughed, “do you think I wanted her to take me back? Do you think I like this?”, I gestured widely at the room, but I knew he got I was talking about the whole ‘wizarding world’ situation, “do you think I want to feel like shit because your little friends forgot to buy me a present while you drowned in them? Do you think I want to be liked by people who force themselves to be around me just because I’m your brother? I did not want any of this, I was fine in juvie, I had found a way to live without fear and all you did was take me out just to torment me only because I fucking exist! I’m not to blame because your mother wasn’t strong enough to refuse to take me back.”

“Then go away,” he yelled back, “I don’t want you here, either! I don’t want a brother if he turns out to be a fucking sociopath with zero communication skills and a never-ending thirst for violence that almost stabbed a guy on his first day of school just because he touched him. I don’t want a brother if he has issues with every person on this fucking planet, if he’s rude to everyone and anyone for no reason and if I can’t even hug without fearing I’m about to be punched. Don’t like it here? Don’t like your life? Go ahead to the bathroom, I left my razor there. Enjoy the birthday present.”

I took a step back and looked at him. That was it.

I remembered the first time I entered what I called the power-saving mode. Drake just dragged me out from under the bed where I was hiding and punished me for making him look for me for hours. He said I made him late to an appointment, but he couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. I thought it was disturbing, to put it like that, but I didn’t have energy to fight anymore. I didn’t have the strength to rebel and kick and scream just to be ignored and silenced. I just took a step back, laid on the bed, and closed my eyes. I felt nothing, thought nothing, and when he was finished and left without even saying a word, I just stood there.

After that, whenever I was too tired to struggle, I want back into that mode. I noticed I was crueler, during those moments. I noticed I said things more the way I thought them and less the way I was supposed to say them not to sound like an asshole. I noticed that, during those moments, what usually hurt and cut deep, didn’t really feel like anything.

So, that’s what I did.

I remained quiet as I listened to Aaron’s panting and wheezing and collected some of my stuff. I scribbled something onto a piece of paper, folded it into an airplane and, with a flick of my wand, sent it flying towards the Hufflepuff common room. I did my usual routine for my books and bag to make them easy to carry, and then turned to my twin brother, who was still standing in the middle of the room, watching me appalled. I walked up to him and pinched his face with my hand, tight enough for my nails to pierce his skin and leave a mark. I looked at him straight in the eyes and cleared my throat.

“You are a terrible person who doesn’t deserve to place judgement upon me. Because of the woman you so adamantly want to call mother, we both lived a life of hell and neglect and pain, and you should know better than to defend her when you know I know she beats you and abuses you. You are, whether you like it or not, my bother, which means you should have taken the opportunity to vent to me about what she had done to you all those years. Instead, you chose to resent me just for my existence and the fact that you were forced to accept me as family. Well, I did. I did accept you, and I will protect you from whatever your mother has done and will do to you, because, unlike what I’ve been taught my whole life, that’s what brothers do. They protect each other and they have each other’s back. You may ignore me and hate me if you like or you might decide you want to be the brother I deserve. I do not dictate what you should do in your life, but I suggest you stay away from me. I do accept you, Aaron, but I do not like you. And I do not love you. And as much as I can try and protect you from her, I will smash you head into pieces if you ever talk to me that way again. Am I understood?”, I whispered, calmly.

He nodded, fast, and I let go of his face. I walked out of the dorm before he could say anything else.

The common room was empty – it was still dinner time, and nobody had come back yet. On the table at the center, though, there was a small box just left there. My curiosity got best of me, and I approached the table. The box was wrapped like a gift and there was a note sticking out, with the name ‘Andrew’ written in big, round letters. I opened it, hesitant.

‘I noticed you finished your packs. I got you another two, just in case one doesn’t last till Christmas when you can get your own. I hope I remembered the brand correctly.
Happy birthday, Grumpy

N.A.J.’

I opened the box and picked up the cigarette packs, sliding them into my bag, not before taking one, lighting it with a spell and taking a single, long drag. I smiled a little, thinking about how the redhead could’ve possibly gotten his hands on those, where did he go to earlier that day, and what was that A in his name. But then again, nothing mattered but the gift itself.

He noticed.

He remembered.

 

---

 

She was speed-walking to the center of the pitch, where I was sitting, wrapped in her robe like she was hanging onto it to save her life. She rushed towards me and knelt right in front of me.

“Are you hurt? Is everything okay? I swear to Merlin’s beard, I will kill that cheeky little monster-”

“Do you know how to fight?” I asked, out of nowhere.

She looked taken aback for a moment, then she really looked at me up and down, like scanning my body to search for something that could give her the answer to what I was looking for.

“Is that why you summoned me here? It’s freezing, Andrew. Couldn’t have we just talked inside?”

“I don’t want to talk,” I stood up, extending a hand for her to use to get up, too. She refused and did it by herself, stubborn as ever, “that’s why I asked you that.”

“What?” she was even more confused, batting her long eyelashes in dismay, “why do you need to know that?”
I sighed and rubbed my face.

“Punch me, for Merlin’s sake.”

“I’m not going to punch you! Are you okay? What the fuck happened?”, she took a step back, scrutinizing me again with her piercing eyes, like she could actually see if I had bruises under my clothes.

“I got into an argument with Aaron,” I just shrugged.

“That I know. I don’t know why you called me in the middle of the Quidditch pitch on a cold November night because you want me to punch you!”

“Because that’s how I release stress, Renée, and you’re the only one who can touch me without risking her life, apparently,” I shouted.

Her face went blank, and it was her turn to sigh as she closed her eyes.

“So, you want us to fight?”

“Spar. Like, martial arts?” I suggested.

“Yeah, I know what that means. Okay, I can do that,” she whispered, exhausted.

We made up a few rules and took off our robes and ties, making our clothes as comfortable and stretchy as possible. Then, we squared up and got our guards up.

“You go first,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re the stressed one, aren’t you?”

I shrugged and tried with a left hook. Before I knew it, I was on the ground, left arm bent behind my back in an agonizing position. Renée stood over me, her heel pressed on my calves so I couldn’t stand up easily. I looked up at her, shocked.

“Where did you learn that?” I wheezed.

“Don’t ask question you don’t want to hear the answer to. Let’s go again, I’ll go first.”

I nodded and she released my limbs.

We went on all night, in the dark, again and again until my muscles were sore and my legs and torso were full of forming bruises and bumps. She wasn’t in a good shape herself, but she was able to laugh it out when I was able to get to her with a punch or a kick. We decided it was time to head back to the castle when the sky was becoming lighter, and the Gryffindor tower began to buzz with preparation for the Quidditch practice.

We snuck in and I accompanied Renée to the Hufflepuff common room before returning to the Ravenclaw tower. I was patiently waiting for the time Aaron usually got up to go to breakfast before going into that dorm room again, and Renée, while obviously guessing it, kept it quiet and didn’t make comments about it. As she said the password to the portrait, granting herself access to the common room, she leaned in to kiss my cheek.

“I’m sorry about Aaron,” she whispered.

“It’s fine, really. And thank you about tonight.”

“No problem, macho man,” she giggled, “we can do it whenever you need me.”

I nodded and curved the corners of my lips upwards into somewhat of a smile to show her I was grateful. She waved me goodbye over her shoulder and the portrait closed behind her.
I took a deep breath and covered my face with my hands.

I really hated my life, but at least it wasn’t my birthday anymore.

Chapter 6: My shot.

Summary:

TW!
mention of abuse, torture and homophobia

By the end of November, I was able to shake off the stupid group. Renée gave up on getting me to socialize with them and she took her opportunity to hang out with me during the time I spent in the owlery studying or in the Quidditch pitch practicing and sparring with her. Most of the time, I was either alone in the common room or with her, almost always accompanied by a silent, indifferent Neil.

My interactions with him, oddly, were limited to our competition in classes and him sliding me some packs of cigs once he noticed I finished the ones he gave me for my birthday. But he was with me as much as he could, always quiet, always unmoved by whatever I could be doing, studying, saying. He just sat there, right beside me, lighting my cigarettes with a snap of his fingers and absorbing the smoke that came out of my lungs.

Renée said it was funny, the fact that I could hide my feelings – her words, not mine – for him while also being so close to him. It was like he was my best friend, not her. But I mostly shrugged, told her to piss off and that we couldn’t possibly be considered "friends" if we didn’t even talk to each other.

Aaron avoided me and actually asked Flitwick to rearrange the dorms so that we didn’t have to share a room anymore. Much to the professor’s disapproval, once he confirmed with me that I was better off somewhere else, he made me move. From one day to another, I just found my clothes and stuff on the opposite side of the tower.

The room was smaller and only had one bed, some basic furniture and a bathroom. Since it was a strange arrangement, I didn’t put it past Flitwick to have just created the room out of nowhere because they didn’t know where to put me if not in another House entirely. But it was not like I didn’t appreciate it: I did enjoy the silence and the loneliness that came with the new bedroom. But it also meant Renée’s and Neil’s visits doubled over time, once they were sure we wouldn’t be disturbed in my private room.

One day, on the first days of December, Renée came into my room alone.

“Hiya,” she said, taking a look around, “your boyfriend is not here?”

I hurled a pillow at her, not raising my gaze from the book I was reading about animagi and the spells and potions required for a safe, complete transformation.

“I thought Neil was with you. Didn’t see him all morning,” I replied, still reading the book – even though I was reading the same page over and over again now that Renée was there.

“I met him at lunch, said he had to talk to Madam Winfield and Miss Dobson about some stuff. I thought he’d come here after that. Maybe he just went to get you dinner,” she shrugged and jumped on the bed beside me. I scooted over to make some space: while I was used to her touch by then, the bed was king-sized. There was plenty of room for the both of us.

“Who are they?”, I sighed and placed the book on the coffee table right next to me. There was really no use in trying to read when she wanted to chat.

Renée looked at me, blinking away her shock. Then said:
“You really don’t know, don’t you?”

I shrugged, trying to read whether the look on her face was amusement or disheartenment.

“They’re the healers of the school, Andrew,” she cackled, “Madam Winfield, Abby, she takes care of bruises and stuff, while Miss Dobson takes care of your happiness. She's helped Nicky a lot, after last year…”

“With what?”

“Y'know, the thing with his father?” she straightened to take a better look at me. At my indifference, she looked appalled and slapped her forehead lightly, “One day you’ll have to explain to me why you lot don’t sound like a family at all.”

“Let’s assume I know very little about everyone of them,” I said, but I straightened too, curious about what I could have possibly missed about my uncle and his relationship with his son, “what happened last year?”

Renée seemed torn, probably asking herself whether it was her place to tell me that story, even though I guessed all the group – but me, as always – knew about whatever event she was talking about.

While she collected her thoughts, I did a mental calculation and gathered the information I already possessed about my cousin and his family: they were all powerful purebloods and when I met Nicky, they didn’t seem close, but it looked like forced distance, especially for his mother Mary; Nicky was one year older than me, but was in his fourth year in Hogwarts just like me because he wasn’t able to pass his exams at the end of his real fourth year. But I also knew that failing the exams meant expulsion from the school and not repetition of the year, so it was a peculiar situation. How did all of this weave into whatever Renée was about to tell me? What else did I not know about my despicable family?

“You know Nicky’s gay, right?”, she said, all of the sudden. I nodded, to which she just sighed, “I always thought it was pretty clear, but apparently Nicky’s parents never noticed. Last year, he began to fancy this lad in Ravenclaw, one of Aaron’s buddies from his study groups, he’s sixth year. When Nicky told his parents, he received a howler the next day that said he had to go home right then and there. Dumbledore was reluctant but when Nicky didn’t go back, your uncle came straight here and took him home himself. We didn’t see him for the rest of the year, but he sent us a letter during the summer from this weird camp… he said they were basically torturing him. They made him hurt and repent, like they could Crucio the gay away. It was horrible.”
She wasn’t looking at me when she stopped talking, but straight ahead to the black and blue wall. I swallowed, unsure of what to do or say. I just asked the most logical question.

“How did he get out?”

“You aunt felt bad when she received the letter of the failed year at Hogwarts. She begged Dumbledore to take him back in school and he agreed, with the only condition he’d never go to that camp again. Your aunt said it was alright because Nicky was ‘cured’ anyway,” she rolled her eyes and sank into the fluffy, white pillows.

“So he has to pretend he’s not gay in front of his parents in order to receive an education?”, I snapped, standing up and beginning to pace around the room.

“Yes but, I mean, they hardly never notice it anyway. And it hasn’t posed an issue yet this year, even though Nicky had plenty of encounters. I can vouch for that, my dorm’s right next to his,” she shivered, laughing a little. When she looked up at me, I must’ve been expressing nothing but concern and fear, because her voice became soothing, “He’s safe until he’s here with us. I swear, Andrew, don’t worry. Plus, Dumbledore would never accept it if they did it again.”

“Oh, yeah, I forget our headmaster is a twink,” I giggled.

“Anyway, you’re safe too,” she mused, “if I didn’t notice you’re gay, they never will. Like, how do you ignore that Nicky is homosexual? He’d probably tattoo it on his forehead if he could.”

“Fair point,” I shrugged, and launched myself again on the soft mattress.

Just then, Neil made his entrance, mute as always. He waved at the both of us and then planted himself on the chair beside my desk, spinning on himself a few times before picking up a book from his bag and beginning to read.

“Where were you, Josten?”, I asked, pointing my elbows in the mattress so I could raise my torso and look at him directly. He was frowning, which was never a good thing during those days.

“Met Riko and Kevin in the hallways. Had a little chat,” he hissed.

“What did they do?”, Renée got up to take a better look at him, too.

“Nothing, really,” he said, but the grasp on his book got so tight his knuckles turned whiter and wither against his already pale skin, “they’re just excited for tomorrow’s match, so they had some steam to let out.”

“Did they hurt you?” I asked, but I already knew the answer: nothing could really hurt Neil during those days, so they’d probably kept a safe distance from him while still getting to him in some ways. They always did, one way or another: whether it was words or actions, whether they’d do it directly or not, Neil was always tormented by them, so much so that sometimes he had to barricade himself into the dungeons so they couldn’t ‘casually run into him’ and take the piss.

“No, but they said some nasty stuff,” as he saw Renée open her mouth again, he just raised a hand, “I really don’t want to talk about it. I’m fine.”

“Sure you are,” she sighed, but she obliged and turned to me again, “are you nervous about tomorrow? Dan was so mad when Riko caught the snitch against us and I really didn’t like how Kevin kept cheating to score points against me.”

“It wasn’t technically-”, I started.

“I know it wasn’t technically cheating, but it wasn’t fair play either,” she stated, crossing her arms on the chest and pouting a little. I laughed.

“I’m not nervous, but they’re strong. Maybe I just made peace with the fact that the only team we stand a chance against is Hufflepuff,” I sighed.

“Oi, we’re good, you know?”, she placed a hand on her chest, feigning offence.

I laughed again but stopped when I saw that Neil was watching us, still a small frown plastered on his face. I didn’t know what was up with him, but he didn’t look like his natural self and not even the fake, made-up one I was used to seeing when we were around other people – including Renée. As I gathered the strength to ask him what was wrong – seeing it wasn’t really a me thing to ask – he just closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

“I’m going to go and get some food in me, but I’m tired so I don’t think I’ll come by again,” he stated, then went for the door and disappeared behind it.

“What’s up his ass?” I asked instead, to nobody in particular.

“Riko and Kevin really know how to wound him, even when nobody else ever gets close,” Renée answered, and we left it at that.

 

---

 

The changing room smelled like there were a thousand pans frying onions in there, but I wasn’t in the place of complaining. I really wasn’t in the place of doing anything but changing into my Quidditch uniform, since everybody there was a friend of Aaron’s and by extent despised me like he did. They just trusted me enough to guard the hoops while they did what needed to be done during the matches, but that was about it for the nature of our relationship. Which was, as always, more than fine by me.

As I put the black and blue robe on and placed my other clothes and my wand in the locker I was assigned, Mr Wymack came into the room, quaffle placed under his arm and against his hips. He took a look at us and smiled.

“Alright, team, the show goes on in two minutes. Hurry up,” he yelled, “and afterwards, please, shower.”

Somebody in the crowd laughed, and I could see a smile forming on Aaron’s lips. That was, perhaps, the first time I’d seen him smile during the whole time I’d known him. Mr Wymack, the flying teacher and Quidditch coach, gestured for us to follow him outside but went ahead without us, while we were finishing the last touches. I ran to the storage room to pick up a broom, trying to avoid the most damaged ones – they were also the ones first-years had to practice with to learn how to fly – and then returned to the changing room to slip on my new, untested gloves.

When I opened the locker again, though, I couldn’t find them anywhere. I asked loudly to the team if they’d seen them, but they just ignored me, chatting away as they exited the room to go to the center of the pitch to meet with the Gryffindors team. I groaned and rolled my eyes, returning to check the entirety of the room for the gloves Renée had gifted me a month prior. I couldn’t have lost them already, could I?

“Looking for these?”, they dangled before my eyes while I was crouching down to look under one of the benches. I snatched them from his hands, glaring at him. When I stood up, I saw that he was looking at me with false indifference, trying too hard to mask his rage, “don’t fuck up today.”

“It wasn’t my fault we lost against Slytherin, Aaron,” I just replied.

“Doesn’t mean it won’t be your fault if we lose today,” he reiterated, and I really wanted to punch him right in the face, but we needed his sharp eyes to look for bludgers during the game. Maybe, I’d just wait for it to end.

“I’ll do my best,” I smiled wryly at him and pushed past him to get out of the room.

He followed silently and, when we reached the rest of the team, David rearranged us to the correct formation, preceded by him as captain. When Wymack made us a sign to enter the pitch, the roaring of the crowd finally hit my ears, deafening me instantly. I looked up and around to the high stands, filled with people gathered from the castle and neatly divided into a rather small, sparkling red and gold section and a wide blue and black one, where I supposed people from the other Houses – tired of the constant abuse by the Gryffindor Quidditch team, which basically consisted in Riko’s gang of miscreants – rallied as well.

Reaching the center of the pitch made the noise louder and louder and harder to tune out, and all I could see was David and the rest of the team waving at the spectators, a big, white grin decorating his fierce face. I marched behind them, in tow, with my head lowered and my broom in hand. I didn’t like the fact that this quite enjoyable sport also came with the public display of matches, but I also didn’t hate that enough for me to drop it entirely. I liked the thrill of the height, I liked the competition, and I liked the fact that I was slowly being recognized as the best keeper between the four teams. Even though I held nothing against Renée, and I’d also never admit it to anyone, I liked being naturally good at something. It was also fun, at times.

The crowd fell silent suddenly, and I knew the Gryffindor team had made its entrance. As always, their bright red robes created an unsettling contrast with their unnaturally pale face and mostly dark hair. They all had those weird speckles of gold in their dark eyes that tied the whole blood-curdling look together, and the same wicked smile on their faces. They knew they were invincible, and they’d proven it a thousand times, so why hide the arrogance, the confidence, the lust in crushing yet another group of people in yet another occasion?
When they approached us, I noticed their steps were synchronized like soldiers, and it made a shiver run along my spine. I sighed, preparing myself for whatever they were going to unleash against us.

David and Riko shook hands first, then the two teams passed by each other so that they could all exchange the ritual, formal greeting. The nasty eyes of the Gryffindors met the scared but ready to fight ones of the Ravenclaws. That was that, until Kevin and Riko reached me.

Kevin just took a good look at me and refused to shake my hands. He then looked up, to the Ravenclaw’s stand, and when I turned around to see what he was watching, I caught the sunlight reflecting on a mass of red hair. As I turned back around, I found Kevin was no longer in front of me.
Riko was.

“Looking for my puppy, pet?”, his eyes were wild and crazy.

“Actually, your brainless second in command was,” I retorted, “I couldn’t care less if Neil was here to watch the game or not. It’s not going to matter anyway.”

“Oh?”, he smiled, “How’s that?”

“You’re going to win. Not in a fair, loyal way, but you are,” I tilted my head to the side, looking at him up and down, “I’d say to skip the pleasantries and just get to it, shall we?”

“Are you accusing me of something, pet?”, I could see by the way his pupils enlarged and his eyes got darker that he was getting angrier.

“Nothing, really,” I cooed, “but what I said on the first day goes for Neil, too. I’d like it if you stopped harassing him every chance you get. I wouldn’t want you to regret it.”

“What are you going to do?”, he laughed, “Report me to the headmaster? Please. You’re just as pathetic as the rest of your little group of losers.”

“Test me, big boy,” I patted him on the head, smiling from ear to ear, “let’s see who’s the pathetic one.”

He hissed at me, but jumped on his broom and flew away, followed by the rest of the team. Only Kevin remained on the ground long enough to shoot me a confused look, then reached his position as a chaser in the sky.

Wymack yelled at me for being on the ground still, so I rushed on the broom and to the hoops. Finally in the air, I turned around to really scan the stands. I could easily find the group, seeing I’d already detected Neil in the crowd. Renée, whose bright, shiny hair was the only thing I could make out from so far away, was waving her arms around like a lunatic and screaming and cheering. The rest of the group was doing the same, but it was a small consolation that she was doing it in my direction. Neil was right next to her, silent and quiet as always, but looking at me with his piercing blue eyes. He’d told me earlier that day that he didn’t feel very well so he probably couldn’t make it to the game, so I was glad to see him there. But there was something about him that I couldn’t pinpoint, and my guts told me it was bad.

Wymack whistled and the game began.

It was just like Renée had told me: it wasn’t like they were cheating, so Wymack couldn’t do anything about it, but they weren’t playing fairly, so it wasn’t easy for my team to keep up with them. Every now and then the commentator shouted and yelled about catching a glimpse of the snitch, but the seekers were always too late. This went on for a while, and it actually made things better.

Of the thousands of shots they took, by the half of the game Gryffindors only scored seven times – which, though, was always better than our five. I was exhausted, and it wasn’t only the fact that Kevin and the other chaser were formidable, but also that Aaron was doing nothing to protect me from the bludgers Gryffindor’s beaters were very obviously batting only in my direction. The math was easy: their keeper could handle our chasers very easily, but Kevin was having a particularly hard time getting past me.

Kevin was brutal and fast, he had such proper technique I wasn’t even stunned when much later Dan would tell me he and Riko were already being considered for professional teams, even though they were still waiting for them to come of age. He was elegant in all of his shots, and could hurl the quaffle from every distance, still making it pass through the hoop with mesmerizing precision. Either way, being so duteous made him easy to read and memorize. When he scored, it was only because he was way too quick in retrieving the ball and shooting again for me to gain enough energy to turn the ball away.

Nearing the end of the match, the difference in points was still too low for the Gryffindor’s liking and the snitch was nowhere to be found, so Riko decided to delight himself into playing as a third chaser. All I could do was slowly learn his technique too, which was not too far off from Kevin’s, and trying my best while the bludgers still came for my head at any given moment. I was sweating, tired, and the rest of the Ravenclaw team didn’t seem to care. When I shot a glance at David, who was supposed to retrieve the quaffle from our opponents, I saw exactly why: they were scared.

Riko’s reign of terror was wide enough for them to be afraid, too, that they would suffer the consequences of interfering with what seemed to be a personal attack on me. Before I knew it, all the Gryffindor team was against me, but making it look like it was fair enough for Wymack not to catch up or be able to put a stop to it.

It all happened too quickly for anyone to intervene.

“Looks like the Gryffindors have the ball again, and it’s an easy pass to the star of the match! Kevin Day takes the quaffle yet again and makes no effort into wiping away the Ravenclaw’s defense. He’s aiming for the goal, let’s hope Minyard is up to it!”, the commentator was screaming. I already couldn’t stand the dude.

But he was useful, as he provided me another point of view on the pitch. He knew before me when anything was coming my direction, and sure enough Kevin was right in front of me in a matter of seconds, quaffle raised as he prepared to take the shot. I studied the angle of his arm and decided he was going to aim for the right hoop, so I rushed there. I made a mistake.

“What? Kevin Day passes the quaffle behind, to Riko Moriyama who was waiting for it! The action’s not over, though! Here’s Moreau, approaching with his bat, and he hurls the bludger directly towards Minayrd. Where are the Ravenclaw’s beaters?”

I didn’t see it coming. The bludger hit my side, sending me flying from the broom that quickly, without a rider, plummeted to the ground. Wanting to save myself from a similar experience, I used the momentum of the hit – even if the bludger clearly had broken some of my ribs, because my right side hurt like a bitch – to reach out for the hoop and grasp it.

“One of the Minyard twins is down! Is this allowed? Can the match go on?”

I tried to pull myself up, so that I could at least sit on the hoop until it was decided what was the right thing to do with the match. But, as long as Wymack didn’t whistle, the game went on, and so did the aggression. As I was struggling, a quaffle hit me right in the stomach, and sent me dangling again. The fabric of the gloves didn’t produce enough friction and made my hands slip continuously, so I had to change position every once in a while. Kevin, Riko and Jean where all in front of me, on their brooms.

A sense of panic rushed through me as I watched them throw the quaffle over and over, not at the hoop to score, but at me, to make me fall to an inevitable injury – I excluded, well I prayed Wymack wouldn’t let me die. I endured the hits as much as I could, grasping the metal hoop with all my strength and flexing my muscles so much I thought I’d be having cramps till Christmas. I was screaming for someone to do something, but not only the commentator went quiet, the whole Ravenclaw team had descended to the ground and was talking to Wymack, while my broom peacefully laid beside their feet. How could they be so stupid?

Finally, they seemed to reach some kind of agreement. It was clear that Wymack was about to put an end to the match, that by then was an even score, so the Ravenclaws seemed to be happy with how everything turned out. Yay.

But Wymack hadn’t whistled yet, so Kevin decided there was time for another action. He raised his arm again, lazily preparing for an easy goal.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I whispered to myself, and I took a deep breath in and closed my eyes.

I opened them right away. Kevin had thrown the quaffle so weakly I thought it barely made it to the hoop, but to prevent any damage, I began swinging back and forth. It took all my strength and energy, and I was positive I was about to collapse, but still I had to try it. Gaining momentum, I looped inside the hoop backwards, sending the quaffle flying away to the other side of the pitch with a back kick. Jean was stunned, and Kevin looked at me like I was crazy for even thinking about something like that. I was just really out of breath.

As the crowd gasped and Wymack finally declared the game had come to an end, with an unsatisfying draw, it was Riko that took matters into his hands. My hands were already beginning to slip more than before, but I saw David coming to retrieve me with my broom in hand so that I could fly safely to the ground. However, Riko was quicker.

“Maybe,” he whispered, so close to my face I could smell his bad, iron-y breath, “you’re not so pathetic after all. Still, if you’re not a loser, you’re a threat.”

“It’s over, Riko,” I panted, “let me go.”

“As you wish,” he cackled, “bye-bye, pet.”

He took a little run up and slammed into me with his whole body weight. The next thing I knew, was that I was falling.

I was afraid of heights since I was a little kid, and I always made fun of myself inside my head because there were worse things to be afraid of that were already in my life, but nothing could really scare me like a little distance from the ground. I knew, since I was a baby, that it was irrational to fear the falling, so I enjoyed the rush of adrenaline that being near heights and ledges gave me. I enjoyed the feeling of my heart pumping and my blood rushing through my veins to serve every little limb of my body while it slightly emptied the brain. And, right then, I enjoyed the feeling of falling to my doom, because I was secretly longing it for a long time, and I couldn’t not be happy about it, could I?

I could only make out Renée screaming my name, people rushing from the stands, Wymack trying to levitate my limp body in vain. It was all useless. My head hit the ground, not as hard as I thought, but still hard enough to hurt and make me feel lightheaded. I rationalized the feeling into somewhat of a diagnosis: I was losing blood, my ribs were broken, my arm was limp because I landed on it and it was probably fractured. Everything hurt, and the loud voices of the people gathering around me made it worse. I opened my eyes for a moment, grunting and scanning the faces that surrounded me. Wymack was asking me something but my ears were starting to plug up, making a terrible whistling and screeching sound. I shook my head a lot, trying to make in go away, but it didn’t work so I closed my eyes again.

When I opened them once more, I saw Renée was the only one left with Wymack and a blonde woman I’d never seen before. I could feel their hands on me. Don’t fucking touch me, I wanted to scream, get your hands off me. But my mouth was shut, and my head was lighter than a cloud, so I couldn’t form anything but meaningless grunts and groans.

I could feel my body lose weight and mass and everything physical and tangible. I could feel myself slip away slowly, and then all of the sudden everything went black. I only had time for a last coherent thought.

Where’s Neil?

I passed out.

Chapter 7: Complete Mess

Summary:

!!!!!!!TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!!
This chapter is... a lot. Please, I warn you to check the way you're feeling thoroughly and watch for the triggers in this chapter because there are a lot of them. It narrates snippets of Andrew's past, which, if you're part of this fandom, you should know what it is about. Be careful.
Warnings: explicit mention of rape and child and psychological abuse.

“He’s waking up.”

The voice came from afar, like he was talking directly into my ear but from the other side of the universe. It was an odd feeling, to sense everything and yet feel nothing real. I could sense the room around me, the sheets and the mattress beneath me, the breaths of the people who surrounded me, but I couldn’t really feel myself, my body, and I could barely hear my thoughts. The ringing in my ears just got louder then, and I thought regaining consciousness hurt more than it really should.

“I told you to stay in bed and get some sleep,” a foreign, feminine voice came from even further. It was a colloquial statement, though, so I gathered he must’ve known her. She must’ve been trustworthy.

“I told you I’d catch some sleep when he wakes up,” his voice was low and spirited, tired, like he’d just come home from a long journey and really wanted to rest, but couldn’t.

Sleep, you fool, I wanted to say, I’ll be okay.

But my mouth stayed closed, and my thoughts began rambling and disconnecting again. The ache in my side became less and less palpable, while the one in my arm almost disappeared.

“Are you sure he’s waking up?”

The woman was closer now, and I could feel her scrutinizing eyes exploring my body. I realized I must’ve been naked, or at least my injuries had to be uncovered. She sighed, and I could feel she was exhausted too. She had probably been up all night to care for him, right after she had to take care of my injuries. She seemed sweet, kind, like the type of person you could count on to pull an extra few hours to ensure your comfort and then she wouldn’t make you feel guilty about it.

I didn’t really like those kinds of people, because they were too good to be true, and most of the time the trick was that they weren’t. They were mostly backstabbers and sadists who enjoyed making you feel trapped by something you didn’t even ask for. But she seemed nice, and she was comforting him, so I didn’t mind her presence, for now.

“I’m going to put him back to sleep, he’s too weak to wake up now,” she whispered, “but maybe he’ll enjoy your company. Talk to him.”

I couldn’t see his reaction, but I could imagine it: he was appalled, but didn’t let her notice; he’d probably just nodded, still intensely looking at me and avoiding her eyes because he’d burst out laughing otherwise due to the silly suggestion.

Either way, he talked once more.

“Sure,” he said, “could you pass me that book?”

It was Hogwarts: A History.

 

---

 

I knew it was a memory because I could see myself in third person, and the person I was looking at was not the me I would see in a mirror. I was little, and I knew that because I remembered that scene exactly. Having an eidetic memory meant that remembering stuff was easy, almost inevitable. Even things I didn’t want to remember, even things I’d gladly wipe out from my memory. But I didn’t get to do that – most people with trauma actually did. I didn’t, because evidently my trauma was too important to be forgotten.

I knew that house, it was the third one already. The first family got rid of me when I began walking because their newborn mania wore out by then, and the second did the same thing when I was old enough to write and read – because children are way cuter when they’re too little to actually feel like they’re your responsibility, right?

I knew that room: the mom had picked up a bed shaped like a red car, which was endearing and really exciting for a little kid, and the walls were plastered in this light blue paint. All the furniture was either red or blue and it was covered in Spider-man ornaments.

The mom was kind: she was gentle, and you could tell she definitely wanted to be a mother, to raise someone as her own. If it wasn’t for the accident, maybe that someone could’ve been me. Then again, if I ended up with her, I wouldn’t have met Cass. And Cass was worth losing every family for.

I didn’t need to look at baby-me to know what I was doing. I was playing with a teddy bear, pretending it was my son, so I fed him and bathed him and put him to sleep. And when I imagined he was crying, I’d get up and cradle it in my arms, wondering if my mother – my birth mother – had ever done the same.

I was seven.

“Andrew, are you still awake?”, I heard the father call me from under the stairs. I muttered a yes. I knew he’d come up to check on me anyway, and he’d probably want to take advantage of the fact that the mom was asleep on the couch. She always passed out on it in the afternoon, after making lunch and cleaning the kitchen.

I knew he was coming up anyway, because he’d done it countless times before. I didn’t really keep score – I was still a kid – but something inside of me told me that whatever he was doing to me was wrong, so maybe I should keep track of it every time he did it.

Sure enough, he was in my room in less than a minute. I watched as little me looked at his wannabe-father’s eyes and gulped, still cradling and rocking the little teddy bear back and forth. The man produced a joyless ‘aw’ at the sight of me, and I – if I, the grown up one, even had a body – flinched. It was always the sign, even with the next ones: when they look at you like you’re their prey, and try to express something that could pass like family love or innocent wonder, when they stand there watching you with those narrowed, flashy eyes, that’s when it’s about to happen. That’s when their mind is already made up, and you really can’t do anything about it but wait for it to pass.

I wasn’t this wise, during that particular episode, mostly because I didn’t have the time to develop a rule and a law based on my personal experience. I didn’t even really know what was being done to me, I didn’t even know the significance of it. I learned only later in life that using the person that should be your son that way was not only wrong, but amoral, unethical, disgusting.

I was seven.

“Are you playing with your new teddy?”, he asked in a soothing voice. He didn’t want me to scream: the mom could wake up. He didn’t want her to wake up, I knew that: if he did, he wouldn’t wait for her to fall asleep every time. I just nodded, trying to be as pleasant as possible. Maybe, if he saw I was playing in peace and I was being a good little kid, he’d leave me alone. Just this once.

“You’re so cute, Andrew,” he muttered again, “do you want to play doctor with me, like yesterday? I don’t want to nap, either.”

I shook my head no, violently. His expression got creepier, and the smile on his face became cold and distant. He, like I said, had made up his mind. I really couldn’t change it, but my little, uneasy mind of a toddler ran to closest thing it could find to somewhat of a solution. It was something his wife said, so surely, he abided by it. She always said: if you really don’t want something, you must always ask gracefully and respectfully. If you say please, no one can really deny you anything you want.

So, that’s what I did.

“Please,” little-me whispered, “I don’t want to play like that anymore. It hurts, all day long. And at night my tummy aches so much I can’t sleep.”

“But Andrew,” he just replied, “it’s our favorite game! Come on, jump on the bed for me. I have to examine you, I’m the doctor.”

“No, please,” little-me said again and was beginning to tear up. Or was it grown-up me?

“Andrew, I will put you on the bed whether you like it or not. It’s not good to disobey your doctors.”

At that point, he picked me up and put me face down on the bed. I could feel even then the chilling sensation of my clothes being torn apart, of his hand big enough to cover my whole back, of his nails digging into my soft, baby skin, and his moans suffocated by biting his other hand, so that his wife wouldn’t wake up from her relaxing nap to find her husband raping their seven-year-old fostered child. I remembered every detail of it, every excruciating feeling and thought, every painful thrust and every long, loud cry.

As I witnessed the scene again and again, the whole world went dark and black. I couldn’t even feel my body anymore, but I knew I was curled up, knees against my chest, as tears streamed down my face yet again. Nothing was around me, but I could still hear my cries of pain and betrayal. The woman lied to me: saying please doesn’t get you anything. But I didn’t know it back then, so I kept saying it, just in case he would stop eventually.

Please let me go. Please, you’re hurting me. Please, I don’t want to play anymore, please!

Please. Please. Please.

I was too loud, and his wife woke up.

The next day, I was dropped off on the porch of my fourth house.

 

---

 

“You’re okay, now,” a concerned voice made it through the panic and the nightmares, and reached my subconscious with calm, reassuring strokes on my head and face. I could recognize that touch, that skin, even the way the hands moved against my own. I felt safer than I did a moment before, and I would’ve allowed myself to sigh and take a deep breath and relax, if only I could take back control over my body. But it was clear, even though she had got to me, one way or the other I was still too weak to fully wake up. I was in a vegetative state, imposed on me by the healers of the school.

My head hurt and felt really light. But the whistling and screech in my ears were lowering their volume, allowing me to hear more clearly what was going on outside of the confined space of my hospital bed.

“He’s my brother,” someone was yelling, rather loudly, “I have the right to see him!”

“Yeah, well,” he was clearly saying this with a frown on his face, and I knew it even if I couldn’t see him, “maybe you should have remembered about it when he was hanging from a fucking pole high as a bloody tower, you absolute piece of shit.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that,” the other one hissed, and I could imagine his finger pointing directly at his face in a gesture of scolding – he could be such an old lady at times -, “You weren’t anywhere to be found either, Mr. High Horse.”

“He was ill,” the feminine voice said – not the familiar, comforting one, but the other – alarmed, like he had struck a nerve, “he couldn’t have possibly cared for your brother in the state he was in in the first place.”

“Fine,” the other boy said, “but that doesn’t change the fact that should at least let me see him! Why can she?”

“Because she’s his friend, you dingus,” he yelled, and I knew he was refraining from saying something worse, something that could really hurt the other boy, but he would never say something like that to purposely wound someone out of spite. He only used his power of witty words and snarky remarks when the opponent was a worthy one, not a 15-year-old boy with an attitude problem, “besides, she was the first one to assist him and she is training as a healer, so she has more rights than you to be here.”

“And what are you doing here?”, the other one accused.

I could feel the way he tensed up, straightening his back like he was being examined.

“I want to help,” he said, defensively.

“And I don’t?”, the other one asked wryly and then scoffed, “you are one proper piece of work, you know that?”

I didn’t like the way they were talking to each other. It made me uneasy, listening to people who basically gave zero fucks about me argue about who cared more and who should get to spend more time with my senseless body. I actually pretty much hated it, and wanted to stop it, but couldn’t. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t yell, I couldn’t send them away.

“Listen here, dumb-”

“Oi, you two!”, she finally intervened, snatching the curtains around my hospital bed open so she could probably sneer at them, “You’re upsetting them- I mean, him, for Merlin’s sake. If you have to bitch about this, could you possibly do it outside where he can’t hear you?”

The other one probably complied instantly, but I knew he was too stubborn to react well after being banished like he was a little child. I knew he was about to retort to the girl with one of his snappy, clever phrases, which would all amount to ‘and who do you think you are’, but she was quicker.

“That goes for you, too,” she scolded him, “I know you care about him, and you feel guilty you weren’t there but if you have to be here now, you’re going to have to behave. Do you understand me?”

He probably nodded. I felt more relaxed now that she had spoken up.

“Good,” she said, “and you have to let him come to see him eventually,” she added, more shyly, like she was afraid it was still a burning topic and that it’ll come back to bite her in the ass.

I could feel the air shift as he probably approached my bed in silence. I knew he was closer because I could also sense the warmth of his body near mine.

“When he wakes up, he can yell at me about not letting his twin come to visit,” he whispered. He had the same, tired voice as the first time now, “Until then, I’m just going to keep doing what I think it’s best for him. I can handle him.”

“I know you can,” she just replied.

They fell silent, and I fell asleep again.

 

---

 

The next memory was in juvie.

Juvie wasn’t a rough time particularly, but I had just escaped Cass’s house, which meant I had lost the only person I could really call a mother and really seemed to give a shit about me. I didn’t like the thought of her being alone in that house, seeing that I was planning to go to juvie just long enough for Drake to be deployed and sent far, far away from me, my body and my soul. Still, when I finally got out of there and Drake wasn’t there anymore, since I had a criminal record Cass couldn’t possibly want to take me back into her house. I was making my peace with that, and the fact that it would be harder to find a foster home once I got out.

As any basic teenager would, I took my stress out physically. I was just damned luck I was in a boy prison, and I was as gay as they came.

My first ‘victim’ was my cell partner, his name was Marcus. He was cute, a little older than me, and I never asked why he was in juvie at all, but it wasn’t anything of importance anyway. I mean, he could’ve been charged with first degree murder, and I still would’ve done what I did. It wasn’t like I was going to marry the guy.

Either way, he wasn’t gay. Said he only wanted to ‘blow up some steam’ while he was in because his girlfriend didn’t come to visit enough and they obviously couldn’t shag in the visitors’ room, so he used me instead. And he really used me, because I never received what I gave, and every time he finished he clarified that he was, indeed, not a dirty homosexual. I always tried to hide my laugh while I said I wasn’t one, either.

One day, he tested my boundaries.

People never saw me as a threat. It was clear I was in for something really, really stupid and just because I couldn’t pay the fine for it, so nobody was really scared, and they treated me like I was some kind of reject. Too dirty to make friends outside of jail, too innocent to make friends in it. Also, if at 15 I was small, at 13 and 14 I was even smaller, so I didn’t look like I could make any damage. Anyway, people took advantage of that in many ways, and I let them do it, because after what I had endured most of my life, being kicked and punched and shoved into small spaces wasn’t that big of a deal.

But I still despised being touched.

“Alright, Minyard?”, Marcus entered the cell. He had the bunk right beneath mine, and I was laying down, looking at the ceiling, wondering – but never testing – if it was low enough for me to touch it from there.

“Hi,” I just said, and left it at that.

Marcus was tall, way taller than me, and he could easily watch me on the top bed without getting on the tip of his toes or anything. He just poked my arm, a little harshly.

“What?”, I asked, batting the hand away.

“Reckon we can do some… stuff?”, he whispered.

“It’s two in the morning,” I answered, “I reckon you could sleep.”

“But you’re up, why can’t we?”

“Because I don’t want, Marcus, leave it.”

“Oh, c’mon, mate,” he grasped my arm, tugging at it like he was trying to pull me towards him, off the bed, “it won’t take long.”

I didn’t even make him finish the sentence. I grabbed his wrist and spun him around, bending the arm backwards and twisting his bones. I was facing his back, now, and with my other hand I took a firm grip in his hair and tilted his head back, so that his windpipe was obstructed. He panted and coughed, and I watched him firmly, pulling enough to hurt him but not too much, so he wouldn’t pass out for the lack of air.

“Don’t ever insist like that again,” I whispered directly in his ear, “Because I will rip out your throat with my teeth and leave you bleeding to death inside this godforsaken cell. And who would come for you, sweet Marcus? Your girlfriend, clearly pregnant with some other bloke’s son, or a guard, who is looking forward to the day you’re finally no longer their problem, huh?”

His eyes were terrified, and his lips trembled a bit. I pushed him, and he stumbled forward, almost falling to his knees. When he turned back around to face me, he was met with my glacial, distant eyes. I had had enough.

“Go to bed, Marcus,” I stated, “Sleep.”

He nodded, and we didn’t speak again the next day. The day after that, Marcus was transferred to another cell and word spread around that the little kid in his former one was more dangerous than he looked.

 

---

 

“He’s still asleep,” the female foreign voice I kept hearing informed someone of that.

I knew it was him, by his smell of wet grass and soil and the way his feet stroke the ground silently, but firmly. He was coming to visit more than she did. I thought, maybe, it was guilt. Maybe, it was something else. I wished I didn’t let myself hope so much.

“I know,” he replied, “I was just coming by to drop his homework.”

I wanted to make a joke about how he must’ve been ahead of me, that homework didn’t matter anymore because he’d probably beat me in both of our classes and there was no point in being good if I weren’t better than him. I wanted to joke and laugh, because his never-ending sadness and tiredness was beginning to annoy me. Or, maybe, just to wound me.

“You know I’ll call you when he wakes up,” the woman said, her voice seeped with kindness. I knew he appreciated it, but also slightly didn’t.

“I know,” he said again, and the sound of something being dropped echoed right next to me.

As we both listened to the sound of the healer's heels walking away, I felt the air shift as he bent and leaned closer to me. In a moment of wonder, he stroke my hair lightly, never grazing my skin, just pushing some strands of platinum locks away from my face. I heard him sigh. 

"Wake up, Andrew," he whispered, "don't make me say that word."

I wanted to wake up and assure him that everything was fine.

But the nightmares were still haunting me.

 

---

 

I couldn’t believe he was there. My heart was racing and my palms were sweating. The room was so white I couldn’t even see the end of it, but I could see him, clear as day, as he approached me with that cool, soothing smile he’d always had when he was about to hurt me. I wanted to take a step back, get as far from him as possible, but I was stuck in place, on my knees, always begging for him to leave me alone.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Why are you crying, sweet boy?”, he cooed, and a shiver rushed through my spine as he tilted my head backwards with his callous fingers. He had his Army suit on, and all of his gears. I prayed he would just put a bullet in my skull and put an end to this sickening game of catch. I shook my head, trying to get free from his touch, but he just made his grasp firmer on my chin.

“What are you doing, eh, boy? Hiding from me?”, he laughed, “don’t you think I’ll catch you eventually? Do you think it’s over?”

“Leave me alone, Drake,” I managed to say, but was out of breath right after. He laughed again, loud and strong, and then became serious, leaning forward to look in my eyes.

“You were always so pretty,” he whispered, and his other hand ran through my hair, tugging at the ends of it, “your eyes are like yellow stars. But they’re so empty now. When I met you, you were so little and so full of energy. What happened to you, my baby?”

“You,” I wheezed, “you did.”

He smiled widely, happily, like I had just confirmed a theory that may have solved all his problems. His hands both slipped from their previous positions to my cheeks, and he gently kissed my lips. I wanted to recoil, vomit, stab him so many times his dead body wouldn’t even be recognizable but I was stuck, I was stuck on the ground and I didn’t have the strength to say no, to say anything that would make him go away. I just had to endure it, all over again, the same thing, the same feeling of loneliness, the same constant reminder that my body wasn’t mine to begin with.

His hands travelled on my body as he kissed me passionately, like he really liked it, like he really wanted it, and it didn’t matter how much I didn’t reciprocate, because that was merely his enjoyment, his pastime, his recreational activity. I was nothing more than a toy, than a blow-up doll. I was no longer human when I was in his arms. And I had this crippling fear that he was right.

That wasn’t the last time I’d fall right into them.

“Say that you love me, Andrew,” he moaned against my lips, and I felt the same old salty, warm tears wetting my cheekbones, “say that you’re mine.”

“Never,” I cried, “never.”

“Oh, come on, baby,” he laughed, kissing the trails on my drenched cheeks, “aren’t you a little old for this? Fight back if you really don’t want it.”

I tried, but my body wouldn’t budge, and he tightened his grip on me by grasping my hips and tilting them, pressing them against his. I was about to be sick.

“See?”, he moaned, “you want me. It’s your fault I’m doing this, Andrew, you let me do this to you every single time.”

I started sobbing as his hands travelled up my shirt, caressing my tense muscles and fondling with my body. He lifted my shirt and threw it away, then began kissing my collarbone, chest, sternum, abdomen. All I could do was cry, scream, tell him – yet again – no, no no no. But he wouldn’t listen. He never did. He never cared.

“Stop it, Andrew, I mean it,” he suddenly halted, to look at me in my eyes, but I couldn’t stop crying, I really couldn’t, “I said stop it! You’re making me angry.”

But I kept doing it, even louder, and he got angrier and angrier, and eventually did what I was waiting for him to do for a long time.

He put his hands, big, strong soldier hands on my neck and squeezed the life out of me.

 

---

 

I jolted upright, coughing so much I expected my lung to fall out of my mouth anytime soon. The sunlight was burning my closed eyelids and I couldn’t seem to regain control of my breathing. Someone was patting me on the back, and I found enough air to scream.

“Nobody fucking touch me.”

They all complied, as I struggled with a hand on my chest to feel my ribcage rise and fall, rise and fall while my breathing became regular again. My head hurt; my arm hurt. My ribs hurt slightly less, so I was able to sit back again calmly as a group of three people looked at me in disbelief.

“Godric, you’re alive,” the blonde, stranger woman said, sighing and falling into a chair next to my bed.

“Are you okay?”, Renée asked, her voice louder than it really should’ve been, “does anything hurt too much? Do you feel lightheaded or like you’re going to faint?”

“Let him breathe, Renée,” Neil said, placing a hand on her shoulder to calm her down. I shot him a sympathetic look and closed my eyes again.

“I’m fine,” I panted, “I’m fine. You can go.”

“Nuh-huh!”, Renée protested, yanking her shoulder so Neil let go of her. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, “you almost died! I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t need you hovering over me, Walker,” I snapped, “I don’t need your help. I’m alive, I’m ok, just back off!”

She looked hurt, and I knew I shouldn’t have talked to her like that. But Drake’s face was still too close and too vivid for me to behave like a normal human being and not a feral animal.

Neil, thankfully, regained control of the situation.

“It’s all good, Renée,” he reassured her, in a soothing voice he never really used, “I’ll stay with him, and Abby will be here too. You go and tell the others he’s up but doesn’t want visitors yet.”

She just nodded and walked away. I’d have to apologize for that later and give an explanation I really didn’t want to give, but Neil was only being fair.

He turned to me.

“You don’t get me to kick me out like you did with her,” he just said, “I’m staying here. Riko tried to come a couple of times already and I will not leave you alone and vulnerable around him.”

I scoffed, trying to lighten up the mood. It wasn’t my forte, really.

“He’s right,” the woman – Abby, apparently – said, as she stood up, “I’m going to have to let Professor Flitwick know, so I’ll leave you alone for about half an hour. Can you handle that, Neil?”

“I know where all the potions are,” he shrugged. She nodded in response, and walked out too.

“Why are you here?”, I finally asked, looking at the crumpled sheets of my hospital bed to avoid meeting his eyes.

“What do you mean?”, he questioned, and I sighed.

“I mean, why are you helping? Don’t you have more important things to do?”

“You’re hurt,” he seemed bespoken, “are you seriously asking why I’m at your bedside when you have a head injury and couldn’t wake up for weeks after that fall?”

“I suppose I am,” I retorted.

“I-I…” he stuttered, but just rolled his eyes and leaned on the chair too, “Just shut up and eat something.”

I obliged and we stayed quiet for some time, eating and reading by ourselves.

Abby was gone longer than she should have, so we started talking again eventually, and he explained to me everything about Christmas homework for each of my classes – apparently, he had endured a very tiring and long conversation with Aaron, Matt and Nicky about it, which granted him little information but still enough for me to get back on track. He then explained with many details what he had done during our shared classes, and a couple of anecdotes actually were funny enough to make me laugh. I coughed a lot after doing it, though, so he frowned and kept to the serious, academic topics.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite pet, finally woken up,” a low, sinister voice came from the entrance of the medical wing.

I gulped and Neil shot to his feet, facing Riko, who, as always, was accompanied by a very bored Kevin.

“Leave us alone,” Neil said, voice firm and steady, “he’s still in a bad shape.”

“Oh, poor little midget,” Riko smiled, “did the big fall scare you?”

“No,” I replied, calmly, “but it did crack open my skull. Thank you, by the way.”

The small, pale boy laughed hysterically, so much so that Kevin took a step back and looked at him, confused.
“You got a mouth on you, don’t you, pet?”, Riko stepped closer.

Neil tensed up and bared his teeth at him, basically growling like a deranged, abandoned dog.

“I said leave us alone,” he hissed.

“Down, pup,” Riko yawned, like Neil’s little performance was old and used and boring at that point. I wasn’t going to admit that the way his eyes flashed and his teeth screeched against each other made my skin crawl, because Riko seemed unmoved by it.

“I just wanted to make a little conversation with my new toy, there,” the Gryffindor pointed at me casually, and I felt my heart sink. It wasn’t like I was afraid of him – in that moment, Neil scared me way more – but he still basically wanted to kill me, so it was only natural for my body to recoil at the suggestion.

“Riko, get out of here,” Neil threatened, but his voice was lower now, his eyes bluer, like he had gone into that powerful, untouchable mode only he seemed to master.

“Or what? Going to cry to mommy about it?”, Riko smiled kindly, and Neil’s face fell into a deep, sorrowing frown. I wanted to know what that was about.

Neil, however, only had a moment to make that hurtful retort get to him, but he seemed to process it really fast. A second later, he was sighing and crossing his arms on his chest, happily.

“You know what? It’s fine,” he said, a smile so fake it was almost creepy, “come and sit with us, you two. I’ll bet we’re going to have so much fun chatting away about our lives. What have you been up to, besides pushing people to their death? I bet your father is so proud of his disturbed little son, so sad and so lonely he has to prove to be half as cruel as his family because he feels this way he’ll get the chance to be actually a part of it. Maybe, though, you haven’t considered that your father doesn’t give a fuck about what goes on inside this castle, much less about what you do to innocent children who have done nothing to justify your very noticeable, cruel actions. Maybe, if you had stopped once to actually think about it, you’d realize that your father, rather than proud, would be disgusted by you and your little stunts and would throw you out of the family immediately.”

Neil stepped closer, and inched his head towards Riko’s ear, making the Gryffindor boy freeze and Kevin jump into attention.

“Also,” Neil whispered, “you might have to consider that I could crush you under my thumb if I wanted to. And if you touch Andrew again, even your uncle’s mercy won’t save you. Is that clear?”

Riko stepped back and went for the door, as Kevin tugged his arm to signal something.

“Winfield is coming,” the tall, pale boy said. He stole a glance at me before turning around and making a beeline to the exit. Riko stayed behind just for a moment, took a good look at us and sneered.

“It’s not over,” he stated.

When he was gone, Neil sat again next to me, but didn’t look at me for a long time. He just stared ahead, mind somewhere else, and quietly he whispered to himself:

“You can bet your ass it’s not.”

Chapter 8: Are you satisfied?

Notes:

Sorry for the delay! Also, it's 1:08 am in Italy right now, so it's my birthday! Yay me lol.

Nicky stopped by a few times, bringing King Fluffkins with him – no idea where he got him, since I thought I had lost that cat the first day of school. He claimed that being around cats could be therapeutic, but I thought it was just an excuse to be with me in the infirmary while Neil and Renée couldn’t be around for one reason or the other. I only allowed Nicky on my bedside, because he was sincere and honest and didn’t hate my guts - yet. Plus, while I was recovering, I learned that my wand was found snapped in two and my locker had been trashed so I didn’t own any clothes and I needed Nicky’s parents to buy some new ones for me: there was no use in being rude.

Neil was the one that was mostly around, which I didn’t necessarily hate. We mainly kept up our being alone together routine, so he sat right next to me, brought me some chocolate – offered with a very disgusted face because he, a downright psychopath, couldn’t stand sweet stuff – and new homework and books I asked him to retrieve for me from the library. He then stayed quiet, keeping his guard up for anyone and everyone who entered the medical wing of the castle. He could sense who the person approaching was from afar and it mesmerized me, even though I didn’t let it show through. He was only missing when he was getting stuff from me, and most of the time he made Renée cover for him, but he was back in a matter of minutes.

Of course, it was when both of them were missing that trouble came.

Nicky rushed towards me – I could recognize him by the way his feet struck the pavement – and peeked his head through the curtains. I shot a bored look at him before returning to my book.

“Don’t be mad at me, ok?”, he began, “I told him Madam Winfield didn’t allow anyone in here but me, Neil and Renée but he wouldn’t listen, said he had to talk to you or something, I don’t know, I tried to stop him but-”

“Nicky,” I shushed him, “who exactly is coming here?”

“I am,” that unforgettable, stupid voice.

Aaron snatched the curtains open and revealed his angry, contorted face. I rolled my eyes.

Had I been avoiding him for the past weeks? Yes. Totally. Was I to blame? Absolutely not. It’s not like he ever cared about me before all that shit had happened, so why would he care now? Why would I allow for him to see me at my worst possible shape when he couldn’t even stand the thought of having me around? What did he want from me?

“Oh, look who it is! The invisible beater,” I smiled wryly at him, yanking the curtain from his hand so I could close them again.

“I don’t think so,” he pulled harder, and on a normal day I could’ve probably overtook him, but I was laying on a hospital bed, so I knew it wasn’t going to happen right then. I sighed, and motioned for him to go on and tell me what he needed to say. Nicky was darting his eyes back and forth between us, like he knew we were a ticking bomb ready to explode at any given moment. Still, he stayed beside us, because he grasped the concept of family better than Aaron and I ever could.

“Why didn’t your redhead guard dog let me in when you were unconscious?”, he asked, angrily.

“Maybe because it’s partly your fault I’m not in my Arythmancy class with him right now and instead I’m trapped in a place I hate while my internal organs recover from a deadly fall?”

“It’s Riko’s fault,” he defended himself. I had to laugh.

“May be. But, if I remember correctly, I was dangling from that hoop for at least half an hour and not one of you stupid little pests thought it best to, at the very least, retrieve my broom,” I spat, glaring at my twin.

“What did you want me to do? It’s Riko,” he hissed, lowering his voice in case one of the people in Gryffindor’s dream team was out and about.

“I don’t care,” I was fuming, “I’m not afraid of him. That’s why he pushed me, that’s why he wants me dead. He basically attempted to kill me, and, while I’m not that glad he failed,” – Nicky winced – “he still doesn’t scare me, so why on Earth does he scare the rest of the bloody castle?”

A shiver ran through Aaron, and our cousin sighed, leaning on the bed.

“So?”, I yelled, “What’s the matter? Why is everybody terrified of him? Why is everybody so subjugated by him that when I try and go against him, when I threaten him, he feels the need to murder me?”

They shared a look, and I recognized the feeling that flashed inside their eyes: Neil had it every time I asked the same question, Renée looked at me the same way when I asked it back on the train. There was something, something not so secret, but still secret enough for it not to be told out loud, for them to be scared of saying, like they shouldn’t be doing it, like only admitting anything like that would mean it was the end.

“What the fuck is going on?”, I screamed, tired of being the last to know, tired of that life where I seemed to be better than anyone, but anyone knew better than me.

“You just…”, Nicky whispered, scared, “You don’t know what his family is.”

What. He said what his family is. There was something about Riko that was standoffish, but I didn’t ever connect to him being a what instead of a whom. And his teammates were the same. What, exactly, was hiding inside the Gryffindor’s tower?

“What is going on here?”

Neil’s voice reached my ears as comforting and relieving. He rushed to my bed and sneered at both of my family members, but at that point our conversation was far from over, so they didn’t have any intentions of staying with me. Aaron just nodded in somewhat of a goodbye and Nicky flinched, looking at Neil’s glare of disapproval. He knew, like I did, he was going to get scolded right when Neil was done with me.

As they strolled towards the exit of the infirmary, Neil turned to me with sorry eyes and a tired look on his face. Sometimes I thought he could look way older than he was, way older than me. Still, the dark circles around his eyes did nothing but make him more beautiful.

“Are you okay? He wasn’t supposed to let Aaron in here,” he whispered, gracefully.

“I’m fine,” I replied, nodding mindlessly as I replayed the whole conversation with my brother and my cousin in my head. Neil seemed to notice my mind was someplace else and I shook my head lightly, trying to focus, “so, what do you have for me today?”

“Mrs Pince said that reading too much might hurt your eyes,” he laughed, and placed two books on my lap. One was for homework, the other for my still ongoing research for a way into Filch’s office. I realized that even if I found a way in, I had to be invisible to avoid detention and the prefect’s rounds. So, I was looking into that for good measure.

“It’s fine, I’ll just put my glasses on,” I replied, shrugging a little.

“Your what?”, his jaw dropped to the floor.

“Really, Josten?”, I smirked, “You spend so much time with me and didn’t notice I need glasses to read?”

“I’ve never seen you with them!”, he was speechless, “And your sight seems fine so why do you need them?”

“Oh, it is not fine,” I laughed, “I just pretend I don’t need them because I hate them but in reality, I can’t see shit.”

“Does Renée know? Does your family know?”, he stood up and began pacing. I snickered.

“Jesus Christ, Neil, calm down. It’s not like I told you I was gay or something."

Then I realized my mistake.

He stopped in his tracks and turned to me, eyes widened and mouth slightly agape. He gulped, closed his mouth and then opened it again to talk, but stuttered the first couple of times. I was frozen in place, scare to finally admit it to him but thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea and maybe he’d say he liked me and maybe-

“Are you…?”, he began and stopped my train of thoughts.

“No,” I answered, a little too quickly to be true, “no, I was just making an example.”

“Oh,” he said, nodding ever so slightly, and shifting again to sit next to my bed. He cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable – and, but I must’ve been imagining it, just a little disappointed? –, “so, let’s see them.”

“What?”, my head was a mess, and I couldn’t comprehend a word he said.

“Your glasses,” he laughed, “put them on, I want to see them.”

I sighed, and pinched the bridge of my nose, preparing for the humiliation. He would be the first in a long time to see me wear them, to notice I did. Because I did wear them most of the time when Renée and Neil were in my room, reading and studying, but maybe I was so used to hide them that they never picked up on that. Was that a fault? An error? Was I supposed to parade around the fact that I couldn’t see?  Was that something normal people did?

“Fine,” I said, “but the moment you laugh, you’re banned from here.”

“Cross my heart,” he swore, and I sighed again.

I bent to the side, opening the first drawer of the little nightstand next to the bed, and grabbed the leather case at the center of it. I snapped it open – it had some kind of magnetic latch – and picked up the glasses, consequently placing them on my nose. It was an old pair, one that Cass had gotten me many years before, after she noticed I couldn’t read very well without them. She’d gotten me a prescription and picked the shape of the frames, which was two silvery squares with rounded edges. They were dirty, and my vision was a bit blurry, so I took them off again and I tried to polish the lenses before settling them for good.

I turned to Neil, who was watching me carefully. I shrugged, and he smiled widely. That eased the aching pain in my chest for a little while.

“They look good,” he peeped, “why don’t you wear them more often? They suit you.”

“I don’t think so,” I smiled back, tentatively, “I just… they make me feel silly. And they’re old, so they’re not that useful.”

“Did your mother buy them for you? Before you went to jail?”, he asked.

“Something like that,” I muttered, but let that topic drop as I tilted my head to take a good look at him.

As it was his first time seeing me wearing glasses, it was my first time seeing him with glasses. I noticed so many things I didn’t really see without putting them on, and it made me realize how painfully more gorgeous he was when I could see all his imperfections better. I could see, now, little strands of curly red hair that feel on his forehead freely and wildly, framing those deep blue eyes. I could see the specks of black and dark, dark blue that adorned his irises, that were more like indigo than icy, light blue. I could see his face, the wrinkles on the side of his eyes and the little dimples, barely even forming, right beside his chapped lips.

Without thinking, I raised my hand to his face, caressing a little spot right beneath his cheekbone. There was a deep, pink scar with some red outlines there, and it was the first time I saw it. I wondered how many other things I missed because I was too stubborn to just wear glasses.

“I didn’t notice that,” I breathed, “where did you get it?”

“I-I…” he stuttered, “I got it the last time I fell ill. The night you hurt yourself.”

“How?”, I insisted. I didn’t even know why; I wasn’t thinking properly. The only thing in my mind was that I was touching him, that I had found the courage to do that, and he was letting me stroke his soft, soft skin.

“It was an accident,” he spoke so softly, “it was healing but the potion I was making today at lesson messed it up.”

“I like it,” I said, “it makes you prettier, in my opinion.”

“You think I’m pretty?”, there was something in his voice that I couldn’t make out, which made me hesitate. While I was looking into his eyes, mouth opened, wanting to scream yes and you’re so pretty I could cry, I didn’t know what to say without sounding desperate, stupid, or foolishly in love with him. Which I wasn’t, by the way, thank you very much.

As I stood there, Madam Winfield made her entrance.

“You alright, boys?”, she bellowed from the entryway. My hand dropped in an instant and I averted my eyes. Neil’s hand, though, was touching the same scar I was caressing a moment before, grazing it with his fingertips.

“Yes,” I shouted back, “everything’s good.”

“Neil, are you joining us for this afternoon?”, Abby asked, approaching us. I was positive I was still blushing, but I could blame it on something medical.

“No,” he said as he cleared his throat and stood up. Something inside me broke, “I have to go to the library. See ya.”

He scurried away and Abby just looked at him go. She just shrugged and then turned to me, smile plastered on her face.

“Time for your potion, huh?”

I nodded. And I set the glasses in the drawer again.

 

---

 

By the time Abby granted me the right to get up and leave the medical wing, it was the last day of the semester. The day after, we were supposed to catch the train back to King's Cross and leave for the Christmas holidays. While I knew that the school granted to stay in the premises for the holidays, I also knew that Nicky had received a letter some days earlier that told him Aaron, me and him were expected for the Christmas banquet at their house. I tried to ignore the way Nicky's shoulders shivered at the news, but it didn't escape me.

The only thing left for me to do, given Neil was able to collect all of my homework - with the help of my brother and twin -, was pack. Which was something I'd never done by myself. With King coming back in full force to hang around my lonely room and wriggle his way on all my stuff, I found packing was a strangely difficult task.

I put my open trunk on my bed and looked at the messy clump of clothes inside it. I sighed, thinking maybe not finding the time to fold them nicely and instead discarding them wherever wasn’t such a good idea as I’d thought at the time. I began picking them up in lumps and put them right beside the trunk, so that, when the trunk was empty, I could put them back folded. But then I started to think that it was an efficient way to gather all my things so I could see them all together and decide in which order to pack.

I paced around the room, trying to decide whether some of the things scattered around belonged to me or to the castle – truly, I didn’t know what my uncle had put inside that godforsaken trunk – and once I established they were mine, I launched them onto the bed.

It took me surely more time than it should’ve, and I was left with a bed whose surface couldn’t be seen anymore, dirty clothes that needed to be folded, me still in my uniform and only two hours before the train left me behind.

I sighed and slouched on the floor in defeat. Maybe my uncle wouldn’t miss me so much if I just stayed behind for this Christmas.

Two knocks on the door, and I immediately straightened my back – didn’t have any strength to actually get up.

“Who is it?”, I called; the door stayed closed, but I heard a slight laugh coming from behind it.

“Who could it be, you git?”, Renée kept laughing, “I’m coming in. Are you decent?”

“Morally, no; but I’m wearing pants if that’s what you’re asking.”

She was still snickering when she entered the room, but stopped right in her tracks when she took a good look at the mess I’d made. She looked at me in disbelief, shocked to her core, and I just shrugged, unsure of what could I possibly say to justify the absence of such a simple life skill as packing.

“What did you do?”, she whispered, like there might be a dragon sleeping underneath all the lumps of clothes and rubbish and trinkets. Actually, the biggest threat probably was King sitting on top of it, watching down on his kingdom of trash like he could kill anyone who dared to take it down.

“I tried to pack. As you can see, I failed,” I gestured widely to the room.

“Yeah, that I can see,” she talked absent-mindedly, “want me to help? It’s not like I have anywhere to be.”

“Won’t you come back? For the holidays?”

“I…”, she hesitated, shooting me a side glance while approaching the bed, “I was asked to stay.”

“By whom?”, I asked carefully.

“Never mind that,” she shrugged, “Also, the food here is better, so I rather stay anyway.”

“Suit yourself,” I sighed, and closed my eyes as I let the back of my head hit the wall behind me.

I heard my best friend shuffle away and arranging stuff in the trunk so it would all fit. I also felt the air shift a couple of times as she passed right beside me, Merlin knows doing what. I tried to keep my attention on her movements, while also keeping my eyes shut and my mind vague. I didn’t want to think too much, I didn’t want to pay attention to anything else. But my head is a wide and thriving field, and no matter how much I tried – others tried – to burn it down, flowers of ideas bloomed so easily it was actually scary sometimes.

Riko wasn’t fully human. But that could wait. I wasn’t going to figure that out that evening. I decided to focus on more mundane problems.

I’d have to spend the entirety of an holiday without Cass and with my birth mother. What should I even call her? Tilda? Mom? No. That title was taken, no matter how much her family hurt me. She was the one to care for me. She was the one to buy me clothes for school, she was the one who bought me books when I told her I wanted to read more, she was the one to notice my reticence to being touched, she was the one who made me into the person I was, the adult I was set to become. She was my mother for all thoughts and purposes, so why should a random woman who gave birth to me and then decided to abandon me get the title I decided to give to someone who loved me the most? Who loved me better, who loved me so much it hurt?

I missed her. I tried too much not to think of what she would have thought of all this wizard thing, and I tried not to think about her laugh upon seeing me with robes and House colors. She would have had the time of her life, prepping me badly for something she wasn’t prepared for. She would’ve tried her best. I would’ve loved her for that. And now I couldn’t even celebrate a fucking holiday with her.

“Are you okay?”, Renée asked softly, sitting next to me, “You’re awfully quiet, even for you.”

“I hate Christmas,” I just replied, eyes still closed.

“You don’t like it spending with your family?”, she sounded so naïve, but I supposed she didn’t know any better. That was Renée for you, ever the optimist.

“I don’t like my family,” I said.

She sighed, and placed a hand on my thigh, which made me finally bat open my eyes. She retracted her hand almost immediately but didn’t seem too hurt by my look.

“Listen, I know you and Aaron have somewhat of an history,” she rolled her eyes, “but it’s Christmas and you two are brothers, you can put some of this banter behind you.”

“It’s not a simple argument, Renée,” I said, trying to be as calm as I possibly could, “it’s so much deeper than that. And it’s not just Aaron I have a problem with.”

“So, talk to me!”, she snapped, and I flinched. She was never one to yell, “All you do is teasing me about all your problems, but you never talk. For Godric’s sake, Andrew, spit it out!”

I just looked at her, baffled, because I’d never heard Renée talk like that to anyone. I assumed, because I knew her better than that, that whatever was the reason she was staying behind at Hogwarts had upset her, and that she was taking it out on me. That was ok, really: I had done it with her countless times, and it would’ve been hypocritical for me to just deny her that need.

I sighed. She was right, even when she wasn’t thinking straight. She had the right to know what I was bitching about constantly and why my appearance had ruined her friend group and her relationship with my brother.

“So,” I began, “let’s say Aaron and I are conceived into a wealthy pureblood family. Let’s also say,” – I take a deep breath – “that Nicky’s father, whom you know to be a little, um, judge-y, wants to know who our father is and if my mother intends to marry him. My mom refuses, because that would evidently get her in trouble, and she decides to abandon the both of us and say she had a miscarriage.”

She gasps lightly, but I take it by her silence that she wants me to continue the story, and so I do.

“Evidently, she regretted the decision, but knew Nicky’s father would ask too many questions if we were twins because there’s no track of twins in our family. So, she just kept one - Aaron. And ditched me to the muggles.”

Renée nods.

“I go through the system and foster care, orphanage and such, and at some point, I decide to… get away from a family, but I couldn’t just leave them because I’m a minor. So I just… did something stupid, got in trouble and ended up in jail for some time. While I was in jail my mom – sorry, the woman whose family I was running from told me she had found a letter in her letterbox addressed to me, and she brought it with her during her next visit. She told me she’d read a little of it and it was from a brother – a twin brother I supposedly had, who’d just found out about me and wanted to get in touch. When I replied badly, that’s when Nicky’s father came to pick me up and explain the whole conundrum to me, but maybe I scared Aaron off because when I finally met him, he wasn’t like the sweet kid who wrote me that letter.”

“What did you said to him?”

“That I didn’t want to meet him and he should be as far away from me as possible.”

“Why?”

“Because,” I sighed again, conversation too heavy for my chest to endure, “I didn’t want him to be tracked down by the people I was running from. Because I thought that they couldn’t get to me, but they could easily get to him. And that scared me because I had longed for a family for such a long time,” – I felt my voice break, tears prickling on my eyelids – “and I didn’t want them to get hurt because of me. I wanted to protect him and he just-”

I couldn’t finish my thought as the feeling of a tear streaming down my face suddenly hit me. I had made a point not to cry in front of others, and now even King Fluffkins was strolling towards me and purring at my feet as to comfort me. Renée slid a hand on my back, back and forth, trying to be reassuring.

“Then,” she whispered, “you owe him nothing for now. If he wants an explanation – and trust me, one day he will – he’ll ask. You have to promise me, though, that you’ll tell him the truth, because I know you love him, but it’ll take time and trust for him to love you. Ok?”

“I don’t do promises,” I said, but she looked at me with such a scolding glare that I had to roll back my eyes and breathe out, “Fine. Promise.”

She nodded, content.

We stayed silent for a while, taking the conversation in as we let our hearts slow down into rhythm. It had felt good to finally admit to some of the things I had lost and why I was so bitter towards life, and it felt good to be understood by the person I trusted most. A thought, right then, occurred to me, and I tugged at her robe sleeve.

“Yes?”, she asked, not looking at me.

“Not a word of this with Neil,” I said.

“My mouth is locked, key is thrown,” she laughed.

I nodded and then looked at the room. I tilted my head to the side.

“You didn’t put stuff in the trunk. You just… tidied up?”

“Yeah, you moron,” she laughed, “you don’t have to pack. You’ll be back in two weeks.”

“Oh.”

 

---

 

“Andrew!”

His voice was haunting me. I thought I had avoided goodbyes and what nots, but he was truly impossible to escape, was he? It was like he could locate me at any given moment, in any given space, no matter how many people were also with me. Allison’s head snapped to the side, immediately finding the head of red locks, and she scoffed lightly before tugging at Seth’s hand so he would follow her into the train. Which, by the way, was leaving in minutes.

“What is it?”, I asked, sighing in resignation.

He stopped right in front of me but slipped and was about to fall onto me. I caught him, straightened him up and raised my eyebrow. He cackled, embarrassed, and was clearly blushing.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, then cleared his throat, “um, you forgot this.”

He handed me a big, chunky book I could recognize anywhere. I had been reading it for the past months, and while in the beginning it was about finding a way into Filch’s office, it had become mostly a pastime to enjoy the hilarious commentary on the edges of the pages or even between the lines of the book itself. The smart, witty, fun group of friends that had animated those pages made my evenings a little less grim.

I couldn’t believe I had forgotten about it.

“Thanks,” I said, suspicious, “I didn’t see it in my room. Where did you find it?”

“I, um,” he stuttered again, “I might have stolen it from you while you were in the infirmary.”

“Why?”, I was fighting the urges both to laugh and scream at him.

“I needed it for research purposes,” he answered, maybe a little two quickly. At that point, I laughed.

“Is that so?”, I replied, picking up the book and holding it against my chest.

“I-I… well…”

The train whistled and Hagrid began to shove the remaining kids into the carriages so they we could finally leave. I turned around to look at the half-giant, who knew not to touch me but gave a hard enough look that told me I would’ve been manhandled if I didn’t get into the train right then. I smiled at the man and he nodded, looking past me. When I saw who I was talking to, he winked. I felt heat rise to my neck and blood flooding my cheeks and I hoped – nay, I prayed Neil didn’t witness the whole brief exchange. When I turned around, he was looking at his feet.

“So,” I said, “see you in two weeks?”

“Yeah,” he answered, “maybe not… right away. I might fall ill; I feel a headache coming.”

“You really need to get checked,” I scoffed.

“Maybe so,” he smiled shyly, “merry Christmas, Drew.”

My eyes widened at the nickname. He looked taken aback by his own words and muttered a goodbye before running away. I looked at him go and tightened the grip on my book, feeling my heart flutter against my chest so hard I thought it could jump out of my ribcage.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” I whispered.

I got in the train but still looked at the far, bobbly set of red hair in the distance.

Chapter 9: Devil doesn't bargain

Summary:

TW!
heavy drug use and explicit child abuse, depiction of deep injuries

As I rushed upstairs to my bedroom – Aaron’s bedroom, really: Tilda had just thrown a mattress in the middle of it and had called it a day – I clearly heard her sigh and grunt in exasperation. I didn’t even know what I did wrong, but I wasn’t going to hang around to find out.

“I don’t know how we are going to make it through tomorrow’s dinner,” she cried out.

“Oh, c’mon now, you’re being dramatic,” I shouted back, “I’ll just pretend I don’t exist and maybe they won’t notice me, either.”

I heard her stomp through the house and finally she appeared at the end of the stairwell, sneering at me with narrowed eyes. I rolled back mine, glancing at her over my shoulder.

“What it is, Tilda?”

“Mum,” she said, snapping at me, “I told you to call me mum.”

“And I told you I wouldn’t do it,” I shot back, exhausted, “I just want to go to bed and read; would you be so kind to tell me what the bloody hell do you want from me?”

She scoffed, pointing at me like I was some kind of circus freak.

“You devil,” she hissed, “you’ll ruin this family.”

“Oh, I’d like that,” I turned around and continued on the path to my room. I managed to tune out her yelling when I finally arrived and saw Aaron on his bed, doing his homework. I closed the door behind my back and sighed, and he didn’t even raise his eyes from the piece of parchment he was scribbling on.

“How do you manage to make her lose her patience like that?”, he whispered, absorbed in his work – I assumed it was one of the classes we didn’t share, because I didn’t recognize the book.

“I like to think of it as a natural talent,” I replied and plopped myself on the mattress on the floor. It didn’t even have sheets or a pillow, but I had honestly slept on worse surfaces so the fact that the mattress was at least comfortable was a win, in my point of view.

“You will ruin dinner,” he whispered again, but from his tone I gathered he wouldn’t really mind if I actually did, he was just pointing out the fact.

“Probably,” I sighed again, “as long as it doesn’t have any repercussions on you, I don’t care.”

He shot me a glance from his bed, but didn’t speak anymore. I took it as a sign to mind my own business and to start to take care of my own shit, so I did.

I grabbed the book from the pile I made next to my so-called bed and started to read, eager to put an end to my suffering and actually start to enjoy my life again, which this family made extremely difficult to achieve.

Aaron and I had been back at that house for a grand total of four days and I was already sick of it. We had plenty of rehearsal dinners in the previous few evening because Tilda was completely and utterly terrified I’d make her look like a dumbass in front of Nicky’s family. Which was probably the case, since I’d never heard of such an elaborate etiquette for dining – at Cass’ house, we had to wash our silverware right after using it so we would be able to use it again for the next meal. It’s not like she was poor, because she had a decent job and the State offered her some money because she'd fostered me for such a long time, but while she was comfortable, I found my family was actually rich. The kind that has two vacation houses in the country side or by the sea. It baffled me, really, because it proved once again there was no problem with Tilda raising me but the fact that it was me. There was no real reason for her to abandon me like a stray cat but the fact that she actually didn’t want me, and it was clear that she still felt that way. She didn’t notice my harsh reaction to touch or to other triggering stuff – while I had started to notice that Aaron was being strangely more careful about it – but I was pretty positive that even if she had noticed, she wouldn’t even have cared. She didn’t know me, she didn’t want to know me and she had been taking all the anger I built inside of her on Aaron, which I didn’t enjoy.

Our relationship didn’t encounter any improvement, or maybe it could be called an improvement starting to tolerate each other’s presence instead of openly despising each other. We just acknowledged that the other was there and was a part of our lives, whether we liked it or not. So, we started to also act a little more like brothers. While I had already confronted Tilda about her drug abuse – though I suspected she didn’t even hear me -, Aaron started to speak up when she was being unfair towards me. He clearly still would have preferred if I wasn’t there, but since I indeed was, me being miserable or angry wouldn’t have made it easier on him.

I opened the book at the marked page and started reading again about Hogwarts’ mysteries, kinks and tricks. I had just started the chapter about the changing stairs when the fun and cheery commentary on the edges came back.

A silver pencil line marked a sentence about the stairs leading to the third floor, and from there, a little, faint arrow pointed to the comment.

“Second portrait to the left opens to reveal a passage directly to the boy’s loo on the fourth floor when asked a simple ‘may I?’, which, by the way, I find really really stupid.”

“How do you even know shit like this, Moony?”

“I have a lot of time on my hands.”

“You do not.”

“Piss off, Prongs, this is a private conversation.”

“On a library book?”

“You heard Pads, James. Piss off.”

“So, Moony, where were we?”

“Care to see that secret passage, Sirius?”

I scoffed. While I wasn’t as oblivious to others’ feelings quite like my beloved Neil might have been, I had noticed that a very intense flirting had been going on for a few chapters between those Moony and Padfoot - whose real name was apparently Sirius – and their friend James – whom they most frequently called Prongs – either was completely and blissfully unaware of the situation or was actively trying his hardest to avoid the conversation. And that was hilarious.

Suddenly, something downstairs crushed and broke down with a harsh noise. I raised my gaze on Aaron, who sighed, waiting for his cue. Tilda could have been heard shuffling around and groaning on the other side of the Earth, as loud as she was being. Then, it came.

“Aaron! Come down here at once,” she shouted.

He sighed again, and I began to close the book and stand up when he reached the door handle and shook his head.

“Don’t intervene,” his voice was even lower than before, “you’ll make it worse. Or she’ll force you to take that stuff, too. Just… Don’t worry. I can handle her, I’ve done it before.”

I just nodded in silence and he exited the room as quietly as he could master. I heard some whispering and some incoherent yelling before everything came to a halt and I eventually stopped listening. They’d be probably drugged out of their minds and passed out on the couch sooner rather than later. Not that I was okay with my brother being so high he couldn’t even remain conscious for more than two minutes, but I knew that if I was to go down there and make a scene, he would take the worst of it. Tilda didn’t even look at me like a human being worth of torturing: whatever moves I made, they would all reflect on Aaron. And that wasn’t something I was willing to live with.

I returned to the boys on the book and their playful chatter, hoping it would distract me enough for me to forget whatever was going on downstairs.

It was then that I noticed everything had gone dark and black around me when Aaron was gone. I could’ve guessed that the faint light that was previously lighting up the room was Aaron’s wand, but I was so used to the dark that I didn’t even register that fact. I just sighed and patted around myself to find my own wand and flick it.

“Lumos maxima,” I ordered, and a massive beam shot out, brightening up the whole room.

I picked up the book once again and mindlessly swept a finger over the little scribbles on the side. Moony had the respect and the patience to write on books using a pencil, something his classmates lacked severely. James used a quill most of the time, but what was really disturbing was Sirius’ ability to leave enormous splotches of ink everywhere anytime he had to leave a note. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what his papers and homework looked like, assuming he did those himself, instead of passing them onto Moony, who was clearly the better student. The fourth, Peter or Wormtail, actually didn’t write on that book quite so often as the others did, and most of the time it was only to laugh at something James said or to ask some of them if they’d like to hang about later. Given I most likely would’ve never met those people in real life, it was fun to explore their relationships. I also wanted to know where this thing between Moony and Sirius was going, and how much time was going to pass before James said anything about it. I imagined a conversation like that might not happen on a piece of paper of a public book, but I was confident enough to be able to guess it based on how their attitudes towards it changed.

My finger stopped right beneath the last thing Moony had written, and a peculiar feeling grazed my fingertip. I passed on the spot over and over until I decided to pick up my wand, and shine a simple lumos on it. At the direct light, it was clear something was written there and later erased, leaving behind a crease because of the pressure.

I changed the spell again to lumos maxima and scattered around the room to find a pencil, then ripped a piece of parchment a placed it on the erased note. Passing the pencil lightly on it, it easily transcribed, although a little patchily. I put the pencil and the book down and started to look at the writing. It was another little arrow that started from Moony’s last comment and recited: “Very smooth, professor”.

My mind started traveling around. Professor? Did that mean this Moony guy was some one that could have been found at Hogwarts? Was he still alive? How much younger was the guy that had responded compared to Moony, who obviously used that book when he himself was a student?

And then I noticed it. I gasped, putting the piece of paper down beside the book and shuffling through the pile beside the mattress. I finally found another paper, longer and more detailed and written by someone I knew. I compered the two writings, and finally came to a conclusion.

The erased note was in Neil’s handwriting.

 

—-

 

Besides a little bickering and teasing between me and Tilda, much to Nicky discomfort, the Christmas dinner went well and calmly. To be fair, I was almost sure my uncle was either drugged or an extremely calm person, to be able to endure the whole thing without snapping at us. Aaron almost did once or twice, but remembered he would have suffered the consequences, so he stayed quiet instead. At one point, after Tilda scolded me for the millionth time about how I was holding the fork, I looked at him from across the table and saw a blind rage flash in his eyes. It was an emotion fast enough for him to smile at his mother right after that.

“Don’t mind that, ok?”, he patted her on the back, which seemed to calm her down, “it’s just family, he’s not embarrassing himself in front of anyone important.”

“He’s right, Aunt Tilda,” Nicky piped up from beside me. I rolled my eyes but tried to keep my comments to myself.

Truth be told, it wasn’t till the moment of the gift giving that hell broke loose.

I didn’t expect much from Tilda, who got me absolutely nothing, but Aaron promised me to share his new stuff, which was mostly stationary, so I wasn’t really upset. Nicky got me some chocolate frogs with his allowance – which he had only received that month after the whole 'summer camp'  accident – and given that Aaron and I had promised each other never to give presents to one another, I had thought we were all set to continue the evening in harmony.

Oh, I was wrong.

Uncle Luther suddenly picked up two wrapped up identical boxes and passed them to me and Aaron. My twin and I shared a puzzled look before returning with our gaze upon Luther and his wife, who were watching us with bright smiles plastered on their faces.

“We bought you the same thing, because you’re twins and you’re both Ravenclaws so we though you might like the same stuff,” Luther said, proud of himself. I nodded, a little disgusted.

“I bet you didn’t end up in Ravenclaw yourself, huh?”, I smiled at him.

Nicky tried to suppress a laugh while Aaron gently elbowed me in the side, so I just made sure my uncle didn’t understand what I said and began unwrapping the gift.

“It’s very rare,” he kept talking, “not many wizards know about this book. I paid a lot to have two copies of them.”

Aaron kindly smiled at him, and tossed the wrapping paper aside while reading the title. He gasped and smiled even more widely, starting to happily thank Luther and Mary for the exquisite present.

As I did the same actions as my twin, my confusion only grew. It was one of the books Flitwick had recommended me at the beginning of the year to learn more about spells and the difference between charms, hexes and jinxes, along with a few other topics to put me up to speed with the program I had lost in the first three years of school. It was a very complete book, indeed, and not many wizards knew about it because it was something most of them didn’t need, explaining technicalities that for me or a muggle born might sound absurd but that mostly came natural to a wizard born and raised.

“You don’t like it?”, Mary seemed crossed and upset by my face, so I attempted to neutralize the confused look I probably had on.

“No, I like it very much,” I replied, “I like it so much, in fact, that I have already read it. Months ago, actually. It’s in the library, at Hogwarts. Nicky was with me when I picked it up,” I glanced at my cousin, whose eyes shot out of his orbits at the memory.

“Fuck,” he sweared under his breath, which made me laugh.

Aaron nudged me again and shot me a death stare, so I cleared my throat, looking at my family.

“Still,” I said, “it’s a very good gift. I might read it again near the exams, to freshen up on the subject. And it's better to own it than to borrow it, right?”

Luther and Mary nodded, but Tilda scoffed.

“What?”, I said, glaring at her.

“You didn’t need to humiliate your uncle like that,” she spat, the wine in her hand spilling a little from the tall glass as she adjusted herself on the armchair she was sitting on.

I was about to reiterate, when Luther laughed.

“Oh, c’mon now,” he said happily, “he is a bright kid, brighter even than his twin! We ought to have imagined he must’ve been ahead of Aaron already.”

I glanced at my brother, who just took a deep breath in to try and calm down. I wanted to intervene, but the banter continued.

“Aaron isn’t stupid, Luther,” Tilda shot back.

“Well, of course not,” he said, calmly sipping his wine, “but you must admit your other son is brilliant, and he was able to turn his life upside down in a matter of weeks, if not days!”

“Thanks, uncle, but…”, my voice was like white noise to their ears and they just couldn’t hear it.

“You could have left him to rot in that hell of a prison,” Tilda shouted at her brother, standing up from the chair, which he mirrored instantly.

“I shouldn’t have had to make that decision,” he was screaming too, “if you’d just told me who their father was.”

Tilda laughed like a maniac, tilting her head back and grabbing her stomach like she was going to be sick. Finally, she looked at Luther, scrutinizing him in pure disgust.

“You would have killed them in my womb if you had known,” she hissed, “this was the easy way.”

“What about all of this,” my uncle gestured widely to the whole room, “looks easy to you?”

“Enough, you two,” Mary stood up, sighing, “why do you always have to behave like this? Everything’s an argument when it comes to you both.”

“Stay out of it,” both of them yelled back at her.

At that point Nicky stood up too, going to hug his mother. While he held her in his arms and caressed her on her back, he sighed.

“Why can’t we just have a normal Christmas? Like a normal family?”

“Oh, shut up, you queer,” Tilda screamed at him, and Mary audibly gasped, “you should know very well what it is like to make your father angry over nothing.”

“He’s cured, Tilda,” Luther pointed out, “stop with these vile accusations.”

“You can’t cure that shit, big brother. You’re not going to have grand kids, you must face it.”

“Stop it!”, Mary cried out, bursting into tears, and she ran to the kitchen.

That shut the argument fast. I was still sitting on the little cushion on the floor that was assigned to me, and while Tilda and Luther exchanged brief, whispered comments about the situation, I started to look at my twin and cousin. Nicky slouched on another cushion right beside Aaron, who was staring into the nothingness right ahead of him and being insanely still.

“Aaron, what’s the problem?”, our cousin tried to reach out, but my brother just scoffed and turned to look at him like he had just asked the most stupid question that could have ever been asked. And it probably was, given the situation, but that was Nicky for you: he always tried to make things better, even when they were impossible to fix, so of course he had to ask.

“What’s the problem, you ask?” Aaron laughed, and I saw with the corner of my eye Luther and Tilda stop talking and turn their attention towards him, “I mean, there are tons of them. First of all, it has been made apparent to everyone that my arrogant, bastard, muggle-raised brother might be smarter than me while I’ve been trying my hardest to be top of my class for the last three years. He just, y’know, turned up and started to blow shit up and master every single spell and potion and class. He read probably every single book in that godforsaken library, even the one I was waiting for someone to gift to me because I had no fucking clue it was even inside the castle. Then, even if he’s so bloody perfect, my fucking mother refuses to behave when he’s around just out of spite, like he’s the one who ruined her life and not the sheer amount of muggle drugs she takes on a daily, nay, hourly basis. Finally, every fucking Christmas we have to roll around this bloody house and pretend like my mother and your father don’t hate each other with a passion, like your parents didn’t send you into a fucking conversion camp because you might have liked a boy, like me and my brother were raised together and this particular Christmas like Andrew was welcomed and accepted by everyone just because your dim-witted, deficient mother can’t stand the fact that we will never be a bloody normal fucking family.”

Well, I thought, that was one way to put it. That was one way I’d put it and I would have never expected my twin to do it instead. I could see by the way he was clenching his fists and jaws that he had so much pent-up anger inside of him that I was curious as to how he didn’t explode any sooner.
In the general disbelief, Tilda cleared her throat.

“Aaron, come,” she ordered, “we’re going home, we have housework to do.”

He stood up silently, still staring ahead while probably looking at nothing in particular. When I tried to stand up myself and follow them, Tilda shook her head and asked Luther to take me back to my so-called home in half an hour. He agreed and I plopped back again on the cushion. I didn’t think much of it while Aaron slid me the keys to the front door. I thought they’d just do some of the drugs, pass out again and try to erase that night for as long as they’d manage.

When they exited the Hemmick’s house, I tried my hardest to talk to Nicky about anything to get those minutes to pass.

 

---

 

The house was cold and dark, so I grabbed my wand and whispered a quick lumos to make my way upstairs. Sure enough, Tilda was sleeping on the couch again, and flinched a little when I shone the light on her. I sighed and went on towards my room, hoping that Aaron had been conscious enough to reach the bed and not pass out in the middle of the house, hitting the hard floor. When I had found the path clear of his limp body, I assumed I’d find him sleeping on the bed.

As I closed the room’s door behind me, I heard faint sobs and some gulps. I casted a lumos maxima to take a better look and my suspicions were confirmed.

Aaron was laying on his bed, sure, but his position was forced and stiff, like laying in any other way might have hurt. And it probably did.

Silent tears were streaming down his face while he gently asked me to turn off the light and please go to sleep and forget I’d seen anything. But it was pointless to beg me at that point, because I was next to him in an instant, kneeling beside his pillow.

His muscles were so extremely flexed that they moved and spasmed beneath the skin, and anywhere that occurred an instant bruise was formed like only moving made the blood vessels burst open. I gulped, unsure of where to touch, how to touch, if to touch.

“Tell me what to do,” I pleaded, “tell me what she did to you.”

“Same old,” he croaked, “lacero and other stuff.”

“No,” I insisted, “no, Aaron, this is different. It’s like your body is trying to crawl out of your skin, it’s terrifying.”

“Just go to bed,” he cried, sobbing still, “I’ll be fine in the morning.”

“And what if you’re not?”, I felt my own tears starting to collect on the edge of my eyelids, “What if I wake up tomorrow and you’re…”

“Stop,” he coughed, and a little blood spilled from his lips, making them redder in contrast to his unusually pale skin, “I’m not going to die. She… she didn’t do it long enough to have permanent damage.”

“Did what?”, I whispered, but he just averted his eyes, so I put my hands on his shoulders and squeezed them, “did what, Aaron?”

“She, um,” he stuttered, “She used the Cruciatus hex on me. For a little while.”

“What the fuck?”, I jolted up, standing again and towering over him. He winced, like he did expect me to react that way but didn’t necessarily want me to.

“She grew tired of the silly hexes and jinxes so…”, he swallowed, “she did a silencing spell on me, so I wouldn’t be able to scream. And then she… she…”

“Aaron, that’s unacceptable,” I was whisper-shouting, afraid she might wake up – even if, deep down, I knew she must’ve taken so many drugs to be able to complete that attack on her son that not even the Earth falling apart could wake her.

At that point, for some reason, Aaron broke down. He started crying his eyes out, sobbing and shaking and grasping the hem of my shirt like his life depended on it.

“She didn’t even give me the drugs,” he moaned, “she just wanted me to feel all the pain I could handle. She just wanted to torture me for the one time I open my mouth against her.”

“Is it ok if I sit on the bed with you?”, I asked, and when he nodded, I carefully slipped the pillow from under his head and sat in its place, cradling his head in my lap and shushing him, trying to comfort him as he described the whole event with wobbly, pained voice. I caressed his platinum blond hair and whispered him that he was safe, then and there, with me in our room, and that she was gone, and she wouldn’t be able to reach him for quite some time.

As the effects of the hex faded, he was calming down and peacefully slid into a comfortable state between sleep and wakefulness. I stood up as gently as I could, went to the bathroom and retrieved some equipment to tend to his more evident wounds and cuts. She was smart enough to hit him in places where the white scars and the results of her harmful magic could be hidden by normal, everyday clothes. I cleaned the slashes of red flesh and put a bandage on most of them, both on his abdomen and chest and on his back. When I turned him back around so he could sleep on his side, I found his eyes closed so I decided to undress and get ready to sleep myself.

I crashed onto the mattress, letting my body free-fall onto it and for one night I also let myself skip the bedtime read. The mystery of Neil’s erased note could’ve been solved on another day, when my twin didn’t need me. I turned the light of the wand off.

“Andrew?”, he peeped suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think you’re arrogant, or a bastard, and I know it’s not your fault you were raised by muggles,” he mumbled.

“I think I know you don’t think that, it just hurts when you act like you do,” I confessed.

“I’m just resentful because of mother. She blames me for finding you and believes you’re the reason we’re miserable. She hates you but takes it out on me. Sometimes I get the anger take the best of me.”

“So, she started doing it after I came in the picture?”

“Not exactly,” he sighed, “but before it was mostly hands, like slaps, or kicks. Only after I’d sent you that letter, she started using hexes. This is the first time she has used an unforgivable, at least on me.”

As I was watching the ceiling of my pitch-black bedroom, I started to remember the first time Aaron had been mean to me and his words about how he wanted me to die or to have never existed in the first place. I remembered how he was watching me hang from that pole in the match against Slytherin and doing nothing. I remember that I had told that I didn’t like him, and I still didn’t, but I had also told him that he was my brother and I was going to protect him. For the first in our relationship, I was starting to believe that it would indeed be easier on him if I didn’t exist. And, as much as this realization didn’t make the things he had said and done to me any better or forgivable – because I was very far from forgiveness -, it, at the very least, deserved an acknowledgement. He did, in fact, treat me like shit, and there was a reason behind it. A very valid one, too. So, why would I break my promise to protect him just out of spite, after seeing what our mother was capable of doing to him just because he was finally brave enough to speak his mind about our family situation? Why wouldn’t I protect him if I was the reason our mother was hurting him all along?

I would’ve dealt with the drug problem later, but I could’ve started to fix something.

Maybe it was the fact that it was Christmas, maybe it was that half an hour that I had spent alone with Nicky and his uncomfortable kindness, but I felt generous enough to stand up, light up the wand again and move next to his bed.

“Let’s make a promise,” I began.

“What?”, he squinted, the light suddenly hitting his face.

“Let’s promise each other that we will always protect each other from her.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed, “It’s just this one night, Andrew. What if in a month I make you mad about something and you don’t want to honor this promise anymore? And viceversa. I mean, you always find a way to piss me off.”

“You piss me off quite often, too,” I muttered, “but, yeah, that could be a problem.”

“There’s one way to know we won’t break the promise, though.”

“How? Tell me.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Aaron,” I squeezed his hand in reassurance, “I’d do anything for her to stop doing this to you. I want to make sure, in any way possible, that I’m going to keep this promise till the day we bury her six feet under.”

“Fine, then,” he sighed.

That night, we swore to always protect each other from her, in any and every way we’d found necessary, until the day she passed and could no longer torment us.

The night, my twin and I made an Unbreakable Vow.

Chapter 10: This is me trying.

“Andrew, hurry! The train’s going to leave!”, Nicky shouted from the carriage, and I tried my hardest to ignore the burning feeling that screamed at me to get inside that train and leave that godforsaken platform. But I knew perfectly what was waiting for me on that train, and I could feel his stare piercing me from one of the carriages at the far back, looking at me from the small door that led inside. It wasn’t like I was afraid of that incoming conversation, but I could still remember his glacial eyes and the bored look he had on his face while he watched me fall to an almost inevitable death, or at the very least a severe injury. I wasn’t afraid of him, I was just afraid of whatever he might have wanted to say to me, given he only wanted to get rid of me. I was afraid he was going to tell me that something had happened to Neil during our holiday break, and I knew I wasn’t ready to hear that.
At the very last moment possible, while the train blew his last whistle, Aaron was able to grab my wrist and pull me inside the carriage.

“What’s wrong with you today? I’d have thought you’d be happy to go back to school,” he looked at me puzzled.

“School is not the problem,” I answered, but the figure in all black was standing in the middle of the corridor, very evidently waiting for me. As I acknowledged his presence, he entered one of the booths to his right and that was a clear sign to follow him. A chill ran through my spine, but I managed to squeeze Aaron’s shoulder in reassurance and smile at him, “I’m fine. I’ll be right back, ok?”

“What? Where are you…?”

I didn’t let him finish, speed walking past him.

I rapidly reached the booth the other went into and found him slouched on one of the couches, long legs crossed, and feet rested on the opposing couch. He had a quaffle in his hands and was throwing it up in the air above his head, only to catch it right after.

“I thought you’d get the message,” he calmly said, “turns out you really are the smarter twin.”

I sat across from him, wherever his legs allowed me to, and tried to master a more at-ease look than the one I thought I had on my face.

“I didn’t think you’d really come, though,” he continued, finally looking at me and stopping throwing the quaffle.

“I’ve had weirder encounters,” I shrugged, “so, out it with it. What do you want?”

“I just wanted to chat. You’re an interesting character.”

“No puppet master, today?”, I crossed my arms on my chest and rested my back on the seat, warming up to the situation.

“Riko’s at Hogwarts,” he explained, “he didn’t leave for the holidays.”

“Why?”

“Why does it matter? Lots of students don’t,” it was his turn to shrug, and he tilted his head a little to the side and narrowed his eyes, “why did you leave?”

“Hemmick’s father wanted us there for Christmas dinner,” I didn’t need him to know the details, but I assumed everyone in the castle knew that Nicky’s family was influential enough to know that an invitation was rather an order to show up.

“How’s the family, then?”

“Oh, come on, Day,” I scoffed, “You just want me to assume this is a normal conversation between friends?”

Kevin adjusted himself on the seat, straightening his back a little and mirroring my position. His legs were still crossed, but at least he took his feet off the couch. He looked me up and down before replying.

“Maybe you’re right,” he simply said, “maybe Riko asked me to approach you to find out your weaknesses. Or maybe you’re wrong and I really just wanted to chat. If someone’s going to tell you which one is it, it’s not going to be me. So, if you don’t want to engage in this conversation, you’re free to leave. It’s you who came here, anyway.”

“You were staring at me at the platform. For at least thirty minutes.”

“Still, you came here.”

“I wanted to know what you wanted from me. It’s not a lot I can give you, really.”

Suddenly, he hurled the quaffle at me. I’ve had played him enough for me to know his tell, so I knew exactly what was coming at me the moment his left side shifted. He was left-handed, but could throw a mean shot with his right hand, which was what he did in that case. I calculated the aim, and caught the ball above my head, ever slightly to the left, with a single hand. When I put the ball on the couch beside me, I kept a hand on it so he wouldn’t be able to retrieve it. He smiled a little, and his green irises shone of amusement and delight. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together.

“You’re a pureblood, raised by muggles. You’re talented in charms, transfiguration, arythmancy and Quidditch. You gave the Hat such a hard time we had to sit through at least forty minutes of silence before he assigned you to one of the Houses, which intrigued everyone so much every single professor strives to have you as their student. You’re such a prodigy and you’re so smart half of the castle falls at your feet like you’re the Messiah, and yet you’re stupid enough to put yourself against Riko any chance you get,” he explained, “I want to know why.”

“If nobody sets boundaries around him, I’ll think he owns the world.”

“Well, he kind of does.”

“Does he, now? Or is he just and entitled piece of shit that likes to think everyone is below him? Someone ought to remind him he’s still a mortal being like the rest of us.”

“He has done nothing to you personally. Why the hatred? You went after him the moment he approached you on the train.”

“That was just for fun, honestly. Everyone was so scared of him, and I didn’t see why,” I shrugged.

“And the rest of the time?”

“He did try to kill me just last month.”

“You threatened him before the match. You had to know something was coming,” he was intrigued.

“I don’t like bullies,” I answered.

“Ah,” he smiled, “so, Neil’s the problem.”

“I don’t like bullies,” I reiterated, “and I don’t like when someone close to me gets hurt. So, no, Neil’s not the problem. I’d have done the same if he tormented Nicky, or Renée, or even my estranged brother. I protect my people. Would he protect you?”

That seemed to hurt him, because he flinched like I had just slapped him. He swallowed visibly and his Adam’s apple bobbed a little on the column of his throat. He looked away, outside, to the English countryside passing by so quickly it was impossible to make out. Looking at his side profile, the sleeked-back black hair falling a little on his shorter hair on the side of his head, and his green eyes filled with a sorrow I couldn’t quite pinpoint, I noticed for the first time that he was strikingly beautiful, even handsome. His sharp cheekbone, adorned with the little roman number, ticked as he clenched his jaw. When he finally spoke, his voice was an octave lower and soft like a whisper yet hard like stone.

“Riko knows what it’s best for him. If it meant his salvation, he’d let me die for sure. But that doesn’t make him selfish,” he turned to me again, “it makes him strong and resolved.”

“You poor thing,” I laughed. His eyes conveyed confusion, and I explained, “you see, Riko and I are a bit of the same. We are both smart, ruthless and brave. The difference, though, is that I care about my friends enough to enjoy their presence even when it doesn’t give me any profit, even when I don’t have anything to gain from them. Because, vice versa, they wouldn’t be my friends, they would be slaves. That’s what you are to Riko. Because there’s no fucking way in hell that he sees you as a friend and is willing to let you get hurt if that gives him personal gain. If I were you, I’d be out of there in an instant.”

“Huh,” he answered after a contemplative silence, “I wonder what’ll get you kill faster – your loyalty or your stubbornness?”

“Either way,” I stood up, done with that conversation, “I’d be more than happy to die protecting my friends. And I know they’d do the same for me. I hope one day you’ll get to experience that feeling. Also, I’m keeping this,” I picked up the quaffle, “if you want it back you know where to find me. Preferably without your master.”

I opened the door of the booth and began to walk out.

“Andrew,” he called me, and I spun around to listen to him, “as far as I know he didn’t harm either Renée or Neil during the holidays.”

I laughed again, but without an ounce of emotion.

“Glad to know he’s a man of Faith, at least.”

I exited the carriage and walked towards my family.

 

---

 

There was really no surprise in finding Renée inside my room, but I tried to feign it as she screamed in excitement and threw her arms around my neck to hug me. I laughed and latched my own arms around her waist and squeezed her tightly.

“How was home? Did you enjoy it?”, she asked, smiling from ear to ear, which made me smile too.

“It was good,” I lied. I didn’t have time to tackle it all, the dinner, my mother’s abuse, the discomfort Nicky evidently felt around his own parents, and least of all the Unbreakable Vow. I’d find a way to tell her, but that was not the time, so I just left it at that.

Luckily, she knew me enough to drop the topic and started to talk about the Christmas banquet at the castle and how her holidays in an empty Hogwarts went. She’d spent a lot of time with Hagrid and the strange creatures he harbored inside his little shack and playing Wizard’s Chess with Neil in the Great Hall. She hadn’t heard from any of the group besides Dan, who had sent her a letter a few days before to dish some gossip about her hometown’s friends.

“By the way, happy New Year,” she said, nudging me on my side.

“Huh,” I said, “who decided which calendar to follow?”

“I guess Merlin. Isn’t he the first wizard ever?”

“Is he?”, I was even more clueless than her, “I suppose I’ll ask Neil. I bet he knows the answer.”

Her eyes widened at the suggestion, and the snarky comment about us being boyfriends that I was waiting for never actually came. As we had moved on my bed and were laying there, looking at the ceiling, I propped myself up on my elbows to look at her.

“What?”, I asked, “Where’s Neil?”

“Fuck,” she swore under her breath, then sighed, “I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

Had Kevin lied to me? Did Riko actually hurt him when I was away? Did he take advantage of the fact that nobody was really there to protect him, so he was an easier target? But Neil wasn’t someone who had to be saved. Neil didn’t really need me to protect himself, and he had said before that he could easily take on Riko, which I had chosen to believe. Was it a lie? How many of the Gryffindors actually went back home? Kevin did, sure, but what about Jean? What about the rest of Riko’s mob?

“What happened?” I whispered, dreading the answers.

“He fell ill again,” she answered, “and usually Madam Winfield lets me tend to him since we’re friends and I’m in training. But this time she just said that it was something someone really qualified should tend to and she wouldn’t even let me see him. She just told me not to say a word to anyone, especially you.”

“Of course,” I rolled my eyes, “Merlin forbid the troubled kid in the school does something reckless like going to his friend’s bedside.”

I stood up and tried to walk towards the door of the room, but Renée hastily grabbed my wrist and yanked me back on the bed, while standing up herself to block my view. She pointed a finger at me, scolding.

“You can’t go to the infirmary, Andrew.”

“What am I supposed to do here? Read, do my homework, and pretend I don’t know he’s hurt?” I pleaded.

“No,” she sighed, “but I can’t let you go there. I’m very sorry, but you’re not going.”

“He was by my side every day,” I said, getting angrier at her, “he read to me, while I was unconscious. He didn’t even know if I could hear him, and he still did. He was there every fucking day, Renée. You must let me do the same thing for him. You must.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” she replied, defensively, “but to make sure you are ok.”

“I’m not! I won’t be ok unless you let me go.”

“Andrew, calm down! Since when do you even give a fuck?”

“I give a fuck,” I began, “I give lots of fucks, actually. I’m a prostitute of feelings. I’m a soft idiot, a sappy motherfucker, a sentimental bastard if you will.”

“Fine! I get it,” she waved her hands in front of me to make me stop talking.

“It’s Neil we’re talking about. You know I care, so what’s the problem? Why are you behaving like this?”, I asked, maybe a little more lightly, because I was starting to worry about her too. Renée was known for her kindness and her altruism; it was the reason she wanted to become a healer in the first place. It wasn’t like her to dismiss a friend’s injury so fiercely, “Did something happen during the holidays?”

“Not exactly,” she sighed, “but still, I don’t want to disobey Madam Winfield’s order. I suppose I thought that if I’d have upset you, you wouldn’t have wanted to snoop around anymore.”

She crossed her arms on her chest but let them fall on her sides, in defeat, almost immediately after. I sighed too, and I stood up to look better at her.

“Fine. Can we at least go to the Quidditch pitch and spar a little? I think it’ll take Neil off my mind.”

“That we can do,” she nodded.

We exited the dorm and the common room in silence, and we descended the tower and castle’s stairs in the same way. The both of us had probably had lots on our minds and weren’t ready to speak to the other just yet. I had also thought at one point I should’ve told her about my conversation with Kevin and how odd I had found his temperament, if not all of his character. But there was probably a lot of time in the future to talk about that, while in that moment I thought it best to shut up and let her process whatever had happened to make her so out of character. She was clearly hiding something from me, something that hurt her deeply, but so was I from her, so I wasn’t a place to judge her about it. When she’d be ready, she’d talk to me. Just as I would do to her. The fact that we were best friends didn’t necessarily mean that we had to tell each other everything as soon as we could. We could’ve waited even a lifetime. Then again, I didn’t really know how friendships worked, let alone being best friends.

As we were approaching the outside grounds, much to our surprise we were stopped by the last person I’d thought would have intercepted us.

McGonagall called me by my surname from the archway of the Great Hall which Renée and I had just passed. She smiled at me that same old, wrinkly, kind smile and reached us with a swooshing of robes and gowns.

“Did you enjoy your holidays, Mr. Minyard? Good evening, Miss Walker,” she tilted her head to Renée as a sign of greeting. She was creepy in an endearing way.

“Yes, professor,” I replied, “Did you want anything in particular? I thought homework was due in a week.”

“Oh, this is not about homework,” she was still smiling, “but I’d like to see you in my office after dinner, if it’s fine by you? You might know it’s on the first floor.”

“Um, sure, professor,” I nodded quickly.

“Marvellous,” she also nodded in response, “see you there, then.”

She left in a hurry, and I just spun around to continue on the path to the pitch. As we were walking away, in the cold January breeze of Scotland, I turned to Renée.

“What was that about?”, I asked.

“I think there’s something else I have to tell you,” she just said.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’ve only been gone two weeks. How many things have gone to shit?”

 

---

 

With a few new bruises created by Renée’s merciless fists, dinner went by smoothly. Aaron and Nicky had reunited with their friends, and they let them talk about their holidays, which were easily happier than ours had been. When it had been our turn to talk, we just told them about the presents and the nice dinner, leaving all the details about the fights and the screaming unsaid. I saw Aaron twitch as he talked about how he was so exhausted after the Christmas banquet that he fell asleep instantly when he got back home.

“Has anybody heard about Neil? I haven’t seen him around,” Dan finally asked.

Renée tensed up, but I smiled kindly.

“He sent me an owl during the holidays and told me he was really behind with homework. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d just locked himself up in his bedroom to study. We might see very little of him in the next few days.”

Renée confirmed, and, given she was the only one with him when he fell ill during the holidays, nobody questioned us, even though Aaron asked me how he could have missed the arrival of an owl at our house. I just replied that it was probably because it arrived very late at night and he was probably sleeping, seeing he could sleep through anything. He just nodded, still unsure but believing me a little more. We then dropped the topic to talk about more interesting things.

They soon informed me that they wanted to have a small get together in the Slytherin common room in the dungeons, but I told them I had something to do.

“You can skip your usual stroll for a party, Minyard,” Allison laughed.

“I have a meeting with McGonagall, actually,” I replied, putting my fork down as I finished my food.

Nicky choked on some soup and Dan’s mouth flew open.

“What does McGonagall want from you?”, Seth asked, shocked as anybody else but Renée around the table. I shrugged.

“Beats me. She told me right before dinner she wanted me to go to her office.”

“What did you do this time?”, Matt questioned, intrigued.

The thing was, René had told me what the meeting was about, because she had caused it, but I’d sooner have died than revealed that secret to the rest of the group. So, I made up an excuse, got up and left as soon as I could.

McGonagall’s office was indeed on the first floor, to the right of a staircase ascending to the Serpentine Corridor, a passage that connected the third floor, the courtyard corridor and the first floor. I had read about it in Hogwarts: A History. It was fairly easy to find, but I stood in front of the door for some minutes to find the courage to knock on it. As I finally raised my fist, though, the door opened with a click and a continuing creaking sound, leaving to me the majestic view of the office in its entirety.

It was a very large room, all made of hard stone from the floor to its walls and an entranceway to the left side with a closed wooden door. The office itself was decorated with hundreds of shelves filled with parchment rolls and books of all kinds, so much so that it could’ve been a library on its own and have competed with the other one in castle in a pretty fair fight. There was obviously a desk, whose surface was hard to find beneath all the papers and essays scattered around on it, which I assumed were the student’s homework she was marking at that time. Straight in front of me, which was what caught my attention, there was a massive fireplace, with a burning fire so red and bright it lit up the whole room without the need of candles on the walls. Opposed to it there were two armchairs and a coffee table. And, sat in one of the two chairs, looking outside the nearest, massive window, there was Professor McGonagall, waiting for me.

“Come, child,” she called, “sit with me. Have a biscuit, if you will.”

I reached the second chair with tentative steps, still admiring the immense library around me. I wondered how many books there must’ve been there, what was their main topic, if she had read them all and how many hours, days, years did it take to finish and to collect such an amazing fortune.
I sat down and the warmth of the fire immediately ran over me, making me feel a little more relaxed. As I looked on the coffee table, I found the biscuits she was talking about, so I reached for them. Who was I to pass on the opportunity of free sweets?

“I imagine your friend has told you what this meeting is about,” she began, still looking outside, “and that she was found in your room by one of the domestic elves, taking some of your books.”

“She has,” I answered, trying to keep my voice calm.

“Did she have free access to your room? I could speak to the Head of Hufflepuff on your behalf, if necessary,” she suggested, but I shook my head.

“Renée didn’t want to cause any damage,” I replied, “and if she had asked me, I would have given her those books regardless.”

“Did you know that she had the same intentions as you?”, she finally turned to look at me, smiling kindly at the vision of me eating the biscuits. I shook my head again, mouth filled, so she took it as a sign to continue with her speech, pointing at the same window she was looking at just a moment before, “I see the both of you frequently on the pitch. What you do during the late hours, when no one’s around anymore.”

“Renée and I come from similar backgrounds,” I said, “that little practice of ours lets us blow off some steam and stress while simultaneously knowing we won’t really hurt each other. As long as the late hours go, I know the rules and we never stay out past curfew.”

“She seems like a good friend.”

“She is. She really is.”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind me asking you to keep our conversation to yourself,” she sighed, “I know it’ll be a lot to take in and you’ll probably want to talk about to somebody else, somebody you trust, but nobody can be trusted with the informations I’m about to give you, Mr. Minyard. This is a secret not even all of the professors know about, so I want to make sure you understand this has to stay well within these four walls. Am I clear?”

I nodded once, calmly, slightly lowering my chin.

“Who, exactly,” I spoke up, “knows about this?”

“Just you and I, Madam Winfield, Professor Sprout, our Headmaster and,” she sighed, taking a long pause that conveyed her feelings, “much to my distaste, Professor Moriyama.”

Riko’s uncle, so, knew about the situation, whatever it was. From what I could gather, also, the only Head of Houses who didn’t know about was the Head of my House, which seemed like an important information, even though I didn’t understand why. Did this concern a Gryffindor? A Slytherin, or a Hufflepuff? Why was I the one being let on to this, if the person responsible for my wellbeing didn’t know?

“So,” she cleared her throat, “it seems, as Miss Walker has told me, that you have been quite interested in the difficult task of becoming an animagus.”

I nodded again, because there was no point in denying that at that moment.

“Many years ago – but I remember them as it was yesterday, really-”, she began, “three students from my House embarked in a similar adventure, not only illegally, as they were even younger than you, but also leaving me unaware of their training. I found out about this after they completed their education here, because they, now adults, were able to tell me freely. I was not happy about it, but in the end, it was for a good cause, because they’d done it to help a friend in need. My only regret was that I wasn’t able to help them through the difficult project – you must already know that I am an animagus myself.”

“How could they possibly have helped a friend by becoming animals?”, I asked, straightening my back. This wasn’t leading where I’d thought it would, and it was really catching my attention.

“You see, their friend had had an unpleasant encounter when he was only a toddler,” a tear escaped her eyes, and I started to realize that whomever these people were, she cared about them deeply, “and as a result, he had become something he didn’t like. He hated that so much, that when he was restricted and forced into that something, he mostly hurt himself badly, causing him to have injuries almost beyond repair.”

She took another pause and wiped her tear with the back of her hand. She was an old witch, a powerful one, someone who had been around that castle for as long as Dumbledore and she clearly loved that place, her House and her students more than a normal professor would. She was at home when she was at Hogwarts, and she wanted us to feel at home, too. Witnessing whatever was going on with that late student of hers must’ve broken her heart, which I could feel compassion for. I understood what it meant, to feel helpless when it comes to protect someone you’re supposed to love, someone you feel responsible for.

“He was a werewolf,” she finally said, like it took her almost all her willpower to say it out loud, “and while there was a lot of stigma around it at the time, which Dumbledore has worked very hard to dismantle ever since, his friends didn’t seem to care. They only wanted him to be safe, and so they read about it profusely, and came up with a solution. Apparently, werewolves didn’t harm animagi, only wizards in a human form. By transforming themselves into animals every full moon and letting him free from the shack we were forced to contain him into, they spent the night roaming around the Forbidden Forest, playing together, like they did when they were fully humans. The wolf didn’t harm himself anymore, and so they boy was saved, finally, by his reckless friends.”

“That’s a very touching story, professor,” I said, “but I can’t see what this has to do with me.”

“You’re the first student who has expressed a will to become an animagus in a long time, and you are far more talented than many of the students of your year, even if you’ve just heard of magic four months ago. You’re brilliant, Mr. Minyard, and I’m afraid I might have to put your brilliancy to use.”

“How so?”

“The animagi didn’t only make sure that the wolf didn’t harm himself, but they also made sure he wouldn’t harm any other wizard on the grounds. They kept him far from the castle enough for it not to feel the need to hunt inside of it,” she explained, “and the problem has resurfaced once again.”

“What?”, I was in disbelief, “there’s a werewolf in the castle?”

“Not exactly, and I cannot offer too much information about the identity of this being, but a werewolf was found near the premises of the castle last year. It was a little more than a pup, and so it was easily contained at first, since Madam Winfield was also trained under the healer that tended to the last one, Madam Pomfrey. But it has started to grow, and the consequences are as dire as the ones of the last time, both for the individual and the people who found themselves around it. I don't know why, but my form of animagus doesn't seem to help it.”

“Do we know if it’s a student? Shouldn’t they be registered at the Ministry?”

“That’s up to them to do when they come of age. Until then they’re our responsibility, if only to ensure that no student will be harmed.”

“So it is a student.”

“I cannot confirm nor deny. Shall we continue on the matter?”

“Uh,” I was taken aback, but I could’ve figured it out by myself on another time, “sure.”

“What I want from you, Mr Minyard,” she kept on, “it to become an animagus to all effects. Given it is still illegal to do when you’re so young, it will be our secret until you’re old enough to declare it to the Ministry. But this time, I won’t let you do this alone.”

“So, what does it mean?”

“I want to train you,” she finally said, “I will train you to become an animagus, so that every full moon you can be sent outside to the Forest and contain the werewolf. It is, sadly, the Headmaster’s order.”

Chapter 11: Rejects

I had to endure forty-eight hours of an intensive course, locked up into McGonagall’s office, so she could get a sense as to where I stood with my knowledge of animagi and the practice and process to become one. She said I was fairly at a good point, which made me hope there’d be less of these draining meetings in the future.

As a reward for my diligence and newly acquired task, though, I asked her to grant me the permission to see Neil. Seeing that Abby was onto this little project of ours, she would’ve understood McGonagall request, and she did, but she also told me to at least wait until he was completely out of the woods, so I would’ve had a higher chance of catching him while waking up. Whatever this illness that he had caught was, I hoped that Abby was skilled enough to walk him through it at least until we were out of school in a couple of years.

I decided to ignore the fact that it had crossed my mind that I would've been the one to take care of him after that.

I was adamant not to let me get attached to him quite so romantically, and I thought maybe the fact that we’d become such good friends in time would’ve eradicated my feelings, but I was starting to feel it was all pointless in the end. It’s not like I had hoped, in my life, to find someone who would stick by me every day of every year for the rest of my existence. I was content alone, and maybe I would be content also alone but strenuously pining over someone till I dropped dead. Couldn’t be that far ahead, right?

“He’s still sleeping,” Abby informed me when I walked into the infirmary, “but could wake up any minute. Maybe not today, but surely by tomorrow.”

“That’s good,” I called back at her over my shoulder as I approached the only occupied bed, with the curtains closed around it to grant more privacy, “can I sleep here?”

“What?”, she perked up all of the sudden, “You mean, in bed with him?”

“Of course not, Abby,” I grunted, “I meant on the bed next to his. So that I would be here if he wakes up overnight.”

“Oh,” she blinked a few times, taking in the information, “well, then… I guess I can ask Professor Flitwick. And it can be arranged.”

I nodded and opened the curtains, but then her voice reached me again.

“No funny business in the infirmary!”

“Abby,” I hissed, “I would never.”

“Fine. Just checking.”

I rolled my eyes back and groaned again, then finally entered the confined space where Neil had been for at least four days. I sat next to him and, while he was asleep, I started to inspect his visible body – he was wearing one of those hospital gowns that basically just cover your belly and genitals – for major injuries. From what I could see, there were none, aside from few scratches here and there. I didn’t know if the gown covered some important cuts or bruises, but I suspected that if the rest of his body was clean, so would have been his torso. At least, that was what I had told myself to be a little bit more at peace. Surely, I wasn’t going to lift his clothes up and check.

Something about his face was different, but I wondered if it was just the absence of his bright blue eyes that had that effect on me. His hair was oddly neat and in order, so I also assumed Abby had worked on it while he was unconscious. His skin was pale, so pale that the pinkish scars that were usually covered by his uniform were extremely visible to my naked eyes. His legs and arms were covered in them, going from long, wriggly strokes to very short and sharp ones. One circled his whole knee, like he had actively tried to amputate his leg below it. His hands laid limp beside his hips, facing upwards and slightly opened. I resisted the urge to grab the one closest to me.

It broke my heart a little to see him like that, but at least he seemed fine. I tried to convince myself that he was fine, that he was really fine, otherwise they wouldn’t have let me stay beside him. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need to worry, that I didn’t need to feel guilty because I wasn’t there when everything went bad. He wasn’t with me either when I had hurt myself, but he was there every moment after that. I could have done the same. Yes. I was doing the exact same thing he did for me. My debt was paid for, finally, but was it really a debt? Wouldn’t I have wanted to do this even if he didn’t get the chance to do it before for me? Wouldn’t I have done the same if it had happened again, in the future?

I remembered that the moment I woke up, after being unconscious for so long, I had asked him why he was at my bedside, bringing me homework, and talking to me, and he had looked at me like I was crazy, like he was doing the bare minimum and shouldn’t have had to explain why he was doing it. Was I being to hopeful? Was I being clueless and naïve hoping he’d done those things because he felt the same way I did? And how did I feel exactly?

My thoughts had escaped me. I tried to collect them and myself, but it wasn’t enough. Maybe I didn’t even put that much effort into it, but next thing I knew I was leaning into him, caressing the same spot I'd stroked weeks before, on the silver slash on his cheek, right under his cheekbone. I’d never let myself touch him because I didn’t like the way my heart hit my ribcage, the way it picked up its pace and felt like I was shivering all over. It was a feeling so close to fear, and I hated it, and I loved it, it was adrenaline pure and simple and I didn’t want it to be so apparent around him. But now, how could he have seen it? How could he have read it all over my face that it was killing me, being so close to him and knowing he would never… he would have never…

I stopped and leaned back again on the chair. I tilted my head back, covering my whole face with my callous hands, rubbing it vehemently enough to scrape my skin. I had no idea my feelings for him had evolved in such a way: since that encounter in the courtyard right before my birthday, we’d been the closest of friends, even if I hadn’t noticed or cared. We spent every free minute together, mostly with Renée, but also alone. We’d become such a known duo, most of the time people asked me where he could’ve been, and I was surprised to know the answers. I knew his favorite things, I knew his favorite places, I knew stuff he didn’t tell anyone else. I was probably closer to him than I was to Renée, because he knew everything about me too, the two important exceptions being my history and Drake, and the fact that I fancied him – so, maybe, also the fact that I was gay to begin with.

So, what was I supposed to do with that… evolution, now? Did my feelings for Neil become something more, something worth to be addressed? I thought I couldn’t possibly be feeling anything but a crush. What was a little crush turned into a big crush after getting to know him better. That was ok, right? That was fine. It was natural, it was normal. Something that happened to everyone, anyone, it didn’t need to be said out loud, it didn’t need to be told to people. I wasn’t supposed to update Renée, was I? It was still just a crush. It would still have passed with time. It was fine. It was fine.

I shook my head, my palms still plastered on my face. I would’ve ruined everything if I wasn’t being careful.

I tried to focus on other things, like the fact that I had been just let on a massive secret the school was hiding from its students. Who was the werewolf? Why was the school taking care of it if it wasn’t someone from within? If the year before it had been just a puppy, it was surely a student we were talking about. Which made it a little scarier and also more exciting. Who was it? Was it someone I knew? Was it older than me, younger, just about my age? I thought it was impossible that it might have been older, because it was hitting puberty it seemed, so the individual had to be a teenager, someone my age or younger.

I looked at Neil again, then, slowly lowering my hands. While he had been falling ill a lot since the beginning of the year, he was okay, up and running again most of the time after a morning in the infirmary. This time it was different, and while I had checked for injuries, I hadn’t been able to look at his torso, which was very well hidden. Could this have been the wolf’s fault? Did Neil discover something, heard whispers from professors, known enough to venture alone wherever they kept the werewolf and in result found himself hurt badly? He wasn’t that stupid, but he was that determined. And he was curious. And yes, maybe a little bit stupid. So, it was possible: the full moon was just a few days before.

But was the wolf conscious? Was its human mind fused with its animal one? Could it recognize someone whom it knew, if it was indeed a student? Could it have recognized Neil?

Just then I remembered something else.

When I was still lying on a hospital bed trying to recover, just mere weeks before, Aaron and Nicky had told me that Riko was a dark creature. When I had asked Nicky about it during the holidays, he had dismissed it saying they didn’t know what he was exactly, but his family lived inside the Forbidden Forest and he would go there from time to time to try and talk with his father. Apparently, he was part of some of those species where you have to be turned to become the creature itself. So, was it possible that he had just been turned the year before, and was now evolving as a werewolf? Was it possible that Neil had found out, given there was a strange relationship between the two of them, and went out of his way to look himself, getting himself harmed? Whether he had recognized Neil or not, it was plausible that Riko had attacked him in that form. Kevin had said that Riko hadn’t harmed him, but he also might have not heard about it till he arrived at school.

Just as that thought has crossed my mind, I heard his voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I think I just need an ice pack or something.”

He was talking to Abby. He wasn’t going to stay for long, if all he asked for was an ice pack. Did wizards use ice packs?
Why was he being so kind to Abby, anyway? I tried not to move and be as still as possible so he wouldn’t notice my presence.

“Don’t be silly,” Abby scolded him, “it will swell up if I don’t do anything.”

“It’s just a black eye,” he reiterated. She sighed.

“Fine,” she yielded, “I don’t even know if we have ice packs.”

That was what I was saying.

He sighed, too, maybe admitting defeat.

“I just don’t want to take up much of your time. I know you’re busy, with Neil and all.”

I tensed up, hearing him say his name. So, he knew Neil was hurt and being treated. Did he know whose fault was that? Even if Riko was another kind of dark creature, he must’ve known there was a werewolf in the castle. Maybe they were allies of some kind. Didn’t most dark creatures live together anyway? That reminded me I was way behind in my Care of Magical Creature’s homework. For fuck’s sake.

I hoped that Abby had acknowledged the fact that I didn’t want to be noticed, and thankfully she did.

“Neil’s out of the woods. He’s going to be fine without me tonight, so if I can help you, let me know.”

“It was just a punch,” he sighed again.

“A well delivered one,” she confirmed, “what was it about, this time?”

“I...”, he stuttered, “I asked him if he could stop being so loud in the common room because I was doing my homework. I hadn’t noticed there was Dan Wilds in the room as well, so I guess he had to assert his dominance in front of the others.”

So, Riko had done that. That was why he was so hurt when I had asked him if Riko would’ve protected him: it was because of Riko he ended up harmed either way.

“I think he would’ve done it just the same,” she told him, matter-of-factly, “he’s just that much of a jerk.”

“I know,” Kevin sighed again.

They were silent for quite some time, and all I could hear was Abby muttering mostly to herself. I assumed it was because she was working on whatever injury he had. Finally, she let out a breath of delight.

“All healed,” she proclaimed, proudly.

“Thank you,” he replied, “it’s such a late hour, I never meant to bother you.”

“You never do, Kevin,” I could hear the smile in her voice, “I know you’re different from them.”

“Am I? I think I’m just as bad for doing nothing and letting Riko have his way every time.”

“One day, I bet he’ll do that one thing that will make you rebel against him. Remember that Danielle is still a Gryffindor. She will let you in if you ask.”

“We’ll see,” he said, softly, “See you, Abby.”

“Goodnight,” she cooed. After he had gone away, at least far enough to be out of earshot, she simply said – there was no need to scream in such a large room, the echo did all the work for her – “Not a word about this with anyone, Andrew.”

“Sure,” I answered.

It wasn’t my business anyway.

 

---

 

When she informed me that she had made the bed for me right next Neil’s and that she was going to sleep, I was once again left alone with my rumbling thoughts. To cope with that as best as I could, I reached for my bag at my feet and grabbed the book I was finally close to finishing.

After that strange encounter of Neil’s erased note, I had noticed there were others from that point forward. There when none before, like he’d had to muster the courage to write before actually doing it, but the ones that he had wrote were all erased. Some were easy to transcribe to another piece of paper, but most were unreadable. What tickled my curiosity, though, was the fact that all of his notes were linked to that Moony guy’s ones. Did they know each other? Was there a professor he liked that I didn’t know about? Most of the comments I was able to read were little snarky remarks about Moony’s relationship with Sirius – which, I had been right, had become more apparent going forward in the book, but it was clear they weren’t actually dating.

After some time, I had dropped the matter entirely. The book was almost finished, and I had found everything I needed to get inside Filch’s office, but what seemed odd to me now was the fact that I ever wanted to get in in the first place. What was I looking for? Maybe at that time it had seemed like a good way to piss off some people, because I hated that school and my family and Aaron’s friends enough to do it to them, but I actually wasn’t searching for anything. So, what was the point of gathering so much information? I would’ve found one, maybe, if I kept reading. Or if I let Neil or Renée onto that old plan of mine.

As the book was starting to dry up, the pages were filled more and more with notes on the edges. They were mostly from Moony – whose name had yet to be revealed – and Sirius and centered around their weird flirting. They often talked about some girls from their Houses and how James was totally hung up on some Evans lady and how she would never, ever give him a chance.

“Maybe you should tell him, Moony. He doesn’t listen to me.”
“And you think he’ll listen to me?”
“Everyone listens to you, pretty boy.”
“You’re prettier than me, Sirius.”
“Nah, I just speak French. The girls love it.”
“How would you know?”
“I assumed. You like it, though.”
“Eh. Regulus has a better pronunciation.”
“Low blow. If McGonagall wasn’t watching us I’d punch you.”
“And ruin my pretty face?”

They went on like this for pages and pages, which was really amusing to read. They were clearly friends before anything else, which, from my point of view, was important in a relationship.

This thought made me steal a glance of Neil, before turning back to the book.

I read for hours, hoping the boy lying in front of me would wake up, but no such luck that far. At some point, I reached the very last page of the book. As I closed it, though, I noticed a big, long note scribbled down and signed by the four boys.

“If you read this book in its all entirety, you’re a person of taste. But, maybe most importantly, you’re probably a marauder, just like us. Welcome to the club! We hope you chose this book to cause some mischief and make your professors fear your next move. That’s what we did in our days. As we leave Hogwarts, though, we think we left an important legacy to be taken upon and continued by a fellow marauder. To see if you’re up to the task, we have a quest from you: find the Marauder’s Map. It’s probably in Filch’s office” – the handwriting changed to Sirius’ – “dumb Moony made him take it on our last day.” – then it was Moony’s again – “We hope you make it, friend.
Messers Moony, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail salute you.”

That was it. I was getting into that office.

 

---

 

I ended up never sleeping on that bed Abby had prepared for me, but rather stayed up to do homework and study. It was true I was falling behind with assignments, and I wasn’t tired or anything – whatever McGonagall had done to me during those sessions was too intense for my brain to handle, apparently -, so it was better to put my insomnia to use. I put my glasses on and got to work.

The infirmary was quiet, so much so that I occasionally heard whispers of the wind coming from the broken bits of window or the enormous archway at the entrance. The only voices I could hear – by that point it was way past curfew – were the ones of the ghosts roaming around the corridors and chatting away, their need of sleep as null as mine. I looked at the moon to find it decrescent, as I knew it would’ve been, but it was covered ever so slightly that at a quicker glance it might have looked like it was still full. Either way, it was extremely beautiful. I loved the way it shone, white and bright in the deep blue sky. I loved the moon even more than I did the stars. There were millions of them, in the universe, but our moon was something so peculiar and particular, with its dark side and his craters. I wondered if the werewolf hated it as much as I loved it, or whether he didn’t blame that beautiful satellite for its misfortunes.

After I finished the book, I picked up the homework for Care of Magical Creatures and Runes: they were the classes I always left for last, because their homework was nerve-wrecking. Runes especially was a methodical exercise that required so much concentration and dedication and patience, and I didn’t have either of those most of the time. I just had memory, a really good one, which allowed me to remember the symbols much more easily than most of the students. Still, it was hard to do homework when I was around people, and people seemed to be around me most of the time.

While I was finishing up the last essay due the next week, I heard the sound of sheets rumpling and a soft moan. I looked up to see Neil’s body flex and relax under the gown and the blanket I had put on him beforehand – he had looked like he was cold, and I did have a blanket I wasn’t using. I put the book and my stationary away in my bag and waited for him to look around and find me.

It did take a while for him to open his eyes, he blinked so much I thought he might have gone blind and didn’t realize why. Then he coughed, inhaled sharply and turned around to grab the glass of water I had also filled previously. That was when our eyes met, for the first time in a while. I tried to hide the gasp that wanted to escape my lips.

His eyes were the same, sure. They were indigo and bright and rimmed with deeper blue and black, with those magical dots that made them look so unique. But they carried his tiredness with them, they carried the weight of being hurt and harmed and sick, they were darker around the edges, and they were brighter at the center, like there was a light, something inside of him that pushed him through recover and wanted him to get better.

“Hi,” he croaked, “what are you doing here?”

“Keeping you company,” I shrugged.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to, it’s very late.”

“McGonagall’s orders,” I replied, smirking slightly, “Abby needed a rest.”

“Oh,” he nodded, then took a sip of water and relaxed again against his pillow, “was I out the whole day?”

My eyes widened at the statement, and I bit my lip.

“What?”, he asked, clueless.

“Neil, um,” I stuttered, and pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingertips, “you’ve been unconscious for the past four or five days.”

“What?”, he yelled, again; then probably realized it was really late at night, so cleared his throat and whispered, “What?!”

“Yeah,” I bit my lip even harder, and it started to become numb, “do you know what happened?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered, rubbing his face with his free hand, “I just… I remember coming here right before New Year’s and then it’s black. I assumed I fainted or something.”

I nodded gravely, and he turned to look at me again, then placed back down his glass on the nightstand.

“So, that’s why you’re here?”

“Sure,” I said, “you did it for me.”

“I did,” he fidgeted with the hem of the blanket, “did somebody tell you why I was ill?”

“No, Abby said it was none of my business, and Renée didn’t know either.”

“So, Renée wasn’t here? Ever?”

“She passed by a few times but Abby turned us away, said that you were…” I took a pause, “you were in a much too critical shape to have visitors.”

“I see. And how are you here, again?”

“Told you. Went straight to McGonagall.”

He scoffed, and it was like a dimmed light brightened up inside my heart. He was laughing. He was fine.

“You’re so dramatic,” he said.

“Maybe so,” I smiled at him.

There was a silence then, while he looked out at the moon just as I had done mere minutes before, and then he sighed all of the sudden.

“Did I really call you Drew before you left?”

I laughed loudly, not caring about who could’ve been woken up by the sound.

“You really did,” I was still smiling, my cheeks hurt, “but it’s fine, you can do it. It will just need some getting used to. There’s no short for Neil, though.”

“I can live with that,” he laughed too.

There was no point in not letting him use that name. It wasn’t Drake’s property, even if he had called me like that for most of my stay at Cass’. Wasn’t that the whole thing I did, though? Replace bad memories with good ones. Neil was a good memory. Until the day he was bound to break my heart, like everyone did, he would’ve been my good memory.

“So, do you want to tell me about the notes on Hogwarts: A History that you carefully erased?”, I asked, suddenly, to break the second silence.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” he swore under his breath.

“Research purpose, huh?”, I teased, snickering.

“How did you find out?”, he pleaded.

“A very strong, rare spell called lumos.”

“Haha, very funny.”

“So, you read the whole book?”

“Yeah, last year.”

“Do you know that Moony guy?”

“He’s… you wouldn’t know him. He was a professor here last year, um, a DADA professor.”

“Bet you were his favorite,” I nudged him, and he cackled.

“Yeah, something like that. I don’t know why he left, though.”

His eyes wondered on my face for a couple of minutes, like there was something on it he was surprised to find there, or like it had changed somehow in the last three weeks. I wanted to tell him his face was just the same. I wanted to tell him I could’ve painted it on a canvas without even looking at him, because I knew every single detail, every dimple and wrinkle, every crease and every color. I had his face imprinted inside my head like a portrait.

I wanted to tell him I wished I didn’t have to memorize things so perfectly, because I wanted the experience of looking at him for the millionth time and still find something I hadn’t noticed. I wanted to tell him I wished he wasn’t so fucking attractive, because he was ruining my sanity. But I couldn’t possibly have told him that, so I just lowered my eyes, hoping I wasn’t blushing under his stare.

I wondered how he perceived the fact that I couldn’t hold eye contact with him. I wondered if he thought we were friends, and I wondered if he still believed I fancied Renée. I wondered if he ever wondered if I was gay. I wondered if he had noticed I was both freer and more restrained around him.

“Did you read about the map?”, I asked, again.

“What?”, he was startled.

“At the end of the book. The map, the one your professor and his friends had created or something.”

“Oh, yes, the Marauder’s Map.”

“Do you know what is it? Did your professor tell you?”

“Stop calling him my professor,” he chuckled, “but yes, he told me about it.”

“Tell me everything,” I urged, “I want to know.”

“Fine,” he laughed again, “basically, they were able to chart a map of the school with all its secret passages and everything, even the ones that led outside the grounds. But they didn’t stop at that: they also put a spell on the map so that it could track everyone inside the school. Like, if you opened it right now, you’ll probably see Dumbledore strolling inside his office or Peeves roaming through the castle.”

“That’s brilliant!” I was in awe, “how did they do it?”

“I didn’t ask,” he replied, “and also, I didn’t try to find it when he told me. It was the end of the year, and everyone was busy with exams.”

“Well, that’s fine,” I smiled, “I’m going to get it.”

“Are you now?”, he smirked.

“Yes,” I nodded, proud, “I’ll tell you my plan.”

We spent the whole night laughing and talking, while he was bashing me for my idiotic plan and I was trying to make up excuses for how I didn’t think of its faults and errors. The moon was our witness as the room filled with our “you’re going to get caught”, or “listen to me, this will work”, and also “Merlin, Drew, you’re hopeless”.

By the time the morning light was hitting our faces through the drawn curtain, Abby found us sleeping, Neil curled up in his bed and my head rested on the mattress, while I sat on the chair. She woke me up kindly, trying not to do the same for Neil, and told me I could go sleep on a real bed. At that moment, the weight of the three previous days crashed onto me and the thought of my warm, comfy bed seemed inviting, so I just stood up and prepared myself to go away.

When I was about to leave, I stopped to caress Neil’s scar once more. And when I passed by Abby, she said that Neil and I were sleeping with our hands touching.

And we were both smiling.

Chapter 12: Toxic

Summary:

MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING
explicit description of self harm and its consequences.

Jesus fucking Christ and everything that’s saint and holy and – fuck. FUCK!

I sat up in a sudden movement, and my head spun round round round again till it stopped and all the uneasiness plummeted to my stomach. I rushed out of the bed, reimaging through the duvet to escape the hold it had on me and sprinted to the bathroom. I kneeled on the floor and dunked my head right over the toilet seat. My hand shot to my hair to pull them back and avoid getting vomit on it. Even though I’d have probably taken a shower anyway after that.

As the sinking, disgusting feeling calmed down, I finally flushed down whatever remained of the biscuits McGonagall had kindly offered me and apparently had been all that I’d eaten in days. Whatever. I had things more important to tend to.

I sat down on the cold floor and freed my hand from my hair, then slouched with my back against the wall and I tilted my head backwards, hitting the concrete as well. I hated it. I hated everything about it. And it was too good to be true, I had to know it was too good to be true, I had to know it couldn’t be just sunshine and flowers and love and talking fucking ponies.

He touched me.

He bloody touched me.

And whatever it meant for him, sleeping with my hand touching another meant the fucking world to me. It was intimate, it was passionate, it was something I would have never dared to do with anyone because… well, because I was throwing up on a Monday morning, for bloody fucking fuck’s sake.

He touched me all night long, and could I blame him? I was flirting with him, I was trying to get his attention, I was hopelessly… FUCK!

There was nothing I hated more than that feeling. I looked down at my arms, just to confirm, but I knew I had goosebumps all over, making my skin crawl and itch. I wanted to rip it off my body, I wanted to scream and I wanted… I wanted…

My eyes ran to the shelf right above the sink. I had to take a shower eventually. The razor was there, it was easy to disassemble, it was easy, just so easy, and I didn’t need to throw up again, I didn’t need to vex myself any longer with that nonsense about Neil and his perfect red hair and his perfect pink scars and his perfect blue eyes. I just needed a razor, three minutes in the shower, boiling hot water on fresh, sizzling wounds and I needed to feel the pain because pain was greater than whatever Neil had done to me. Pain was greater than any emotion, pain was easy, pain was manageable.

Then the dorm door creaked open and slammed shut.

“What have you done to this place? It smells like sick.”

Of course, Renée. Couldn’t avoid her for long, could I?

“In here,” I shouted back from the bathroom.

“What?”, she rushed and stood on the entrance, her eyes widened at the sight of me, “why are you sitting on the bathroom floor with vomit on your lips and a pair of bags under your eyes that could carry this castle’s groceries? Was there a party I wasn’t invited to?”

“Spent the night with Neil in the infirmary,” I tried to keep the answer short, to avoid questions, “might have caught something in the process.”

“Should you call in sick? I know it’s the first day of the semester, but you should rest if you feel ill.”

I groaned as I stood up, sore in my arms and legs, while my right hand, the faulty hand, hurt. Pain was good. Pain was fine. I tried to ignore it, ignore everything, as I patted my left hand on Renée shoulder, pushing her a little.

“Nothing a shower can’t fix,” I said, “Can you step out or do you want to see my dick too this fine morning, Walker?”

“I- um. I will wait for you in the bedroom,” her cheeks turned bright red, and I smiled kindly. Falsely.

“Atta girl.”

“Andrew,” she said, hesitantly, “are you flirting with me?”

“I would never,” I feigned offence, “apparently, though, I flirt with everyone in sight these days.”

“Wait,” she furrowed her brows, “what’s that supposed to…”

I shut the bathroom dorm in her face.

“That’s rude,” she yelled from behind the door.

“You’re annoying,” I shouted back. That shut her up.

It was easy, really, I had done it thousands of times. It was something I struggled with at first, but with time it had gotten so simple that I could’ve had it done in less than two minutes. I placed the empty plastic shell on the shelf again, and clutched the blades in my fists, holding so hard onto them that I could’ve felt the skin ripping apart on my palms. I turned the hot water on, on maximum, so that vapor was crashing onto the roof in seconds, and I stepped in.

I washed my hair with one hand, I washed my body. I tried to eliminate the nasty smell I could feel on my lips. Then, when my flesh was warm and tender, I got to it.

One stripe. Two stripes. Three. Four, five, ten, fifteen. They had to be even, right? Sixteen. Such a weird number. Eighteen. Might as well round it. Twenty. On each arm, on each wrist. Blood trickled down, hitting my bare legs, catching onto the hair there, flowing down to the sink. The floor was red and bright, like his hair.

It wasn’t his fault, that was what I was telling myself. If I was any other person, that touch would’ve meant nothing to the both of us. But I had, I simply had to punish myself, did I? I had to punish the fact that I had once again allowed myself to be vulnerable, to be open to someone so freely, so carelessly, that I had hoped it would’ve been different if it was him. That I had put my past behind and I could have a simple crush, I could flirt away, I could have someone to hold onto at night when the moon is bright and demons begin their hunt.

I wanted Neil, I wanted him so bad that I had allowed myself to slip into a comfortable pattern that was no longer sustainable. I tricked myself into believing firmly that we had a chance, I had a chance at being normal, at being able to hold hands without meaning it’ll hurt. And it hurt. It really did.

Not only had I done a mistake, not only was I suffering the consequences, but I really had thought it wasn’t a mistake in the first place. I really thought it was all forgotten, that my body had forgotten the abuse, the way those same hands, my fucking hands, were held up against a mattress, latched into somebody else’s while I cried in pain and shame and fear. I really thought I could put it behind me, I could just be, finally, without any restraint, without any chains.

But I was chained. I was chained to an existence of sufferance and loneliness, of pain and cuts and bleeds and punches and rapes. That was my life, that was what I was destined to be, that was what my body was used to. Not the gentle touch of a darling boy that laughed with me, not the kind caress of someone who loved me. It was used to roughness and destruction. It was used to being used. And that’s how it reacted, that’s how I reacted.

It was a simple sequence. You get touched, you feel emotions, you eliminate them with pain so sharp and tangible. You cure those wounds, you let them heal, and you convince yourself that healed you, too. That was what I was doing since I was eleven. My body couldn’t stop that day, my body couldn’t stop just because Neil was different. Just because I was really beginning to…

That was a pointless thought. There was no use in those feelings anymore. It was clear my body wouldn’t allow me love, or fancy, or lust. My body didn’t allow anything.

What about Renée, though? She was allowed. Was it really just because she was a friend, because she was a woman? Could it be possible that my brain just refused to register the fact that someone was touching me when she was around? In one way or the other, she had bypassed the system. I was happy she did, really. I would’ve been happier if other were allowed in, too.

I sat down in the shower, knees held up against my chest so that my arms could rest on them, watching as the lines on my wrists became paler and paler till the water ran clean. At that point, I stood up and stepped out of the shower, drying myself with soft towels that I patted gently on my forearms, careful not to get any fluff inside the wounds themselves. I then opened the drawer with the medical kit that I had brought from home for that case specifically and applied some disinfectant and then the bandages. I finished it off with my armbands on and it seemed like nothing was different from the outside. That was good enough.

I realized I didn’t have any clean clothes and wrapped a towel around my waist before exiting the bathroom. Steam flew out of it as I opened the door and I found Renée sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Wow,” she said, “you really have some abs.”

“Did you see the loop I did around that goal or was it just me that found it amazing? No, because you seem a little surprised for someone who saw me do that shit,” I replied, looking into the drawers for my underwear.

“I almost forgot about that,” she pondered, “seems like ages ago.”

“It was a mere month, really. Maybe a month and a half.”

“As I said, ages,” she stopped for a minute as I struggled with putting my briefs on without dropping the towel, “your armbands seem thicker.”

“There’s something underneath.”

“What?”, she was curious. I was floored.

“Knives,” I lied with the first thing that came to mind. Really?, I thought, the first thing that comes to mind in a bloody magical school is knives?

“Why do you carry them with you?”, she seemed genuinely interested. That caught my attention, and I tilted my head to the side, watching her carefully.

“It’s a habit I picked up from prison,” I lied again, “why do you look so concerned about it?”

“I have some, too,” she blurted out, “but I hate them. I hate the sight of them, they remind of… things I want to forget.”

“Give them to me,” I suggested, on a whim, “I’ll keep them with mine and I’ll give them to you if you need them.”

“Hopefully I won’t,” she sighed, then looked over at me with something that resembled gratitude, “would you really hold onto them? I don’t think Dumbledore likes knives.”

“Let’s say Dumbledore owes me a favor,” I smiled.

“I’m not going to question that.”

“Fine by me.”

She nodded and then there was silence again.

In the bright morning light that came from the window the emotions and the tormenting thoughts came back again, leaving me armless in front of them while the ravaged my soul. I let them eat me alive, for all I cared, because after cutting myself I always felt empty, like the senses I once owned flew out of me with the blood that escaped my veins. Those demons I battled so hard on my hardest days were once again glorious and victorious, feasting on my brain and my body and my very core, and I let them, because I didn’t have any battle left in me, and I couldn’t push them back again.

I wondered what it would have taken to make me like that permanently. The death of a family member? The return of Drake? Whatever my mom will ever pull on me eventually?

I wondered if I could ever grow emotionless, tired of feeling even the slightest ounce of sorrow and regret, tired even of my beloved pain that cured everything. I wondered if I would eventually stop running towards a razor blade just to erase my thoughts and feelings, if I would ever heal or make peace with the fact that I was permanently broken.

I had fantasized about someone that would make me whole again, that could make me feel like I was reborn in one piece, but it wasn’t realistic. People break you, even those who love you, even if they don’t necessarily crack you open, they always leave scratches behind. I refused to see people as some balm that could heal every wound that somebody else had left you with: people are scars themselves, they cut you deep and touch your heart and they can even heal that wound they created, but the scar is there. It will stay there, and it will never leave, because that’s what people do. Either they love you or they hate you, but they always hurt you.

“Andrew?”

I lifted my gaze upon Renée, who was watching me from the bed, still, her eyebrows furrowed and a little pout out to express utter confusion.

“Yes?”, I spoke, softly, my heart shattering in a million pieces by the minute.

“You’re still in your underwear. I get it, you have a great body, but put some pants on.”

“Oh,” I blushed, “sure.”

I quickly picked some pants from the drawer and a clean with shirt and put them on, while searching with my eyes for my blue and black tie, which I didn’t find. I put my combat boots on and kneeled to tie them up, when the tie appeared in front of me, offered by a pale hand with nails painted of a bright baby blue.

It was the color of Neil’s eyes.

“Thank you,” I whispered as I stood up.

“You don’t look good,” Renée bit her lip slightly, “did something happen with Neil?”

“No, it’s fine. We’re fine.”

I wasn’t.

“So, what is it?”

“I just… it’s things I don’t want to talk about, ok?”

“Sure,” she rolled her eyes and sighed, “sparring later?”

Then I remembered: I had some way to take my mind off Neil. I had things to do.

“I would love to,” I shook my head, then smile cheekily, “but I’m afraid I have plans tonight.”

 

---

 

The hallways were particularly cold, so much so that even if I was completely invisible, I feared that someone from the outside could’ve seen the puffs of hot air that escaped my lips and guessed who was wandering the castle that late at night.

It wasn’t that late, though: on a normal day, I would’ve fallen asleep an hour prior, or maybe even just thirty minutes. I wasn’t tired – the voices in my head guilting me into cutting myself again because what I’d done that morning wasn’t enough were very much keeping me awake – and I prided myself into thinking I was completely lucid.

I had tried the charm a few times on some towels before casting it onto one of my robes, and it was really simple to cast and use. As the robe rested on the duvet it seemed normal and even brand new, untouched, unaltered. But as I put it on, the image of my body quickly disappeared from the mirror in the bathroom that I was standing in front of, leaving my head floating mid-air. I laughed at the reflection, and quickly found one of the beanies Renée left around my room, casted the spell on it and put it on, becoming invisible to all effects.

I decided to sneak out after the rounds of patrol made by the prefects right after curfew but waited a little longer just to make sure no one was around, not even a stray first-year kid trying to pull some silly prank on professors or other students.

I descended the stairs with the calm of somebody that had memorized their pattern of movement by then. I realized I didn’t even need that map, and it was just curiosity driving me out of my room at that hour to make something I might have regretted. I had orchestrated a plan in all of two hours, and I was praying it worked, but I was also confident it couldn’t go badly. Still, I didn’t know how to actually put that map to use, but what that Moony said actually intrigued me.

A Marauder. From what I had gathered by their written chats, Moony and Sirius didn’t have an easy life. Sirius was rich, sure, but his family seemed worse than Nicky’s. They for sure didn’t know he was gay, or at the very least that he was in a relationship with a boy, and what his mother seemed to have done to him was way worse than what mine had done to Aaron. At least, Tilda made it look like she loved Aaron, while Sirius’ mother openly despised him. They never really got into what Moony was struggling with, but by the way Sirius worried about him it looked like it was serious – no pun intended.

Was I a marauder? I had taken some pride into scamming others, making bullies and people in power look like fools with the things I did, the way I exposed them. I was stealing something from someone just for the Hell of it. Could I be considered part of that group? It seemed like they were the kind of friends that would’ve fit with me.

James was a little like Matt was: always smiling, always welcoming, but he could be a worrisome opponent if anybody touched someone he loved. Once I had seen him punch the hell out of a Gryffindor because he’d told Dan that the only reason Hufflepuff was losing the Quidditch tournament was because they had a half-blood for captain and a team of mudbloods – probably referring to Renée. Matt’s face was stone cold as he slammed his knuckles into the bloke’s jaw time and time again, but the smug smile he wore as Sprout rushed over to the scene was telling of how much he didn’t regret a single punch. And when McGonagall asked how he was going to explain his actions, Matt just replied ‘I don’t need to explain them because they were rather an under-reaction, really. He deserves much more than a couple of hits’. He was fierce and strong, lanky in his long legs but firm on his feet, even at fifteen years old. And that James reminded me of him. Which made me wonder whether Matt and I could’ve been friends, if I didn’t avoid him as much as I did.

Neil was a lot like Moony, but also like Sirius. In truth, the both of us were a mix of the both of them, for different traits and characteristics.
But my thoughts were escaping me.

Before I knew it, I was standing before the door of Filch’s office right in the Entrance Hall, and the plan was afoot. The big clock on the stairs rang as the shortest hand clicked and turned towards the III and the longest one towards the XII. The explosion that came right after was precisely in time.

It was indeed three in the morning, and while Filch wasn’t the sleepiest of them all, he ought to take a nap once in a while. To make sure he wasn’t in his office, that also served as his room, I found him something to worry about long enough for me to sneak in and out without leaving traces.

It was a plain box, enchanted with so many jinxes that I had lost count and couldn’t really remember what it was supposed to do. I remember there were some fireworks conjured by a Cracker jinx, an incredibly loud noise that was alarming all of the campus conjured by a Drone jinx and when everything came to an halt and the box itself was to be approached by anyone, there was actually a Biting jinx on it that ought to make it alive and able to bite whomever was around. All of it was topped by an excellently delivered Impedimenta that had to slow down the other jinxes till it was the right time – I did have to read a lot about that spell so that I could calculate the amount of time I had between the making of the box and the explosions of the jinxes.

I had planted it right next to an enormous tree in the courtyard and soon enough, Filch opened his office’s door and ran towards it, quickly followed by some of the professors and even the Headmaster, which I hadn’t seen in a very long time. While everyone rushed towards the noisy, explosive, biting box, I slalomed through their bodies, reached the door that Filch had kindly left open and sneaked inside the little room.

It was the size of a small basement, and it kind of smelled of fish, maybe due to the cat that was hissing at me in the far-right corner of the room. I hissed back, like I was a cat myself, and it quieted down slowly. I looked around the room and saw a small cot, an even smaller desk and a simple oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. There were also a pair of really shiny chains and manacles, that I guessed were meant for the students. I also gathered Dumbledore probably hadn’t accepted Filch’s suggestion.

The real attraction of that place was the massive amount of filing cabinets pushed against the wall, each cabinet labeled with its contents. Most of them were files about student’s misconducts, and I opened one that was dated about ten years prior. I skimmed its contents till I found an enormous file about two individuals. They were twins, named Fred and George Weasley, and they were apparently the real heirs of the Marauders, since in their files it was evidently listed that they had indeed stolen the Marauder’s Map – though Filch was able to retrieve it from a professor, some Remus Lupin. Their practical jokes and pranks included burning water, stealing coffins, misplacing every single book in the library, actually making fireworks – bigger than mine were, for sure – and creating so many silly, annoying objects that had infested the whole castle throughout their stay at Hogwarts.

While I was impressed, I gathered from that file that the Marauder’s Map must’ve been somewhere in that filing cabinet, so I searched around some more. I put that Fred and George’s file where it belonged and started reading the labels on each cabinet.

Finally, I opened the one that was marked ‘Confiscated and Highly Dangerous’. In there, there were a lot of stuff that wasn’t dangerous per se, and I wondered whether Filch didn’t just confiscate student’s property out of spite, more than out of peril. I could recognize the golden snitch he had confiscated from that Slytherin girl earlier that year. But, as far as I dug, there wasn’t even a piece of parchment inside that cabinet.

The Marauder’s Map had been stolen again. And it hadn’t been me.

I closed the cabinet, sighing, and quietly exited the room. Outside, the commotion and ruckus had died down, but the professors were still hanging by Filch’s room. I recognized Abby among them, she was waving her wand above the caretaker’s hand that had clearly been bitten by the box. I chuckled, low enough for them not to hear me, and I left them at that, while I started to climb my way up the castle and the Ravenclaw’s tower again.

As I reached the first set of stairs, though, a booming voice hit my ears.

“Mr. Minyard, I hope you found what you were looking for,” it said.

I turned around and gulped, as the Headmaster was standing in front of me, a slight smirk on his face. He was quickly joined by McGonagall, that looked at him confused: he was clearly speaking by himself, for all she knew.

I took the hat off, revealing my head, and then removed the robe, hoping they wouldn’t mind my half-buttoned up shirt, my wrinkled pants and the fact that I wasn’t wearing any shoes – the combat boots would’ve woken up the whole castle before the box even had its chance.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I only meant to wake up Filch, Professor.”

“Well, you made quite the act out there,” he smiled even wider, “I didn’t know you could cast that many spells on an object alone.”

“I didn’t know it either,” I shrugged, “I just did it and hoped it worked.”

“You are really as brilliant as you seem, Mr. Minyard.”

“Albus, should we do something with him? Maybe relieving him from his... special assigment?”, McGonagall intervened.

“Yes, Headmaster!”, Filch screamed, reaching us with his healed hand, and waving it around, “he’s a menace! He deserves to be punished.”

He then grabbed my forearm, as to drag me with him and put that bloody manacles on me, and his grip was so tight that I felt the bandages come off and winced.

“Nothing of the sort,” Dumbledore sentenced, his face wasn’t happy anymore, “and put your hands off the child, Argus.”

“You can’t just send him off,” McGonagall protested, “he woke up the lot of us. That tree almost caught fire!”

“Well, my dear Minerva,” he smiled kindly at her, “I hadn’t had such a fun time since those four little Marauders were here. And then again, with Fred and George? Once in a generation there needs to be someone to stir up the waters, otherwise we would die of boredom.”

McGonagall seemed to scold him with her gaze, but she eventually just chuckled along and turned to look at me.

“What is that?”, she asked, pointing at me.

I glanced at my arm. My sleeve was bright red with blood, pouring out as it drenched the fabric. The bandages were off and the wounds reopened with Filch’s tight grasp. They stung and I felt tears prickling at my eyes because of the pain my head didn’t even register before McGonagall pointed it out. I wanted to cry out as I felt I was being stabbed in my arms times and times again, I felt lightheaded like I was about to faint and I felt like every part of my body was aching and somehow murdering me from the inside out.

“Professor,” I looked at Dumbledore with pleading eyes, “may I go?”

“Mr. Minyard,” he reiterated, “did you find what you were looking for?”

“No, Professor. May I go?” I repeated.

“Yes,” McGonagall replied hastily, “shall we go to the infirmary, to Madam Winfield?”

I shook my head, biting my lips as I noticed tears were threatening to escape from my eyelids and roll down my cheeks.

“But you’re clearly hurt.”

“I know how to take care of that. I didn’t take into consideration that a moron could grab me with such vehemence so soon in the morning,” I shot a venomous glare towards Filch.

“Mr. Minyard, that’s hardly appropriate…”, McGonagall begun, but she was quickly shut up by Dumbledore.

“That’s enough,” he said, “Go to your dorm, Mr. Minyard. And tomorrow, after dinner, find Professor McGonagall to resume your lessons. It’s clear you have a lot of potential and we ought to put it to use.”

“Sure,” I nodded lightly. I didn’t know how I was still standing straight, “goodnight, Professor.”

I didn’t wait for him to answer as I dragged my body up the several flight of stairs that stood between me and my dorm room door. I didn’t even change into my pajamas, but I threw the hat and the robe on the floor. I laid in bed, trying not to whimper as I took my shirt and armbands off slowly and realized I had lost so much blood that the fabric was stuck to my skin. When I slid the bands off my arms they peeled off some of the scabs that had already begun forming on the cuts, which hurt even more.

My breath was heavy and shallow. I took a look around and realized my clothes had stained the duvet as well. And, as much as I wanted to get up and clean that mess before anyone found out, I didn’t have that much energy. I was still bleeding out, the blood poured on my bare torso and flooded the bed.

With a last, weak effort, I reached for my wand in the back pocket of my pants, and I pointed it at whatever was in front of me. My eyelids were closing, and my vision was blurry at best.

“Colloportus,” I whispered, locking the door. Or at least so I hoped, since I couldn’t have heard the lock clicking shut.

I collapsed right after I'd casted the spell.

Notes:

hello my friends and readers, sorry I was absent for quite some time but I had an exam for university and I was really behind with my studies lmao, hope I can update frequently again from now on
yes this is a sad chapter, but I hope you like it as much as you do the sappy and romantic ones ;)

Chapter 13: Close as strangers

Summary:

TW!
mentions of self harm

Months started to pass by in a hurry. Given I didn’t have time to breathe - let alone smoke, which I missed very much - it was easy to forget the thin line between sleep and wakefulness. The routine was killing me, but it was inevitable, so I just rolled with it even though it was consuming me. I didn’t care, I didn’t mind. It also meant I had less time to spend around people my age, while mostly I hung out with professors and Abby.

It was Quidditch practice first thing in the morning, so early that the sun didn’t even rise at that time; then lessons, lunch break – which I mostly used to do homework and not fall behind -, lessons again, reading and essays for the exams that we had to take at the end of the year, dinner – which I mostly ended up having by myself in my room or with McGonagall in her office -, and finally intense magic sessions with Abby and McGonagall. There was also the Quidditch tournament, that mostly deprived me of various evenings I had to spend on the pitch, and the fact that we were slowly but steadily approaching the end of the school year and I had to take several exams, in which I wanted to, at the very least, come on top of some of the subjects.

While I was studying to finalize my animagus form, McGonagall suggested that I also learned some healing abilities, because my cover would be completely blown if I returned to the castle after a full moon with an arm dethatched from my body or any other severe injuries. The wolf shouldn’t have attacked me, but we were better safe than sorry. So, I spent hours transfiguring my body with magic – or at least trying to do it – and then trying to mend any damage I may have caused in the process. By the time I was allowed to return to my bedroom, I had only a couple of hours to rest before the alarm went off and I had to get up again, feeling like my head had barely hit the pillow before I was forced to be out of bed.

The prefects knew that they couldn’t give me detention if they ran into me after curfew. Most of them knew that I was involved in a special project with McGonagall and some of the other professors – even Flitwick began to show up at my sessions after dinner, which was relieving but also added to the stress and the intensity of the situation. It also rose some suspicion, as the word spread and of course, no one knew what all that secrecy was about, but everyone was curious to know how a new student can be involved into something so important that also involved the Headmaster.

I also was allowed to do things that no other student was. I could, for example, consult the library at extreme hours, and at some point, Madam Pince had relented to giving me the keys to the library itself just so she wouldn’t have to put up with my crazy schedule anymore. I could also skip some lessons to go practice in the loneliness of the dungeons while the students were occupied and was excused from part of the weekly assignments.

In that crazy haze, January ended in a minute, and the next thing I knew it was April and I was starting to dethatch myself more and more from people I had considered friends. I didn’t talk with Renée anymore, even though she tried for the first month or so to catch up with me as much as she could, but I was always busy, and she was always disappointed. I didn’t remember the last time I had talked to Neil, and I mostly saw the group during Quidditch matches. I only talked to Aaron during Quidditch practices, and it was mostly about sport. None of them even thought of asking me why I was so out of touch and why I was such a difficult person to find, or maybe they were too afraid to do it.

I tried not to keep track of the full moons, because I didn’t want to know how much time was passing while I was training, I didn’t want to know how many times a werewolf had been out there, hurting itself over and over because it felt trapped in its own body. By the end of April, as exams became a more pressing matter, McGonagall had informed me that another full moon had passed, but she was confident, because we were making fast progress.

I was just exhausted.

The first day of May, I stepped into the Great Hall for the first time in a while, and I tried to ignore how chatter stopped right when I set foot inside the room. Hundreds of sets of eyes followed my path to the Hufflepuff table, where the group was sitting.

“Morning,” I sat next to Renée. Like it was the most natural thing to do. She was looking at me completely appalled.

“Alright, mate?” Matt asked, his eyes wide in surprise, “I though you died since our last game.”

“Alive and well, thank you,” I replied, scooping up some marmalade with a knife from the bowl at the center of the table and spreading it on some toast. I looked up, to see most of the group was watching me in silence, and had stopped eating all together, “Hello? Are you lot ok?”

“You ask us?” Dan answered, “I haven’t seen you since March. It was two months ago, Andrew.”

“So what?” I sighed, “Are we supposed to hang together every day?”

“Don’t play dumb, asshole,” Seth said, ever the delicate guy, “you know it’s not like that, but this shit with McGonagall and the Headmaster has been keeping you so busy it’s a miracle if you’re seen outside your room or the library.”

“Yeah,” Allison looked at me up and down, “what’s going on?”

“Can’t say,” I took a bite of the toast and avoided their gazes.

“But you have to,” it was Nicky now, “you can’t just disappear.”

“Listen,” I cleared my throat, “I would love to tell you and maybe even get some help, but I’ve been specifically asked not to spread this information. Not even to my friends.”

A silence followed, full of tension and unsaid words. Finally, a cold laugh erupted at my side.

“That explains it,” Renée said, firmly, “so sad you don’t actually have any friends.”

She quickly stood up, but I could see the tears wetting her face.

“Sorry,” she proclaimed, “I have to go.”

She ran towards the archway and the group was quick to follow. Alone again, I sighed once more and kept eating my breakfast.

I knew my disappearing act was going to raise some questions, but I didn’t know it could’ve hurt somebody. Or at least, I didn’t stop to think about it enough to take that into consideration. I knew it was for a grater purpose, and I was actually really proud of the progress I was making as an animagus and I enjoyed the feeling and sense of power that came with the achievements that I was making, but I never intended to hurt anyone in the process. Maybe myself, but surely not Renée or my family.

“I haven’t seen you since that night in the infirmary.”

I had almost forgotten that voice. Or maybe I had just fantasized about it enough to make changes to it, enough to make me shiver once I heard it right next to me and not in my head anymore.

“Sorry about that,” I replied.

I looked up and he was watching me carefully, with his arms crossed on the table and his head lying on top of them, big blue eyes blinking and long red eyelashes batting slowly. He was sitting on the opposite side of the table, a few seats on my left, right next to where Matt was a moment prior. Maybe that was why I hadn’t noticed him.

“Is everything ok?”, I asked, tilting my head to the side.

“I’m really tired, that’s all,” he said and yawned as if to prove his statement. I didn’t believe him anyway, and I knew he knew I didn’t. Or something like that.

“You look battered,” I took a sip of the hot tea I had poured inside a big mug.

“You don’t look good yourself, mister, but you won’t catch me pointing that out,” he smiled tentatively.

“I suppose you’re right,” I smiled a tight-lip smile at him too.

Feelings. Things I hadn’t felt in months, so caught up in routines and patterns and trainings and practices that I had forgotten I was pining over one of my best friends, that I was hurting over somebody that could’ve never wanted me, let alone loved me, and that I was so desperate for him to be with me that I had let him touch me, I had let him hold my hand. I had forgotten the consequences of that night, I had forgotten the strong emotions that came with seeing the creases that formed on the corner of his eyes when he smiled or the fact that my heart was screaming inside my chest that he had the prettiest, most kissable lips ever, and the fact that whenever I thought things like that my brain shut down and ordered me to find a razor and punish myself for feeling the way I felt about him.

I wasn’t going to put the blame on him, though. Drake was to blame, everyone that did the same things before him, every one that had abused me was the problem. If I hadn’t gone through all that, I could’ve just let myself fall in love with a pretty redhead boy that smiled at me and cared for me, but instead I had to punish myself over it because I couldn’t allow myself to be used that way anymore, not even by someone that seemed like they wanted to heal me.

He was actively reading my mind.

“Tell me I didn’t do anything wrong,” he whispered, “tell me it wasn’t because I did something wrong.”

“What?”, I asked, surprised, “that I disappeared? You know I’m working on something with McGonagall.”

“Not that,” he lifted his head and propped it onto one of his palms, “I know whatever you’re doing is important, I’m not going to ask you to tell me. I also realized I had become accustomed to your presence everywhere in my life, so it kind of sucks anyway. But I’m not mad at you, not like Renée is.”

“Then, what is it you’re asking me?”

He bit his lip, then slid across the long wooden bench to come face to face with me. He leaned forward and grabbed my mug, taking a long swig from it before putting it back next to my plate. The tea was almost over, and I shot him a venomous look.

“That was mine.”

“There’s plenty of tea here, Drew.”

“Well, I wanted that tea.”

“You’re such a dick sometimes.”

“And you’re a baby.”

“I am younger than you.”

“Still, you’re a teenager acting like a bloody toddler.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“You are. And you’re so used to being liked by everyone that you assume everyone will like you regardless.”

“Don’t they?”

“I didn’t like you at first.”

“That’s also because you’re a dick, like I pointed out earlier on this conversation.”

“I may be a dick but there’s a reason for it and I’m not going to apologize.”

“Did you cut yourself because of me?” he suddenly blurted out.

I blinked a few times, taken aback. He sighed and rubbed his face with the palms of his hands before clawing at his hair with them, pushing it back.

“What?”, it was all I was able to say.

“Abby told me I could go the day after I woke up. There were fireworks that night and that loud siren, and when I was released, I wanted to come up to your room and see if you had found the Map because I assumed that the jinxes were your doing.”

“The door was locked,” I anticipated.

“It was. But I learned Alohomora when I was eleven, Drew.”

“When somebody locks a door, it means stay out,” I clenched my jaw.

“When a friend locks themselves in their room without warning after almost setting the courtyard on fire, you worry and bypass some boundaries,” he firmly reiterated, his eyes cold as ice and as blue as the winter sky, “and when I got in, my worries tripled as I found you in a pool of your own blood with your forearms slashed open.”

I knew someone had been in there. I had found my dirty clothes clean and the blood that dried on them had been washed away. I had assumed it had been a house elf, as why would have anybody have cared about me getting my armbands and my shirt clean for the day while I was lying unconscious on a bed?

“I didn’t want to wake you up. And I knew you wouldn’t have wanted to have this conversation then, so I left. But I also knew you would’ve needed your armbands to hide the new cuts, so I cleaned them for you. You seemed weak and tired, I didn’t want you to do it by hand in the bathroom sink and the elves would’ve just taken them.”

That was why, then. I wanted to be angry at him, to yell and curse his name and cut him off from my life, but all I could do was sigh and admit to myself he had done exactly what I would’ve done in his place, maybe went even a little further with the clothes.

“That was unnecessary,” I swallowed some pride, and averted my eyes to the far end of the room so I didn’t have to look at him in the eyes as I said it, “but… well, thank you. I really didn’t want to wash them.”

His hand quickly snapped, surrounding my face but not touching it. He was just covering my eyes, like a pair of horse’s blinkers, that directed my gaze right in front of me, towards him.

“So?”

“So what?” I asked in return.

“Was it because of me?”

“Why would it be because of you?”

“I don’t know!” he was clearly distraught, “One moment I am laughing with you and we’re talking and everything was fine and the next you’re passed out on your bed losing so much blood I had make sure you weren’t dead. I thought maybe I had done something wrong, maybe I had taken making fun of you for your plans over the map too far or maybe you had found out something that made you regret spending the night with me.”

“No, no,” I assured, “it wasn’t like that. You didn’t do anything. It was all my doing; I made that decision consciously. I was just having a hard time and that's what I turn to when I feel helpless. I hadn't done it since, anyway.”

“Ok,” he sighed, relaxing and dropping his hands, “I'm glad you're better. And by the way, I meant it. I… I have missed you a little bit.”

“Even if I’m a dick?” I teased, a smile growing on my lips.

“Yes, unfortunately I kind of like that you’re a dick,” he smiled. My heart skipped a bit, but I tried to hide it, “Tell you what. I’ll ask even the Headmaster if I have to, but what do you say if we go together to Hogsmeade next Saturday? I was going with the group, but I want to spend some time with you and I know I won’t get a chance if not like this.”

“What? Just you and me?” I tilted my head to the side.

That was extremely odd. And my brain was screaming at me, telling not to fall into the same trap, that I'd end up on the shower floor again crying and bleeding out, because once again I was letting him in, I was letting him take me wherever he wanted to. I didn't know why he held so much power over me, but I didn't like it. I loved it, also. Kind of. It was scary and priceless, and I was hooked on it. He was my drug, something I couldn't get rid of. Maybe I should've started acknowledging that that crush wasn't going anywhere.

“Yeah, it’ll be fun. I can offer you a butterbeer, you can tell me how you made those fireworks. Like two good friends,” he smiled wider.

“Right, good friends,” I nodded absent-mindedly, “And are you sure they won’t mind? Not even Renée?”

“She might,” he bit his lip – have I ever said how that thing made me lose my bloody mind? -, “but don’t worry, I’ll talk to her.”

I nodded again, and then looked at the big clock in the Entrance Hall.

“I have to go,” I wanted to stay.

“It’s fine, Drew. We’ll see each other on Saturday.”

“Isn’t the final of the Quidditch tournament on Sunday?”, I inquired, and he smiled wickedly.

“You’ll have to hype me up, Minyard.”

 

---

 

As always, the door of the office opened before I even had the chance of knocking on it, and I walked inside.

“Mr. Minyard,” McGonagall called for me from her usual armchair, gaze lost in the flames of the fire cracking in the fireplace, “you’re early.”

I strolled over one of the infinite shelves and picked up a book from it, skimming through the pages. It was a biography of Rowena Ravenclaw, or at least everything the magical community knew about her and her relationships with the other founders of the School.

“I thought we might move the lesson up,” I answered the implicit question, “I didn’t have anything to keep me occupied, anyway.”

“Huh,” she turned her eyes over to the window, “did you have dinner?”

“I forgot,” I replied earnestly. She had become my confidante during those months, seeing that I couldn’t have possibly talked about my stressful situation with anyone else, so I didn’t see any point in hiding something that had simply skipped my mind for once, “I was working on that Transfiguration essay due tomorrow. I brought it here so you might start to take a look at it, Professor.”

I fished the several pieces of crumpled parchment from my pocket and went to place them on her desk, before returning to the section of the small library where I was standing before.

“I thought I had excused you from that assignment,” she finally turned around to face me.

“You did,” I placed the book back on the shelf, and picked another – it was about the life of one of the ghosts in the castle -, “but the exams are close, and I want to be prepared. Ignoring homework won’t do me a favor in the long run.”

“So, you’re telling me you’ve been doing all the homework you’d been purposefully excused from, still doing Quidditch practices in the morning and coming here after curfew to basically torture your own body, while also not eating properly. Mr. Minyard, when do you sleep?”

I chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”, she inquired, getting up from the armchair to study me with her eyes the color of ice.

I put back the second book to turn to look at her, and leaned on the shelves with my shoulder, arms crossed on my chest and head tilted to the side.

“Someone had asked me that same thing months ago. I think it was my cousin, Nicky,” I explain.

“So, this is has been going on for longer than our sessions?”, she stepped closer to me.

In time, I had stopped finding her intimidating in any way. She was just really concerned about her students, while also being really stern. She was like a grandmother, and I liked to look at her like that when she was trying to scold me for my impractical behaviors.

“I eat, Professor,” I smiled, “a lot, too. I am a bottomless pit. I’ve just forgotten to do it this one time, it won’t happen again. Matter of fact, I’m starving. Do you have any of those biscuits of yours?”

She pursed her lips in a tight smile and snapped her fingers, as a plate full of biscuits appeared on the coffee table between the two armchairs. I calmly walked towards her and sat on my usual chair, grabbing a handful of biscuits and starting eating.

“So, what do you think of your animagus form?”, she asked finally, sitting on the chair in front of mine.

We had finally discovered it the night prior, with the last slithers of the descending moon to keep us company. It was a black panther, with yellow eyes and lighter spots on the forehead: McGonagall thought it was precisely a melanistic jaguar.

It was a strange feeling, being completely an animal. I could feel my brain, I was capable of thoughts, and I could recognize my surroundings. I felt very human, but still more animal. I didn’t know how to put it into words, how every sense was both dimmed and enhanced. I could’ve heard the party going on in the Slytherin common room, in the dungeons, and smelled clearly the breakfast food the elves were preparing for the next morning. But still, I had completely human thoughts and feelings, laced together with animalistic needs and instincts.

The stranger thing was coming back to my human form – kindly conjured by McGonagall, seeing I could still turn only using my wand and I couldn’t have casted a spell in animal form – and still having those odd, enhanced senses. I had stretched a few times, remembering what it was like to have a human body, and McGonagall watched me with a concerned yet proud look on the face.

My body gave in right after, collapsing on the chair, and I had been almost immediately sore, but Abby was close enough to rush over and help me with my aching muscles.

Still, it was all I had ever read about and more. It was an amazing feeling, and for the first time in months I hadn’t felt chained to my own existence of pain. I felt free of experiencing things like it meant I could just start all over again. I wanted to run, I wanted to roar and feel the wind breeze past me. I couldn’t wait for the first time I would’ve been let free in the Forbidden Forest.

“I like it,” I smiled at her kindly, “I could’ve gotten way worse.”

“Well, that is true,” she laughed, “one of those students I told you about in the beginning? He was a rat. Sometimes I wondered how the wolf didn’t just eat it.”

I cackled and ate another biscuit.

“So,” I began, mouth full, as she shot me a look of disappointment, “what’s next? What else do I need to learn?”

“Well, first of all,” she sighed, “you need to bounce back faster to your human form, but for the first times the things Madam Winfield had taught you will suffice if you feel sore. Then, you need to learn how to transform without a wand.”

I nodded, taking in the information, and swallowed the food. Then, it was my turn to sigh. I licked my lip and opened my mouth to speak, but she was faster than me.

“You need support, Mr. Minyard.”

I furrowed my eyebrows and tilted my head, looking at her confused.

“What do you mean?”, I asked.

“You’re going through a process that normally requires years in mere months. You’re already quite further than what Professor Dumbledore and I had expected. You’ve been isolating yourself more and more in the past weeks and then there’s the…” she stopped, to wave mindlessly at my forearms, “the scar problem. You are in clear need of someone to talk to.”

“You said I couldn’t talk to anyone.”

“Ah,” she lifted her pointer finger, as to shush me, “I told you you couldn’t talk to your friends about it.”

“And who would I talk to?”, I was beginning to feel upset about that conversation.

“A professional,” she explained, “someone precisely selected to help you through whatever you need to process.”

A knock on the door, that promptly flew open. A woman walked in, in a skin-tight black dress with a miniscule slit on the bottom hem, that barely touched the shin right under the knee. She was also wearing a flamboyant black hat that covered half of her face and was holding a suitcase with both of her hands.

“Ah, Betsy, you’re just in time,” McGonagall stood up to greet her and the other woman took off the hat, going in to hug the professor. She had a bright white smile and chocolate black eyes, paired with a coffee-toned skin and shiny red lipstick. She seemed like a comforting person.

“You must be Andrew. You can call me Bee,” the woman extended a hand towards me.

“I’d rather not to,” I sneered at her, who retracted the hand almost immediately.

I remembered her name from the time Renée had told what Nicky had gone through the year prior with his family. She had told me that Nicky was seeing this woman to help him bounce back from that conversion camp, and that she was actually doing a great job at it. But I didn't care who she was and what she had done for my family. All I knew was that I had no intention of disclosing my feelings to a stranger, no matter how much accurately picked she had been for that job.

“I’ll leave you two to it,” McGonagall said, smiling to the both of us before disappearing inside her bedroom.

Betsy sat on McGonagall’s chair and studied me for a lot of time before opening her mouth to speak up. She was endearingly beautiful and extremely soft, like, just with her face, she was inviting to lay down on her and rest while she made you better, like she was some kind of massaging pillow that melted all the tension in your body.

“So,” she begun, “are you excited for this assignment?”

“Curious is a better word, I believe,” I replied, lacing my fingers together on my lap while placing my elbows on each arm of the chair.

“You wouldn’t say you’re happy, either, I imagine,” she kept on.

“Why would I? Happiness is a construct. I have yet to find what definition of it applies best to me.”

“That’s an interesting take on human emotion,” she smiled and rested her head on a palm, elbow propped on her knee, “care to elaborate?”

“I won’t,” I rolled my eyes, “this is silly.”

“Is it really?” she tilted her head slightly, losing the smile, “Or are you just scared to tell me too much?”

“Why would I even talk to you?”

“Because today you made your best friends upset and you realized that you’re alone.”

“How do you…”

“Because you’ve been keeping so many secrets that you feel like you’re exploding, and you’re so tired because you feel like you’ve been carrying a massive boulder on your shoulders. And you wonder why would it even be you? Why would it be the kid that barely made into the school anyway? You don’t think you’re that special. Why should anyone else?”

“This… it’s…” every word that made any kind of sense escaped my mind at that moment.

“It’s true, and you know it,” she simply stated.

“You have no way of knowing all of this,” I reiterated, “Are you a legilimens?”

“Oh, honey,” she laughed, “I’m not even a witch. I’m a Squib. But you just confirmed my hypothesis, didn’t you?”

Shit. She was good.

“So, what do you want to know?”, I asked, sighing and slouching in the armchair, yielding to the fact that I’d have to open my mind to her, “About the assignment? About my friends and family? About the cuts?”

“We’ll have time to tackle everything, if you want too,” she smiled again, “let’s keep it to the assignment for now.”

“Fine, hit me.”

“Do you feel like you have earned it?”

“Of course not. I was chosen randomly for all I know, just because I showed some interest on the matter of animagi. Do I feel like I’ve been doing a good job? Yes. Do I feel like I was the only one in this entire castle able to pull this off? No.”

“That’s good. So what do you think about those who asked you to do this?”

“What should I think? They’re brilliant wizards. Professor McGonagall has been helping me a lot and has made the process much easier than I imagined. I’m grateful.”

“Don’t you resent them?”

“Why should I?”

“For the things I said earlier,” she answered, “because you’re just a random kid and you have no reason to be here and to be let on on a huge secret that you can’t talk to anybody about, and because if it wasn’t for all of this you wouldn’t have lost your friends.”

“Renée will recover,” I shrugged, “Once I won’t need this lessons anymore, I will apologize and everything will be normal again. As for the first thing, I just hate it when they say how brilliant I am. I know I’m not, but I think they feel obligated to make me believe I was the perfect choice for this assignment.”

“You don’t think you’re brilliant like Dumbledore and McGonagall say?”

“It’s not just the professors. Everyone thinks I’m some kind of prodigy, even people I can’t stand,” – ‘you’re so smart half of the castle falls at your feet like you’re the Messiah’, Kevin had said – “but I feel normal. I know I pick some things up easily, like charms or transfiguration, but that’s just because I have an eidetic memory and it’s easy for me to remember things.”

“So, that’s a no.”

“No, I don’t think I’m brilliant. Maybe I think everybody else is stupid sometimes, but I don’t think I’m brilliant.”

“Do you know it takes the strongest of wizards at least a few years to finalize their animagus form?”, she inquired. I swallowed, suddenly nervous.

I knew it. Of course, I knew it. I had read about the subject so many times, it was ingrained in my brain how hard that process had been for other wizards and witches. But still, most of them had to figure it out themselves, like I was doing before McGonagall stepped in; I had been helped and trained by someone who had been an animagus for decades. It had to account for something, didn’t it?

“Do you know how long it took McGonagall to get it right?”, she whispered. At my raised eyebrow, she chuckled, “Almost six years. And she’s one of those who got it right really fast.”

“So, what? Am I supposed to believe I’m some kind of superhero? It’s already hard enough to believe that I’m a wizard.”

“Is that the problem? You aren't well adjusting to this world?”

“I…” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, preparing myself to finally admit what I had been thinking since the first day I had stepped inside that school, “I can’t believe it. I had such a shitty life; I was in fucking prison. I was running away from something that scared and somehow, I arrived here. Now, apparently, I come from a wealthy family full of discriminations that I can’t just leave, and I have magical powers and I just… Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve this. I feel like I belong in that prison, and I belong in those poor family that only took me in to receive checks from the muggle government, not here with powerful wizards on a special assignment. My brother, for one, deserves this more than me.”

“But he’s not as talented as you, is he?”

“How? How is it possible that all of this comes easily to me, and he has to put so much effort in everything?” I pleaded, like she held all the answers in the universe.

“You don’t have to lose all the time, Andrew,” she looked at me with pity. I hated it, “You can come on top, sometimes. You can get what you deserve. And that’s not always a bad thing. You’re really that talented, you really are brilliant. And your brother couldn’t have pulled this thing off like you did. You have to accept that.”

“I think I am,” I sighed, “very slowly, but I am. But I miss my friends.”

“That’s natural. You’ll have time to spend with them soon enough,” she smiled tenderly, “But you have to do this first. You realize you’re the only one who can do this, right? You realize you’re doing it to help someone else?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, trying to drop the subject entirely as it was burning a hole in my chest, “do you know who it is? The wolf?”

“Yes,” she answered, serious, “but you know I can’t tell you. And you can’t see it, the morning after the full moon.”

“Fine,” I shrugged, “does it know who I am? What I’m doing for it?”

“Yes, he does.”

“So, it’s a boy,” I smirked.

“Fuck,” she swore, then laughed, “Well, there are still hundreds of boys in this school. Good luck finding him.”

I smiled at her fondly and silence fell on us. She wasn't that bad.
A door creaked open and suddenly, McGonagall was right next to us.

“So, is he ready, Betsy?”, she asked, twisting her laced hands in nervousness.

“Yes,” she smiled at me, then turned to the older witch, “I think he is.”

“Oh, good,” McGonagall exhaled like she had been holding her breath. She turned to me, licking her lips slightly, “You must prepare yourself, Andrew dear. The next full moon is in eighteen days. And you’ll finally meet the wolf.”

Chapter 14: Moments

In truth, the Quidditch tournament regularly ended in close proximity to the end of the House Cup, but that year it was so painfully obvious that Slytherin and Gryffindor were so ahead compared to the other two teams that it was pointless to continue just for the sake of it. Not only that, but both of those teams stood at the same number of points, so the final had every student waiting with extreme anticipation.

The full moon would’ve fallen on the nineteenth of May, and the final on the fifteenth. It should had been on the 8^th, but it was postponed as a too heavy rain was falling on that part of Scotland, for all weekend. The Hogsmeade trip was also postponed, and that made everyone more excited and longing for that last duel.

While I didn’t like to brag, the process of learning how to turn into an animal without the use of the wand was actually fairly easy, and I had already mastered it to some extents. That being said, I had asked McGonagall to excuse me from the lesson that we had that weekend, as I had one sole and only focus on those two days: Neil A. – still didn’t know what that stood for – Josten.

All of Slytherin blatantly fell to his knees when he passed by and praised him as their savior, like the match was already done and won. That ought to have pissed off Riko, but as far as I could tell, Kevin, Jean and him were keeping it on the down low before the game, like they didn’t want to expose any scheme or tactic or enhanced power.

My theory that Riko was, in fact, the werewolf still stood, and I genuinely feared for the final, as, if it was true, he would have been the most powerful on that pitch that day, his magic and skills enhanced by the incoming full moon. But I couldn’t seem to ever run into him or his group of minions in the corridors and in the Great Hall, so I couldn’t confirm that. Was it part of their plan? Hide him and his stronger magic until the day of the game, so it would’ve been a surprise for the opposite team? I didn’t know, but still, that disappearance made me unsure and nervous.

To counter that, there was Neil’s good mood. He seemed to have forgotten his unpleasant encounter with my senseless body in my room and didn’t seem to mind the fact that I had harmed myself purposely. I had tried, following that first day of May, to go to have breakfast with the group in the Great Hall every day, but I was surprised to see that they almost always sat at the Hufflepuff table, while Neil was waiting for me at the Ravenclaw’s. He tried to make subtle questions, but most of the time it was clear he was trying to make an estimate of my mental health and make sure I hadn’t hurt myself once more. I tried to reassure him, but I admitted – at least to myself – that the fact that René was ignoring me hurt more than a cut ever could. I didn’t think she could’ve taken my absence that badly, but now that I was experiencing hers, I understood why she was so bitter about it.

On the 14^th, while I was skimming a book about werewolves at breakfast, I was ambushed by the redhead.

“Hi, you,” he said. He had the largest grin on his face, and it made me smile back. I could’ve never smiled that wide, but I tried for him. As he had said two weeks prior, I had to hype him up.

“Good morning,” I replied while I watched him sit in front of me with the grace of a drunk elephant and fill his plate with everything edible on that table, “I’m pretty sure the leftovers are meant to feed the elves. Spare them some.”

“Very funny, Drew,” he shot me a look that was half-amused, half-pissed off, “I need to eat. Tomorrow’s a big day. I don’t know why but I’m completely starving.”

“I can see that,” I chuckled as he tried to fit the impossible inside his mouth, while also ingurgitating it at the speed of a race car, “At the very least slow down, you’ll choke.”

“You’re taking the fun out of this beautiful day, Minyard. I shall not forgive you.”

“So formal, Josten,” I smirked and returned my eyes on the book that I was reading, “I enjoy a good formal conversation. Could you be a dear and pass me the tea?”

He really did choke, and coughed at little as he reached for the teapot and handed it to me. I took it from him careful not to touch or even brush lightly against his fingers. His smile turned shy and he looked like he was blushing a little, but I chalked it up to being flustered because of how he was eating.

“So, what do you want to do in Hogsmeade?” I asked, sipping the tea I poured inside a mug.

“Same old,” he chugged down a whole glass of orange juice, “I want to see some of the shops, and then we can hit the Three Broomsticks for a couple of hours. I need to relax.”

“That’s sounds about right,” I shrugged and cut a piece of my toast with strawberry marmalade to eat it, while also returning to the book. I had to remember to return it to Mrs. Pince before going out, otherwise I would’ve totally lost it between those two frantic days.

“What are you reading?”, he leaned forward to look at the pages of the book, but I closed it so he could read the title, and he scrunched his nose in some kind of expression of disgust, “Werewolves?”

“I think they’re interesting creatures,” I tilted my head to the side, taking a better look at him, “they’re human most of the time, they can be wizards: not all of them are beasts.”

“You think? Aren’t they predators that attack people?”

“Do they all or just a selected group of them?”, I shrugged again, “I think some of them are good. Maybe the pack mentality can get a little to your head, but isolated wolves can and should be treated as humans. They didn’t do anything bad until they actually do it.”

“Huh,” he leaned back a bit, “that’s the first time I hear someone talk about it like this.”

“How much do you talk about werewolves?”, I chuckled.

“Renée hates them,” he blurted out, then bit his lip like he didn’t really want to say it, “She, um, she thinks they’re evil creatures and that babies that have been bitten should be put down.”

“She doesn’t,” I shook my head, but I remembered clearly the hate she felt towards Riko. Did she know something the others don’t? She was one of the few students that had stayed behind during the holidays, along with Riko himself, and she had always said she had weird connections outside of the school that she didn’t like having, and she hadn't talked about that request to stay behind and where that came from. Was she aware that Riko was a werewolf? Was she somehow connected to him because of it?

“She does,” Neil said, coldly, “I think… well, I think people, even good people, that live like that should have the choice of ending it. When they’re older, I mean. It’s such a difficult life. Not, um, not that I know anything about it.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, but as I opened my mouth to speak the clock struck ten in the morning and the loud noise of a bell echoed through the Great Hall.

“I have to stop by the library,” I announced to the redhead, who was staring at the eggs in his plate and pushing them around with a fork mindlessly, and I stood up, “see you in half an hour at the entrance?”

“Um,” he shook his head, as to expel physically the bad thoughts he was clearly having, then nodded, “yeah, sure.”

Something got the best of me. I hadn’t seen him sad or even pensive and worried in months and a part of my heart cracked at the – even unfounded - idea that I had caused that pain in his brain. I didn’t really want to do it, but he was too important to let down in that way. He was too important for me to accept that I had let him down that way.

I leaned over towards him and placed my palm under his chin, forcing him to look up at me. The points of our noses were brushing against each other as we both breathed shallowly, his eyes wide and pupils shrunk to a mere dot. I moved up my hand and caressed the same, pink scar with my thumb and smirked at him smugly.

“Cheer up, Josten,” I whispered. I could’ve sworn my lips had touched his when they moved, “tomorrow’s a big day, and you’re the star.”

 

---

 

After more than half of the day spent trying to prevent Neil from buying everything I’d set my eyes on for at least half a second, we finally decided it was time to go and get something to eat before we passed out: it was unusually sunny outside, and the summer weather had started to make itself evident with each passing week, even in Scotland.

As I sat down waiting for Neil, I drew shapes and figures with my fingers on the table, lost in thought.

Was I really ready for the first time with the wolf? Would it be kind to me, would it recognize me as a fellow student? If it was indeed Riko, would he try to kill me, taking advantage of his superiority in form? He would’ve been stronger, bigger, deadlier. Would I survive? Would McGonagall come and save me, would Abby?

“What are you thinking about?”

A pint of butterbeer and some chips appeared in front of me, diverting my thoughts onto something else. I looked up to see my redhead friend smile in the bright daylight and eyeing me with suspicion but mostly curiosity.

“What do I owe you for the food?” I asked in return, not wanting to disclose my mind to him. Actually, I wanted, but I couldn’t.

“Oh, nothing. It’s on me,” he tilted his head and picked up a chip to munch on it, but quickly furrowed his brows when he saw me chuckling, “What?”

“Is your family like, rich?” I took a sip from the butterbeer.

“We could say that…” he trailed off, sighing.

“Oi,” I tilted my head to the side and tried to meet his eyes, “You can tell me. I’m also in a rich family that I hate. I get it.”

He scoffed but kept on taking small bites from the chip until he took a deep breath.

“My father,” he whispered, more because he was out of breath than because he didn’t want someone to hear, “he is rich. My mum and I just lived off of it.”

“You never talk about your family that much,” I tried, keeping my eyes diverted enough for him to gain courage to talk about it.

“There’s not much to say,” he shrugged, “my father is a downright cunt and my mom… well, you know.”

“What?”

“Don’t you remember what Riko said? In the infirmary, when you woke up from that coma thing?”

“Well, yes, I do remember,” I bit my lip, “but I didn’t know what that comment was about.”

He took another deep breath in, like he was trying to breathe through a deep wound to his chest, like his lungs were cut off and he was struggling to keep it together enough to entertain a conversation. After a few minutes of silence and a few other chips, he finally spoke.

“She died,” he gulped, licked his bottom lip and took a long drag from the butterbeer, like it was actually alcohol, “she wanted to get me away from that part of Europe and the life we had there, so she enrolled me here and, well… she died during the journey.”

“How?”, I insisted, then remembered we were talking about an actual person he seemed to have loved very much, so I dialed it back, “If, um, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“She was ill in the first place. Suppose she wanted me to live a better life, and she knew I couldn’t have that where we come from.”

He looked at me at that point, and I read clearly in his eyes that it was a blatant lie, told through his teeth with the ease of someone who is expected to do precisely that very often. It was also the look of somebody who doesn’t like to bring that stuff up, and that wouldn’t tell me the truth even if I threatened to maim him in any way, shape or form, so I just nodded and dropped it.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I said instead, reaching for the chips myself.

“Please,” he scoffed again, more dryly, “it looks like you’ve gone through worse.”

He brushed his fingers against my armband, lightly enough for it not to feel like he was touching me, but also enough for me to know what he was doing. I didn’t retract my arm, as to see how far he would’ve gone, but after that he just grabbed some chips and shoved them in his mouth, making me laugh.

“You’re impossible,” I wheezed.

“What?”, he smiled, mouth full of food, “They’re really good, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” I was still laughing, “but there’s no need to eat them like that.”

“You don’t like them?”

“I prefer sweet over salty,” I half-twisted on my seat to look at the counter full of pastries a few meters away and felt the craving rise in me before turning to Neil again, who was watching me like I had said the most monstrous thing in the world, “Don’t tell me.”

“You demon,” he seethed, jokingly, “how could you?”

“Don’t take it personally, sweetheart,” I cackled, “but chocolate is better than chips. And, for instance, ice cream is better than pasta. Although, pasta is really close.”

“You’re insane,” he laughed back, “We’re the complete opposite.”

“Well, opposite attract, when they don’t hate each other,” I smiled, taking a few chips and eating them.

A weird silence fell, so I looked up and found him with his glass in hand, mid-air, and his mouth slightly agape.

“Oi,” I nudged him a little, and some of his butterbeer overflowed and landed on the table, “aren’t we 'good friends'? You said that just this morning.”

“Oh,” he exhaled, “you mean like that. I thought you hated me for a moment.”

I burst out laughing and stood up, flicking him on the forehead to sort of lightly punish him for his dumb brain. He was really that clueless. Couldn’t he see right through me? Couldn’t he see how I acted different when I was with him, how more easygoing I was? I thought I was transparent, I thought that was why he felt like he could sleep with his hand in mine. Maybe he didn’t even realize it. Maybe I should've just dropped the matter entirely.

I went to the counter and asked the barista for a few napkins so that I could wipe the table clean, but a croissant caught my eye and I stopped to buy it. When I turned back around to go to the table, I saw Neil was cornered by Allison, and while she was smiling, all smugness and giggles, Neil was bright red from the tip of his hair to the bottom of his neck.

I approached them and patted on Allison’s shoulder.

“Alright?” I greeted her.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you’d be back so soon,” she bit her lip, then threw us a wave goodbye over the shoulder, “I’ll over to the others then. Bye, boys.”

I rolled my eyes but ignored the last comment as she walked away. I sat again, starting to wipe the surface of the table with the napkins I just took, and placed the croissant on the clean part of the table.

“What did she want?” I asked Neil, while also concentrating on my task.

“She, um,” he stuttered, “she asked if we were on a date. She still thinks I like boys.”

My eyes shot towards his, but he was actively trying to avoid looking at me.

“And what did you say?” I inquired.

“That even if I did like boys, you don’t, so this can’t be a date,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Oh,” I nodded, “right.”

“Unless you were lying that time?”

“No,” I replied – still so fucking fast – “no, I’m not gay.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“My middle name is Abram,” he blurted out. My eyes widened, and I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out, so he just kept talking, “I knew you were wondering since Christmas.”

“Fuck,” I just said, “I thought it was Albert or something lame like that.”

He laughed and I followed soon after, then everything came back to normal. Looking back, it was one of the best afternoons of my life.

 

---

 

Slytherin won the Quidditch Cup, and Neil couldn’t be happier. He threw himself into our friend’s arms as they cheered for him, Allison and Seth. Dan squeezed him so tight I thought he could explode.

After the match, the House threw a major party in their common room to celebrate Seth, that was both the captain and champion, but was also on his last year at Hogwarts, so that was his last win and had to be commemorated. I attended, much to McGonagall’s disapprovement – the full moon was so very close -, but I felt like I needed to be there for them, and most of all to celebrate Riko’s downfall. Maybe his powers didn’t help him much as I had thought.

When the commotion died down and everyone was passed out for the intake of alcohol and muggle drugs that somebody had smuggled in, I noticed I was the only one left standing and I got up to go at least to sleep in my dorm. As I reached the entrance of the common room, though, I heard somebody call me.

Neil was being dragged by the wrist by the snitch girl, the one that was kicked out of the team the previous year – Tessa, I believed. While she moaned and groaned asking for him to follow her, clearly to her room, he stood at the center of the common room, between limp bodies, and smiled at me.

“Thanks for hyping me up, Drew,” he just stated.

“Yeah,” I gulped, eyes spasmodically jumping from her hand on his wrist and his swollen red lips, “No problem, mate.”

I left and I tried to convince myself that the tears escaping my eyes didn’t mean anything.

 

---

 

The Forbidden Forest was even more beautiful that I had thought. By the moonlight shining so brightly on the trees, they seemed enchanted with a kind of magic that we didn’t – or rather, couldn’t – practice at school, because it was simply unattainable by the human, it was only destined to nature and wilderness.

“Alright, Andrew,” Abby began, shivering in the cold breeze, “You know the plan. You’ll transform, we will bring the wolf when he’s already turned and will come back before sunrise, so that we can take him somewhere safe before he turns human again.”

I nodded, still ogling the beautiful landscape in front of me.

“Wouldn’t it be safer if he stayed with me till sunrise? I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” she sighed, “but we’re on direct orders from the Headmaster. The last time some of the students knew it didn’t end well, the word spread around really quickly, and we can’t afford that this time.”

“I see,” I nodded again, then sighed, “I’ll get a move on. I want to explore a bit before he arrives.”

It was her turn to nod as I took my animal form and stretched my black-haired limbs, poking the soft ground with long pearly claws.

I ran around for about half an hour before my nose caught the sniff of McGonagall’s perfume – a really strong scent – coming from the point of the meet up.

When I arrived there, McGonagall was already gone, but the wolf was there.

I didn’t know how to describe it. It was scary, sure, but not as much as I had thought: it had long, lanky limbs covered in a scarce fur, and could stand on his two back legs. The only thing that resembled an actual wolf was the snout and the overall face, with those grey pointy ears.

It was really beautiful in its own, primordial way, in a way I couldn't really put my finger on but fascinated me enough to force my animal mind to study its body with as much precision as a human one.

It growled at me at first, confused and defensive, getting on all fours. But then it took a few sniffs and approached me slowly, circling around me a couple of times. I sat on the wet ground, licking my paws and waiting for it to at least acknowledge me as a friend and not a foe, so that we could spend that night together and get it over with.

It soon took a fun turn and it was simpler than I had expected to be around it. My animal brain didn't register as much memories as my human brain did - and that was a fun surprise - so I didn't precisely know how we went from scrutinizing each other to being friends, or at least companions. But we got along pretty well for a feline and a canine being. We ran through some patches of the forest, and carefully avoided others, then hunted a little – with no success, given my poor skills – and played around near a small pond, both on the shore and in the water.

After some time, the wolf halted and rested on the shore, curling up on itself and falling asleep. I took it was exhausted because his transformation couldn't be as easy and painless as mine, so I let it rest, captivated by our surroundings enough to not care about my lack of company.

As always, my brain, even in animal form, couldn’t respond to that kind of stimuli, so I just kept playing with the water and the small animals of the Forest, jumping around and running through the trees. I chased small animals, played with liane and scratched some of the logs with my pointy claws, tasting and feasting on the freedom that the panther could give me.

Then suddenly I heard it.

“Shit!”

What?

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t, right? I would’ve noticed. I would’ve done the math, but he couldn’t.

“No!” he screamed, “It’s too early, it’s too early. Fuck, fuck…”

I turned into a human and ran towards the lake. My heart ran even faster than me, and my lungs didn't fully absorb the cold air I was trying to breathe in.

I was just sure he couldn't be, so I just assumed he had to be there for some other reason, didn't he? 

And there he was, huddled up against the trunk of a tree, completely naked. His scars, that covered his whole, slim body, were evident and silver in the bright light of the sunrise, that had come earlier than expected. It was summer, at last: that meant that the moon had fewer time in the sky, and the wolf had fewer hours in the wild.

“Andrew, please,” he begged, covering his body as best as he could, clutching his teared up skin in his hands, “please, don’t look.”

“You know I hate that word,” I found the strength to say.

“Goddammit, Andrew, not now! Just turn away.”

“You could’ve told me…” I shook my head in disbelief. It just couldn’t be, could it? He just couldn’t be, “You should’ve told me.”

“I-I couldn’t, you know damn well I couldn’t,” he stuttered and sobbed, “You shouldn’t see me like this.”

“I…” I sighed, then my brain snapped into place and I remembered I was still clothed and wore way larger clothes than him. He had lied, he had fucking lied to me, but he still had boundaries, he was still human, he was still my friend. I couldn't just betray his trust like that, I couldn't just violate him because he had wronged me. I had worn a simple t-shirt to be comfortable, so I snatched it quickly from my body and threw it at him, “Put that on.”

“You don’t mind?”, he whispered.

“I won’t force you to let me see your body, Neil. I would never.”

He put that on, fast, like he was used in doing that movement so that everybody could see the least possible of his bare torso.
What wasn’t lost on me was the pink, faded scar of a bite on his shoulder, indented and unstable, like it was done with uttermost rigor and precision but still to someone who had up put up quite the resistance.

He didn’t want to be that at least as much as I didn’t want him to be.

He told me that kind of life was really difficult.

He told me he should’ve been given the choice to put an end to it.

He told me so much, he was ill so often, once every fucking month, and I ignored it because I was too busy trying to find the deepest of his secrets that I couldn’t see the most evident one.

He stood up, and my t-shirt fell just at half of his thighs. The fact that he was slimmer than me and that I wore larger clothes made it easy to hide most of his body.

He was unsure on his feet, so I held out a hand.

I was trying so fucking hard not to break down right then and there, because he needed me. The wolf needed the panther not to harm itself, but Neil needed Andrew. He just needed me to be there for him because he was weak and fragile and he just finished transforming back from something that had a completely different bone structure from him. He was clearly struggling, and while I just wanted to lose my shit and yell and him and hit him and cry, I didn't. He needed me. And so, I tried for him. I always tried for him.

“Are you feeling good?” I asked.

“Sure,” he nodded, but his eyes were closing, “I’m fine.”

“You’re about to faint.”

“I’m about to faint, yes.”

“Fuck you, Josten” I sighed, but promptly caught him as he passed out and carried him in my arms out of the forest. He didn’t weigh much, so it was fairly easy, but I was still in shock.

He just couldn’t be.

As I exited the Forbidden Forest, I saw McGonagall and Abby running towards me. The professor rapidly conjured up a blanket to cover the limp body in my hands and took him from me, not saying a word.

Abby was shaking, but I just felt empty. Was I so easy to fool? Did he know all along what I was doing? Was that why he didn’t seem so phased by the fact that I was tirelessly working with McGonagall and the other professors? Was this why he didn’t get mad at me? How couldn’t I see that?

“Andrew…” Abby tried, extending her arm to put a hand on my shoulder, but I winced, and she just gulped, retracting her hand.

“He’s my best friend, Abby,” I just said, staring into the nothingness.

“You have to understand… If we could’ve told you, we… we obviously…” she stuttered but couldn’t find the words. I could see that it was deeply hurting her seeing me so emotionless, yet so sad. I couldn’t help her, though. Her pain wasn’t my fucking problem.

“He’s my best friend, Abby,” I repeated, “and you hid it from me. You all just hid it from me.”

“You shouldn’t have found out, Andrew,” she cried, but I didn’t have ears for her moans.

“He was in a fucking cage,” I screamed, feeling tears gathering in my eyes and batting them away with my eyelashes, “for months, while I just hung around with McGonagall doing cheap tricks and eating bloody biscuits. I could’ve been so much faster; I could’ve helped more…”

“You shouldn’t have known…”

“You don’t understand!” I was sobbing, my voice was cracking up and jumping from low to high, “I… If I knew it was him all along… This is killing me, Abby. This is fucking killing me! He’s my fucking best friend, he’s the only one who doesn’t hate me and the only one who talks to me and I just realized I don’t know jack shit about him!”

“Andrew, please…” she begged me again, but I just shook my head, tears escaping and falling all over the place.

“Don’t,” I seethed, “don’t ever say that word. And don’t fucking talk to me ever again.”

I turned into my animal form and ran, ran, ran. I ran towards the castle, I ran inside it, and for once I didn’t care who might have seen me, not even in the slightest, because fuck them for making me keep secrets, fuck them for not letting me tell Renée I was an animagus, fuck them for making me hide and putting shame on me all over again, just like when I was seven, just like when I was eleven, just like when I had to beg anyone for a scrap of a good fucking life.

I transformed again to enter the common room, and it was gratefully empty, but I knew it wouldn’t have been like that for long so I just ran as quickly as I could with my human legs towards my dorm room, and barricaded myself in it. It wasn’t just a spell that time, it was my desk, and a chair, and the dresser. I just moved everything in front of the door with my wand, crying silently, and then I jumped onto the bed, burying my face in my pillow.

I sobbed and sighed and tried so hard to gain composure again, but to no avail.

After a few hours had passed, nobody had come to knock on my door. And who would, anyway? Aaron was busy preparing his exams, and so was the rest of the group. Renée wasn’t talking to me and I didn’t have the guts to go and talk to her right then. And Neil… my Neil…

He was lying unconscious in an infirmary bed. He was sleeping the night off. And, as much as I didn’t want to do it, I stared at the ceiling and finally admitted it to myself. He couldn’t be. But he was…

Bloody Hell.

Neil was the fucking werewolf.

Chapter 15: Easy for you to say

“Mr. Minyard!”

Several knocks, a loud yell, and I sighed. That had been going on for days, and I couldn’t take the noise anymore. It was just deafening, at best. At my worst, though, I wanted to cut off their hands and tongues so they couldn’t bother me anymore.

“Mr. Minyard, you have to get out! It’s the last day of school and you will fail if you don’t take your exams!”

“Andrew, you’ve been in that room for a month and a half now. You have to get out at some point. You have to go home!”

I scoffed. Home? With my wrench of a mother and my abused brother? Playing around with my traumatized cousin and my intolerant aunt and uncle? Yeah. Couldn’t wait. So excited about that.

“Come on, Andrew! You can’t stay in there forever.”

It was amazing how much you could achieve in a lonesome room with a bathroom and an house elf kind enough to magically bring you dinner with a snap of its fingers. I didn’t need to leave the room, I didn’t need to follow lessons and classes, I didn’t need to change clothes – well, I did because I would’ve felt disgusting otherwise, but all the same. I hadn’t gotten out since the full moon in May, and I had left Neil alone during the one that had just passed in June. He deserved that, I felt. But also, I wouldn't have been strong enough to perform the magic of precision that took to transform myself into the panther in his presence, so I just sat that one out.

The knocking began after a couple of days since I had locked myself in. At first, just McGonagall, maybe comprehending the extent of the damage that regretful night had done to me, had come to the Ravenclaw dorm to seek me out and asked if I was okay. When I didn’t reply and she began to draw attention to my room, she’d left. After that, people just came more frequently and increasingly worried about my mental status – which, by the way, was as bad as they came. There was Flitwick, and Abby, then Aaron and Renée. At some point even the Quidditch coach, Wymack, had come to knock on my door and asked if I could just come out and talk about it. The penultimate was Bee, and then, of course, as of the day prior to that, Dumbledore had intervened.

I didn’t mind, nor care, that the headmaster of my school was screaming at me through layers and layers of wood and furniture, so I just laid there, eyes open and fixated on the ceiling above me, doing what I had been doing relentlessly for a month and a half. And that was thinking. Analyzing, scrutinizing, studying, dissecting, exploring the issue from whatever point of view might have been involved in that nasty affair.

McGonagall thought she was protecting a student, and so did Abby. They thought it was best that I didn’t know about Neil’s problem, because I was young and weak and I’d have wanted to talk about it with someone close to the both of us – Renée, for instance, but also anyone in our friend group, really – so that they would’ve known about it too, like they had to be warned about Neil or something. I still thought there was nothing to worry about since Neil mostly hurt himself during the moons, but that was another problem for another day.

McGonagall had gone through that once before, and she said stuff didn’t end well when students began to know about it. It wasn’t like the werewolf was flaunting his problem, but maybe his conditions or his absence at times, or maybe just his attitude began to make it known throughout the castle, and I imagined the professors had to deal with a great number of complaints about it. McGonagall seemed to have loved that boy and his friends, and maybe the way he was chastised and pushed away from people who had been his friends had hurt her. That made her want to protect Neil from whomever might have had prejudices about werewolves and how they behaved. She knew I didn’t, but I knew then that Renée did, and she and Neil were very good friends, so would it have ruined their friendship if word spread around? Would it have been my fault?

As far as Dumbledore went, he obviously had reasons to keep this secrets that went beyond Neil’s safety inside of the school. As Headmaster, and probably as someone who had also dealt with that previous werewolf, he must’ve known that there wasn’t actually any threat to Neil at Hogwarts, but maybe it was something from the outside he was protecting Neil from. I wanted to know what that was and why, if Neil’s magic was enhanced with his werewolf blood, he couldn’t just look after himself and rather needed Dumbledore to look after him. I wasn’t going to talk to either of them anytime soon, I believed, so that was something I had to figure out in some unconventional and indirect ways. In other words, I’d have had to think about it at some later point.

And Neil… well, he had plenty of reasons to hide that from me. I just wasn’t sure any of them were really valid, but it was my point of view, not his. And, even if we knew each other really well, he wasn’t in my mind. He didn’t know how I would’ve reacted. How was he taking the fact that I had isolated myself just because I had found out his secret? Did he think I hated him, or did he know I just needed some time to regain composure before I was able to talk to him again? Did he know I was going to ask so many questions? Did he know he had to answer, because the fact that he lied to me was a serious threat to our friendship?

I hated lies. I understood they were almost always necessary to survival – I knew that, I had lied to Cass for years about her son just to ensure her safety and mine because I wanted to be adopted –, and I lied with ease, because I was raised to do that. But I didn’t lie with pleasure to my friends, and rather than lying I preferred to avoid the truth and the subject altogether. That was why nobody knew about Drake: I just didn’t talk about him. And probably Neil didn’t need to talk about the fact that he was a werewolf because nobody had ever asked him about it. But he knew I was training to help him during the moons – Abby had told me that he knew it was me – so he knew I knew there was werewolf in the castle and he knew I was looking for him and he knew I was ok with werewolves and didn’t think they were evil so why didn’t he just tell me? Why did he lie to me? That wasn’t avoiding the truth, that was just straight-up making sure I didn’t know the truth. And he had to know that was going to hurt me, right? He had to know it could’ve gone wrong, so why didn’t he just confess to me? Why?

The same stream of consciousness flowed inside my mind for the thousandth time and as soon as it finished it started again. McGonagall and Abby, Dumbledore, Neil; McGonagall and Abby, Dumbledore, Neil. What was I even doing?

I was trying to convince myself that I had the right to be angry about that whole situation. I was trying to make sure I wasn’t in the wrong for shutting everyone out and avoiding people and letting Neil get hurt all over again in the past full moon when I knew I'd had the right effect on the wolf, I knew I had avoided what needed to be avoided.

My anger, my frustration, were they pointless?

Maybe not participating in the full moon was a bit drastic. But what could I do? If I had gotten out for that, I would’ve had to go out for everything else, like exams. Exams I didn’t want to take because I wanted them to expel me. Because fuck them and that school and I wanted to go home.

My real home.

I bet Cass would’ve known what to do, how to comfort me. I bet she would’ve known the right thing to say to make me finally walk out of that room and pass those exams which I knew how to pass, and I had worked really hard to pass – granted, I was blissfully ignorant about the last month worth of lectures and assignments, but whatever. Cass would’ve solved everything. But she wasn’t there, was she? She wasn’t my mom. Not anymore, anyway.

I sighed.

“Andrew, come the fuck out!”, Aaron was screaming. I didn’t take him for the guy who wanted me to return to that bloody castle the next year, but maybe he was just putting in that much effort because our mother would’ve beat him senseless if I didn’t pass. That was a fair point. I might’ve had to consider that.

“Don’t you get lonely in that shithole?”, Nicky quickly followed, bellowing from behind the door.

“Language, you two!”

“Oops. Sorry, professor.”

“But that’s a good argument,” Dan was there. Great, “Aren’t you tired of being alone in there? You can do your exams and then we can go somewhere you like.”

“He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god,” I recited, yelling back at them. My voice was hoarse and gruff, and I realized that was the first time I spoke since May’s full moon. Jesus.

“What?”, that was Seth.

“It’s Nietzsche, you moronic, brainless oiks!” I shouted and grabbed a glass from the nightstand before throwing it towards the door.

“Well, that’s just plain rude,” Matt pointed out.

“And I advise you, too, to reconsider that tone, Mr. Minyard,” McGonagall reiterated.

“Come on, Andrew,” finally, Renée spoke up again, “If you don’t want to come out, at the very least let someone in.”

I considered that. Who would come, and why would they? Neil would try and apologize, I supposed. I wasn’t ready for that. And I wasn’t ready to explain the whole situation to Renée either. The rest of the group was really out of their comfort zone, and also wouldn’t really care that much if I hadn’t put my school enrollment at risk. McGonagall, Abby and Dumbledore only cared about the exams, and would just push me to take them so that they could be done with all this bother. So, who would really understand? Who would just try and listen to my reasoning without asking for too much?

I suddenly got up and took a quick look around the room. During that past month I had tried to get better with my skills both at transfigurations and charms and I had let the panther out quite a few times. The room, simply put, was a mess: the pillows were decorated with scratches of claws and feathers flew out of them with the slightest breeze, so that the floor was covered in them. Books were scattered around the whole dorm, there were some even hanging from the frame of the bed, and various objects were either shattered or muddled up in some corner where they clearly didn’t belong.

Well, shit.

I frantically searched for my wand on the bed while chatter was thickening on the other side of the door, and someone was sporadically calling my name. As I found it, covered in various layers of blankets, clothes and duvets, I flicked it, thinking of the spell in my head, and most of the stuff returned to his rightful place, even the furniture that I had gathered in front of the door. I realized that was the cleanest the room could get, and I prayed to whatever God wizards believed in no one had to use the bathroom – there would’ve been too much to explain, too much blood to wipe clean.

I marched towards the door and opened it as much as it took to make my face visible and for them not to be able to just get in.

The first reaction was an audible gasp from anyone present. I mean, ouch?

“Merlin, mate,” Allison cringed, “did nobody tell you about beauty sleep? Those bags are darker than your muggle clothes.”

“Shut up, Reynolds,” I seethed, then sighed and scanned the crowd outside my door, “Bee can come in.”

The second reaction was a collective, loud ‘what?!’. That was a little better.

“The rest of you can piss off. Bee will decide if it’s right for me to do my exams or not,” they all stared at me blankly, McGonagall included, “Well? You heard me. Fetch the healer and beat it.”

 

---

 

Bee arrived half an hour later, smiling and caring as ever.

“I was waiting for you,” she just said.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I let her in. I had arranged the room so that she could sit on a chair right next to my bed, where I would be lying on. Wasn’t that how that happened on tv and shit?

She went straight for the chair and I walked behind her, taking my place on the edge of the bed and sitting for a moment to look at her in the eyes. Was I sure about that move? No. Could it help me understand what was going on in my motherfucking head? Probably. Worth a shot.

“I mean,” she explained, “that when Abby reported the full moon fiasco to me, I had a hunch about the fact that you’d need my support.”

“I don’t need support,” I answered way too fast.

“Don’t you?” she laughed, “I assume that barricading yourself in a dorm is a completely normal response.”

“Wasn’t it?” I shot back, enraged, “Wouldn’t you react like I did?”

“May be,” she shrugged, “But you may also consider that everyone responds differently to similar trauma.”

“Enough with that word,” I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms across my chest and finally letting my back hit the mattress beneath me, “I hate it.”

“You seem to despise quite a lot of words. Why’s that?”

“What do you think? Trauma,” I replied, moving my hands like I was forming some sort of rainbow bridge between them.

“Ah,” she smiled at me fondly, “I get this is not your first time.”

“With a shrink?” I asked, and waited for her to nod, “No. My mum – sorry, I mean one of my foster parents one sent me to one to figure out the being-in-the-foster-system thing. She thought I had some unresolved resentment towards my biological parents, so she wanted to get that sorted out before she… well… I mean, short answer is that I had been psychoanalyzed before.”

“We’ll get into that part of your story another time, perhaps,” she nodded again, lacing her fingers together and placing her chin on them, “Now let’s talk about how you feel about what happened, and don’t leave anything out.”

“Will do,” I sighed, then cleared my throat, “Well, I guess I feel like shit.”

“That’s a great start.”

 

---

 

I ended up taking the exams. While I was profoundly hurt by the professors and Abby and the fact that they thought it best to hide such thing to me, Bee made me realize that by not taking them I was being unfair to none but myself. And anyway, what was the point in not returning to that school? Neil could be avoided, and McGonagall and Abby could be nothing but a professor and a healer to me, but outside of that castle I had no family and nowhere to go. And as much as I didn’t like that, it was the truth and I had to own up the situation, otherwise the one who had to face the loss was, in the end, only me.

The exams were fairly easy, I had to be honest about it, and I wouldn’t have surprised me if I ended up at the top of some of them – mostly the subject in which Neil didn’t necessarily rival me. I had to take them in a shorter span of time compared to the other students, but that was just because they took them in the span of a week while I had decided to procrastinate till I had only one day left.

I had talked to Renée afterwards and tried to make amends for my negligence of our friendship, but she just stopped me and said that she had talked to Neil and she now realized that I didn’t intend to cut her from my life but rather was forced into some sort of secret assignment that automatically reduced my time with her. She also said that the fact that that same assignment had left me so fucked up was punishment enough for my absence, and then we promised each other to spend the train ride to King’s Station together so that we could update each other on our respective lives, which sounded fair to me.

As I had my confrontation with both McGonagall and Dumbledore on the matter right after the submission of my papers, during which none of us thought it best to approach the conversation about the full moon but Dumbledore, who, by the way, just said ‘you’re expected to resume your duties to this school the next year, Mr. Minyard’, I had only one person left to talk to. And I didn’t think I was ready for that, so instead I just strolled around the courtyard for as long as I could while I watched the sun setting down for the night. I sat with my back against a tree on the shore of the big, silver lake and looked at the big, red ball of hydrogen and gas as it disappeared behind the horizon, only to appear somewhere else in the world.

The moon, nearly faded away and waiting for its time to rise again, was high in the sky while the sun made its descent. It was poetic, in a way, how to things so important to us, enough to determine how long a day may last and dictate even the artificial interchange between day and night, work and sleep, had to dialogue with each other from a distance. Never touching, never communicating, or interacting, and even when they did it was never real, but rather an optical illusion. Yes, poetic, and clever and somehow romantic, but also sad and concerning.

The air shifted beside me and I sighed, listening to the fragile stems of grass breaking under the pressure of a whole human body sitting on them. Nature bends to us, I thought, or do we make it look like it does for our personal confidence as a smart and opinionated race on this planet? We might never know.

“Wow. You must be thinking about something really deep.”

I shrugged, gaze fixated on the horizon ahead.

“Something like that,” I muttered under my breath, not really in the mood to talk. Not yet at least.

“There’s a banquet, you know,” he added, standing up again so he could make some pebbles bounce on the crispy surface of the lake, “you’re skipping dinner.”

“I don’t think they care.”

“Renée and your brother do,” he called back at me, now that we were further apart, “they asked me to look for you.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Are you kidding?” he turned back to look at me, same old wicked smirk on his face, “I could track you down anywhere. Even though I thought you’d rather be hiding in the owlery.”

“Huh,” I pondered, “I thought of going there. But the sky was strangely free of clouds and it was sunset and… well, I think I just stopped here on the way to the owlery.”

“Fair enough.”

Silence fell, and the last slither of sun colored the whole sky of a vibrant violet color that turned into a fiery red only as it approached the star itself. Other starts started to appear, vivid in the pollution-free countryside of Scotland, bright as they ever were. I stared at them individually as they appeared while Neil still had his back to me, bouncing those rocks.

“What do you want?” I asked, “You know I want to be alone.”

“You talked to Renée,” he shrugged, “You talked to Bee. I figured I might give it a try. And I told you: your brother sent me.”

“Whatever,” I sighed.

“You really ought to change that attitude of yours, you know? It might pose a problem in the future.”

“It’s extremely none of your business, I believe,” I snapped, “and I told you once before that I make no apologies for my character and attitude whatsoever. It’s there for a reason and it will stay there for as long as I deem fit.”

“Suit yourself,” he launched another rock, then slapped his hands together a few times to get rid of the dirt and came back to sit next to me.

“What do you mean you can track me anywhere?” I asked, curious about his previous statement.

He chuckled and raised his knees to his chest, so he could sling his arms around them. As the robe fell to his elbows, some of his scars became visible, either pink and thick or silver and thin.

“Your scent,” Neil tapped his nose with his pointer finger, “I recognize it, and it’s stronger than the others here. The only one stronger than yours is some of the professors’.”

“Why?”, I tilted my head to the side while I looked at him, “What do I smell like.”

He smiled fondly, and his eyes shot to the wand that was lying right next to my feet.

“I can smell magic,” he announced, then sighed, “your is thick, like the smell of gasoline at a gas station or like the smell of soap in one of those markets that sells detergents. I don’t know, I can recognize it’s yours.”

“How?” I inquired further.

“It might surprise you, but I know very little about the powers that come with my full-moon-problem.”

“I know a lot,” I stated, “but I never heard about smelling magic.”

“I suppose that’s something the werewolf community might not admit willingly,” he shrugged, “I mean, it’s useful. For hunts and stuff.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I sighed, “So, you know where to find me, like, always? Isn’t that kind of stalker-ish?”

“You’re a moron,” he cackled, “I have to concentrate to know whether it’s you or someone else. You know, everyone here smells of magic.”

“Ah. I hadn’t considered that.”

“You might also want to consider that even if you died, the stench of ashes and owl shit might follow you as long as your body isn’t completely decomposed. I’m not sure it will even leave the skeleton.”

“Fuck off, Josten.”

“Sorry,” he smiled, “But it’s true. You smell like the only thing you do is smoke.”

“Well,” I puffed my chest, like I wanted to appear proud of it, “I enjoy smoking. A lot.”

“I’m kidding,” he reassured me, “I’m sure I’m the only one who smells it. You have actually a fresh scent. You have no idea how much some of the other students stink. It’s like they never learned how to take a shower.”

“Cruel,” I smiled, against all my willpower, “I like it.”

“I can smell blood too, y’know,” he gulped and bit his bottom lip.

“Oh,” I nodded, “So, that was why you broke into my room that day.”

“Yeah,” he nodded back.

Silence coated the atmosphere again, and we stayed quiet as the world fell into darkness and the only thing brightening up the courtyard was the light coming from the castle itself. Surprisingly, my eyes adapted well to the dark sky, and I was still able to see most of my surroundings – gifts of the panther to my human body.

Neil stood up and waited for me to follow him. I realized our conversation was over, and whatever had happened between us, we had uncovered some of our cards and it should’ve just brought us closer. Or something like that, at least.

I had come to terms with the fact that Neil had lied to me, and it was mostly because I understood why he did it: Bee told me that the previous werewolf had endangered one of the students, whom the wolf hated, because the wolf’s best friend had brought the student to witness the transformation as some sort of a prank. The secret was then out, and the werewolf had to endure all of it alone, because his best friend was shut out of his life.

I guessed McGonagall had scared Neil with that old tale, and while Bee told me that things between the werewolf and his friend got patched up later on, Neil wasn’t one to take that kind of risks. And, even if I still believed that only good things would’ve come out of me knowing earlier that it was indeed Neil we were talking about, I could now see how that could’ve posed a problem for my friend.

The banquet was already over when we stepped inside the castle, and prefects were ushering all the students to their common rooms to pack up, as the next day we would’ve left the premises to go back to our homes on a very early ride.

My stomach rumbled to express its disappointment in the absence of food.

“Don’t worry,” Neil spoke up, “I sent a portion of everything to your room so that you wouldn’t starve.”

“Oh,” I bit my lip, “that’s considerate of you.”

He sighed.

“Listen, I…” he shook his head lightly, “I suppose I just wanted to thank you. Even if it all went sideways after, I had my best full moon to date when you were with me. I didn’t have new wounds or detatched limbs, I was just tired from all the running. I know that what came next fucked you up and I swear I didn’t want you to find out that way. But I hope you know that I am deeply grateful for what’ve you been through to help me.”

“I know, Neil,” I shrugged, “I only wish I could’ve helped you sooner.”

“It’s fine,” he smiled sweetly, “I just love the fact that you’ll be with me from now on. You really… you make me look forward to the moons rather than despise them. You changed the whole idea I had about being what I am, Drew. You can’t even begin to fathom what that mean to me, truly.”

I smiled a tightlipped smile at him, and he opened his mouth to speak again, but a voice called him from the far end of the corridor. We both turned around to see Allison and Seth waving frantically at him, and he laughed a little before turning to face me again.

“I have to go,” he bit the inside of his mouth, on the cheek, and looked me up and down, “I’d hug the shit out of you. Really, thanks.”

He ran away, calling for the Slytherin couple to wait for him, and I watched him go with a faint smile on my lips.

Fuck. Did I have to forgive him?

That little cunt.

Chapter 16: Look what you made me do

Summary:

TW!
Extreme child abuse and mention of suicide

I tried to focus on the good things: Neil’s smile, Renée’s loud laughter, late nights eating biscuits with McGonagall and the melodic sounds of the owlery at dusk. The burning feeling of a spell coursing through my veins. The smell of wet soil and green that brushed against my animal nose. Good things. Good moments. A good life, that was a good life.

That was what I was trying to convince myself about when I felt the excruciating feeling of a Lacero spell on my calf, even if it wasn’t really there. I grasped my muscle and closed my eyes shut as the effects of the spell lingered in my body, making my skin crawl and every other limb feel numb. I held my breath and released it only when the pain had passed, long after the first appearance of the torture.

But there wasn’t any point. Soon came the same feeling, the same ache in my shoulder, and then my arm and my abdomen. If what I felt was even a fraction of what Aaron was enduring, I thought it was too much for anyone to handle, let alone if it happened every other day for most of your life. It was abuse, plain and simple, and I couldn’t believe the pain my twin had been put through while I was gone.

It was the last week of August, then. Between the Laceros and the guilt trips and the drugs and the homework, summer had passed in a blink of an eye. I had received many owls from Neil – who had spent his summer inside the castle, like he’d had the summer before that – and Renée regarding their holidays, but I hadn’t found the strength, both psychological and physical, to tell them about mine. I was drained from every drop of energy, and I laid on my shallow mattress most of my days waiting for that torture or even my life to end. It was too much.

Aaron and I hadn’t even discussed what was happening. It was like we both accepted that the shared punishment was a consequence of the Unbreakable Vow, and it was probably slowly killing us. That was our life: we got up in the morning, got in an argument with our mother and while I was able to escape and hole up in our room, Aaron had to suffer whatever she thought was the best way of disciplining us.

That day, Aaron was experiencing the consequences of coming in second to his twin brother in every subject we studied together. Even if I wasn’t top of the class, Aaron was still a few points behind me, not enough for another student to fit between our placements, but enough for our mother to notice the gap. She had been screaming for hours about how I was an inept, a dumb, muggle-raised, bastardized wizard that deserved nothing but the scum I was raised into, while he was a member of the finest dynasty and wizarding family of all the Kingdom and he should’ve acted as my superior, accomplishing more than me. How could he ever disgrace her like that?

It was a fucked-up discourse, but nothing about that woman was sane so I didn’t expect much of her. I just suffered in silence every time Aaron was under attack, but that day I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. And Aaron couldn’t live like that, surely.

As he stumbled inside the room, aiming for the bed, I sat up on my mattress and cleared my throat.

“I’m not,” he said, voice raspy, “I’m not in the mood to talk about it, Andrew.”

“Fine, don’t talk,” I shrugged, and a fit of pain travelled through my spine, making me wince and moan, “this has to end.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, face buried inside his pillow, “you said something like that at Christmas, too.”

“Well, it had unexpected consequences.”

“Oh, boo-hoo,” he spat, “of course you only care when it affects you directly.”

“Oi, fuck off,” I reiterated, “I care about you, too. That's why I accepted the Vow in the first place, moron.”

“Whatever you say. Can we discuss plans later? I’m bleeding.”

“Oh,” I nodded, “right.”

He coughed and the movement caused him very visible pain, so he began clutching his torso and abdomen, moaning. I sighed and got up, crawling towards his bed to assess the depth of the wounds. I grabbed the hem of his t-shirt, drenched in blood.

“Can I?”, I asked, careful.

“Andrew, for Merlin’s sake, get to it. I feel like I’m dying in here.”

“Fine, fine!”

I lifted the shirt, took it off in a quick motion and threw it in the pile of clothes that was growing in a corner of the room. I also slid off his tracksuit that he wore for comfort at home and began scrutinizing his body attentively, trying to see whether some of the cuts could be hidden enough for me to miss.

A cut on his side was deeper than the others, and stagnant blood was accumulating under his skin near that area, causing a large, painful bruise. I poked it and a gush of blood came out of the well-defined incision, while my twin flinched and cried out, contorting on the bed.

“Sorry,” I muttered, when our mother yelled to be quieter from the floor below us.

“Be quick,” Aaron pleaded, “and careful. Or she’ll come up here to finish the job.”

I gulped, actually scared that Aaron was right. I’d never been angrier than what I had been during those few months in that House, always fighting and in pain for whatever my mother would find to her distaste that particular day. I was even more resolute to helping Aaron and getting rid of that bitch.

I fumbled under the bed and finally found the small case we had hid under there with basic stock of medicine and gauze, so that I could patch Aaron up every time Tilda lost her control. I bandaged most of the bruises and wounds, focusing and brushing light fingers against his skin to feel the sensibility of his body parts to my touch.

When I was finished when his minor injuries, I turned back to that enormous gash on his hip, and I nibbled on my lip.

“Wait up,” I announced.

“What?”

“I have to pick up my wand.”

“Are you actually mad?” he cried out but shushed himself quickly when he realized the volume of his voice, “You can’t use magic outside of school for at least another year. You’ll get expelled and we’ll need to go to the Ministry and explain.”

“It’s a healing spell,” I explained, “Surely, I wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t needed. But you need it, and I know how to do it, and there’s no way in hell that cut is going to heal with cream and prayers.”

“If you put a bandage over it…”

“Aaron,” I hissed, “that’s going to take months to heal with muggle medicine. Don’t fight me on this. I’m doing this for your safety.”

“My safety?” he countered, “Don’t you think she’ll do a lot worse to me when you’re going to be expelled? I’m fine. I can hurt a little. Godric knows I’ve been through worse.”

“You shouldn’t be putting yourself through more pain just because you know you can handle it!”

“Andrew, I’m the bleeding one. Just stay put and do as I say.”

I shook my head vigorously, but I sighed and went back to the bandages and the disinfectants. There, I found some thread and needle, and I fished my lighter from my pocket, beginning to burn up the metallic point. I took in a deep breath and poked at the bruise a couple of times, letting blood flow. I pinched the edges of the cut together and Aaron began to squirm.

“Bite down on something,” I suggested.

I began threading. I tried so hard to ignore the muffled screams of pain coming from my brother.

 

---

 

Tilda was passed out on the couch, so Aaron and I took advantage of it and sat in front of the ancient TV – it wasn’t really a magic object, that was true, but Nicky’s father always lamented how my birthmother was affectionate towards muggle things – and tried to calm our nerves, slouching around for a while.

Then, the doorbell rang.

Tilda was up and going in a moment, rushing towards the door. With a flick of her wand and a wordless spell, the house, that hadn’t been cleaned since I had arrived, was shining and bright, with sparkling floors and tidied up shelves.

“Is this the house of Minyard Tilda?”

A familiar voice. It took a while to place it in my innumerous memories, but it eventually clicked in place, making me straighten my back and listen closer to the upcoming conversation.

Shit.

“Yes,” she lovingly replied, the sweet little mother that she wasn't, “how can I help you today, sir?”

“No need for that kind of formalities, ma’am,” the agent said, voice cold as ice, “I’m a welfare worker, and I was assigned a long time ago to your son’s, Andrew, case. I’m just checking in to remind you of his annual control over at the police station, so you wouldn’t miss it.”

“What?” Tilda tilted her head to the side, “I wasn’t informed of such thing.”

“Oh,” the agent said, “well, it’s tomorrow, a year after his release from juvie. You have to go with him to supervise, since he’s still a minor and he was imprisoned for a criminal offense.”

“I see,” she seethed, and smiled a tightlipped, fake smile at the officer, “Well, we’ll be there. Good day.”

“To you, ma’am.”

Tilda closed the door slowly, and then she turned towards us.

“This,” she began, her voice trembling with ire and fury, “is just the drop that breaks the camel’s back.”

“Mother,” Aaron tried, taking a deep breath in as he prepared for the worst, “I’m sure Andrew didn’t know…”

I knew. How the fuck could I even forget about it? I had been in jail. I was free on probation. That was just how muggle law worked, I couldn’t just escape it because I felt like it, because I was some sort of wizard now. But then, how was I supposed to remember about it when my year had been peppered with discoveries about myself and my friends that turned my world upside down? It all started with me being a magical being and it ended with Neil being a fucking werewolf. You could imagine that muggle law was the least of my worries.

“I don’t care,” she screamed, at the top of her lungs, “I don’t care what either of you has to say. I need a hit…”

She stumbled towards the kitchen, as I observed her body swing back and forth under the influence of the previous drugs she took. I gulped and waited for my twin to act.

It had become somewhat of a tradition, for him to signal me when it was time to go away. He took all the consequences of my fuckups and of our mother’s mistakes. He was ready to go through Hell and torture for me, and only then I realized that he felt exactly like I did: even if we were estranged, and even if we got on each other’s nerves, we were brothers in the end. Hadn’t I told him that brothers protect each other from anything?

She called his name, and he nudged me on the side before getting up and following her voice to the other room. I stood up too and went for our bedroom instead.

I crashed onto the mattress and waited for it to begin, slowly as always. I had grown accustomed to it by then: I knew the feeling; I knew the pain. It was comforting in a way, the fact that I knew it was coming.

As Aaron took the drugs, my thoughts began to fade, and my mind became a vague haze of feelings and sensations that were altered enough for me not to feel the total pain of what was being inflicted on my twin.

I breathed deeply, with my arms loosely crossed on my chest and looking at the ceiling.

But that was new.

That was a pain I didn’t want to know, and that Aaron had dreaded since Christmas’s Eve.

My breath caught up in throat as a scream failed to explode in the air. I grasped the duvet and the mattress, and my chest felt like it was caving in, crashing my ribs one by one till one finally pierced my organs. My lungs completely shut down, leaving me gasping for air that didn’t come, and every single limb hurt like it was turning inside out, like the meat on my bones was trying to crawl out of me.

I rolled on the bed and hid my face on the mattress, trying to muffle my moans and screams, while tears salty as the depths of the sea began to unravel on my dry skin, falling beside me on the white, soft fabric.

And I cried and cried and cried, silent as I could be, and I finally learned why it was, indeed, and Unforgivable Curse.

It went on for maybe a few minutes, maybe half an hour, maybe the whole evening. I couldn’t tell, because the pain I was feeling didn’t allow me to open my eyes and check, but it sure felt like I was trapped for eternity in that torment, locked inside my tortured body.

When it ended, I felt the tension slowly leaving my body, but the ache was very much still there, echoing in every part of my body. I sat up, with incredible struggle, and palpated my limbs and torso to make sure everything was in place. My wrist and hand hurt from the grip I had on the fabric of the mattress, but there was nothing major as far as I could tell.

Then, I waited again.

The door slung open, and Aaron came in stumbling and tripping over, falling onto his bed like he was a dead body. The sobs began right after, and I breathed in deeply, preparing to cross the room.

I stood up, carefully, but fell right onto the mattress again, so I bit down my lip and I dragged my body across the room, putting my whole body weight on my weakened arms, that began to tremble and felt like they were giving out.

I made it onto the bed finally and I crawled over my brother.

“Aaron,” I called, but he didn’t reply, face buried in his pillow while his chest rose and fell with heavy breaths.

“Aaron,” I said again, starting to poke his legs and shake his body so he would look at me.

“Please…” he whispered, an airy voice in the complete silence, “please, Andrew…”

“Shh,” I tried, but I could feel the tears pooling in my eyes again, and I finally embraced his body like I had on Christmas’s night, rocking him back and forth, trying to give him comfort, “It’s okay.”

“Andrew, please…” he went on, but I shushed him again.

“It’s over, Aaron,” I whispered, “It’s over. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

“Everything…” he swallowed his pain, and coughed up some blood, “Everything hurts…”

“I know, I know, shush now. Rest.”

“No, no Andrew please,” he cried, gripping my shirt with all his strength, or at least what was left of it. I could see the veins in his hands pulsating and pumping blood like his body was full of adrenaline, and I asked myself how could a spell make a dying body think it was in overdrive, “I can’t…”

“What? Tell me, come on. Tell me, so you can rest.”

He broke down, crying even more, and I adjusted our bodies so he could rest his head on my chest. I caressed his back while he curled up against my torso, and his tears wetted my clothes as they fell down with the force of the pouring rain.

“I can’t…” he finally started talking again after quite some time, and I moved my hand up to his head, so I could stoke his hair gently as he spoke, “I can’t take it anymore, Andrew. I think this was the last I could endure… I think I have nothing left in me to fight her off or even to handle this madness. Andrew…”

“Yes?”

“I think… I’m afraid that if she’ll ever use Crucio on me my body wouldn’t handle it… I think she would kill me, Andrew. I think that if she’d use it against me again, I would just die.”

I couldn’t stop the tears falling on my cheeks. Our cries merged together and clashed against each other, accompanying us during that dreadful evening towards the start of the night. The moon finally rose, and as I looked at it, I could see my answers, my plan, everything figured out.

“Don’t worry, now,” I cooed, hoping he’d fall asleep soon, “It’s over, Aaron. This ends now.”

 

---

 

“Did you take everything?”

I dumped my bag in the trunk of the car and she slammed it shut.

“Y’mean the two clean shirts and the one good pair of pants I possess? Sure. Brought it all.”

“Piss off,” Tilda replied, rolling her eyes and stopping only to glare at me, “You could’ve taken some of your brother’s clothes. You’re twins.”

“I’m bigger than him, Tilda.”

“Are you? Haven’t noticed. And I told you to call me mother for the duration of the trip.”

“My shoulders are broader, my arms are bigger,” I explained, like she even cared about it, “and I won’t ever call you mother.”

“Fine,” she shrugged and went for the driver seat, “it’s your funeral, boy.”

She entered the car, and I followed suit, grabbing the seatbelt to fasten it, but I noticed she didn’t do the same. That was perfect. I thought it was a little stupid, not fasting a seatbelt on a long trip, but she could do whatever she wanted for all I cared. It wasn’t like I was there to stop her from hurting herself.

“Merlin,” she sighed, “it’s a three hours drive. I will kill myself over boredom.”

“We could take less if we take the sky,” I suggested.

“Huh, clever boy. You might be better than your dumb brother in the end. If only you didn’t vex me with this bureaucratic shit.”

“Nobody forced you to take me back.”

“Wrong. My brother forced me. Brothers are a pain in the ass,” she then stopped to adjust the rearview mirror and turned to look at me, “you look horrible.”

“Classy.”

“I mean it,” she tilted her head to the side. It was the first time I had ever seen her sober and lucid, “you look like you didn’t sleep at all.”

“I didn’t,” I replied, sharply.

“Well, look alive,” she countered, “or they’ll think you’re using drugs or something. They’ll take you in again, and my brother will kill me if I let that happen. You’re his protégée now, so act like it. You know, we’re an important family and you really should start to dress and act and behave like a person of your status-”

“Start the damned car and shut up, Tilda.”

“Sure.”

She grabbed her wand from the drawer in the hood of the car, where I assumed she had put it earlier, and flicked it, pronouncing a quick invisibility charm strong enough to cover the car and us with it. I gasped as the car took a run up and then began to fly, a little unstable but steady enough not to feel like I was on a rollercoaster.

The ride was silent, and we both knew we exchanged everything circumstantial we ever had to say to one another. I didn’t really talk to her, not ever, because Aaron told me not to, as that would’ve only upset her when she was drunk or stoned. When Aaron was stoned too, and there wasn’t any sign that she might be abusing him in the near future, I just went to our room and tried to doze off, treasuring those few hours of peace of mind and soul that Tilda let us have.

I realized that it was, in fact, the first time she and I ever even had a conversation. It was brief and concise and really just a formality, but it was a conversation, and typically we were separated by Aaron long before anything could be even said between us, as he was fearful the smallest spark might’ve lit the biggest fire of all.

Should I have been worried about Aaron? What might've happened to him when all was done? I supposed that Nicky’s parents would take him in, because they loved him, and maybe he would be finally clear and sober from all the substance abuse and all the muggle drugs he was taking. I wasn’t quite sure how he handled his abstinence during the time at Hogwarts, but he sure knew how to mask it long enough not to draw any suspicion towards him. He was a bright kid, and he had friends, and he had Nicky, like he’d always had, so he would be fine.

I told myself that over and over, during the one hour drive I was enduring, and about half an hour into it I finally snapped, when my thoughts became overblown and intolerable.

I looked around to see, as I had planned, that we were hovering over a plain field, empty and deserted as we were still a little far from the heart of the city.

“You ruined him, you know?” I began.

“What?” she glanced at me but tried to focus on the road ahead.

“Aaron,” I explained, “You made the right choice. You picked the good one, between the both of us. And yet, you still managed to fuck him up.”

“What are you talking about?” the points of her ears became red with fury and she gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“The drugs. The curses. He’s the empty shell of the boy he could’ve been. You put him through so much undeserved shit that it’s a miracle he’s still alive. He barely was, last night. You almost killed your son, Tilda.”

“That is not true. He was fine, I drug him so he doesn’t feel a thing.”

“That’s what you chose to believe,” I said, “That’s not what he told me while he was sobbing in my arms because of the pain you caused him.”

“Stop it. You’re not telling the truth and it’s upsetting me.”

“You know, it must count for something,” I stated, “that you managed to fuck up both the kid you gave up and the son you chose to keep. Some psychiatrists might do some work on you.”

“Andrew, I mean it. Stop.”

“And for what? Why should you even do this to him? Because you’re unable to stand the sight of me? Because your brother is an unsufferable cunt? Doesn’t seem enough to me. Doesn’t seem something worth torturing your son for.”

“Andrew!”

“Maybe the fact that you’re so unhinged, so unpredictable in your patterns and behaviors that led me to believe this was the only solution possible. Because if you were only an addict, maybe you’d be even salvageable. But you’re most definitely insane, and toxic, and you’re a fucking shitty mother, Tilda. You’re really the worst mother in the whole wide bloody world.”

“You’re going to pay for what you’re saying, you know?”

“Am I? Or are you going to go back and just let Aaron take the blame? It was him who made me come back to this family, it was him that sent me that letter, it was him who wanted a brother. Maybe he was just searching for someone to protect him from you.”

“Andrew...,”

“I hope he sees the point of this,” I sigh, “I hope he can let go and live a normal life, like the brilliant person he is. Truly, he didn’t deserve either of us. We’re both shitty family, Tilda.”

I opened and closed my fists a few times, then turned to look at her. I was surprised to find out that she was already looking at me. We were speeding through the air and nobody could see us, nobody could hear us.

“The only difference is I have reasons to be shitty to my brother, and I was trying to overcome that, to be better. I think if you’ll live, you’ll only get worse.”

“What are you doing?”

“God, I hope you suffer.”

It was just as I had planned.

With one hand I grabbed the steering wheel, and I turned it so that we would be facing down, heading towards the ground, and with the other I pressed her leg down, pushing on the gas pedal.
She started screaming, shouting my name and yelling me to stop and that I would have killed us both. And I hoped she was right.

Since Christmas, I had made peace with the fact that my birthmother was abusive and that my brother was profoundly scarred, but the Vow made me experience what was like walking in Aaron’s shoes for a couple of months. I had suffered throughout my whole life, and if the pain that I was receiving through my body had been inflicted directly on me, I would have probably been fine with that. But Aaron?

Aaron was innocent, and he was trying his best to love his mother regardless. He was trying his best in everything, every time, always, and nobody seemed to notice how much hard work he actually put into things. He wasn’t a natural beater, but he tried and learned, and he also trained with the other teams every single day to get better and better. He wasn’t really book smart, but he cared enough for him to study so much he barely even left his dorm. He wasn’t really a good person, but he tried to be just that in front of his mother, he tried to please her and make her proud, but there was really no point in trying.

I was telling myself over and over that Aaron would’ve been fine, and that I was doing him a favor.

As for me, I didn’t care much about living, and I didn’t mind dying. I had no place in that world, and I had known it since I was only a child. I thought that if I hadn't took my life that day, I would've probably done it in the future either way. I had left two letters on my nightstand addressed to Neil and Renée, and I prayed that they would’ve understood my actions.

Aaron would’ve known it was an incident. Her magic wobbled and she lost control of the car. The brakes were tampered with. He didn’t need to know I was the one who did it.

As the car crashed onto the ground, I asked anyone who guided and ruled on this world to take me on impact, because I’d had enough of my life already.

I was ready to die for my brother.

Notes:

well so, we all knew it was coming lol. Hope you enjoyed!

Chapter 17: In the end

Summary:

TRIGGER WARNING!
explicit mentions of suicide and rape

Light hit my eyelids. My eyes fluttered open, and I blinked a few times before taking a long, deep breath.

No.

“He’s awake,” someone announced, but I couldn’t register the voice, I couldn’t match it with a face or a name, “go tell Abby she’s needed here.”

“I’m busy,” someone else replied, “with Aaron. He’s doing well either, you know?”

“I don’t think he was the one in a car crash and that quite literally dropped out of the sky. He can handle himself for a couple of minutes.”

A sigh followed, loud and thespian, and I could sense the sarcasm exuding through that simple gesture. But shushed words of reassurance reached my ears as that someone comforted my brother, telling him it’d be okay, that he’d be right back.

I blinked another couple of times and prayed that my lack of awareness of my surroundings wasn’t due to some irreparable brain damage.

After some minutes, I could recognize the too familiar infirmary at Hogwarts and its beds covered with white linen and comfortable duvets. I carefully sat up and looked around: the group was there, maintaining a safe distance both from me and my brother, who was sat a couple of beds to the left on the row opposite to mine.

“Hi,” the first voice called again, and urged me to turn towards it.

Neil flashed me a smile as my eyes landed on his. He had a new scar on his neck, which worried me, but I didn’t have the voice to ask about it out loud. I seemed to have lost it. It was even scarier than that confused situation.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he suggested, looking me up and down; only then I realized I was shirtless – probably even trousers-less, but I couldn’t just check, “the infirmary seems to be our place.”

He kept looking at me, waiting for me to say something equally sarcastic to his snarky comment, but I was somewhere else entirely with my mind. I couldn’t even begin to grasp the fact that I was at the magical castle in Scotland, when moments before I had thought I had died on a trip to London. Why was I there? What was happening? Where was Tilda?

“Drew?” Neil was still by my side, and tilted his head so that he could meet my eyes, that were staring into the nothingness, “Andrew, are you okay?”

“This isn’t right,” I breathed.

“What do you mean?”

“This can’t be happening.”

I whipped my head around, looking for something that could indicate that I was in a dream, some kind of hallucination that my brain had made up to make me feel safe and comfortable so it could ease the feeling of dying that must’ve been spreading in my crushed body. That was it, that was the only explanation to that. It was purely artificial, irrational, a completely normal response to death. Maybe it was one of those dreams I had when I was in a coma after a similar fall, back in December. Could it be that? Could it be that I didn’t die, but my brain decided to shut my body down regardless? Could it be that I was just making everything up for my own sake?

It had to be that. It had to.

“Drew, talk to me,” Neil whispered to me.

My head snapped in his direction, and I could feel tears falling and burning my skin. He lifted his hands and placed them just at the side of my face, hovering over my cheeks and trying to get my attention.

“Touch me,” I urged.

“What?” he gaped, but my thoughts were running too fast for him to keep the pace.

“Never mind,” I shook my head and took his hands to lower them, before raising my own to caress his face.

That scar. That fucking scar.

“You’re real,” I sentenced, “you’re flesh and blood.”

“I would be surprised to find out otherwise,” he blushed under my touch, but I couldn’t acknowledge the fact that I was so intimately stroking his skin, I couldn’t begin to fathom the consequences of that action, because I didn’t believe it to be true. I didn’t believe that was Neil; that was my subconscious deciding that the last thing I would want to see before it shut down forever was Neil’s smile, and the last thing I would want to hear were his snappy comments, and the last thing I would want to experience was talking to him, touching him, longing for him.

“You’re fucking real, aren’t you?”, a hiccup escaped from my mouth. I believed I hadn’t cried like that in such a long time I thought it was impossible for me to cry that much again. His eyes softened as he realized that I was really asking. I was really fucking asking whether he was a real person or just a fragment of my maddened mind.

“I promise, Drew,” his hand reached for mine, but he didn’t touch it – he never touched me – “I am as real as they make them.”

“Why did you have to be real?”, I murmured.

He scoffed.

“I ask myself the same thing every day. But I still am real.”

I began to shake my head violently. I stood up. I didn’t care if I wasn’t wearing anything, I didn’t care who might have seen. I didn’t care, nor I did realize. I wasn’t really conscious, I believed. I was still in shock, and adrenaline was pumping through my veins with such force that whatever my rational brain might’ve told me, I felt the right to bypass it.

“No,” I breathed again.

“No what?” Neil stood up to follow me.

I wanted to get out. Out where? I didn’t know. I needed to get out. There was a door. I wanted to run towards it, but I tripped over myself and fell to my knees in the middle of the room. I knew I was speaking.

“No, no, no…” words flooded over and out of my mouth without my consent.

“No, no, no!” I kept screaming, yelling, scratching my throat and feeling my chest filling with anger and confusion and pain, pain, so much pain, so big, enormous, omnipresent pain crushing me under its powerful, almighty thumb.

I gripped my hair and pulled it out, and hit my bare chest with my fists, and clawed at my pale skin, and dug my nails in my flesh. I tortured my body, I tortured myself, I tortured whatever was left of me.

I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it anymore, I want to go, I want to go.

“Nicky, Matt!” Neil was yelling over my voice, as he rushed towards Abby’s desk to fish something out of one of her drawers.

Suddenly two pairs of big, strong arms were restraining me, stopping me from hurting myself over and over, trying to keep me kneeled down and overcoming the strength I was putting into escaping and agitating so they would just let me go.

“No!” I screamed again, “No! Let me go!”

Neil was all of the sudden in front of me, on his knees, holding a small phial near my lips.

“Touch him in the fewest places you can, am I understood?” he warned the two boys behind me, “I don’t care about how much he’s squirming, touch him just in one place if you can.”

“You try it,” Matt suggested, but Neil was quick to shoot a death-glare towards him.

“Don’t make me,” he barked. He met my eyes again, and moved the phial closer before whispering, lovingly and calmy, “Drink up, Drew.”

“No, no…” I shook my head, threatening to make him drop the ampule all together.

“You’re safe,” he reassured me, “you’re with me, you’re okay.”

“Neil,” I cried, “Neil… let me go.”

“You know that I can’t, Drew. You must drink this,” his voice was starting to quiver, and I saw that as an opportunity to make him desist.

“Neil, please,” I begged, “Please, let me go.”

Let me die. Just let me die.

“Fucking damnit, Drew,” his eyes were filling up with tears, but he eventually just forced my mouth open and dunk the potion in it. Ironically, it had a bittersweet taste, “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

“I want to go…” I murmured as I felt my senses weaken, and my limbs fall limp at my sides.

I crashed onto Neil’s lean body, and he caught me, not daring to touch me more, not daring to extend his arms over and hug me, not daring to comfort me with something he knew I’d regret. He just accepted that my body was against his, and looked up, tears rolling down his cheeks. But he still shushed me, offering me at the very least all the support he could give me.

“I know, it hurts” he just said, then turned to the others in the room, “Put him in the bed again. He’ll be asleep in a few moments.”

A pair of arms picked me up from the floor and the next thing I could feel was the soft mattress of the infirmary bed under my skin. They placed my head on the pillow and covered me with a light duvet, as I was starting to shiver.

“I want to go,” I repeated, lower still, to nobody in particular, “I want to go…”

I want to die.

 

---

 

When I woke up again, I felt calmer, and my body had released a lot of caught up tension.

Neil was still staring at me from the feet of the bed, leaned over with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands tied together. But he wasn’t the one beside me.

Nicky was.

“Are you ok?” he simply asked, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak a monstrous lie, so I just nodded, knowing damn well we both knew I wasn’t. He still took it as a good sign, for he started to speak again, “We have to talk about what happened, Andrew.”

“Haven’t I just had a mental breakdown and suffered a car crash? Shouldn’t I be allowed some peace?” I reiterated, but Nicky just sighed and lifted a hand to signal me to stop talking.

“Andrew, Aaron deserves some peace two. You have been out for days and you’re the only one who even knows what happened. You were the only one with her when she… Um, she…” he began to stutter, and I sensed something was off.

I glanced at Neil, his eyes still fixated on me, and saw in his tormented expression that my intuition was right. I tried to feign unawareness as much as I could in a state of mind in which I could barely remember what had put me in that hospital bed in the first place.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, biting down my lip, “Wait, where’s my mother? Is she at St Mungo’s?”

“Well… she… um…” Nicky still found it hard to find the adequate words to deliver such news. I kind of felt bad for putting him on the spot like that, like I didn’t know what was going on or why was my mother missing.

“Tilda’s dead,” Neil completed the sentence for him, and when I looked into his eyes I could see his pupils were shrunk and his irises weren’t the normal, warm indigo but a chillier, frightening ice blue, “You’re an orphan. Congratulations.”

How far was the full moon? I had lost track of it since the last day of school, but I was fairly sure, given only by his physical state, that it was a crescent moon right then. I wondered how much he could sense about the unspoken words in that conversation. But I didn’t show it – at least to Nicky. I turned towards my cousin again, forcing my eyes to swell with tears.

“Mother died?” I gasped for air. I was really good at faking being sad. It came so natural, I didn’t even really need to force it out.

“I’m afraid so. My father is devastated…” Nicky sighed again, but this time his eyes were kinder, softer, “I told Aaron you would be woeful, too.”

“Why? What did he say? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Actually,” Nicky started, “that was what I wanted to talk you about in the first place. I figured you already knew Aunt Tilda died. She, um, she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, so she was catapulted out of the car as soon as it the ground. You just passed out because of the shock, but, aside some minor injuries, the airbag was activated by the seatbelt, you were fine.”

“And how did you find us?”

“The news made quite the scandal, I heard,” Neil responded that time, “Aaron was just watching telly - whatever that it - and it came up. Next thing the muggles knew was that the car was gone, and so were the bodies. Aaron suggested to bring you here and spare you the ride in the train in a couple of days.”

“So, what about Aaron?”

“He thinks you did it,” Neil was on a streak of unbearable truths too cold to be told by a loving and caring cousin.

“What?!” I shouted.

“The breaks were tampered with,” Nicky explained, “and something shocking must have made her lose control. You are very capable of both.”

“Plus, it was notorious you hated her,” Neil added. I just shook my head.

“Yes, sure, I hated her. Not enough to kill her, though. I’m not a criminal, you fools. I’ve already been in jail, I remind you: I don’t ever want to end up there, ever again. Why would I do something like that?”

“Because nobody would know it was you,” Neil looked me up and down.

I clenched my jaw and my teeth gritted against each other.

“She was still my mother, Neil!” I yelled, “She gave birth to me and hurt me less than whomever I had encountered during my shitty life. What? You think I want to go back in the system again? With the chance of losing my brother, my twin brother again?”

“Of course not!” Nicky interrupted our banter, “My father will take care of you both until you come of age, and the professors agreed to let you stay in the castle during the summer, too, if you both wanted. But we need to know what happened, Andrew.”

“What do you want me to say?”, my heart was beating fast in my chest, thumping against my ribcage, “I don’t remember! It was… we were flying towards London and at some point, she just lost control. It was too fast for me to do anything, and I don’t even know how to fly a car, and I couldn’t even think or react because we plummeted to the… Fuck, don’t you know what I’ve been through? Why would I want to lose my mother? My only mother?”

My only mother… I missed Cass so much. A tear escaped my eyelid and rolled towards my chin.

“Alright,” Nicky interrupted me, “it’s fine, don’t get worked up again. It must hurt to even think about it, and I think what we heard is enough.”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Neil nodded along, “we believe you. But Aaron doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to talk to you. At least for a while.”

“Could you tell him?” I grabbed Nicky’s hand, “Could you tell him I didn’t do it? I don’t want him to hate me.”

“Yes, yes,” Nicky nodded quickly, then gulped and retracted his hand, “Of course. I… will leave you with Neil. He knows your course of treatment, so he’ll be tending to you until Abby returns. Alright?”

“Yeah…” I bit my lip again, “Yeah, go. I’ll be fine.”

Nicky’s glance shot between me and Neil before he turned around and headed straight for the exit of the medical wing.

I breathed out and relaxed against my pillow, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, Neil was staring at me with narrow eyes and a look that could kill.

“What, wolfie?” I teased.

“You did it, didn’t you?” he sneered.

“Oh, bloody hell,” I rolled my eyes, and crossed my arms across my chest, “What, I can’t even hide something from you now?”

“Ha! You wish,” he smiled, “Your heartbeat was too fast: you were lying for sure. So, did you do it?”

“You made it pretty clear I can’t lie.”

“Fine,” he scoffed, but then returned serious, “Why?”

“You said it yourself, I hated the bitch,” I shrugged.

“Yeah, but there’s more,” he tilted his head to the side, “There’s always more with you. What did she do to piss you off that much?”

“Why does it matter? She’s gone.”

“Call it curiosity.”

“I call it not minding your fucking business, Josten.”

“Whatever,” he laughed, “Spit it out either way.”

“She used the Cruciatus curse on Aaron,” I stated, suddenly, and he straightened his back and looked very carefully at me, “Twice. I couldn’t let her get away with that.”

“Well,” his eyes conveyed an emotion that wasn’t either pride or content, but somewhere in that spectrum, “better off dead, then.”

I chuckled and relaxed again, taking a deep breath. But he wasn’t quite done.

“So, about your meltdown earlier,” he began, “I sensed it had little to do with losing your mother and more to do with the fact that your plan didn’t go as you thought.”

“How so?” I reiterated. I clenched my fists unconsciously and struggled to loosen them up.

“Did you want to die in the crash?” his eyes were reading my soul like an open book, and I hated every second of it.

“No,” I said.

“Liar,” Neil smiled wickedly, but then stood up, “I’ll call Bee.”

 

---

 

“I don’t want to talk,” I rolled my eyes as soon as I heard the snippety sound of her heels clicking on the tiled floor. Her warm laugh came in as a response, “I’m serious, Bee. I don’t want to talk about it. I talked way too much for a single day.”

She sat on the chair next to my bed and crossed her legs. For some reason, she was wearing muggle clothes: a white shirt with puffed, short sleeves that she tucked into a sheath bright green skirt, and some fun glasses on the tip of her nose. She smiled at me dearly.

“You don’t even know what I want to ask you,” she just replied to my previous statement.

“About my recently passed mother, I presume.”

“Or the fact that Neil just told me he thinks you have suicidal instincts.”

“Rat,” I seethed.

“Oh, shut it,” she laughed again, “he’s just looking after you.”

“Nobody asked him.”

“Nobody asked you to crash your mother’s car-”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Okay!” she kept cackling, which was infuriating, “We’ll skip through that bit. I want to take it from the top.”

“Wait,” I blinked a few times, confused, “What do you mean?”

She smiled tenderly and reached for my hand, that was laying on top on the duvet, but I promptly retracted it, sucking in a long breath. Bee tilted her head, but averted her eyes towards her notepad, rested comfortably on her knees, while she flicked her pen between her two fingers.

“I want to talk about your history, Andrew,” she finally admitted.

I began to shake my head no, to bite my bottom lip so hard that I could feel it go numb against my teeth.

“I don’t,” I replied, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You have to trust me with this. Otherwise, it will only get worse: your relationship with Neil and Renée, the suspiciousness your brother’s friends have about you, the fact that your brother fully believes you had the guts to kill your own mother. It’s going to get worse, and you will be alone, Andrew. Is that what you want?”

“What difference does it make?” I snapped, barking at her like she was, in the end, the reason I felt so helpless, so tirelessly abandoned by everyone I loved and that I had attempted to express that love to.

“It makes all the difference in the world for someone like you, doesn’t it?” she shrugged, “It makes all the difference for someone that feels like everyone is out to get you, like the universe somehow spins in a way that only affects you directly, and negatively. You feel like you have just that few things good going on for you and you don’t want to lose those too, don’t you?”

I watched her, calm as the sea when there’s no wind, unmovable like the Great Wall, and my mouth fell open. I didn’t know if in admiration, as I found it impossible to have such a spot on description made by an almost complete stranger, or surprise, because I couldn’t believe I was so easy to read.

“I…”

Something in my heart cracked, and my lip began to tremble and quiver as I tried to assemble a phrase in my head that could have some sense, that could convey how much pain, and exhaustion, and sorrow, and tiredness I felt on a daily basis, how I felt that nothing in the whole wide world could ever begin to mitigate torment that was making my heart ache, that had made my life miserable to a point it was almost intolerable.

I thought I could just scream, call for Abby, make Bee go away, so that I didn’t have to tackle the fact that I couldn’t bear the touch of anyone, that a caress alone made me want to vomit my soul out and kill it, that I had never felt the love of a parent, that unconditional love everyone always brag about, that I had often regretted being born, that I had often tried to end my life, that crashing Tilda’s car wasn’t the first, and wouldn’t probably be the last time I had actually accepted that my life was over a long time before that.

I had made peace with the fact that I wasn’t living, I was surviving. I didn’t even know what I was surviving anymore, and I was breathing and my heart was beating purely out of spite, purely to let anyone who had hurt me know that I was still there, still fighting, and maybe, just maybe one day I’d be able to say I’d overcome the hurt, the pain, the torment.

I was alive, somehow, and I wanted it to be known to everyone who thought I would’ve never survived what had been done to me.

“Nothing I will say will ever get out of this room, right?” I finally spoke up, eyes fixated on the ceiling above our heads.

“I swear to you,” Bee answered, “it’s between me and you.”

“Fine,” I swallowed my fears, and moved my gaze upon her, meeting her eyes, “let’s do this. But you have to help me, you really have to help me, Bee.”

“I will do everything that is in my power to do.”

“Good,” I nodded, absent-mindedly, “I should warn you; I have an eidetic memory. I remember everything that I have experienced ever, and it’s impossible for me to forget anything. I remember everything I have watched, heard, felt, thought. Most of my memories will die with me, forever unspoken, but some I am willing to share with you.”

“I am fine with that, as long as you help me help you,” Bee reiterated.

“I will try.”

“Let’s begin,” she cleared her throat, “Tell me about the first time you’ve ever felt in danger, or helpless.”

Moments flashed before my eyes: the ground getting closer and closer as the car crashed against it, the feeling of my body fighting within itself because of the curse, the fall towards the bottom of the pitch after Riko had pushed me, every single time somebody had hugged me, touched me unprompted, the moment when the police caught me and pushed me against the car in handcuffs, the last time Drake had used me, the first time someone had raped me. But it wasn’t any of that.

“The first time…” I sighed, “The first time was when I was two, I believe, or around that time, and my foster father slapped me right across the face for dropping the plate with my dinner. He was… really big. And at first, I remember he loved me, I think. Or at least, he treated me with kindness, like his wife did most of the time. At some point, his behavior shifted, and he started hitting me. I think he didn’t like that I was a toddler, that I wasn’t a baby anymore. I think he didn’t want to raise me and realized that nobody was ever going to take me back, that I was going to stay with him until I was much older. So, he got angry and took it out on the bane of his existence, which was me.”

“Is that why you are so reticent about touch?”

“Oh, no,” I scoffed, even though I could understand how ‘simple’ abuse could have the very same effect on a different person that had a similar experience to mine, “that came much later.”

“When did that happen? Who was the culprit of that particular crime?”

“Long ago, I would have told you it was me,” I answered, “it was me that had allowed that crime to be carried on; I believed it was in my power to stop it, and I just hadn’t done it. But I think I am ready to change that answer, I think I am ready to assign blame where it’s due.”

“So?” Bee pressed.

“Foster families were never kind to me,” I began, closing my eyes, “and the boy I’m about to tell you about wasn’t the first to do those things to me. The first time it had happened, I was barely seven years old, and it was my third foster home. After that, I changed places quickly; sometimes they lasted a few months, sometimes they lasted only for some days. Either way, I had same experience in almost every house I went into. Which was degrading, surely, and killed pieces of me little by little, but maybe I was too young to understand fully. The real damage, the last blow had one particular name written all over it. He was the reason I went to jail, he was the reason I escaped the system, he made me what I am today.”

“Tell me.”

My mum was a part of me I really missed, and that I wanted to keep close to my chest at all times. I didn’t want to ruin the memories I had of her, of the long nights spent in her arms crying because I couldn’t believe my real mother had left me, of the games we played, of the bits of childhood she was able to give me. But she was the mother of the monster who had took away my pride, my joy, that stripped me of any decency and modesty, that took away that very childhood my mum was trying to build.

She was just as much at fault as her son, because part of me knew she must’ve noticed something. She was just that kind of mother, though: those that can’t admit that her kids are guilty, that think that their kids can do no wrong, that are willing to erase every trace of mistakes their kids ever made.

Whether I liked it or not, I needed to talk about her, one day or the other.

“When I was eleven, I think, I met Cass. She was a single mother, and she really wanted to help children in need. She was my foster mother for almost two years, and, right before I left for jail, she was ready to sign adoption papers, and make me her kid to all effects. She was the only sun ray in my life of rain, and, while I had grown accustomed to the rain, the sun, the warmth of her presence in my life was nice.”

“She seems like a good lady,” Bee commented. I bit my lip, and nodded.

“She is, in some ways,” I shrugged, “but she had a biological son. His name was… his name…” a single tear fell on the duvet, and I sniveled, “His name was Drake. He was in the military, and he was the reason I could not let Cass sign those adoption papers. He was the reason I had to get away from the woman that wanted to raise me, that loved me, the only… the only mum I’d ever had. He’s the reason I can’t handle being touched, he’s the reason I grew up so violent, he’s the reason why I gave up on my life. He’s the reason every day I wake up and I wish I didn’t.”

Bee blinked a couple of times, then gulped and tried to regain composure as she scribbled onto her notepad.

“I take he wasn’t a good brother, then.”

“He would say he was,” I chuckled, “he would say he treated me like a prince. He would say I loved him and that I would’ve done everything for him, because we were just that close. Cass loved him, truly, and she wanted us to get along. He never really tried. I suppose I didn’t, either. But I think I’m excused, since he ruined my life.”

“What,” Bee cleared her throat again, and prepared herself for the hit that was coming, “what exactly did Drake do to you, Andrew? What was worse than the abuse you had suffered in the previous houses?”

I took in a deep breath and let my head fall back, hitting the wall behind me, eyes still closed. My hands were shaking, and my stomach was hosting a war inside of it.

I remembered the hallucination I had had when lying in this exact same bed, for a similar fall, for a completely different reason. I was fortunate that the damage, this second time, didn’t require such a deep coma another time. I wouldn’t have been able to handle that image of Drake again.

“Andrew?”, Bee called to me.

I opened my eyes, and stared at her for some seconds, munching on the inside of my cheek. Then I sighed.

“Every single day, for two years. Every single day, sometimes even twice a day. Sometimes he punished me if I forced him to skip a day, sometimes he punished me just because he felt like it. He said he just needed to do it. He needed it.”

“What?”

“Drake raped me. He raped me, and I don’t think I’ll ever recover.”

Notes:

THANK YOU GUYS FOR 100 KUDOS!!! Leave one on this chapter if you like it :)

Chapter 18: Anti-hero

Summary:

TW!
slight mention of child abuse

I was released from the hospital wing the same day that I had that conversation with Bee. I'd told her everything that had crossed my mind, every feeling, every statement, every thought and every prayer, as much as I felt I could share to give full explanation as to way I was raised in a such a hard way, with such hard boundaries. I thought I would have had found some sort of peace of mind, overcompensating for the absence of dialogue and therapy that had just aggravated my psychological state. It was curious, though, that I felt like I had opened a little cage of feeling that was close shut and lost in the hidden corners of my soul, so far that I could barely tell it was even there anymore.

The loneliness, the weariness, the fear I had of other people: I felt like a 10-year-old in search for answers and quiet, a child that I had been long before I went to Hogwarts. It was worse, maybe, thinking, talking about it: it made me relive every single trauma I'd had endured during my brief life. It wasn't something I was used to, and it made me angrier, more scared, it opened my wounds in a way I believed they weren't supposed to be opened.

I despised it, but still, I could recognize it was somewhat helpful: I had a lot in me that wasn't processed correctly, that I had handled in a way a little child thought was best, but it probably wasn't. As Bee had put it, how does a literal kid come to the conclusion that being in jail for arson is better than being adopted? I had many ways to escape that house, just like I had escaped the rest of them.

But a part of me knew it wasn't about leaving the house but making sure they would never have found a way to get to me again. As much as it isn't a quick connection, prison is much safer than some of the houses registered in the foster system.

As soon as I stepped in my dorm room, my things already disposed on the blue shelves, I sat at the desk to start on some of the homework I still had due in a few days: it was the day before the arrive of the rest of the students, and, the week after that, we would start the new year. With the O.W.L.s on the horizon, I couldn't be caught slacking: even if things came easily to me, more than most of wizards my age, being ‘powerful’ and talented would amount to nothing if I didn't put effort into learning.

I glanced at the desk calendar and acknowledged that it was indeed a crescent moon, and that must’ve been why Neil was acting so sharp and focused in the infirmary, and why his senses were so enhanced that he could feel my emotions. That boy really did know me inside and out, which was starting to piss me off. I trailed back towards the DADA homework, which, incidentally, made me think about Neil even more.

I grabbed the schedule right next my paper and quill. Neil, Aaron and I would still have DADA, Arythmancy and Runes together, like the year before, but this year the Gryffindors would pair with Hufflepuffs for Potions, which left the Slytherins with us. That would be a pain in the ass: not only was Moriyama a cunt per se, but as Head of the Slytherin House he was notorious for favoring them in his classes, leaving the other students to learn for themselves. Which was a terrible thing, mostly because I hated Potions in the first place.

At least, the comfortable presence of Neil would give me some quiet.

I hadn’t talked to Bee about the moment when my body and Neil’s had finally touched for the first time. As far as affection went, the closest thing I had done to Neil was a sweet caress of his cheek, but I never went further than that, and he didn’t seem to mind, nor did he try to touch me when it was clear I was averse to that.

Even though I was clearly losing my mind in that particular instance, I could feel that he was even more uncomfortable than I had been when my body, my nude body had leaned against his, limp and lifeless. I couldn’t begin to fathom whether that discomfort was due to my nudity or the fact that it made him distressed that he was crossing a line with me in that moment. Did he think I was mad at him because my body had touched his? Did he think there could’ve been a way to prevent it, so that he didn’t have to break that boundary? Maybe I had to talk to him about it. After all, weren’t we like, best friends? Surely, that was something best friends should talk about. Well, best friends also talk about crushes and people you may fancy but that was a real no-no conversation to have with Neil in particular.

Either way, I had taken pretty well the fact that he had touched me like that, and I knew it was impossible for him to have it any other way. A part of me wanted to experience the whole thing again, but conscious this time, prepared for what is going to happen, so that I could really see what it felt like touching a body so closely for the first time in a while, a body I wanted, a body I felt like I needed.

But there was no doing that. Neil was asexual, and while he respected my boundaries so effortlessly, I felt like I was doing a great job at respecting his, admiring him from afar and longing him with so much passion that my body was on fire every time he walked into a room. I would’ve never told him that unprompted; even if I knew there was a slight chance he might’ve like me back, I would’ve put a distance between us, because I wasn’t anything he’d ever want to deal with. My past, my trauma, my lines too easily crossed, my harsh responses, my inability to express my emotions in a healthy, positive way weren’t exactly the right foundation for a perfect relationship.

He'd have me as a friend for the rest of his life, and nothing more. I’d love him till the day I’d be six feet under, and I’d make myself like that.

A slight knock on the door made me shake my head and regain control of my thoughts. I put the schedule of the year back down on the desk and called out for the person knocking to come in, as I tried to find the point of my reading I had long lost.

“Andrew?”

I stood up in a swift motion and turned around to meet the red-shot eyes of my twin brother staring back at me. He stood there, tensed up and shaking, while I was paralyzed from the neck down and I thought I could faint. Oh, I was not ready for that conversation to happen.

“What are you doing?” he asked, but it sounded more like an accusation. I briefly glanced at the desk, covered in parchment and spilled ink – I had yet to fully comprehend how to use a quill.

“Um,” I stuttered and swallowed my awkwardness, “studying? I have to catch up on some…”

“Unbelievable,” Aaron interrupted me, his lips cracking in a sarcastic smile, “You’re studying? Andrew, our mother is dead!”

“Oh, fuck,” I slapped my palms on my face, pushing my fingertips against my closed eyelids, “I’m so sorry. I hadn’t thought… I should’ve come straight to you when Abby discharged me. I’m so out of it, I’m so, so sorry. But Nicky told me… well, he told me you didn’t want to see me.”

“He was right,” he fidgeted and picked at the hangnails on his hands, “I didn’t… I don’t. But I wanted to see you because… Well, I have the answer. See? You don’t care that she died.”

I scoffed, regaining consciousness and stumbling towards him.

“Right,” I nodded, “I don’t care. Or, to find better words, I care because it hurts you. But it doesn’t hurt me.”

“Why?” he screamed, and I kicked the door of the dorm so that the whole Ravenclaw tower wouldn’t have to listen in our argument, “Why aren’t you distraught? She’s your mother too!”

“She wasn’t, Aaron,” I answered, my voice getting cold, “she didn’t raise me, she didn’t even give me a proper bed to sleep in when she was forced to take me back by our uncle. She didn’t love me like a mother; therefore, she wasn’t! But she was a mother to you, and I could understand why…”

“No!” he kept yelling, “You don’t know how hard it is to lose a mother.”

Oh, I know. She just isn’t dead.

“Listen, you have to understand…” I tried, approaching him with my hands extended towards him, for him to hang onto, “she hurt you, Aaron. Maybe it’s better this way. You must see the bright side in all of this.”

“What?”, he recoiled, “How could you say that?”

“Well, isn’t it true? She cursed you, Aaron. She was a monster.”

“She was my mum!” he cried out, “She could do anything she wanted to discipline me!”

“You told me she would’ve killed you!” I was screaming too, at that point.

“I was high!”

“You were right!” I put my hands on his shoulders, but he pushed me back, “Aaron, she…”

“She was my mum,” he was breathing heavily, but he lowered his voice, “and you killed her.”

“No,” I insisted, “no, I didn’t.”

“You’re the monster, Andrew.”

He opened the door again.

“No, wait,” as he disappeared behind it, I followed him to the doorstep and watched him descend the stairs to the common room, “Aaron, come on!”

My voice was lost in the echoes of the corridor, and I sighed as I accepted the fact that my brother hated me for saving his life.

 

---

 

“You should really put on something more… formal.”

Renée skimmed through my clothes as I adjusted the black and blue robes on my shoulders.

“Oi,” I called back, “I’m wearing a tie. Isn’t that formal?”

She appeared behind me, and I watched her reflection in the mirror in front of me. She gave me a pointed look and waited for me to nod slightly before clinging to my waist with her arms, giving me the first hug of the school year.

“It isn’t if you’re wearing an Iron Maiden shirt underneath it,” she laughed against the fabric of my clothes, pressing her face on my shoulder. I chuckled.

“Dumbledore is going to love it,” I assured her.

“Whatever you say,” she sighed, acquiring a more pained look on her face, “I’m really, very sorry that I wasn’t here when you arrived.”

“Stop it,” I turned to face her, cupping her face with my hands, “You didn’t know. How could you? You’re here now. It’s all that matters.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, “I just can’t believe Aaron is blaming you.”

“Right?” I pinched the bridge of my nose, “He just needs time, I think.”

“You always defend him,” she rolled her eyes, returning to her chores – she was tidying up my room, even though I really couldn’t see the mess she was supposedly taking care of -, “One day, you’ll realize he doesn’t deserve it.”

“He’s my brother,” I turned over to the mirror again, straightening my tie as it frequently came undone, not being attached to a collar.

“And you’re his sibling,” she pointed out, “but I don’t see him defending you like you do with him.”

“One day, he will be. He just needs to accept I’m his family.”

“Sure,” she shook her head, but ultimately let it go.

She trotted towards me and held out her hand. I cackled as I took it and laced our fingers together.

“Are you ready for your fifth year of Hogwarts?”

“Really,” I said as I pulled her towards the door and then down the stairs of the tower, “it’s only my second.”

“In a sense, it is,” she shrugged, “but you have the O.W.L.s so it’s going to be a pain the arse either way.”

“How about you? Are you ready for you last year?”

“Why not?”, she sighed again, “I’m just worried you will die without me in this godforsaken castle. I feel like I’m the only thing keeping you afloat.”

“You’re not wrong,” I dragged her out of the common room and tried to focus on the pattern of the changing stairs of the main corridors.

As I descended towards the Great Hall to start the school year, I looked around the castle to see which places I would recognize by memory. I had spent days, if not weeks, strolling around the premises of the school, learning every corner, hiding spot, trick and kink it might have. I had read a whole book about the things you might want to know about it if you live inside of it.

I recognized the portraits that led to different parts of the castle, I recognized the people in them, and I recognized the places of the big hallways that I had walked countless times. As we passed in front of the library, I glanced towards it to see if I could catch a glimpse of Madam Pince reorganizing the shelves for the twelfth time since her arrival.

After two months trapped in that shallow house in the English countryside, with nothing but my high brother and my bitch of a mother to keep me company, I started to understand what Renée felt towards this very castle, what McGonagall felt when she looked at her students, why some of the students preferred to spend their holidays in the school.

“Y’know,” I began, “You were right.”

“What do you mean?” my best friend asked, shooting me a confused look.

“What you told me last year,” I explained, “that Hogwarts is home for those like you and me, that don’t belong anywhere. I’m starting to feel it now.”

“Emotional, are we?” she teased, nudging me in the side.

“Shut up,” I scoffed, and I pushed her slightly as her laugh merged with mine.

Going down a few more flight of stairs, we spotted the big, heterogenous group of friends entering the Great Hall through the archway, and we rushed to catch up to them.

As we followed them through the crowd, we finally managed to sit at the Hufflepuff table – which the group seemed to favor when it came to choose one to sit at – and tried to catch up with their conversation.

Aaron fell quiet as soon as I approached the table, but Nicky was yelling and poking at Neil, who was blushing angrily and urging him to stop. Allison was laughing loudly, while Dan and Matt were staring into each other’s eyes in silence.

“I’m going to be sick,” Renée commented, and picked up a bun of bread just to throw it against the cute couple, “Get a room, you wankers.”

“Piss off,” Matt laughed, but didn’t avert his eyes from Dan’s, “you’ll understand when you finally fall in love.”

“Yeah, maybe,” it didn’t escape me how her eyes wandered on Allison for a moment before picking another bun and hurling that as well, “But you still disgust me. And what’s going on there?” she turned to Nicky, that was basically drawing the attention of the whole room to us.

“Lupin is back!” Nicky just replied, still busy poking Neil everywhere it was appropriate to. I didn’t know how much more I could endure before breaking his finger.

“You’re taking the piss!” Renée gasped, then broke down laughing.

“Huh,” I snapped my fingers in front of my cousin’s eyes, and he finally turned towards me, “Care to explain?”

“Oh, right,” Nicky chuckled, “sorry. Neil’s favorite professor is back from his time off doing research in some part of Wales.”

“And Neil totally has a crush on him,” Allison piped up.

“Totally,” Renée confirmed, nodding in my direction as to convey a message with her eyes that basically said, ‘see? You could do it.’

But I couldn’t, so I just turned to Neil, who was regaining composure after Nicky’s attack.

“Is this the professor you told me about in January? The one from the book?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “and I don’t have a crush on him, Nicky!”

“Sure,” my cousin rolled his eyes, “you don’t like boys and all that. Whatever, Neil, you’re coming out of that closet sometime before I die!”

“Plus, it’s totally normal to fancy a professor,” Allison stated, “and he’s a hottie, so I understand. Too bad he’s totally gay.”

“I fancied a professor once,” Renée looked at the ceiling, her face contorted in an expression that showed the effort she was putting into reviving that memory, “I think he was a Care of the Magical Creatures teacher. I was in my second year, so he wasn't my professor, but I saw him everywhere. He was so good looking I thought I could faint every time I saw him in the corridors.”

“You’re a bunch of perverts, and I despise every and each one of you,” Neil rolled his eyes in annoyance.

“Oh, baby,” Allison poked his cheek, which made Nicky chuckle again, “you love us. And also, you’re in love with Lupin.”

“I… I mean…” Neil began to blush again, so he just grunted and slapped away her hand, “shut up!”

“We did it, boys!” Nicky announced, throwing his hands in the air a gesture of victory, “He didn’t deny it!”

While everybody got lost in other conversations, I left Renée to rekindle with her friends and talk about their last year with Dan and Allison and scooted over to Neil to talk to him. He was sitting across the table from me and was reading one of the books we had as a summer assignment for our DADA class.

“Hi,” I choked up.

“Oh,” he looked up at me and smiled gently, “hi. Sorry about… um… that,” he pointed at my cousin, deep in conversation with my twin, with his head, and then used a napkin as a bookmark to close the book.

“If I remember correctly,” I smirked, “you might not be in love with him, but you are indeed his favorite student.”

“Well,” Neil took a deep breath, but averted his eyes towards the food that was laid in front of us, “that might be because we… um… we share a little problem, if you get me. McGonagall took care of him before me, that’s why she’s so strict about it. ”

“What?”

Then all the clues and information I had about that man came flooding to me, drowning my senses in realization. A man, named Remus Lupin, whose jokes always ended with a punchline on the moon and whose friends called him Moony, that, if I remembered well from one of the few descriptions his friend – or rather, lover – Sirius had done of him, was covered in scars and that was McGonagall’s student in the past… he was a werewolf. He was the werewolf McGonagall had told me about all that time training to help Neil.

“So,” as a lightbulb lit in my brain, I shot a confused look towards Neil and whispered, “is he going to help you, or do you still need the panther?”

“I think he’d eat me if we were to cross paths on one of those days,” he laughed.

“That’s not good,” I urged, but he still brushed it off with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t worry, Drew,” his hand landed a little too close to mine and his pinky finger brushed against mine, making me swallow hard as he looked at me with tender eyes, “I’ll always need you.”

My heart landed in my stomach, thumping and beating and accelerating so much I thought Dumbledore could hear it from the other side of the Hall. I just gulped and averted my eyes from his indigo irises that were staring directly into my brain. Now that I knew that he could easily read my emotions, I asked myself what did he think that that sudden silence and that restrain could indicate: yes, he could feel how my body changed its response towards someone or something, but he couldn’t just put a name on the rhythm of my heartbeat, or the sweat on my palms, or the way my chest heaved when he was around.

Could he tell what he was doing to me? So much for admiring him from afar and longing for him unnoticed. Could he actually tell I was starting to… fucking Christ.

The Sorting Ceremony began soon after that short exchange between the two of us. As new first year students trotted through the large corridors that formed between the long tables and stumbled to try and surpass each other, I watched carefully while McGonagall lowered the Hat on each and every one of their heads before shouting out a sentence.

There were a lot of Slytherins, which made Allison and Neil holler in excitement and clap. Aaron and I stayed mostly quiet when a new Ravenclaw was announced, but the table of the House clapped quietly and welcomed the new recruits with kind words and shushed reassurances. The new Hufflepuffs were met with smiles and hugs from the whole table, and at one point even Renée stood up to go and congratulate the kids. The Gryffindors, whose joy was dimmed by the black shade that the Quidditch team casted on it, were equally pleased by their new acquisitions.

The Ceremony was fast, and the Hat didn’t encounter any difficulty into sorting the new students. But as I looked at the piece of talking cloth on the stool right next to McGonagall, I noticed that the Heads of the four Houses were intensely staring at me, maybe wondering what could’ve been if I ended up in one of the other Houses instead.

Another man, a rather young professor in a ragged robe and dark green eyes, was studying me from the distance, eyeing me up and down as the table filled with food and drinks and the banquet started. He was promptly called back to order by McGonagall, who laughed and offered him the plate full of potatoes that the professors were passing around.

The group of friends gleefully started their first meal of the year, stuffing themselves with soup and meat and many other finely prepared dishes. Mostly, it was Nicky, Renée, Matt and Dan who seemed to do all the talking; Allison tried to be as talkative as she could, but it seemed that Seth’s absence left a hole in her heart, making her quieter than usual; Aaron sometimes chimed in with some of his own thoughts on the various subjects, but mostly listened.

Neil and I ate in silence, able to steal glances of each other every once in a while. At one point, our gazes met and he subtly smiled at me and winked. I felt like I could pass out.

“Would every student please pay attention?” McGonagall voice echoed on the thick stone walls, and the room shushed as she stepped away from the stand, approached by Dumbledore, “The Headmaster will now give his annual welcome speech. Thank you, everyone.”

The ancient wizard walked up to the stand, his grey robes rustling and swishing at every step he took. Once he knew everybody had their eyes on him, he cleared his throat. I saw the raggedy professor shoot him an annoyed look, but McGonagall quickly swatted him across his head – just like he was her son – and reprimanded him.

“Dear students,” the Headmaster began, and something in the way his voice was firmer than usual made me fear what might’ve come next, “It’s a pleasure to have you all here in this school, whether it is for the first time or for the last, or whatever comes in between. In every one of you, I see some of the greatest minds of this millennium, and surely of the wizarding world. You all impress me every day with your strength, your wittiness, your shrewdness, or your diligence and talent. You must know that we aspire to make you feel independent and brave enough to be able to face whatever obstacle you might encounter in your life. But the challenges start here, in this very school.”

Confused murmurs filled the room as the students looked at each other, questioning what Dumbledore might have meant with his last sentence. I turned towards Neil, that was still focusing on his book, unbothered by the spectacle that Dumbledore was making. I scoffed and shook my head in disbelief, before returning to the speech.

“After some difficulties we have encountered with our past allies, the schools of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, due to the conflict we have had with those institutions because of some students we supposedly stole from them,” Neil’s eyes shot up, in the direction of the Gryffindor table, where Jean Moreau was, already looking back at the redhead, “The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry decided to still keep the traditions alive, despite the adversities. That’s why this year the Triwizard Tournament will happen regardless, and will be fought between three students of this school.”

A loud gasp emerged from the crowd, and I took a look around to see if anyone was as confused as me about the situation. What was a Triwizard and why did it involve a fight of some kind? Should I have been worried? Were we allowed to bring some weapons, like knives or nunchakus or something?

I yanked Renée's sleeve so she would turn to me and answer some of those questions, but before I even spoke, she began explaining.

“The Triwizard Tournament is a contest, usually held with the other two largest schools in the continent, in which three champions have to challenge each other to pass three tasks designed by the professors to test their abilities, their intelligence and courage. It’s extremely dangerous, and it was discontinued at some point because of the high death risk it held. The last time we did this fucking tournament a Hufflepuff died. His name was Cedric. They say he was basically the first blood of The Great War.”

“What?” I whisper-shouted at her, taken-aback by the revelation, “How is this thing still in place?”

“Traditions, I guess. And the War is over…”

“What war?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Renée cut me off, as Dumbledore was shushing the crowd so he could speak again.

“Quiet, everyone,” he tried, “I assure, the professors will work so that the Tournament will be as safe as possible. On the other hand, Madam Winfield is a perfectly trained healer and she has dealt with impossible cases since she took her predecessor’s place.”

“I promise,” Abby spoke up from the Professors table behind the Headmaster, “I have dealt with some serious wounds. I can tend to the most life-threatening situations and make you leave without a scratch. You’ll be fine.”

“Good,” the Headmaster nodded, “but there’s more. Since we’re limited to the Hogwarts’s students pool from which to pick our champions, we will be extending the age limit to everyone between the fifth and seventh year, and everyone’s name will be put in the Goblet of Fire.”

“Are you insane?” Dan stood up, yelling and crossing her arms across her chest, “Most seventh-years are way undertrained to stand up to the tasks. Fifth-years are at even grater risk! Are you really trying to kill us off or something?”

“Miss Wilds,” McGonagall stood up, “I cannot accept this behavior from one of my students.”

“Professor, with all due respect,” Allison stood up too, “she’s right. We’re undertrained, unprepared and fragile. You should consider that a person in their fifth-year might be even more incompetent, and we know how fatal the tasks can be.”

“You two are in big…” McGonagall began, but she was interrupted by Dumbledore, who just raised a hand in her direction.

“That’s enough, Minerva,” Dumbledore stated, “the girls are correct. That’s why we will extract one champion per House and the chosen three will be looked after by the Head of their House, that will make sure to extend their student’s competence in dueling and skills in using magic. An exception must be the House of Ravenclaw, whose Head was chosen to devise one of the tasks and can't, therefore, take part in the training of the student.”

Aaron finally picked up his ears, and the whole Ravenclaw table quieted as we waited for the nomination of the professor that would’ve taken care of us during the Tournament.

“Professor Lupin,” Dumbledore pointed him out with a movement of his arm, as Lupin – the infamous Moony - stood up and bowed his head to the students, while I realized it was him that was looking at me before, “offered to look after the Ravenclaw champion.”

That said, the Headmaster didn’t leave space for questions and doubts, returning to the table without uttering another word. When I turned back to our group of friends, Neil’s face was worried and sad, as he pushed around some peas in his plate absent-mindedly.

“Neil?” I inquired, “What’s wrong?”

“Looks like one of you crows got my professor.”

He suddenly stood up and headed for the exit, and I tried to follow him, but Renée firmly pushed me back down on my chair. I looked at her confused, but she just sighed.

“Let him blow off some steam, he’s had some rough days lately.”

I just nodded, but still made my exit a few moments later to go to bed. If both Aaron and Neil wouldn’t talk to me, that’d be one hell of a year.

Notes:

UGH! I missed the twin's birthday by so little!
Either way, happy belated birthday to Andrew, one of my comfort characters and the protagonist of this fic. <3

Also thank you Taylor Swift for the title of this chapter lmao

Chapter 19: The Archer

Summary:

TW!
Minor mentions of self-harm and rape

The first week of school went smoothly, but lessons had yet to begin, and I found I had no way to spend my time but to lounge around in my dorm and do my homework, while the whole school waited for the big, Triwizard hammer to fall.

We didn’t know how much time the Goblet would take to spit out the three names of the lucky contenders, so we – well, mostly the other students, given I didn’t care much for other burdens to be bestowed upon me – waited in anticipation. As the students at the school passed their time running in the corridors and living through their last days of freedom before the great advent of both the Triwizard and Quidditch Tournament and the incoming school year, I tried and stayed as much isolated from them as possible, handling and enduring the occasional visit from Renée and – more often than the previous year – my cousin.

Realizing that Aaron’s absence might have made me sadder than most could acknowledge, Nicky had taken it upon himself to try and maintain the fragile contact I still had with my birth-family, while simultaneously pushing me and Aaron closer, as if that was going to actually accomplish something.

Either way, he was fun to hang around with, and it was gratifying how much a boy a year older than me didn’t know compared to me. He had also been aware that he was a wizard since his birth, while I had known about it all for barely more than a year. That wasn’t as to say he was stupid, but that I was starting to realize that my talent in Charms maybe had a little more to it than I wanted to admit.

As it turned out, Renée was Head girl for the year, while Aaron, Matt and Neil were all prefects for their respective Houses. Which, basically, meant that Neil took the nasty habit to drop on me late at night, after his rounds around the schoolgrounds.

Since the first banquet, we hadn’t really exchanged words: he was way more silent than his usual self, which worried me. He seemed to have turned a little bitter during the summer; he was snappy, and he let his emotions run looser, especially the negative ones.

“Sometimes I feel anger eating its way at me,” he admitted, on one of those late-night drop-ins, “Do you think it’s the wolf? Or do I just have a shitty personality?”

“I think anger is a normal emotion to feel, even if it’s a lot of it,” I replied, staring at the drapes around the bed, while I dangled my feet from the side of the bed, “and you and I are really the most entitled to anger, anyway.”

“So, both of us have a shitty personality.”

“Both of us suffered because shitty stuff and shitty people,” I reiterated, "We've earned the right to have shitty personalities. Also, yours’s not entirely shitty. I think you're just difficult to understand at times."

"Do you have trouble understanding me, too?"

"If I had, I wouldn't be sharing my crucial, sleepless night with you, wolfie," I smiled as I hurled one of the pillows towards his head.

"That nickname has got to go away at some point," he laughed back, retrieving the pillow and hugging it.

"I've got to balance Drew out," I shrugged, and sat up to take a better look at him.

He was so cute, sitting on the floor, with his leg crossed and the pillow close to his chest as if it was a protective armor, with a faint smile caught on his lips like he had forgotten to stop laughing, and I could feel the heat of the feelings I had for him radiating through my body like shocks of electricity. I swallowed my emotions and tried to keep up with the conversation I had started.

"Would you prefer Abe?" I suggested, unable to keep my thoughts steady long enough to formulate a better retaliation to my own point.

"Abe?!" he scoffed, appalled, "Don't you dare."

"Sorry, Abram," I chuckled, while he rolled his eyes.

"I shouldn't have told you about my middle name."

"I have one too, y'know," I shrugged, "The only way you'll get it out of me is if you marry me, though."

"If it means that I can vex you about your middle name until the day I drop dead, Andrew Minyard," he threw the pillow back at me and I caught it with my left hand before it could hit me, "I'll marry the shit out of you, one day."

Fucking hell.

I pretended to burst out laughing and buried my face in the pillow, trying to cover the fact that I was blushing heavily, and I could feel my cheeks getting redder by the second.

Neil laughed too and stood up to come and sit next to me on my bed. He laid on the opposite side from me and dangled his feet from the high mattress. As I laid down again, our heads were right next to each other, while our body were as far as they could be. Which was really depicting of our relationship for the last year, I thought on a whim.

We were both staring at the ceiling, contemplating whatever was on our minds. Neil and I hadn't talked in days, and wouldn't really talk for a lot after that simple night. Looking back, I would know that that was the last peaceful night the two of us would've had together for a long while, but at that moment I laid as close as I could to him, hoping to God he couldn't read my thoughts as I reminded myself how easy would it have been if I just gathered the courage to turn around and kiss him.

Still, I knew even then that something about us was off, and I really couldn't do anything about it. People have this nasty habit of letting their emotions get the best of them, and Neil and I weren't any different.

Sometimes one of us piped up with a lonely sentence, an input to a conversation that never really started. At some point, won by the weariness, we both fell asleep, facing each other.

The next morning, when I woke up, he was evidently long gone, but where his head had rested the entire night was a simple note on a piece of parchment ripped from one of my homework scrolls. His handwriting was familiar, and he knew how to use a quill better than I ever would. The note was short, but meaningful, and my heart swelled up at the sight of it, making me wonder whether maybe Renée had been right after all.

"I've missed you, dumbass. -N.W.J.", it said.

I laughed as I let myself fall on the mattress again, clutching the note and holding it against my heart.

"Fuck you, Abram," I whispered to myself, "you'll be the death of me."

 

---

 

“Class dismissed, children!”

As the Runes professor ushered us out of the classroom, I abandoned a mute Aaron to catch up with Neil, who was chatting with some Slytherins of his year. At a second, better look I discovered that Tessa was with him, and that didn’t in any way make me rush and hurry towards him like my life depended on it.

I arrived at his side, and he looked at me smiling softly and mouthing a hushed ‘good morning’ while Tessa and her friend went on rambling about their totally crazy week. I repressed my laughter as Neil mocked the two girls, facing me and away from them. Finally, he turned around and threw a goodbye to the girls before returning to me and walking beside me to nowhere in particular. I shot a glance in Tessa’s direction to find her visibly disappointed about Neil’s abrupt take-off, but I didn’t let myself ponder about the implications of the look on her face.

But then, curiosity got the best of me.

“So,” I began, and I cleared my throat, “is Tessa…?”

“Oh, no. Godric, no,” Neil laughed, and while I could feel the tension physically leave my shoulders, I glanced at him in a way that must’ve worried him, as he was quick to clear the air between us, “She, um… I think she fancies me, but you know I’m not into girls. She’s a friend. The kind of friend that simply won’t take the hint, but a friend nonetheless.”

“I get it,” I muttered, lowering my gaze to the floor of the corridor that we were ambling in.

“Ugh!” he finally groaned, “Don’t you hate when people just don’t understand clues? It’s so frustrating. You do everything so you don’t have to say things out loud, and they still won’t get it!”

“Oh, I know. I wish those people would just stop and notice something is up,” I rolled my eyes.

“Right?” he nodded, and I felt the urge to laugh in his clueless, dumbass face, “I mean, it’s not like I’m not making it obvious.”

As I tried to remain quiet and burst out laughing at his statements, I looked over at him and something felt off. I stopped right in my tracks and grabbed him by his shoulders, making him face me. I pulled his head closer to mine by pushing slightly with my palm on the nape of his neck and I tried to ignore how he blushed violently, how his breath was hitting the tip of my nose, how flustered he was, how he clenched his fists as soon as his face was brought so close to mine. I wanted to ignore what that proximity was really doing to me and focussed on the matter at hand.

"You're taller," I simply announced, and then immediately let him free. He breathed heavily, like he had just run a marathon, and gulped.

"What?" he panted, out of air, eyes panicked and cheeks red and lips bitten down with his beautiful, canine teeth, and his neck tensed up so that the tendons and his windpipe were showing and I... I just wanted to… God, that was so fucking... Anyway.

"You're taller than me. Last year you were shorter," I pointed out in a hurry to change the atmosphere around us, since I couldn't understand whether he was feeling embarrassed, violated or just... Fuck.

"I am almost 15, Drew," he chuckled, but it came out weirdly since he hadn't been able to catch his breath just yet, "I ought to grow up. Puberty and all."

"Well, no fair," I shrugged, "I am as short as I was last year. Why do you get to be taller than me?"

"Genetics, I guess," he seemed to regain composure and with his head signaled me to keep walking before starting to himself, "And it's just by little."

"It's disrespectful," I protested, but he just loudly laughed again as he urged me to follow him, "You can't be taller than me."

"Why not?" he inquired. The smile on his beautiful face was intrigued and sarcastic, and he looked down on me like I was being a petty child. Maybe I was, but still.

"Because I'm older," I suggested, but Neil cackled again and went to surpass the greenhouse where we had Herbology lessons. I hadn't even noticed that we had ended up in the courtyard, but he just kept walking, "Where are you going?"

"To the entrance of the Forest," he simply said, like it was obvious, but the confused look on my face must've told him that I was unaware or what we were doing, "Full moon, today. Abby told me that since you know about me already there's no point in waiting for the moon in the infirmary. She'll bring us dinner, but we can hang out until sunset."

"Do..." I blinked at him, surprised, "you don't mind that I might see you transform?"

"It's not a big deal," he shrugged, but he walked with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders curved and it was painfully obvious it wasn’t something he was so comfortable in doing. Still, he muttered, "You'll see it one day, anyway."

“I don’t have to, if you don’t want me to,” I suggested, bending over to try and catch his gaze so that we could have that heart-to-heart conversation in a proper way.

He averted his eyes as much as he could, speed-walking towards the dense forest and its dark, giant trees. And even though he stated that he was just a little bit taller than me, his longer legs made it difficult to keep his pace, so I ended up running up to him and grabbing his bare wrist, gripping just underneath his robe.

We were just at the entrance of the Forest, out of reach from any other student that didn’t dare to go that far on the outside grounds. Even Hagrid was far enough, in his little shack, for him not to hear or see us having that conversation. As I pulled at his arm, Neil’s body crashed onto mine for a second, but he hastily put some distance between us. Still, he was still close enough that our robes rustled against each other. He was in profile, looking back at me and shooting glances between my face and my hand.

I could feel his scars bulging on his thin skin and peppering his slender forearm, and for a moment he just looked at me with an expression that conveyed how he didn’t want me to feel them, not because he was embarrassed, not because he wasn’t going to show them to me anyway, but because he knew that particular spot on his body might’ve been sensitive for me, might’ve triggered me into relapsing yet again. He wasn’t angry, and he wasn’t sad, and he wasn’t reticent: he was worried. He turned around completely and faced me. I didn’t loosen my grip, meeting his pained eyes. I found the courage to swipe my thumb across one of the reachable scars, and he flinched, but I just slightly shook my head.

“Neil,” I began, “I won’t look at you if you don’t want me to. I know…” I tried to take in a deep breath of air, but this proximity just made me want to… God help me, “I know we’re friends and I know you care about me, but I care about you, too. I’ll just wait outside of the forest for your call, and then I’ll transfigure and come for you.”

“You’ll come?”, his eyes were swelling with tears.

“What’s the problem?”, I reached for the usual scar on his cheekbone with my free hand, and he closed his eyes at the touch. What the fuck was going on with him?

“The wolf,” he explained, “This summer… It’s gotten worse. Abby found me with my stomach ripped open. I… I need you,” a hiccup interrupted his speech, but he promptly went on, “You promise you’ll come?”

“I promise,” I whispered and nodded quickly, “as soon as the sun goes down, I’ll come and look for you.”

He nodded in return and my hand finally slipped away from his wrist, freeing him. Totally surprising me, though, he grabbed it and laced our fingers together. For a couple of seconds, we both looked at our hands, intertwined, gaping at them in shock. Then, when I finally found the strength to look up again, he was already watching me, with a soft smile on his lips.

“Thanks, Drew,” he breathed out.

“It’s our thing, isn’t it?” I swallowed down my emotions, “You save me, I save you. We’re a great duo.”

“We are,” he chuckled.

He let go of my hand and began to walk away. I couldn’t comprehend whether my heart had stopped, or it was beating so fast I couldn’t perceive it anymore. I just walked behind him, and when the time came, as I had promised, I went to look after him.

And when the sun rose again, I went back to my human form, and I left him my shirt. He was fast enough to cover up before passing out due to the stress of the transformation, but still he fainted, so I picked him up and brought him to Abby.

I waited outside the infirmary as she inspected him, and soon enough she came out with her usual radiant smile.

“He’s in fine shape,” she announced, “I think he’ll be able to attend today’s lessons, as soon as he wakes up.”

I nodded, but remembered that I was still shirtless, and the whole school was about to wake up.

“I have to go,” I stated, and turned around to begin and walk towards the Ravenclaw tower.

“I’ll tell him you were here,” she called after me.

Right, I thought as I sighed, mind telling him I think I might be falling in love with him, too?

 

---

 

The door of the classroom flung open and slammed against the wall behind it. The whole class turned around, but I knew precisely who it was, so I just scoffed as Lupin’s face lit up and welcomed the tardy student.

“Josten!” he piped up, “I was just introducing myself, you’re right on time. Have a seat.”

“Thank you, professor,” Neil panted, as he clearly had run his way here.

Lupin waited for him to find a place and settle before returning to his introduction.

“Alright, lads,” he smiled at the class, his face battered with scars that I assumed came for his first moons, like Neil’s, “as most of you know, I’m Professor Remus Lupin. Some of you have already met me, some of you haven’t; but I am your Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, nonetheless. I hope you all will grow to look at me like a trusted figure, someone you don’t necessarily look up to but to whom you know you can go when you’re in trouble. I was one of you, once upon a time, and I’ve gotten in quite a lot of quarrels when I was your age. So, trust me when I say, I understand you.”

He took a moment to take the image of the whole class in, before turning towards where Neil was seated and winking at him. I, apparently, was the only one to notice. Before I could turn around too and watch Neil’s reaction, though, Lupin snapped his fingers and the book on my desk flew open, and so did Aaron’s, who was sitting beside me, to the exact same page.

“Without further ado,” Lupin smiled widely, “let’s begin!”

The lesson, that was an introduction to some counter-hexes, was interesting, and his easy-going and confident way of teaching made the whole learning process more interactive and captivating. He was very tall, lanky, even though at a quick glance he might’ve seemed older than he actually was. His bright green eyes were all I could focus on, full of life and powerful even after a full moon, which must’ve meant that he was able to control his wolf in a manner that Neil wasn’t used to just yet. I hoped that he had taken the time, in the past, to comfort Neil, both as his teacher and as his counterpart, and to offer him advice.

As the lesson came to an end, Aaron quickly packed his books and left before I could put a word in to try and talk to him. I sighed, but still stood up and began to gather my things too. At that point, Lupin called out again.

This time, it was for me.

“Andrew, do you mind waiting a moment?”, he yelled from his desk, at the very end of the classroom, while rummaging through some papers.

I spun around to meet Neil’s eyes, while he was half-turned towards the exit and half toward me and the professor. I furrowed my brows to silently ask if he know what all that was about, but he just shrugged and pointed at the door to signal he’d wait outside for me. I nodded in remand, and then waited for the students to clear the room to walk up to the desk.

“Have a seat, Andrew,” Lupin began, still reading some documents and not lifting his eyes from the multiple pieces of parchment scattered on the surface of the table.

I obeyed as I dragged one of the chairs of the classroom to put in front of him and I sat down.

“What’s this about?” I asked, nervous and impatient.

He looked up from the papers and smiled lightly, before returning to them, but still finally beginning our conversation.

“You remind me of someone,” he breathed out.

“Is this what you wanted to tell me? That I’m similar to one of your schoolmates? I don’t have a lot of time to hang around, Professor,” I crossed my arms over my chest and tilted my head, but Lupin just scoffed and shook his head.

“I’m sure you don’t, and please, call me Remus,” he finally put down the papers, “but no, I wanted to have a difficult chat with you. I remember you were present at the Headmaster’s speech a week ago.”

“Yes,” I narrowed my eyes, “and you were watching me. I wondered why.”

“McGonagall had told me about a student that was helping Neil with his furry little problem,” Lupin mimicked my stance, relaxing against the back of the chair and crossing his arms, “I gathered it was you. I also gathered either one of them had told you about me, and the fact that Neil and I share that part of our lives.”

“Yes,” I repeated, “I know about it.”

“That’s fantastic,” he nodded, “and that’s precisely what I wanted to talk to you about. I knew it was you for two specific reasons: first of all, you and Neil seem very close. That was the kind of bond I shared with the friends that had helped me with my moons back in the days. One of them still does,” he took a moment to breathe deeply, and I wondered what that was about, but he didn’t leave me time to ask, “And secondly, your smell. I assume Neil has told you about it as well.”

“He said I smell like magic,” I shrugged.

“Yes, but you see, everyone in here does,” he gestured widely at the room, but I gathered he was talking about the school in general, “You, however, smell differently. Your smell is distinguishable, it’s recognizable, and it drew my attention to you almost immediately.”

“How?” I inquired, leaning over as that conversation was taking an unexpected turn.

“McGonagall also told me that you were able to accomplish a full animagus transfiguration in a matter of months. That’s very impressive, even with McGonagall’s help.”

“I was trained,” I reiterated, defensively, “there’s nothing unusual about that.”

“Oh, I get it,” he smiled wickedly, “You know.”

“What?” I spat.

“You know your magic smells different, and that you have more powers than others of your age and in your year. Your smell,” he explained, “is tangy, harsh, pungent. It fills the air, and it’s so thick that with the right control of the canine senses a werewolf possesses, I can actually see it around you, if I look hard enough.”

“I don’t understand the point,” I tried to divert the conversation and put an end to it.

“You are a powerful wizard, Andrew,” he announced, confident and strong, “Did it ever happen to you, when you were little, that you wished so much for something, and it eventually came true?”

Flashes of memories dashed in front of my eyes: the time one of my foster mothers, one of those who violated me, choked with her food when I looked at her for a little longer than intended; the time I had yelled at the neighbor’s father to leave me alone and he acted as he was put under a spell, walking away from me and actively never talking to me ever again; the time I had wished for Drake to hurt himself so he wouldn’t be able to touch me for a while, and at the same moment he fell from the stairs, breaking his femur.

I had always thought that those events were peculiar, and it had occurred to me, the year prior, when I had discovered that I was a wizard, that it might’ve been the answer. I hadn’t realized that it wasn’t the same for others my age, that it was something only I was able to do.

“Yes,” I breathed out.

“That,” Lupin went on, “added to the fact that you are able to cast wordless spells and overall use wordless magic, plus the fact that you were able to achieve a full animagus form in a matter of months, and the fact that you have basically the same, strong smell of magic that a wizard as powerful of Dumbledore has, every single of these things, Andrew, makes you a miracle, a mighty and great wizard. The greatest of your generation, perhaps.”

A heavy silent fell on us, and I choked on my air as I took his words in. I had wanted to believe that my talents were just that, that my diligence in school was a fruit of my hard studies, that the fact that I had accomplished so much in such a little time was due to the fact that I had put a effort greater than my classmates in learning new things, that the fact that everyone seemed to praise me for my achievements was just because of how poorly the other students did in those matters.

But it was just a ruse, and deep down I knew I was tricking myself into believing something that wasn’t true. I had known, for a long time also, that something in me was different from the others. It wasn’t just that I didn’t precisely fit in with the wizards because I was raised by muggles. I didn’t fit because I was superior, in a way. And everyone had excepted it – McGonagall, Dumbledore, my friends, my cousin, even this professor that I had never seen in my life – but I refused to believe it.

“Why,” I swallowed, “why are you telling me this?”

“Everything I told you,” Lupin sighed, “you had already figured out. I, however, have the duty to warn you.”

“About what?” my breath was caught in my throat, unable to enter or leave my lungs, trapped by the anxiety that was filling my blood.

“I asked you if you had heard the Headmaster’s speech. You know that I have been assigned to look after the Ravenclaw champion in the Triwizard Tournament,” he stated, and I nodded.

“There might not be one,” I pointed out, “There are three champions, and four Houses. One is going to be left out.”

“Not Ravenclaw,” Lupin corrected me, “and, I’m afraid, certainly not you.”

“Me?” I stood up, “I’m not even fifth year! I mean, I know the age matches, but I’ve been admitted to this school just last year!”

“Andrew,” Lupin shot me a glance that was both scolding and soothing, “the Goblet chooses between the most deserving of the names it is presented with. With a power like yours, it’s unlikely it will leave you out of the Tournament.”

“So, what?” I yelled, panicked, “I have to be one of the champions even if I don’t have the proper training just because of the magic in my blood?”

“I know this is a lot,” he sighed, “but you have to realize, I have been appointed for a reason. I will finish to train you.”

“What?”

“I’ll take you under my wing,” he said, “I’ll train to your best. You’ll be able to embrace your powers, you’ll be able to exploit your talents in every way you desire.”

I crashed onto the chair again and tilted my head backwards, exhausted.

“I will try my best,” I whispered.

“Either way,” Lupin sighed again, “you have to prepare yourself to the possibility that you’ll have to fight.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ve been fighting my whole life. How hard can it be?”

“I know who you remind me of,” Lupin smiled fondly at me, leaning over his desk with his elbows propped on the surface.

“Who?”

“Me,” he lowered his gaze, “When I was your age. Sure, I have a lot in common with Neil, and our furry little problem is the most prominent thing. But you… with your temper and your strong words, with the fact that you don’t seem to take shit from anyone, with your secrets, and your quick-wits and your unspoken words… You remind me of me.”

“Then, Remus,” I mumbled, “this is the beginning of a great alliance.”

“I sure hope so,” he peeped, then pointed at the door, “You may go, now. I see a head full of red hair peeking through the entrance every once in a while.”

I scoffed, but promptly picked up my bag and went for the door, without so much of a goodbye.

That was it, then.

That would, indeed, be one hell of a year.

Notes:

Hi, hello!
Bit of a filler chapter, so sorry, but I promise it's an important one :) Also soft Andreil is always accepted.
If you'd like any clarifications about the Harry Potter characters displayed in the fic, you may ask! Just to be clear, this takes place after the death of Voldemort, but clearly in this AU something went differently from canon. Some of the characters died (James and Lily, Cedric) but some survived (Dumbledore, Remus, etc.). If you have any questions, fire at will ;)

Chapter 20: Babylon

Now, what the fuck is he doing?

It was easy to keep track of the messy red hair that were flashing before my eyes, mid-air, while guarding the hoops. What wasn't easy, on the other hand, was understanding what the redhead was, in fact, trying to accomplish by sprinting on his broom like a madman, utterly crazed in his jerked movements.

The Quidditch tournament had started the week prior, and the teachers as well as the students were eager to finish it as soon as possible to leave space to the more important Tournament taking place that year. I thought it was unfair of them to deprive the younger students of their much deserved fun, but I also understood the importance of hurrying the process.

The first match had been Gryffindor against Hufflepuff, and as much as Dan tried to keep up with the red and gold hivemind, everyone in our little group of friend knew it was utterly impossible to stop it. The win, however, was not so definite, as the Hufflepuffs were able to catch the snitch: either way, Renée had been completely wiped away by Kevin and Jean, so the points given by the snitch weren't enough for them to close the gap between the two teams.

Allison, as new captain of the Slytherins, had tried to be the bigger person and comfort Renée once they had reached the changing rooms. Aaron, Neil and I were also there, and Aaron went for our cousin almost immediately. Neil and Matt were good friends, so they naturally started talking about the match in good spirits. However, it was painfully clear that Dan took that defeat pretty harshly, and when our eyes met, it was almost as clear that neither of us would have known how to talk to the other. As she slammed close her locker after retrieving new, clean robes, though, I found the strength to speak up.

"You're better than them, you know," I stated.

"What?" she half-turned around, giving me the best death-glare she could manage. I wasn't fazed by it.

"You're better than most of them, both as a player and even more as a captain. I know you hate them because they kicked you out of the team, and I can't blame you, but I think in the Hufflepuff ranks you were able to learn more and to grow more as a player. Taken singularly, the Griffyndors are shit. It's the team play that gives them strength. That's why they're not unbeatable, but it sure is difficult, so don't beat yourself too much over it."

Dan scoffed, but still smiled fondly at me, and bit down her lip as she tried to hold in the tears.

"You're kind," she responded.

"I'm not, and you know it," I shrugged, "That's why you should also know that I'm telling the truth."

Dan felt better when she exited the shower, even though no one could guess why.

The next set match was Slytherin against us. I had heard Aaron tell Nicky that given Neil's newfound strength and quickness it was a lost cause to begin with. The captain of the team, David, had told me that I had to guard that goal with my own life if we wanted to have any chances at winning, because Neil would've surely caught the snitch before we could even blink.

With warnings like that, and knowing who they were talking about, it was almost obvious that I was surprised in seeing how wrong they could be.

The match was taking way longer than any of the Slytherins were used to play. Usually, their matches lasted for about an hour before Neil was able to catch the snitch and put an end to everything. But he seemed out of it, and I couldn't understand why.

The Ravenclaw chasers scored a lot of points against the Slytherin's keeper, and the whole thing was made easier by the fact that everyone in the green team was focussed on what Neil was doing.

Which was nothing.

He was just basically avoiding the bludgers as they hurled towards him, quick as ever. But other than that, he just stayed as far as he could from action, while he was usually so active that he often acted as a chaser as well as seeker while he was on the lookout for the snitch.

I blocked another quaffle thrown at me by Allison and she grunted, shooting me a death glare, but I just shrugged and threw the ball in the air to hit it with the end of my broom, sending it towards one of the Ravenclaw chaser ahead.

Allison went back to the center of the pitch, bat in hand, and tried to distract the Ravenclaw team as best as she could only using the bludgers, but it was all pointless.

When the snitch finally appeared, the seeker of our team spent about half an hour trying to catch it, while Neil just stood back and observed the other player struggled with something that would've been easy for him. A little hatred sprouted in me in watching him drown his own team like that, mostly because I couldn't understand why.

Since the full moon, I had been avoiding Neil, struggling to come to terms with my feelings. As much as I knew that I had feelings for him, I had settled for a dear friendship and affection accompanied with a weird sexual tension, also known as crush. But it had developed, without me noticing, in something much more serious.

I had promised myself, a long time prior to that, that the last thing I would do to myself would be falling in love. I hated the concept of being so relentlessly dependent from another one's feelings, like mine weren't complex and fluctuating enough as they were. Neil, on his part, was nearly as unstable as I was, and I couldn't believe I had let myself fall for somebody whose feelings were not only unknown and obscure regarding almost everything, let alone me, but also painfully clear about the fact that he didn't care about love and relationship and boys and girls. He had told me countless times that he saw Seth's relationship with Allison as a distraction to what he thought was Seth's focus, Quidditch. I was the worst person to deal with in a relationship, and Neil was the worst to reach for if somebody wanted a relationship. It could never work. So I did what I knew best: I ignored both my feelings and him, hoping they would somehow disappear.

It was pointless, as my heart fell under my shoes once I saw him in his Quidditch robes on the field, with that ironclad look that made me fall in love in the first place. I had bitten the inside of my cheek and tried to be as steady as I could during the game. As it turned out, that was pointless too, because Neil ruined it all by himself.

I couldn't understand, because I knew that Quidditch was his main passion: he lived and breathed for that sport, it was what mattered the most to him, and he was damn good at it. He had the talent to be scouted for national teams, he had the passion to actually make it. But that day, on the pitch, he was giving nothing to the match. And that made me both hate him and want to talk to him.

As Wymack whistled the end of the game and the commentator announced our victory, Neil quickly dropped out of the sky and abandoned the broom on the grass, racing towards the changing rooms. Allison was fast to follow.

Before Wymack could object, the teams exited the field without so much as a friendly exchange of compliments and congrats, and I agreed, coming down steadily and going in search of the Slytherin's seeker.

Before I could see him, I could hear Allison's fists banging on the shower's door and her voice screeching as she screamed.

"NEIL JOSTEN!"

I winced, but entered the bathroom, nonetheless. She was accompanied by a comforting Renée who was stroking her back in a tender motion to try and calm her down. Still, she was tense, standing in front of the only closed door, even if the shower was clearly not running. On the bottom, where the door didn't cover, I could see from where I was standing a pair of shoes and the green robe of someone who was sitting on the floor.

"Neil Josten," Allison hissed, "as I live and breathe, I will murder you when you come out of that shower!"

"Everyone has a bad day, Alls," Renée whispered, "Leave him be..."

"No!" she yelled again, stomping her foot on the ground, "He doesn't deserve peace. This was not a bad day; this was full on mutiny."

"Allison," I just called out, and she promptly snapped her head in my direction. A fluctuation of blonde hair cut through the air in her sharp turn, and she glared at me, but it didn't bother me, "he will not get out of there."

"Drew?"

Three heads turned slowly towards the door, where the voice came from. Renée, though, quickly returned to looking at me, raising her brows as to tell me ‘Go on, say something’.

So, against my better judgement, I spoke up.

"I'm here," I announced. A thick silence followed, but I could see his feet shifting and shuffling as he decided what to do. I took the matter in my hands and approached the point where Allison and Renée were standing, then crouched down, "Neil, I'm here," I repeated.

Behind me, the tall girl scoffed as she noticed that my appeal got through the thick skull of the redhead behind the door. He slowly crawled towards the door and turned to put his back against it, and then I could clearly hear he was panting, out of air. That worried me, but I tried to keep my nerves steady for him.

Still, Renée decided it was best to leave Neil to me and get Allison out of there.

“Let’s go, Alls,” she suggested, “We can find something fun to bring to the party. A game or something.”

“Fine,” Allison sighed, very evidently pissed off, “I’ll come.”

“Right. See you there, Andrew?” Renée peeped, and I slowly nodded.

“You better get your man, Minyard,” Allison threatened in return, “because the next time he acts up like this he’s out of my fucking team.”

“Oh, we get it, you’re mad,” I snapped at her, “Just leave and find something better to do than bitching about it.”

“Listen here, you-”

Her hand moved towards my shoulder, and I could sense, even if I couldn’t see, the trajectory it was making, so I just grasped it and twisted it.

“I will break your wrist, Reynolds. Now, leave.”

She retracted her hand and Renée quickly ushered her out of the bathroom, not before shooting me a warning look, but I ignored it. I turned around towards the door and knocked on it as soon as they had left. Neil stood up and opened the door just wide enough for his bright blue eye to peek through the gap, but other than that I couldn’t see anything. His eye was red shot and he looked like he had been crying for ages, and he was still hyperventilating.

“I can’t let you in,” he breathed out.

“I know,” I tried to smile at him, but I just knew it came out wrong, “What should I get you?”

“M-my c-clothes,” Neil stammered, and at a better look I could see he was shivering, “in the locker.”

“I’ll bring water, too. In case you feel like drinking it.”

I rushed into the changing rooms and sent away everyone left from the teams that didn’t already get the hint: the bathroom was closed for business; they could shower in their dorms. After Aaron blatantly rolled his eyes at my request, he and the other Ravenclaws and Slytherins obliged as they should’ve been ready for the party at the Ravenclaw common room already. I ran to Neil’s locker and got some clean clothes for him, picked up my water bottle and went back to him.

The door was still ajar, but he had sat back down, and I approached him slowly.

“I’m back,” I said, as soon as I was close enough for him to hear without having to shout.

“Drew?” he whispered, but he didn’t turn around: his voice quivered, and I knew he was crying, “Would you hold my hand for a while?”

“What?” I was taken aback, “Why?”

“I liked it,” he sniffled as I sat so that we were basically against each other’s back, but the door came between us, “the other time, before the full moon. It comforted me. Would you do it again?”

He slid his hand on the tile floor, as far as he could for me to be easier to reach.

“Fine,” I said, pretending to be bothered by his request, “But only for a couple of minutes. We have a party to attend. And I smell of grass and quaffle and whatever perfume Allison had on and smeared all over the place.”

“You smell fine,” he chuckled, “I like when you smell like the air of the pitch and the wind.”

I sighed, but I put my hand on his and waited for him to weave our fingers together.

“You seem to like an awful lot of things,” I pointed out.

“You still hate most of them?”

“I sure do, wolfie.”

 

---

 

The music at the party was very faint and light-spirited, even if the sulking faces of the Slytherin team kind of ruined the atmosphere. Still, David, the captain, was not shy enough to stop himself from inviting them and everyone else that would’ve wanted to attend, really.

I had left Neil in the bathroom of the Quidditch pitch to shower and change so that I could do the same in my lonely dorm, with a warning that I would’ve waited for him and the party and that if he didn’t show up to assure me that he was still alive I would’ve searched the entire castle for him. He laughed, but he seemed to understand that I wasn’t joking, not even a little bit.

So, after I had put on my cleanest pair of black, baggy jeans and black tank top with a turtleneck, I had crashed on one of the armchairs of the common room, watching everyone enjoy the party and dance while I waited for Neil to show up.

He did take his sweet time, and once in a while Nicky came to check on me and ask if I wanted to take part in the celebration: it was, after all, my victory as well. But I just shook my head and shooed him away every time, as my anxiety grew.

Finally, Neil showed up in a ragged red hoodie and a pair of blue jeans that I had never seen on him, but that were clearly worn out: there were small patches all over them, all of bright colors that I recognized as the colors of the Houses. I could have sworn one of those patches looked a little too much like one of my uniform ties that I had misplaced a couple weeks before.

He eyed the room carefully and found me almost immediately. As soon as he moved towards me, though, he was tackled by Tessa, who threw her arms around his neck. He, polite as ever, gently brushed her off, with a smile so fake but so bright it might’ve actually fooled me too. She looked genuinely disappointed but ultimately let him go, and he fended the crowd to reach me.

As soon as he approached me, he sat on the arm of the chair and didn’t say anything to me for a couple of minutes, just studying the mass of bodies merging indefinitely in front of us.

“Better?” I asked, but I refused to look at him. I could ignore the feelings pumping through my heart just so much.

“We could say that,” he replied, looking over at the dance floor.

“What’s the matter with you lately?” I tried, but it probably came out more accusatory than I wanted, because his head snapped in my direction, and he scoffed in a manner that wasn’t appreciating the irony of the question. I could understand his feelings, but still, I thought I had the right to know.

“What’s the matter with me?” he reiterated, nearly screaming. Thankfully, the music was loud enough to cover our voices to the rest of the room, “What’s the matter with you! I haven’t seen you in weeks. It’s nearly the full moon again and I was left wondering whether you’d come with me. Where have you been?”

“Busy,” I muttered.

“Fuck that,” Neil hissed, “You’ve always been busy, but you always found time for me, for us.”

“Us?”

“Us!” his hands moved between me and him, pointing at the two of us as if the implication of the word was obvious, “Our friendship.”

“I get it,” I laughed, “It’s fine if I ignore Renée for half a school year and ‘she’ll just get over it’ because it served you a purpose. But the moment I have better things to do than lounge around with you and it’s not because I’m training to make sure you don’t maim yourself, suddenly you’re angry. Alright.”

“That’s not what it is!” I could see his fists clench with fury and for a moment I thought he’d hit me.

“What is it, then?” I finally turned towards him. He was staring back already, eyes bright blue and icy.

“You’re avoiding me,” he cried out, “You’re completely, blatantly avoiding me, and you don’t even try to hide it. You cut corners when you see me in the corridors, you lock your door at night – especially when you know I might drop by because I have rounds. Why don’t you just tell me that you hate me so that we can move on?”

“I don’t hate you, Neil,” I scoffed, “Why would you ever think that?”

“Because,” he explained, “there’s no other reason you would ever avoid me like that.”

Bloody idiot, I thought, I don’t hate you. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

“I’m not avoiding you on purpose,” I said instead, like that was going to actually accomplish something, “I don’t know what to tell you, I just hadn’t noticed.”

Neil averted his eyes and lifted his gaze on the people in front of him again. He studied the students dancing for a few moments before parting his rose lips and speaking up again.

“Liar,” he whispered.

Then, he stood up and disappeared into the crowd.

 

---

 

As curfew hit and since it was a school night, soon enough people began to leave the Ravenclaw common room just to reach their own, but even the members of my House and team went for their dorms at some point of the evening. At one point, it was clear that the only same old miscellaneous group of friends was set on staying up and going on with a party that had died long before.

I avoided contact with them, staying in my armchair most of the time, and watching them play stupid boardgames as the guests found corners to hide in and make out with each other, while somebody else dragged a partner inside a room, while people scattered around and passed out on the cold floor.

After some time, the room was left finally empty, and we were the last men standing. Allison had started to talk to Neil again, which was a mild relief. Dan and Matt, full of alcohol we had smuggled in the castle, were all over each other. Nicky, Aaron and Renée had been deep into conversation for quite some time then, and there was a sense of peace and quiet that permeated the whole place.

I took in a deep breath, enjoying the moments of tranquillity, knowing that most likely signified that a storm was coming. I closed my eyes as I tilted my head backwards but straightened myself immediately. When I opened my eyes, my gaze met Neil’s for a fragment of a second, and my heart began beating in my throat.

Renée caught the movement of our pupils and was quick to intervene, nudging Allison, who was sitting right next to her, on her side. Allison gave her a knowing look and Renée smiled before standing up and running towards one of the sofas.

“Minyard,” Allison called me, “come here. You have to play.”

“Play?” Nicky’s head shot in her direction, eyes lit up by the suggestion, “You brought another game?”

“Even better,” Allison smirked, “Renée and I brought something really fun.”

“Enough with the suspense,” Aaron rolled his eyes, “tell us already. What is it?”

“Amortentia,” Renée replied instead, coming back to the group.

Everyone stared in awe at the pink bottle in Renée’s hand. The bottle, that looked so innocent and harmless, contained the strongest love potion known to the whole wizarding world. It was so powerful that just by smelling it you could identify the one you were in love with, even if you didn’t know it yourself.

“Alls and I brewed it for Potions,” Renée explained, “I stole a little from out cauldron before coming to the party.”

“Want to go round and round and tell what you smell, lads?” Allison was still smiling, and the venomous look she shot me made it clear that she was talking about me. She wanted to admit openly that I liked Neil. Not sure of how she knew it and was so sure of it, but it was still unbearable.

“Remember, don’t even touch it,” Renée warned, “you may just go insane. Just smell it.”

Nicky stood up quickly as Renée sat down and she put the little ampule in the centre of the circle the group was forming. My cousin didn’t wait for me to stand up, but instead pushed the armchair closer to the rest of the people in the room, so that I could participate in the little experiment.

When she was sure that everyone was present, she cracked open the vial and pinkish steam rose from it in spirals. The room quickly filled with it, and the cruel game began.

“That’s easy,” Matt spoke up first, “It smells like the incense Dan burns in her dorm. She constantly smells of it.”

“That’s true,” Allison laughed, “but that was kind of easy. Dan, I guess you’re next.”

“Predictable. Matt’s cologne,” Dan shrugged, but smiled fondly as she rested her temple on Matt’s broad shoulder, while he leaned in to kiss her on the top of her head.

“Disgusting,” Renée wrinkled her nose at the gesture, but then sighed, “Anyone else?”

“It smells like a garden. Not like flowers,” Aaron spoke up, a confused expression on his face, “Like plants and soil.”

“That’s intriguing,” Allison smirked at him and leaned back, propping herself up with her hands behind her.

“Doesn’t that Hufflepuff girl that constantly cheers you on before a match spend her life in the Herbology greenhouse?” Nicky suggested, “What’s her name again?”

“Katelyn,” Aaron gulped, “She… um, I just saw her today.”

“Right,” Nicky nudged him and Matt burst out laughing.

“You have a crush for a Hufflepuff girl! Didn’t you say we’re just a bunch of idiots?” Matt smiled his thirty-two-teeth wide grin at my twin.

“She’s funny,” Aaron mumbled.

“Alright,” Renée clapped her hands together to regain everyone’s attention, “Let’s move on. Nicky?”

“I know whom this smells like,” he smiled, but it had a sad twist to it, “You don’t know him. I met him in that… um, in that camp my parents sent me to.”

“What’s his name?” Dan teased.

“Erik, he's from Germany,” Nicky didn’t miss a beat, “he’s fantastic. And smart. He’s just…” my cousin took a deep breath and smiled widely, his eyes looking at something that was far from the inside of that room, “He’s the love of my life. I just know it.”

“That’s so cute,” Allison commented, and Aaron leaned in to hug our cousin while a tear rolled on Nicky’s cheek. He promptly wiped it away.

“I don’t know what it smells like to me,” the blonde girl went on, “Maybe hair dye, but that might just be because I retouched Renée’s hair before coming here.”

Renée blushed violently before chuckling.

“Right, um…” she stammered, “Well, to me it smells like rain, I guess. It doesn’t remind me of anybody in particular.”

“Are you sure?” Neil finally spoke for the first time since the beginning of the game, and everybody turned to him, then went back to stare at Renée, who was still blushing.

“Yeah,” she cleared her throat, “why would I lie?”

“Don’t know. Just asking,” Neil shrugged.

“What about you, Josten?” Allison taunted him.

“I want to know too,” Nicky peeped.

“Tell us,” Dan chimed in, “Mr. I don’t like boys or girls.”

Neil didn’t seem to be bothered by the request, albeit he wasn’t enthusiastic about it either. He leaned in towards the potion and inhaled the pink smoke. He coughed, hit his chest with fist and shook his head.

“So dramatic,” Renée laughed, “Come on, spill.”

“I don’t know, it’s strange,” Neil made a perplexed face, and stared intensely at the vial.

“Describe it,” Matt insisted.

“It smells like…” Neil sighed, “It smells like a pipe dream.”

A silence fell on the group, and everybody waited for Neil to explain himself. He, on the other hand, just studied the ampule with his eyes narrowed, mesmerized like he could see a whole movie in the pink shimmer of the magic liquid.

“What do you mean?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know how to put it into words,” Neil shook his head, “It smells like something so painfully beautiful, so extremely perfect, excruciatingly flawless that I know it could never, ever be. It just won’t ever exist.”

Neil finally averted his eyes from the potion and pointed them at me. From the point of view of the group, he could be staring at any one of them, but only I could know he had locked eyes with me, only I knew how fast my heart was beating, how angrily, how forcefully, how lovingly.

“A pipe dream, as I said,” he concluded.

As the air stood still for a moment, I could actually imagine it. I could see myself standing up from that chair, rushing through the seated bodies of my friends, throwing myself at the boy I loved and kissing his bright red lips, cupping his scarred face with my hands; I could feel his body against mine, I could feel his fingers laced with mine, I could feel every single moment my skin had touched his and I could feel how it all clicked, how it felt right, how it felt like it was possible.

But reality dawned on me pretty quickly.

“Boring!” Allison yelled out, making everyone cackle. Neil smiled a tight-lipped smile at her, but she was looking at me, “Your turn, Minyard.”

“I never agreed to play,” I shot back. She simply wasn’t having it.

“Everyone uncovered their deepest secrets,” she smirked, “It’s only fair you say your part.”

“I don’t fancy anyone.”

“Oh,” she said, sarcastically, “Just like Neil. Maybe you two should get together.”

“Allison!” Renée slapped her lightly on the arm.

“Just stop bothering the boy, Alls,” Dan intervened. But there was just not stopping her.

“What?” she laughed, “I’m just saying! They’re full of the same bullshit, so it’s just logical they do something about it.”

“Not everybody is as cynical as you,” Neil hissed.

“Got something to say, ginger?” she turned sharply towards him, fist raised but quickly held back by Renée.

In a minute, everything turned into a commotion, and everyone was arguing. Neil was just still sitting down, eyeing Allison like he wanted to actually murder her.

Then, it all went to Hell. Even more.

“My dear students.”

The voice of Albus Dumbledore echoed in my head, and, as the rest of the group quieted down and the fight died, I assumed they could hear him too. That was comforting, in a sense: at least, I wasn’t going completely insane.

“I had been woken up by the most wonderful news. The Goblet of Fire has chosen the three Champions from our esteemed School.”

I swallowed and closed my eyes. Lupin’s word resurfaced with a strength that was difficult to ignore: it’s not going to leave you alone.

“I am happy to announce that this year’s Triwizard Tournament’s champions are Day Kevin, Josten Neil and Minyard Andrew. I wish you a good night, and we’ll have our celebrations tomorrow morning.”

I opened my eyes. Neil was staring back at me. The whole group shot their eyes back and forth between me and him.

Well, that was it.

Bloody fucking Christ.

Chapter 21: Haunted

Dumbledore paced back and forth with an uneasiness that made us all uncomfortable. Lupin, on his part, was just staring down the old wizard, looking at him like he was an old crazy man who was a danger to others around him.

"Are you positive he cannot attend?" he faced McGonagall yet again, in a twirl of grey robes.

"I am," she just nodded, "His hand is completely crushed. With an injury of this degree, I had to excuse him from most written assignments too. He can't hold his wand, Albus, and Abby isn't sure of how to mend this."

"How did it happen?" the Headmaster inquired.

"I can't be too sure. He doesn't seem to know, either. He said that he's gotten drunk - wouldn't say the source of the alcohol - and fell down the stairs of the Gryffindor tower while reaching for his dorm. But, seeing that Abby would easily fix an injury of that nature, I find it must be a lie."

"Otherwise it must've been a hell of a party the Ravenclaws threw," Lupin laughed slightly.

"Party?" McGonagall's head snapped in his direction, then she turned to me - the only Ravenclaw in sight -, and then the scarred professor again, "Our students don't throw parties!"

"Oh, please, Minerva," Lupin scoffed, "The Gryffindor tower was a constant party when Sirius, James and I were here. Don't lie to yourself."

"You four were different," she protested.

"Three," Lupin corrected her.

"Right," she sighed, "three."

Three? What had happened to Peter, the fourth friend? I had to ask Lupin. Whenever I would've gotten out of that uncomfortable situation. I glanced at my right side just to see the profile of the almond-shaped eyes of Riko Moriyama standing right next to me. I swallowed down the annoyance I felt.

"Enough," Professor Moriyama spoke up, "with your pointless quarrels. Let's focus on the matter at hand: my nephew shall replace Day as Champion for the Gryffindor House."

"And why would he?" Lupin questioned, as he leaned on the wall with his shoulder, crossing his arms across his chest.

"I'm afraid," Dumbledore replied, "That's what the Goblet has chosen."

"Alright, then," Lupin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, "Let's all move on with our lives. I have class in half an hour and so do these kids."

"Riko and Tetsuji can go," the Headmaster pointed out, "but I have something to discuss with the rest of you all, pertaining another matter."

The two Moriyamas protested for a while, but they eventually left. I was sure I wouldn't hear the end of that on the Potion class later that day.

I shot Neil a stolen glance. He wasn't looking at me and his side profile was strikingly gorgeous. I stared at him for a while, with the corner of my eyes, and when I looked ahead again Lupin was chuckling under his breath at me. Were my feelings so evident?

"I wanted to ask you both a question," Dumbledore began, "About our arrangement."

"What?" I was startled.

"Seeing that you're rivals, now," he explained, "I thought you could have a hard time behaving and getting along on those days. It might also be a greater risk for Andrew to take, if the wolf suddenly decides he represents an obstacle or an enemy of some sort. It’s my duty to protect you both.”

Lupin, behind him, rolled his eyes and made a face full of disdain and contempt. He obviously didn’t like the older wizard, but I couldn’t understand why: Dumbledore was nothing but accommodating, he was kind and gentle, and yet Lupin seemed to resent him for some obscure reason. Whatever it was, I was determined, now that it was confirmed I was the champion, to get more information out of the werewolf, seeing we would be spending a whole lot of time together.

“I guess it makes sense,” Neil whispered beside me, “It’s not like I can control the wolf, I don’t think I would be able to save him if it decides it’s what it has to do.”

“What?” I repeated, in disbelief, “No!”

“Andrew,” Dumbledore went on, “You have to understand…”

“I said no.”

“But maybe it would be cautious-”, McGonagall interceded.

“Oh, for the love of everything holy, the lad said no,” Lupin interrupted her instead, snapping and finally standing up straight, “Unless Neil has actually something against it, they will be together on the moons and that’s final.”

Everybody turned towards the redheaded boy standing beside me like a statue, but he looked more like a deer in headlights at that moment. His eyes widened and his breath accelerated before getting caught up in his throat and he bit his lip down, trying to keep a calm façade.

It was 7 in the morning, and we had received the news about the Tournament a few hours prior. While the group of friends quietly decided it was best to leave us and had went for their dorms to catch some sleep, Neil and I had remained steady, still, immobilized, frozen in time and space in the Ravenclaw common room, breathing heavily with realization and fear washing over us.

We hadn’t talked, we just couldn’t. What was there to say? He had called me a liar, and I was lying to him: about my feelings, about why I was avoiding him, about the fact that I couldn’t accept that I had been falling in love with him that whole time because – this other thing was more of an omission of truth rather than a lie – I had been abused my whole life and I couldn’t let myself believe that there was more to love than just pain. The weird tension during the amortentia fiasco had brought us even further from each other, and the great announcement had done nothing but seal the deal on our break from each other.

That said, I still wouldn’t let him face the moons alone.

Either way, he might’ve still hated me, for all I knew. How could he even think about spending a whole night with me when it was clear I wouldn’t try to spend a minute to talk to him? Why was I doing that to him? Why would I ever try to hurt him that way?

Was this a new way to torture myself? When the cuts and the cigarettes couldn’t help, did I have to make myself the loneliest piece of shit in the universe, so that I could actually feel something? Was agony all that I could ever allow myself to feel? Could there be peace, one day?

Neil sighed, breaking the spell that had fell on Dumbledore’s office. He turned towards me, slowly, and bit the inside of his cheek before speaking.

“Andrew,” ouch. Not Drew, just Andrew, “they know better than us.”

My whole world fell. Did he actually prefer to amputate his own limbs rather than spending a night a month with me?

To think about it, though, he had the right to do it: months before I had given him a lot of shit about keeping things from me, about lying to me, because I thought I could never lie to a friend. It was only fair that he had to expect the same from me: honesty, truth, frankness. I wasn’t giving it to him. He could banish me from his life, and rightfully so.

But I also remembered what else he said: he had cut through his whole abdomen. He was about to die during the moon that summer. If I wasn’t with him, they’d have to put him in a cage, and the wolf would've turned against itself and Neil… Neil…

I shook my head violently.

“Fuck this,” I said.

“Mr. Minyard!” McGonagall protested.

“No,” I turned my head towards her, hissing, but then snapped at Neil, “Fuck you saying they know better. You know better than them, you are the werewolf, dickhead.”

“Andrew, it’s dangerous…” he tried, but he didn’t move, so I just grasped his wrist and pulled him towards me, looking deeply in his eyes.

“Well, fuck that too!” I grunted, and I was screaming at that point, “It has always been dangerous. The wolf could’ve attacked me on the first night, but it just didn’t. I am ready to risk my life for you and there’s nothing any of you jackasses could say that’ll make me stand down. You are just plainly idiotic if you ever think that I’ll leave you alone on the most crucial nights of this year just because of a stupid Tournament I do not care about. ‘It’s dangerous for me’? What about for you, Neil? Why does nobody care if you’re the one getting mutilated or killed?”

The room went silent. I looked at every and each of them, staring back blankly at me, and then stretched my shoulders and cracked my knuckles.

“Is that everything?” I inquired, shouting.

“Yes,” Dumbledore replied, quietly.

I hastily went for the winding staircase that led to the corridor, not daring to look at Neil right then, dreading, in fact, the reaction to my little show. When I was finally out, I took a deep breath and I placed a hand on my chest, just to make sure my heart hadn’t stopped then and there.

“Andrew,” I heard somebody call me.

When I turned around, I saw Lupin, and he smiled at me.

“He would never say it, so thank you for standing up for him like that,” he stated, “See you after lessons for our first session of training?”

I sighed, but then nodded.

“Sure,” I tightened my lips, “why not.”

 

---

 

I was slung across the room, landing badly on my back. I groaned in pain as my body was slammed against the floor, and Lupin, approaching my pained body, chuckled and looked at me from above.

"You have to be quicker," he just said.

"I am quicker, if you'd let me use knives," I reiterated, but I really wasn't in the physical state as to have that conversation all over again. We had had it twice.

We had been at it for at least three hours after the day's lessons, the sun had already gone down, and I was pretty sure we were missing dinner.

Lupin had explained to me the basics of dueling, and I had tried to put them to practice. But he was faster than me in casting spells, and I still wasn't able to perform wandless and wordless magic enough to stop him with such velocity.

He threw a hex after the other, without any effort and difficulty, simply with a flick of his wand and a smirk on his face that was telling of how much he was enjoying that training.

"You know," I panted, trying to regain air after the impact, "you shouldn't find this funny."

"Why not?" he smiled, "It is."

He lent me an hand and I took it, so he could haul me upright. I coughed a couple of times, while he patted me on my back.

"I think we can call it a day," he laughed, and then lifted his hands in surrender when I shot him a venomous look, "Do you have any questions?"

"Yeah," I nodded slowly, "Who's Sirius?"

Lupin blinked at me, shocked. He opened his mouth, then closed it, and finally tilted his head to the side.

"What do you mean?"

"I've read the book," I explained, "The one about Hogwarts. I wanted to know more about the school, and instead I found out about you and your friends. Your name isn't made once, you know, Moony?"

"That nickname," he chuckled, "Sirius still uses it. Despite everything."

"So he's still in your life?"

"Oh, yes," Lupin went for his desk at the end of his classroom, and I closely followed him, "Believe me, he'd never let me forget him."

"Are you good friends?" I threw the bait, hoping he'd catch it.

He did, as he sat down and smiled smugly at me, and then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, still laughing softly.

"Wow," he said, "were we so easy to see through?"

"On that book? Oh, yes," I scoffed, "I couldn't understand how that boy James didn't see it."

"Prongs noticed eventually," his smile disappeared at the mention of the name, "he got so mad at Sirius for not telling him. He was afraid we'd break up and ruin our friendship group."

"Did you?" I inquired, shifting from one foot to the other, "Break up?"

"Nah," he smiled again, "I'm still married to my beautiful husband."

My eyes widened.

"You made it work?"

"I don't know if you could say that," he shrugged, "but we've been through so much together, and we loved each other. We still do. It was just natural, even though he denied he liked boys while kissing me in the broom closet."

"Oh," I gulped, "That's... peculiar."

"Mh," he smirked again, "Neil's still on that not liking boys issue, I see."

"He doesn't," I nodded.

"I too thought I fancied a straight bloke," he reiterated, "It gets better."

"What do you mean?", I asked, feigning confusion.

"I just thought..." he narrowed his eyes, but then just relaxed with his back against the chair and looked at me up and down, "Nevermind."

"So, this husbands of yours," I began, trying to ignore the fact that he was implying that he knew about my sexuality, "was he one of those who helped you on the moons?"

"Yeah, along with James and another guy."

"Peter?"

"I don't really want to talk about him," Lupin sighed, but then smiled at me, ever so gently, "I think it's great you stepped up for Neil. He shouldn't have to face this alone."

"He won't, if he just listens to me," I shrugged.

"He will understand. I get why he's so reticent. When I was younger and I couldn't control my wolf on the moons, I caused a lot of trouble. There was this one guy, I hated him with a passion, and Sirius wanted to prank him so... let's just say it was almost a catastrophe. Werewolves are dangerous, Andrew."

"I know," I replied, "I don't care."

"He could kill you," he went on.

"He won't," I stood my ground, but I felt like a little kid stomping his feet because his father told him that candies were bad for your teeth.

"How could you be so sure?"

"I know him, the panther knows the wolf. It's just... we are... I just know, ok?" my gaze slid slowly towards the ground.

"And what if you're wrong? What if it attacks you and there's no one close enough to help you?"

"Professor," I leaned on the desk, propping myself up with my steady hands, and I locked eyes with the scarred man, who just looked back at me, no expression on his face, "with all due respect, I do not care. I do not care about your worries or his attempt at dissuading me. I do not care about dying. I have made it abundantly clear that I will not let him risk his life, all alone in that godforsaken Forest, and I stand by that, even if each and every one of you thinks it's a bad idea. If he kills me, it'll kill him too. I know he won't do it."

“If you say so,” Lupin shrugged from behind the desk, then leaned over towards me, “So, if not Neil, who will you take to the Yule Ball?”

“What’s that? I don’t like that word, ball,” I straightened my back, and tilted my head as I waited for the professor to explain himself.

“You can’t not like a word,” Lupin objected. I scoffed.

“I hate plenty of words, Remus. What’s a Yule Ball?”

“It’s a celebration, for Christmas, held during the Triwizard Tournament,” he said, “there’s music and formal dresses, dances and lots of food. And, as Champion, you’re supposed to bring a date. Whom will you bring?”

“Ugh,” I groaned, “I already hate it. I guess Renée would come with me if I asked.”

“Renée?” Lupin seemed shocked, “You mean Walker, the Hufflepuff?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“No,” Lupin scoffed, “I just thought you might want to challenge some boundaries this school has.”

“Like what?”

“Like bringing a boy to the Ball,” he answered, “Causing a little havoc.”

“Even if I really like that suggestion,” I chuckled, “I wouldn’t know whom to bring. The only other gay bloke I know is my cousin Nicky, and that’s a boundary I will gladly respect.”

“Fine, then. Be boring and bring a girl,” he rolled his eyes.

“Will you bring Sirius?” I pointed out.

“I will try. He has a bone to pick with this school, and I won’t expect any less of him than utter chaos if he actually comes by. But I miss him, so I will probably ask.”

“I would like to meet him,” I said, and I surprised myself with my candor.

Somebody called my name, just then, and when I turned towards the door, I could just see the bob of platinum hair swishing back and forth as the one I could only assume was Renée - I really needed to start wearing my glasses more - waved her arms at me, drawing my attention to a paper bag she had in her hand. At least I wouldn’t go to sleep without dinner.

“I have to go,” I informed Lupin, who just nodded and then waved back at Renée, who blushed violently.

That was when I first noticed that, yes, Lupin was indeed wildly attractive. I wondered how I didn’t recognize his beauty before, but I couldn’t let myself wonder over the fact that Neil’s face and body and all-over appearance had just captivated me so much I couldn’t even notice a hot man when he was standing right in front of me.

I headed for the door without saying goodbye and smiled at Renée while she excitedly chanted ‘dinner in bed, dinner in bed!’. I laughed loudly as she jumped up and down, shaking the bag and its contents and probably messing the whole thing up.

“Till next time, Andrew,” Lupin yelled after me.

I turned around, walking backwards, and smiled at the ragged man that was looking at me from a distance.

That was the second person ever to whom I had come out to.

 

---

 

“Lupin has a husband?” Renée screamed, before bursting out laughing, “Well, that ruins my chances with him.”

“I don’t think you ever had any to begin with,” I pointed out, but she just slapped me on the arm with her free hand. The other was laced with mine as we walked through the small town that smelled like petrichor and was beginning to look like a Christmas village, with its glistening rain and ever so soft snow.

Over a month had passed since the announcement of the Champions, and Neil and I weren’t really on speaking terms. Still, two full moons had passed, and we had spent it together: he would go to the forest first and then I would go out and look for him as the panther, as soon as the sun set. When it was about to rise, I would put some distance between us, wait for him, somewhere far away, to dress up and pass out like he always did, and then I’d take him to Abby for her to take care of him.

That had happened twice, and one had been the night before my sixteenth birthday, which, against the better judgement, he had decided to attend anyway. He had told Renée that it was for Aaron, as they were friends still, but she thought he was lying.

I couldn’t really tell which was the truth, because during the two whole nights we had spent together everything had seemed normal, but I knew it wasn’t. It had been so long since we had one of our honest talks, and I wasn’t sure I knew him anymore.

In the silence that followed Renée’s loud cackle, I took the time to examine the group of people that was walking ahead of us. Dan’s fingers were weaved with Matt’s, who was walking right behind her, and her hands – with his – were deep in her pockets to protect them from the cold. Allison was talking to Dan about some nonsense, something to do with a shade of lipstick. Aaron was laughing at a joke Nicky had made, and he followed right after, unable to speak between wheezes. Neil was just pacing beside them, eyes following the way his feet went one in front of the other, in silence.

“Do you think he’ll talk to me tonight?” I suddenly spoke up, startling Renée.

“I mean,” she made a face of uncertainty, biting down her bottom lip, “you’re the one who started this ignoring contest.”

“I… shit,” I grunted, then slapped my palms on my face, covering it, “I know it’s my fault, but I don’t know what else to do! I can’t handle feelings. And he gives me a whole lot of them.”

My hands slid off my face and fell beside my hips again, so Renée promptly took back the hand she was holding before.

“You should really forget about him,” she sighed, “I know you fancy him, but there’s a lot of fish in the sea, y’know.”

“I don’t want other fish. Fish stink. I want my pretty-pretty red fox, not some fish,” I protested, turning my head to look at her, who was observing me with something like worry and fear in her eyes.

“It’s hurting you,” she whispered, gently, “It won’t happen, between you two. You know that, and, even if I was originally rooting for you, I know that. Or, at least, I hate to see you hurting like this.”

“I’ve been worse,” I said.

“You could be better,” she just replied.

“So,” I sighed, “what do you suggest? That we stay friends?”

“I suggest that you find a rebound,” she peeped, “If you’re not getting over him on your own, find someone who can help.”

I sighed again but didn’t answer her suggestion as it was pointless to keep arguing. I didn’t want to try and find someone who could just replace Neil like the strong feelings I had for him meant nothing. Sure, there were some pretty boys in school, and I knew for sure some of them were gay, but that would’ve meant coming out to someone that I didn’t know or that I wasn’t interested in knowing. Simply put, I had better to do than to find some replacement. And, as I had always stated, I actually didn’t mind pining over him, even if it meant we couldn’t be friends anymore. I was still there with him when he needed me, and I planned to keep that tradition intact.

As Head girl, and with the complicity of some of the prefects, Renée was able to obtain from Dumbledore that we could spend the evening of my birthday at Hogsmeade, with the simple recommendation to get back to the castle in time for curfew. Allison, Dan and Renée also knew a place where they could get Aaron and me our 'first drinks'. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Aaron had spent the summer drinking vodka and that I’d had plenty of beers in juvie, but still, in theory, it would’ve been a fun night.

In practice, it wasn’t as good as it was originally planned.

Renée and I ran up to the others and we entered the Hog’s Head Inn. I took a moment to examine both the exterior, and, when we walked through the creaky front door, the interior of the Inn.

It was a wooden shack, barely holding together, and the inside of it smelled a lot like goat, but I couldn’t pinpoint whether it was more like goat cheese or goat, full stop. It wasn’t lit up and festive like the Three Broomstick that we had just passed, down the road, but it was rather dark and the whole place was brightened just by the flames of a few candles scattered around the bar.

The bar itself - or maybe it was a restaurant too - was the first thing you walked into, but behind the counter there was a staircase that brought upstairs, probably to some rooms for the guests. The place was small, dirty, and overall kind of sketchy. The few people that were there didn’t seem like the commendable and trustworthy type, drinking alone from tall glasses and gazes lost in the nothingness ahead of them.

It made me feel slightly uncomfortable, given the fact that Nicky had went on and on about how I should have dressed fancy for the occasion, and so I was wearing my best pair of pants and a black satin shirt that I had borrowed from him. I was way overdressed, if that was the place we would be hanging out the whole evening.

Behind the counter there was a very old man, cleaning some of the silverware. He was dressed in muggle clothes, which I found odd in the all-wizard village of Hogsmeade, and had very long white hair and beard. At a better glance, he reminded me of someone.

“Oi,” I called Renée, and leaned over to whisper in her ear, “doesn’t that look like Dumbledore?”

“Merlin,” she said, chuckling, “I hadn’t noticed the other times I’ve been here. You’re right, he does. But come now, let’s get a table.”

I sighed, as I felt that was something worth investigating. Still, I trusted Renée to spin the evening around. Which was a more difficult task than what she had thought.

Even after a whole month, it was clear that Allison was mad at me for some reason, but she was also mad at Neil, which slightly helped. Still, she wasn’t the only one obnoxiously ignoring me: my twin brother and the redhead were doing a great job at it, too. The only difference was that I knew why they were angry with me and wouldn’t talk to me.

That left me with Matt and Dan, which I didn’t really know well, and the mighty Renée, who, as hard as she tried, couldn’t seem to reunite the group enough for them to notice me or interact with me for more than two minutes.

After Aaron and I blew on the ‘1’ and ‘6’ candles on the mud chocolate cake our friends had made, I grew tired of being alone and stood up to go to the counter and fetch something to drink. Once I arrived there, though, there was no trace of the old man, but, instead, there was a simple teenager, with short black hair and green eyes and lean muscles that moved smoothly against the thin fabric of the black shirt he was wearing. It was satin on the sleeves, but some kind of see-through mesh on the torso, and he looked like he belonged in some night club.

He was tidying up the bar, walking in the very little space behind the counter with a rag slung over his shoulder. He was whistling.

“Hi,” I spoke up.

“Oh,” he spun around to flash an unnatural white smile at me, “hello, cutie. What can I get you?”

I sat on the stool, ignoring his remark and the nickname he had just called me.

“Whatever beer’s your strongest,” I answered, propping myself up with my elbows and crossing my forearms on the countertop.

“Slow down,” he scoffed, “you don’t seem old enough to drink.”

I rolled my eyes at him, which made him laugh even more.

“Didn’t you just see me blowing on those godforsaken candles? I’m sixteen. Happy birthday to me. Now pour.”

He burst out laughing, and I was a little startled. Still, he picked up a thick glass and went to the tap to pour the draft beer. When he was done, he made it slide across the countertop so it would reach me faster, and I caught it before it could fall on the ground, shattering.

“Alright,” he said, slowly walking towards me, “You got your beer. Can I get your name in return?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to know,” he shrugged, then leaned on the counter and placed his chin on the palm of his hand, looking me in the eyes, “You’re interesting.”

“I’m really anything but,” I said, picking up the glass so I could take a sip from the beer, “I’m Andrew.”

“Roland,” he responded, “Say, why aren’t you with your friends?”

“They’re my brother’s friends,” I sighed, “I don’t think they like me very much.”

“What’s not to like?” he picked up a glass and retrieved the rag from his shoulder, so he could wipe the glass with it.

“Roland,” I raised an eyebrow, “Do you honestly look at my face and think ‘this is one fun bloke’?”

“Well, let’s see,” he bended forward and peeked over the counter to look at me up and down, then studied my face for a couple of minutes before saying, “I think you’re handsome, that’s a start. Pretty people usually come with a lot of fun, like a package deal.”

I choked on my beer, and slowly put the glass down on the counter as Roland laughed at my reaction. I tilted my head, feeling a little smile curving the corners of my lips, while he tilted his on the other side to mock my stance. I giggled and he grinned at me.

“I like making pretty people smile,” he whispered.

“Would you stop flirting with me?” I snickered.

“Why would I ever do such a stupid thing?” he placed the hand he wasn’t using to hold up his head with on his chest, feigning scorn.

“Because,” I pointed out, “you don’t know me.”

“Let me get to know you, then,” he smirked, and finally laughed loudly, tipping my head backwards as I hollered.

“You’re so bad at this,” I stated, trying to catch my breath.

“Oh, am I now? I think it’s working,” he shrugged.

“Andrew,” I heard Renée’s voice.

I turned my head around, so that I could see the group of friends standing at the entrance, all ready to leave. Neil was bouncing his gaze between me and Roland, narrowing his eyes as he analyzed the slender barman. Renée was holding up my coat, as a signal we were about to leave.

“Coming,” I reassured, but I returned to Roland, “Got to go.”

“I gathered that,” he said, watching the group that was waiting for me.

“How much was the beer?” I asked, reaching for my pocket to fish out the little money I had on me.

“Nonsense,” he scoffed, “You barely touched it. It’s on the house, don’t worry.”

“You’re spoiling me,” I leered, but eventually got up to go away.

“You promise to come around again? I’ll wait for you,” he smiled softly.

“I will try,” I nodded as I walked backwards toward the door. I didn’t miss the way Roland winked at me before retrieving my full beer on the counter and disposing of it.

In the meantime, the others had gone outside to enjoy the brisk air of the late evening of the Scottish countryside. When I reached them, they started to make fun of me about the fact that I had ditched them for a stranger. And, when they finally left me alone, walking ahead of me and leaving me with Renée, I laughed at the comments they made.

“Are they really that blind?” I asked her.

“I think that if I didn’t know I wouldn’t have noticed either,” she replied, “You don’t make it obvious. You looked like two friends joking around. And, I mean, what even was that?”

I shrugged and kept walking, but I ruminated over the thought of the guy I had just met, about the fact that he was capable of making me free of the burden of the love I felt for Neil for the few moments I had spent with him, and I came up with an answer to her question.

“That was a fish, Renée.”

Notes:

Everybody say hi to our favorite barman!
Did anybody expect to see him here? LOL
Also let's give it up for the Wolfstar cameo

Chapter 22: Bad Omens

Summary:

TW!
mentions and depictions of wounds and death

Notes:

Ugh, sorry for the wait. I kind of despise this chapter but it was really hard for me to write for a number of reason. It has not been a good week but I tried to make this as enjoyable as possible. Still, I think this chapter kinda sucks :P Sorry again

The wind was howling at the rising sun, in the dark mist of the Forest that covering the trunks of the trees and the sprouts of green grass here and there. There was nothing around us, nothing to watch us closely, nothing to spy on us as we sponged the night from our wrecked bodies. He was panting, on all fours on the muddy ground, lowered head as he tried to recover from the transformation.

“Do you want my t-shirt?” I asked, failing to catch my breath and slouching with my back against a trunk.

“If you please,” he whispered back.

The atmosphere was strange while I stood up and pulled at the hem of my shirt to fling it off my body. I wasn’t wearing my armbands, which was peculiar, since I’d never left my room without them. I guessed it was because nobody could see my scars right then apart from Neil, who had already seen them – matter of fact, he had seen much worse than just scars.

Still, it was weird that no creature was approaching us, easy preys in the middle of the Forest, struggling and weak as we were. Often, after a full moon, I had had to defend both Neil and me from predators, weird creatures I had never heard about, and right then it seemed like the Forest was empty, except for us.

I tossed the shirt at him, but much to my surprise, he stood up, still breathing heavily. He was fully naked, splashes of blood on his pink lips from the squirrel we had hunted earlier. He reached out for the shirt, walking slowly towards me, and grabbed it, but he didn’t snatch it from my hand.

“Thank you,” he said, smiling softly at me.

I was hyperventilating. Neil looked at me up and down, eyes slowing down as they travelled on my half-nude body, completely at his mercy while I stared him down. I could see every scar, every joint, every inch of his tortured skin: the bite mark on his shoulder, the deep cuts on his limbs and the silver linings of the thinner wounds. I tried – Merlin, I fucking tried – to keep my eyes off his more intimate parts, but, as close as he was, it was nearly inevitable.

He was still growing, which slightly pissed me off. He was nearly a head taller than me, and he was looking down on me; at that point his hand slid from the shirt to my forearm, then up my bicep and then on my shoulder. I was melting.

“How did you gain so much muscle? It’s unusual for someone so young,” he smirked at me while he squeezed my flesh, both tender and hard under my skin, “You’re such a jock.”

“I’m not,” I chuckled, “I just like to be in shape.”

“This is more than ‘in shape’, Drew,” that name made me shiver, sending chills up and down my body, “You are just so…”

He trailed off, as his hand slid towards my collarbones, and then up to the nape of my neck, and then forwards on my cheek and God, it felt good to be touched. God, it felt so good to be touched by him.

I closed my eyes while his hands explored my body, and I didn’t care that the sun was shining, that people were probably waiting for us at the castle, that we had duties and responsibilities and commitments. I just wanted to bask in the touch of someone I loved, a touch that didn’t make me flinch and want to cry, a touch that made my heart explode and my head spin.

“You are so…” he repeated, and I could feel the air shift a little as he, too, closed his eyes and leaned in, and I could feel his lips brushing against my cheek, and with his free hand he took one of mine and placed it on his hip, “… so beautiful.”

I wished I could freeze the image in my mind, while I could still sense his naked, wounded chest against my own, while I could still hope as his lips moved towards mine so slowly it made want to jump on him and kiss him with such force, he would be breathless after.

But that didn’t happen.

He groaned. And it wasn’t pleasure, it was clearly pain. Wincing, he distanced himself from me and he bended over.

“Neil?” I called, confused. I had taken a good look at his body, there was nothing wrong with it.

But he didn’t respond, and he started to cry out in agony.

“Neil?” I urged again, moving towards him as I tried to look at his abdomen where the problem was clearly coming from.

He fell on the ground, still grunting, holding onto his belly.

Which was slashed open in two.

“Oh God,” I fell on my knees beside him, while he laid on the ground, “Oh God, oh God. What’s going on?”

I was panicking, crying, I wanted to scream for help, but the air was still, the Forest was quiet, and I started to feel like there was nothing I could do but watch him.

“Neil?” I said, once more, but he wasn’t listening to me: he just looked at the laceration on his body. I thought that if I looked long and hard enough, I would be able to see his organs. I swallowed down my fear and put a hand on his abdomen, trying to stop the splashes of blood coming out of the tear.

“Neil, say something,” I felt the tears burn my cold skin, but I wasn’t able to see his face anymore, like he was a ghost of some sort.

“Neil!” I screamed as his body became limp in my hands.

“Andrew…” he whispered, “Andrew…”

No. Nononono.

“No!” I shouted, jolting upright.

I gasped for air and looked around. It was my dorm room, and everything was calm and peaceful as it was most mornings at Hogwarts. At my feet, with a hand gripping my shin for dear life, there was a very scared Renée.

“Andrew,” she said, “I’ve been trying to wake you up for ages. What was that?”

I was wheezing and put a hand on my chest to make sure that my heart wasn’t beating out of my ribcage, having destroyed it and escaped from its material bindings. I watched Renée as she studied my face with fear in her eyes, but I tilted my head backwards to stop myself from hyperventilating.

“A nightmare,” I finally answered, “Seemed like a dream but I guess I am not allowed to have those.”

“I’m so sorry,” she made a face and pouted her lips to express empathy, “but you have to dress. They’re waiting for you.”

“Who’s waiting?”

“Oh Godric,” she slapped her palm on her forehead, “you forgot.”

“Forgot what, Renée? Jesus, just say a complete sentence.”

“It’s today,” she urged, “The first task. Neil and Riko are waiting for you at the pitch.”

“Oh,” I sighed, “Fuck.”

 

---

 

“Do you have everything?”

“Yes,” I responded to the anxious professor that was following my every step inside the small changing room of the Quidditch pitch. We both didn’t know what that was about, how could the pitch be turned into an arena for the task, but we were waiting patiently – well, at least I was: Lupin was a trainwreck – to be called for, so that the Tournament could officially begin.

Pacing back and forth, Lupin was listing all the charms, spells and hexes he had taught me in two months of practice, while I nodded along confirming that I both knew the use and how to cast them.

At some point, a very defeated Wymack entered the changing room. Beside me, Neil and Riko appeared in an instant, accompanied by McGonagall and Moriyama.

While Riko was the Professor’s nephew, to avoid favouritism, he was trained by the Head of the Gryffindor House as it was previously established. Both the Moriyamas hadn’t liked that decree, but eventually gave up on the resistance, probably realizing that it wouldn’t amount to anything good.

Wymack sighed.

“Follow me,” he announced, “Flitwick it’s going to pay if the pitch doesn’t return as it was.”

“What do you mean?” Lupin, who was the closest to him, asked, worrying even more.

“Look for yourself, Remus,” Wymack rolled his eyes as he opened the door that led into the field itself. But the field wasn’t there.

In front of us there was an enormous pit, where the pitch once had been. Instead, the soil, grass, and overall structure of the field was eradicated, smashed into little pieces, and reduced into flying, rotating, spinning blocks of rock and dirt. They didn’t even put the hoops away before wrecking the whole thing up: it looked precisely like a Quidditch pitch, but haphazard and broken down, like some sort of alternate universe.

“Seems easy enough,” Neil shrugged – I assumed, because I didn’t have the heart to look at him after having watched him die in my arms, even if it was pretend.

“But we don’t have our brooms,” Riko said instead, looking accusingly at McGonagall like she should’ve known better.

“Good observation, Mr. Moriyama.”

Dumbledore appeared out of nowhere, quite literally jumped out of thin air as he entered a visible field between the dust and mist that was created by the dismantlement of the ground beneath us. Lupin and Neil audibly gasped as he showed up, and McGonagall was startled so much she had to steady her heartrate with her hand on her chest.

Riko smugly laughed at the scene, but Tetsuji slapped him across the head, urging him to regain composure. Riko straightened up and I rolled my eyes, ready to make a snarky comment to the childish behaviour of the Gryffindor champion, but the older wizard spoke before me.

“These are the rules for your task of today, gentlemen. The task is to retrieve a snitch, one for each of you, marked with the color of your own House, that will give you an hint as to what will happen in the next task. You will find them in the most obscure places, not always in plain sight, not always running away like you’re all used to. You have to climb and explore the field to find them. But this Quidditch match of sorts is peculiar, as you might see with your own eyes: the field is completely destroyed, and Professor Flitwick was able to cast a spell on the rocks to make them levitate and move. You are not allowed to use your broom or any summoning charms that you might think of. The level of difficulty for the task must be equal to each of you, and the only thing that’ll get you those snitches is your own wit and intelligence, which all of you are very much provided with.”

I scoffed, and crossed my arms while I tilted my head, a sarcastic grin on my face.

“Oh, I get it,” I said, “So they weren’t joking when they said you were actively trying to kill us.”

“Andrew…” Lupin tried, moving his hand towards my shoulder, but I dodged it and moved up to Dumbledore to look at him in the eyes. The tired old wizard just stared blankly at me.

“What if one of us falls from your spinning flying fucking rocks, Albus?” I spat, “You lecture me about my safety and then put me up to this? You’re a hypocrite.”

“Andrew.”

This time, it wasn’t Lupin’s voice. I turned around, but I could already feel the pair of blue eyes burning holes in the back of my head as I was talking to the Headmaster. Neil simply raised his chin, just a little, and I felt like a scolded pet, running away with my tail tuck between my legs.

The air froze as we both looked at each other intensely. It was the first time I had heard his voice in quite some time, the first time that wasn’t in my dreams. A flash of the image of him, aching him my arms as life flushed out of him through that open gash, made me gulp, maybe even tear up. He was the first to tear his eyes off me and looked behind me at Dumbledore.

“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” he whispered, then moved toward what seemed like a starting line.

Riko walked past me but made a point in hitting me with his shoulder as he did so, even if he knew I was way bulkier than him and that I wouldn’t budge. I guessed it was more of a principle for him, asserting superiority because he didn’t make a scene like I did. I took a deep breath in.

“You’re going to be fine,” Lupin finally put that hand on my shoulder, but I flinched away. I hoped it looked like a pissed-off move and not like a ‘I’m-scared-to-be-touched-and-now-I-feel-sick’ move. Either way, I breathed out and bit the inside of my cheek.

“Maybe I’m just too muggle to understand these traditions of you wizards,” I responded.

“You’re more powerful than me, Andrew,” he replied instead, “maybe it’s time to accept the traditions. Or, at the very least, roll with them.”

“I guess,” I sighed, “but I still can’t fucking stand heights.”

I ordered my legs to move, even if every inch of my bones was screaming to run away. Neil was right: the faster we moved, the sooner the task would be over.

I was sick, still. I was tired of inanimate object taking decisions over my life. I was still confused about the sorting the Hat had made; I was even more confused about this power everyone seemed to ascribe to me that made me obligated to partake a stupid Tournament because a fucking cup sensed that I would be able to survive the shit my own professors decided to put me through. What the fuck was even that?

I took my position next to Riko, that stood just between me and Neil at the starting line. I breathed deeply once more, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I looked up, trying to look past the rocks that were waiting for their clue to start creating havoc, and found the crowd.

All around me, the whole school was united on the usual bleachers where they were packed in during the Quidditch matches. They weren’t divided by House, though, which made it harder to find somewhere where the group of friends could be sat, waiting for me and Neil to complete the task.

I didn’t know why, but I felt like I could’ve breathed steadier if only I could’ve seen Renée’s reassuring smile.

There wasn’t any time to search further. A single shot of fireworks left Dumbledore’s wand, the wizard standing at the very edge of the field so that each of the three of us could see clearly as the trail of smoke rose up, and up, and up, and finally exploded in the sky.

While the majestic colors expanded in circles in the crispy blue of the morning, Riko, Neil and I started running towards the blocks of soil.

Neil was faster than me and Riko, but that I already knew: it wasn’t a surprise when he was the first one to reach the closer floating rock, and he could jump high enough to grip at it and haul himself up. Standing on the levitating ground, he fished his wand from his high combat boot and pointed it at Riko.

I didn’t wait around to see what would happen to the Gryffindor before sprinting even faster, finding a rock slow and low enough to climb, and losing track of Neil all together. Still, when I looked back to try and see what Riko was up to, I found him stuck in some mud Neil’s wand had created right under his feet. I chuckled at the struggling boy, trying everything to get out of that quagmire, but finally decided to make my way in the field and find that godforsaken snitch.

Neil and Riko were both seekers, they were used to the movements of the little golden ball and its speed, its natural escaping mechanism, while I only ever had to guard the door. And while I was an astute and acute observer and found that it was really easy to track a snitch when it made itself known, Riko was still a seeker, and Neil was faster than any other person in that bloody school.

And then there was the height problem.

I looked around, doing my best to keep my balance stable while the rock I was standing on tried its hardest to unsaddle me like a mechanical bull. But as it floated around, running in circles, it also didn’t keep track of the movements of its fellow boulders. At some point, I had to dodge a stone block that was simply aiming for my head.

Every piece of the shattered field seemed to have a mind of its own, travelling at the speed of light throughout the finite area of the arena with the force of a typhoon. And, while I had been getting accustomed to the feeling of pure high and adrenaline that came with straddling a broom and flying through the air while also playing magic football, that task was a very different experience, no matter how sweetened Dumbledore was putting it. I gulped as my eyes travelled slowly towards my shoes, as the rock was spinning faster and faster and bringing the sky closer and closer.

That was when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and a pair of lips way too close to my ear.

“Just don’t look down, Andrew. You can do it.”

I spun around, but Neil had already passed to another block, flying away on it. I could still see him, though, and he winked at me from a distance. I scoffed and shook my head lightly, but that small interaction gave me the energy to start actually playing the silly game of the Triwizard Tournament.

I began jumping from one rock to the other, trying to circle the field as fast as I could without encountering Riko, which had freed himself - from what I could see from the empty puddle he had been previously stuck in – and was probably looking for revenge. Riko had also learned pretty quickly that hurting either one of me or Neil was equal to hurting the other, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Gryffindor was on the lookout for me, the one who was way worse at eluding people while jumping on flying pieces of dirt.

I finally arrived one of the boulders with the hoops on it and started to climb the pole. I figured that by going higher and higher I would be able to cover much more ground just by looking around from the top of it. Still, Riko and Neil were nowhere to be found, but in my journey towards the block I had seen a bright green snitch sprinting away in the air, so I knew Neil was closer to solving this thing than I was. Albeit that wasn’t a surprise, either.

When I scaled the whole pole and reached the hoop itself, I sat on it and made my eyes travel far and wide. I finally found Riko, who was struggling, dangling from a rock he wasn’t able to climb onto.

Neil was just a few blocks ahead, but, contrary to Riko, he was on the hunt already, strictly following the snitch that was bolting away. I watched as he nimbly dodged a rock from above and jumped over another from beneath, still rushing from one block to the other with an inhuman agility. He really looked like a fox, agile, swift and with the confused bundle of red hair bobbing up and down with his quick movements.

I found myself smiling as I watched him, vaguely forgetting about the task, the levitating ground trying to kill me and the fact that there was a monstrous, evil, and probably not even human being on the lookout for me, that actually wanted to hurt me.

I should’ve kept track of the last point, to think about it.

I didn’t even hear the spell that got cast on the rock I was sitting on, but it capsized, so quickly that I didn’t have too much time to find something to take a hold of so that I wouldn’t be slung all the way across the field and on the hard, dismal ground beneath us all.

I managed to flip and grip the upside-down pole as the hoop itself crashed onto the soil and was dismembered by the hit, while the rock was still mindlessly travelling so fast through the pitch that it didn’t give me many means to climb upwards towards the steady rock. Still, I put some strength into my arms and began scaling, reaching for the rock above me with all my force, and I managed to haul myself on it.

When I did, panting and gasping, I found that Neil had seen what Riko had done and had also managed to disarm him, because he was smiling victorious with both his and Riko’s wand in his hands. He winked at me again, before showing me the green snitch he was able to catch without getting a scratch on his beautiful body. I giggled, but then, when the Gryffindor moved again, as pissed off as he was, to go and catch the red snitch that had appeared in the meantime, I was reminded that there was a task to complete.

I sighed, as Neil laughed at my defeat, and looked down at the dismembered hoop at the bottom of the pole, which was gouging a deep, straight line into the ground as it flew around. In the distance, I could hear Wymack wailing, and I looked just to see him slouched against Abby’s shoulder, crying and yelling ‘my goal!!!’ while she simply patted him on the back to comfort him. As much as that was hilarious, I returned to scanning the area in search for a blue snitch, that seemed nowhere to be found.

At that point, the only logical thing that popped into my mind was to slow Riko down as much as I could so he wouldn’t catch the snitch before me. I started to list charms and hexes in my mind that would serve to that particular purpose, and, pointing my wand at him, I began chanting.

“Brachiabindo,” I pronounced, as Riko’s arms were bound by invisible chords and he rebelled, wandless, at the silly jinx.

At the same time, I started thinking. Flitwick had designed that whole task to be a reflection of personalities of the three champions. All three of us played the game, we were all very passionate about it – even I was, when I cared to admit it – and two of us played as seekers. So, it was only logical that the task comprehended the snitches and some of our other qualities – Neil’s agility, for example.

Riko had freed himself from the chords and had started running again. Neil was on solid ground, analyzing the snitch to find the clue for the next task. I yawned and sat down on the rock.

“Ebublio,” I pointed the wand at Riko again, and I could hear Neil burst out laughing as he watched our opponent gasp for air inside the water bubble that had just appeared around him. I chuckled, but dived back into my thoughts.

Still, there was nothing that reminded me of me. Sure, they had kept the hoops, but there was nothing in that task that screamed ‘Andrew’, something that had to do with either my team or my position in it.

The bubble had burst – it was fairly easy, to be honest, but I couldn’t think about a better jinx. I rummaged through my head for another one.

“Locomotor Wibbly,” I casted, and Riko’s legs collapsed as he was running, making him fall from the rock he was running on top of. Luckly, he was close to the ground, so he didn’t hurt himself too much.

The only thing that reminded me of the keeper that I was, were the rocks on which they had kept the hoops. Or, better, the singular hoop: at a better look, I noticed that the only hoop of the six that should’ve been there was the one beneath me, and the only rock with a hoop was the one I was sitting on.

That was so stupid it almost pained me that I hadn’t realized it so much sooner. The answer was the block with the hoop on it, but how? What did that rock have that the others didn’t? There was no sign of the blue snitch, and, if my guesses were correct, it should’ve appeared by then, flying near that rock I was floating on.

I stood up, careful not to fall down, since I was at a considerable height – I tried my best not to think about it, but standing up still made me quiver. I looked at the rock, then down at the pole that was still digging a line into the soil. There was nothing there, not a hint, not a clue.

I looked straight ahead and noticed Riko was very close to catching that godforsaken red snitch. I sighed, and, wand in hand, I casted another spell.

“Impedimenta,” I said.

Time started to slow down for Riko, and he found himself trapped inside the impediment jinx, shooting death glares at me all across the arena. The red snitch made fun of him, flying near him and his face, but still eluding him quickly with its fast movements when his arms were too slow to even attempt at catching it.

I took advantage of the fact that Riko was slowed down for quite some time and that Neil hadn’t yet discovered the peculiarity of the snitch, to jump on a parallel rock and look my boulder from another perspective. But even there, it seemed like a normal bundle of soil and dirt and a normal pole with a normal goal. Maybe the answer was in the hoop, but it was destroyed by then. I sighed.

But then an idea popped into my head. 'In the most obscure places, not always in plain sight, not always running away like you’re all used to', Dumbledore had said. Flitwick was a fan of the sport, and he and Wymack knew that a keeper isn’t fast enough to catch a snitch. Our training would never allow us such speed. We are sturdy, bulky, solid, like a rock. And the answer was just there: inside the rock.

I took a deep breath in and breathed out. I pointed my wand at the incriminated rock, and opened my mouth.

“Bombarda Maxima,” I yelled. I crouched and covered my face as the boulder, the pole, the goal exploded under the effect of my spell. When I opened my eyes, the answer was in front of me: the snitch had been encased in the ground beneath my goal, and just then I recognized it: it was the hoop I had been dangling from and then had fallen from almost a year prior. That hoop had a lot of me in it.

But I didn’t account for the fact that in the explosion, the snitch would’ve been involved. Lucky for me, that was just the point, I realized as I looked back at Riko’s and Neil’s snitches: they had exploded too. And all three showed the same message, written in some sort of firework spelling.

‘Welcome to the second task!’

It was followed by a giant arrow. But before I could realize where it pointed to, it disappeared.

That was the fucking clue?

As soon as the task was deemed finished, I was teleported on the ground, which was now normal and intact, like nothing had ever taken place in that Quidditch pitch. The hoops were all fine too, even the one Riko had disintegrated trying to make me fall from it during the task.

Astounded, I looked at the other Champions just to find the same defeated expression on each of the two faces. Neil sighed, but turned around to look at me and smile softly.

“Are you okay? With the heights and all,” he asked, voice lower than a whisper.

I simply nodded. I wasn’t used to talk to him anymore, and flashes of the dream still haunted me. I tried to open my mouth and reply with something more than a simple nod, but our professors interjected the conversation.

Lupin hauled me away from the other boys, while Mr. Moriyama and McGonagall did the same for Neil and Riko. He had his hands on my shoulder, but I was still in too much shock to try and flinch away.

“Are you hurt?” was his first question. I shook my head no, even though that task was traumatizing at best.

“Good,” he sentenced, nodding along, “The other two tasks are going to be worse. What’s the clue?”

I grunted and freed myself from his grip.

“It’s a riddle,” I replied.

“A riddle?” he questioned, but I wasn’t listening as I started to speed-walk towards the exit of the pitch. I longed my bed and a 48-hours-long sleep. Either way, I found enough strength in myself to yell back at him.

“I fucking hate riddles!”

Chapter 23: Welcome to the Black Parade

Summary:

TW!!!
mentions of selfharm

Notes:

THIS IS JUST A REMINDER THAT THIS FICTION WILL LAST UNTIL NEIL AND ANDREW ARE OUR OF HOGWARTS AND IN THE "REAL" WORLD. DON'T PANIC IF I'M LATE, I UPDATE AS SOON AS IT'S POSSIBLE.

“So,” I sighed, looking up at the high ceiling of the classroom, “what do you think it is?”

Lupin shuffled in his seat, still eyeing me like I was some kind of madman, but I knew he didn’t mind me. Still, I thought at some point he ought to tell me that it was a serious matter, and I shouldn’t be belittling it by lying on the floor of the DADA classroom right before a lesson started. In fact, I shouldn’t have even been there, as I was scheduled to have a Potion lesson right about then, and Professor Moriyama wouldn’t been happy with my tardiness.

As always, though, I couldn’t care less, and Moriyama was just stupid not to take any available opportunity to have a confrontation with Neil about that stupid fucking riddle. Of course, that was just that: if Neil had solved it already, there was no need for said confrontation, but I was hoping that Neil had been dumber that he usually was in the little less than two weeks that had just passed.

Lupin slouched back in his chair, and cleared his throat.

“I don’t know,” he finally admitted, “I haven’t seen that arrow.”

I groaned. I had tried my best to describe what the clue that followed the explosion of the snitches was, but I know it must’ve been hard to partake in the guessing game if the arrow hadn’t been seen in person. That was just the problem, was it? No one but me, Neil and Riko had seen that fucking hint, and the riddle wasn’t easy to solve.

There weren’t any words, none that actually helped at least, and the only thing visible and helpful was that arrow. But what was it? Did it point in the same direction for all three of us? Did it point to something in particular? Did it point to a person, a thing, a place? Was there something more, was it the start of some kind of treasure hunt?

Dumbledore was really shit at making clues.

“But there must be a way to determine together what it was pointing to,” I fought.

“Don’t you have that memory thing to help you?” he asked instead.

Of course, my eidetic memory. It came in handy from time to time, but that task wasn’t the case.

“Yes, but it is just that: a memory. I can’t change the angle, or the frame: I can look at the arrow again, at the still image of that memory, but I can’t just look over at what the arrow was pointing to. It’s not like a vivid dream.”

Lupin scratched his chin a couple of time before sighing as well, and slouching even further on his armchair. I thought that if it was a bed he would be lying down too at that point.

“This sucks,” he breathed.

“I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to use that kind of language in front of the students,” I teased, but chuckled at the defeat on the professor’s face nonetheless. I then bit the inside of my cheek, returning to the ceiling with my eyes, “I’ll come up with something.”

“I should help you,” he reiterated.

“You should train me,” I corrected him, “This,” I said, gesturing between the two of us, “is just me being a prick and invading your personal time. I don’t know why you even let me do it.”

“You know why,” he shrugged, and then laughed as he stood up from his armchair.

“Being like you doesn’t excuse me for being a dickhead,” I suggested.

“I was a dickhead,” Lupin shrugged again, “and a lot of people excused me just because in their books I was really good-looking and funny and smart and kind. But I was an asshole most of the time, really.”

He crouched down and laid beside me, watching the same point on the ceiling that I was watching. He then fished his packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his long, ragged robe and picked up one directly with his lips. I snapped my fingers and the little stick lit up in his mouth. Lupin laughed.

“How did you learn?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, “Aren’t I the most intelligent, talented, brilliant wizard on the planet? I know how to light a fag.”

“I know how to do it, too,” he said, matter-of-factly, like he was reinstating some sort of dominance or superiority over me – he was, in the end, my professor, and even if he thought I was very talented it must’ve bugged him that I easily knew how to do stuff he must’ve practiced a long time to accomplish – “Sirius was the one that learnt it first, and he taught me. For him, it was just a way to flirt with girls in the common room during parties; for me, it was a matter of practicality. I’d lose my lighter every time I stepped in this godforsaken castle.”

“I have mine in my room. I just don’t use it anymore, because I know how to do that,” I shrugged, even though my shoulders couldn’t quite slide comfortably on the floor, so I imagined it only half-looked like a shrug. Either way, the professor couldn’t even see me.

“Would you like one?” he suddenly asked, offering me the packet. I patted down my robe and found out I had left my own packet in my dorm, and I gratefully picked up a cigarette from Lupin’s.

“Shouldn’t you be telling me that smoking is bad for someone my age?” I inquired.

“Nah,” he chuckled, “I guess your friends tell you that all the time. At least, mine did.”

“I don’t have any friends,” I responded, to which the corners of his mouth turned downwards a little.

“Not even Neil?”

“He bought me two packets for my birthday last year. I don’t think he minds the smoke.”

“Well, then,” Lupin smiled again, that kind-hearted smile that I guessed was the reason why he always had the whole school head-over-heels for him, whether he was a student or a professor, “let me tell you about my best friend James. I think you mostly know him as Prongs, but before we came up with that nickname he was just James Potter, and he was the richest, the nicest and the most beautiful boy in my year. The four of us, me, James, Sirius and… well,” he choked up a bit, but then coughed to clear his throat and kept going, like nothing had suddenly wiped the smile off his face, “we shared a dorm. The first few nights, James and Sirius, being the pure-blooded, entitled, rich son of bitches that they were, couldn’t stop talking and bonding and chatting away about nothing in particular. Peter was James’ childhood friend, though, so he could listen and no one would mind. I, however, felt like the odd one out. Mostly because I had a secret I was told never to uncover with anyone, not even my closest friends.”

“But they became your friends eventually, that much I know,” I tried to cut the story short.

“Yeah. And it was all because of James. He was the kind of guy that lived to be in the spotlight, but also deserved to be right there, at the center of everyone’s attention. He was kind, brave, sunny like very few things are and were during those dark times, he was the absolute best and everyone’s favorite. He was talented, bold, but caring and loving, and he had this undying crush for a girl in our year. He also took care of Sirius and me when we had our problems. And he was very much against us smoking: he said that we were adding insult to injury to our already wrecked bodies. He took Sirius in as a brother when he ran away from his parents, and he was the first one to know about our relationship. He was meant to officiate at our wedding…” Lupin trailed off, and with the corner of my eyes I could see a tear escaping from his and rolling down towards the floor.

“What happened?” I thought it was only legit to ask.

“What?” he jolter upright and seemed appalled at the question. At my probably shocked and utterly confused face, he softened his eyes, and then sighed, “Right. You didn’t know about all this before last year.”

“What else did I miss about this wizarding world?”

“A war,” he didn’t miss a beat, “a great war between us and a dark, powerful wizard. And…” he took a deep drag from the cigarette, then let it out softly and slowly, “James and his girl, the one I told you about, his wife – her name was Lily, she was the sweetest person I had ever met – had a son. They named him Harry, and on him dawned the prophecy that he would be the one to defeat that dark wizard. He – Voldemort, was his name – didn’t want to take any chances, and didn’t wait for Harry to grow to have a confrontation. The Order, Dumbledore’s army, which Sirius, James, Lily and I were a part of, tried to hide them in a safe place, no one ought to know where except a Secret Keeper, someone loyal. Sirius thought it was easy for Voldemort to guess it was him, so he bestowed the honor on Peter. But Peter betrayed us, and he told Voldemort. James and Lily… they died when Harry was just one year old.”

“What happened to him?” I was seated up too, at that point, eager to know more, the cigarette still not lit up in my hand.

“The Order had been looking for the mole for quite some time, and everyone thought Sirius was the Secret Keeper, because he was basically James' brother, so they tried to frame him. But he had managed to be there, at the Potter’s house, the night of the attack. He stopped Peter, even though it pained him to acknowledge both his best friend’s death and his other friend’s betrayal, and found out that Voldemort hadn’t been able to kill Harry. Lily’s body had protected him, and the curse had bounced back onto him. Sirius picked Harry up, took him to our apartment, and even if we were hitting a rough patch in our relationship we put our small differences aside and decided to raise Harry ourselves. Dumbledore said that it would be easier for him to grow in a normal house, with muggle parents, and tried to send him off to Lily’s muggle sister, but Sirius fought him off. He is Harry’s godfather, y’know? He had every right to raise him.”

“When did the war end?”

“Voldemort returned when Harry was only fourteen. Peter had escaped from prison using his animagus form – no one knew about it, because they weren’t registered at the time – and he was able to resuscitate the Dark Lord, tricking Harry into playing a Triwizard Tournament, just like the one you’re doing. A kid lost his life,” he kept smoking as he was talking.

“Cedric,” I whispered, vaguely remembering the conversation I had had with Renée at the banquet the first day of school, when Dumbledore had announced the Tournament.

“Yes. A sweet kid, really. He didn’t deserve his fate,” Lupin sighed heavily, but quickly returned to the story, “Anyway, since Sirius and I had made a promise to each other to prepare Harry for his destiny, he wasn’t caught unequipped when Voldemort came for him. It took a lot less time for him to defeat him, and, even if the final battle was devasting, we didn’t lose as many lives as we could’ve if we waited. At some point, I thought I might’ve lost Sirius. Hell, I thought I could die myself,” he dabbed the cigarette butt on the tiled floor.

“That’s…” I slowly slid on my back, just to lie fully flat on the floor again, “…really not the reason I came in today.”

Lupin burst out laughing loudly, and I noticed it could sound like an howl if I paid enough attention. He then stood up and went to throw the butt in the already full ashtray. At one point, he stopped in his tracks and looked around, like he had just thought about something but couldn’t quite put a name to his thought.

“You know, about our problem,” he said, “we should find a way to access your memories and freeze the moment you made that boulder explode. Maybe we could also see where Neil’s and Riko’s arrows were pointing to, if we look at it from an outer perspective.”

I glanced at the clock, and realized I was really late for class with Professor Moriyama. I sighed and stood up, but I couldn’t let Lupin’s idea slip through our fingers.

“How would we do that?” I asked, going for my bag that I had left hung from one of the classroom chairs.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, then spoke up, “Would you be comfortable if I read your mind?”

“Would it be precise in finding the memory, or would you be accessing them randomly?”

“I’m afraid it isn’t really up to me what I can access,” he sighed, knowing where that answer would've led.

“Then no can do,” I bit down my lip and starting to walk backwards toward the door, still looking at the very tired professor.

“It’s fine,” he scratched his head and made his eyes travel through the room, as if the walls could’ve helped us with that conundrum, “We will find something else.”

“See you tomorrow?” I yelled over my shoulder while opening the door and preparing myself to make a run for the Potion classroom.

“Have a good day, Andrew!” Lupin yelled after me.

The door closed behind me and I started running. I was very late.

 

---

 

The door decided it was the best time to emit a loud creak in the one silent moment I was entering the potion classroom. Every single one of the heads present in the room turned towards me, and I walked over at the only available spot in the class, chin up high, trying not to look discouraged at the venomous glare that Moriyama was sending me.

I sat down and fished my books from the bag, that was still larger inside than it was on the outside. I picked up a book after the other, creating a tall pile in front of me. Beside me, Neil giggled. A frantic sound of heavy steps came closer and closer, and in the end the ugly face of Professor Moriyama appeared in front of me.

“What’s this?” he gestured convulsively at the books. I shrugged, calm in the face of his rage.

“I think they’re pretty self-explanatory as items,” I answered, and picked up the book at the top of the pile.

I glanced at the blackboard in the corner of the room. Neil sat in the front at Potions, he was the first one to enter the classroom and the last to leave, because for some reason he wanted to excel at it even if it wasn’t his forte. So, as I sat next to him, it was easy for me to read the topic of the lesson, written in big, cubital letters with white chalk on the black surface.

I slowly opened the book at the page of the subject and put it down on my desk. I had already read that part of the book, but Potions was one of those classes that I had to attend to comprehend even the slightest bit. Moriyama might’ve been a cunt, but he was good at what he did, at the very least.

He was still breathing heavily on me, his chest rising and falling at a speed that I could only guess was barely tolerable for his body. He was looking down at me like he wanted to rip me to shreds.

“May I help you?” I asked, sheepishly, but I tipped my head to the side to convey the sarcasm.

“Yes,” he fumed, “what’s your excuse today?”

That was a fair question: in truth, I hadn’t been the most diligent student since the announcement of the champions for the Tournament. I had been tossing and turning nights and days, searching for a simple way to both distract myself from my impending doom and focussing on the various matters at hand. I had a school year to complete, two Tournaments to win, the duty to save my best friend, that wasn’t really my best friend, that was the boy that I loved, that didn’t know that I loved him and that could never love me back, from himself. I had my hands full and empty at the same time.

The emotional turmoil that was clouding my head called for deeper rest, but also made me stay awake most of the time. I didn’t have the strength and the will to cut myself again, and I was under the strict surveillance of Professor Lupin, who had taken the habit to come and wake me up in time for lessons and breakfast if he didn’t see me in the Great Hall before a certain hour.

I was exhausted and had been picking and choosing stuff I thought it was easy to sacrifice for the greater good of my being. One of those things was punctuality, and my tardiness was often excused by those Professors that seemed to love me – Lupin, McGonagall, Wymack, Flitwick. On the other hand, those that couldn’t stand me before, found it really easy to despise me right then.

Moriyama hadn’t ever liked me, for some reason I couldn’t actually name, but I reckoned it had something to do with the fact that his nephew hated me too. He hadn’t been quite fond of the fact that I had basically dropped my perfect-student attitude, and, in his books, it probably revealed that I wasn’t as good of a wizard as everyone else painted me to be.

Either way, I looked up at him with my unfazed glare and I managed to curve up my lips in an ironic smile.

“I’m sorry, but my competition is sitting right beside me. I couldn’t disclose such sensible information,” I replied, pointing at Neil with my head like he couldn’t see me.

“What?” Moriyama seemed baffled, “You were doing something for the Tournament?”

“I can’t tell you that,” I crossed my arms over my chest and laid back on the chair, “You’ll have to take it up with my supervisor if you want answers.”

Neil chuckled again but shut up when Moriyama sent a scolding look on his way.

“The fact that you’re one of the Champions doesn’t excuse your bad behavior,” Moriyama sentenced, straightening up and finally acquiring the hard demeanor he was known for.

His eyes, black with those weird golden veins that I had first noticed in Riko’s, became cold and he seemed to grow in height, becoming like a steady mountain.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. The lesson hadn’t started, I was technically on time,” I defended myself. I couldn’t toy with him anymore if he was going to use his rank against me.

“Well,” he raised an eyebrow in my direction, “Mr. Josten is one of the Champions, but he was right on time. In fact, he arrived before me.”

“Mr. Josten isn’t me,” I pointed out, standing up, which caused immediate alarm throughout the whole class. With the corner of my eye, I could see Aaron shifting uncomfortably in his chair as he watched the scene unfold, “Also, you’re his supervisor. He didn’t have anything else to do besides being here with you.”

“Watch your tone, Minyard,” Moriyama pointed his finger at my face. I scoffed and carefully pushed it aside with my own index. His pupils, barely discernible from the rest of his irises, shrunk as he filled with pure, blind rage.

“Or what?” I whispered.

The classroom filled with tension, and everyone stood still waiting for the hammer to fall. Neil’s eyes jumped from me to Moriyama, then back to me, and in my stare-down with the professor I couldn’t tell whether he was more worried or scared.

Moriyama slapped the surface of the desk between us and Neil winced, startled. I didn’t move, purely because I couldn’t let him see how scared I was of his eyes, turning both bright red and colder by the minute.

“That’s it,” he hissed.

He grabbed the collar of my robe and pulled at it, making me inevitably lose my balance and fall to the ground in the small corridor created between the worktables. The impact resonated through my whole body but mostly hurt my knees, that were struggling to function properly again.

Moriyama hovered over me, tall as a skyscraper. It was a more than familiar situation, but that time I didn’t cry, I didn’t quiver, I didn’t tremble in the face of the abuser. I waited for him to finish whatever show he was putting on to try and humiliate me.

“Do you all know,” he smiled wickedly at the whole classroom, “that Mr. Minyard's was the first name vomited by the Goblet of Fire? Mh?”

I didn’t know that.

“Dumbledore wanted to read into it. Said it was because this muggle-raised trash,” he spewed hate from every pore, “was the most gifted wizard this school had hosted in years. That he is supposed to reach a potential most of us Professor won’t know in our lifetime, that he will accumulate power and his first real challenge is going to be this very Tournament.”

“Professor,” the feeble voice of Neil came from the desk above me, but I knew nothing was going to stop Moriyama’s rant.

“But you know what I see when I look at him?” the professor rhetorically asked again. He took his wand and pointed it at me, raising my chin with it so that I could look at him in the eyes, “I see a fragile, powerless, dullard jackass that tries very hard to be something he’s not. Of course, you’re struggling to juggle everything you have to do in this school while Neil and Riko find it easy: you were not born to live this life. You should’ve stayed in that rat’s nest they found you in, since you’re such an imbecile that you couldn’t even figure out your first task without taking the easy way out and making things explode.”

“Professor!” Neil finally stood up and snatched the wand from Moriyama’s hand, “That’s enough.”

“You want to be next, boy?” the teacher threatened, head snapping in the redhead’s direction, but while Neil didn’t budge or retreat, Moriyama did nothing to punish him in any way. I took it as a good sign as the professor turned to me again and his eyes were no longer red, but their usual dark black.

“Detention,” he began, chin up high to signal his superiority over me, “doesn’t even begin to cover the insult I was forced to endure today. I will talk to Dumbledore about a more fitting punishment for your misbehavior.”

I finally stood up. I looked at the professor with hard eyes and didn’t utter a word. Everything he had said was true in my head, but I knew it to be objectively false. While he had hurt me, he couldn’t even begin to cut me as deep as I was able to do with myself. His words were now lost in the air, mere accusation thrown over a fit of anger that was more appropriate of a toddler than a teacher. I didn’t care, I never did care about what other thought of me.

I spun around and went for the door. I didn’t even care about the fact that Moriyama was screaming at me to come back and follow the lesson as it would be fit for a student that was already facing punishment for being late. I didn’t care about all the people watching me as I opened the door to exit.

Before the door closed behind me, though, I felt the need to find the pained and angered eyes of my twin brother, that was watching me leave like everyone else.

I didn’t even dare to look at Neil.

 

---

 

King purred as he brushed his little black head against my bare shin. I had asked Nicky if I could’ve had him back after the summer holidays and he was more than willing to give him back to me. I found that cat therapeutic: his gentle meows and his soft fur grounded me, reminded me that I was still human, still alive, still me.

I had thought about going into the owlery, because that place always calmed me down the best, but I was afraid that the voice of Moriyama’s little freak show might’ve spread around. Renée probably wanted to find me, talk to me, ask me how I was: I didn’t have time for that.

I could practically hear, all the way across the castle, Lupin screaming at the top of his lungs that what Moriyama had done was outrageous, a clear sign that that man wasn’t meant to be teaching, while Flitwick and McGonagall silently agreed in front a very smug Moriyama and a very tired Dumbledore, who was searching for a way to make it even and fair for everyone.

I looked over at the window. The moon was up, almost full, and I knew the day was coming that Neil and I ought to be together in the wild again. I wasn’t sure how it was possible that the wolf and the panther got along so good, so smoothly, even when there were clearly problems between Neil and me.

Sure, he seemed more confident and talkative than what he had been in the months prior to the first task, but he still didn’t properly seek me out, and maybe I hadn’t made an effort, too. Correction: I hadn’t actually made any kind of effort. I believed our relationship had been broken by my failed attempt at love, and he hadn’t really been fond of me since our discussion in the Ravenclaw common room.

Still, I could acknowledge that he felt like trying sometimes. I could acknowledge that, sometimes, when he noticed I was particularly lonely, he approached me. It wasn’t out of pity; I could see that it was out of habit. He didn’t necessarily talk – most of the time he didn’t – but he was there. He tried to be there with me, for me.

In my defense, I was trying too, even if maybe in a more subtle, quiet way. I had been drafting a calendar of the next full moons, researching and learning more and more about werewolves, and had yelled for half an hour to Dumbledore so that he would be careful in choosing the dates of the tasks.

I had been going into the Forest every once in a while, to take up the project I had of a small wardrobe, hidden in the trunk of a tree, where Neil could store his clothes, so that he wouldn’t need to borrow mine once the sun rose.

Somehow, maybe due to the character I had been building in the school for the past year and a half, everything I did for him passed as egotistical: I didn’t want the tasks to be near the full moon because he would be stronger and it wouldn’t be fair for me; I built the cabinet so that I didn’t have to lend him clothes once a month, and so on.

But not only that reaction was fair and comprehensible, somehow I thought it was for the best. That way, Neil didn’t have to feel like he owed me something just for having his back even if we weren’t friends like before.

I stood up, and accidentaly startled the cat that had curled up in my lap. I stopped to apologize to King before heading for the big, ample window and sitting on its windowsill. I let my head fall and hit the cold glass with my temple and closed my eyes.

My breath fogged up the glass, and, when I cracked my tired eyelids open, I doodled a little star on the small patch of condensation. I opened the window, and scooted over on the windowsill, closer and closer to the edge. I looked down.

Chills ran up and down my body, and I placed two fingers on the joint between my chin and my neck. There, I could feel my accelerating, steady pulse.

I was alive. I was alive.

With the fingers still on my throat, my other hand reached for the opposite forearm and removed the thick, black armband, so that I could place my callous palm on my torn skin.

I was alive.

I survived.

I kept surviving, no matter was challenge was ahead of me, I kept standing up.

That was what Moriyama didn’t understand about me: I didn’t care about people screaming in my face, I wasn’t afraid of vague and empty threats, I wasn’t fazed by an open display of abuse of power in order to make me feel little and insignificant.

I just had to take and assimilate the blow. On the morrow, I would’ve been good as new.

I stayed still for quite some time, the cold wind of November rushing through my hair, the rushes of adrenalin cruising up and down my body as I looked way down at the ground, one hand on my heartbeat, the other on my past wounds.

I looked over at the Forest in the distance. It was dark, like not even the light of the moon could enter it without violating some kind of rule. Still, I knew from the countless times I had been in there, that it wasn’t that scary. It was familiar by then, with its weird creatures and its ponds and creeks, and the majestic trees everywhere and the caves. Neil and I had spent the best nights of our lives in that Forest, that was Forbidden to most and was so precious to us.

Wait.

That was it.

The first task had been an interpretation of something that was very close and dear to the three Champions, and even the clues had been given in a way that could embody our role in Quidditch. It was only logical that the second task, too, would be something that combined Neil, Riko and me in an intricate way.

Riko’s family lived in the Forest, they were dark creatures that moved there in the night and he must’ve been connected to that reality in some way.

Neil had found his freedom as a werewolf in that Forest.

And about me…

If I closed my eyes, I could’ve seen it as clear as day. The memory of the first task, the rock exploded in front of me, the big writing in the sky made out of small fireworks and the huge arrow that pointed somewhere unknown. But I was advantaged by the height: Neil and Riko were both on the ground, and when I revisited the memory of me looking back at them to confirm it, I could see that their arrows were pointing in the same direction as mine.

Still, in my memories I turned to the arrow again, and I tried so hard to look past what I had noticed the first time. Behind the arrow, in the distance, there was the castle, its towers, its magnificence. And when I acknowledged which angle of the castle I could see, there was no question as to where that arrow, rotated in that precise position, was pointing to.

The second task would’ve been taking place in the Forbidden Forest.

That was the fucking clue.  

Notes:

I'm SO SO SORRY!
I hate being this late, but I can't help it: it's finals season, and I have a lot of exams in the near future, I simply can't find the time to study. I hope it doesn't bother you, because I think that the future chapters are worth the wait. I will just tease you, but we will see Roland and Rita Skeeter in action!
I really am sorry, i think it will happen more and more especially during the holidays. I will try my best, I swear.

Chapter 24: Teen Idle

Summary:

TW!
sexual content

Notes:

I'm back babies!!!
I honestly don't know if I like this chapter or not, but the next one is super juicy and I hope I will be able to post it either today or tomorrow. Stay tuned!

The walk from the owlery back to the castle was the thing I dreaded most about the time I spent in the tall tower. From the moment I stepped out from my hiding spot, everything hit me back: my reality, my life, my problems. Every single piece of the landscape around me reminded me that I was alive, but not in the way that I liked. It reminded me that I had friends, duties, goals and way too many things to do.

As soon as I stepped down from the last step of the staircase, out in the open air of the cold Scottish countryside at dusk, the light of the dying day hit me in the eyes, and the faint voices coming from the sparkly Great Hall disturbed my ears.

Ever since I had gotten more comfortable with my animal form, I had started noticing small things that were different in my body: my eyes were yellower, and my pupils were slightly more elongated - not in a way that anyone else would notice, but still, it was there. My eyesight and my hearing were much improved, and I found that it was quite disturbing to be able to hear what everyone was up to in the Ravenclaw dormitories.

If I focussed on the sounds long enough, I could hear Renée’s laugh, Nicky’s shrill voice telling some obnoxious piece of gossip, Dan and Matt lightly scolding him for being too loud, but also quietly giggling about it, Allison's encouragement to keep talking, and I could just feel both Neil and Aaron just being there, both minding their business but both enjoying the company.

I couldn’t be bothered to spend time with them, when really just Renée – and Matt, when he was feeling particularly stupid – was really into talking to me and having me around. Most of them had something against me: for some of them I could actually see why they wouldn’t talk to me, but for people like Dan and Allison I thought they were just taking their repressed anger out on me.

I wasn’t even angry about that. I couldn’t be, really, when I had bigger issues to solve. But it stung badly to know that nothing about my life really changed once I had discovered who I really was: everyone looked past me, like I wasn’t even there, until they had something to unload and vent for. Then I was the only thing they could see, the only solution to their every predicament and conundrum.

That was what I had felt like all my childhood, and it didn’t really cross me, but it also wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t how I thought friends should treat you.

“Andrew!” someone screamed.

That someone was easily found, as Renée was rushing towards me waving her arms in the air like she was trying to gain my attention in a crowd, not like we were hopelessly alone in a big, empty field. I cocked my eyebrows and stared at her as she ran for her life.

“What?” I asked, once she reached me and bended over to catch her breath. She panted with a hand on her chest, and when she straightened up, she had tears in her eyes. I was confused.

“What?” I repeated.

“Aaron,” she just said. I urged her to explain what she meant by that, “He went crazy when he realized you weren’t at dinner. He crashed your room and started throwing stuff around, he claims you’re hiding something. I don’t know, he was spiraling.”

“What?” I asked for the third time.

“Andrew, you have to come,” she insisted.

“What?” I whispered; my head was a mess, I couldn't think of something else to say.

“Andrew,” she snapped her fingers in front of my eyes, “Neil will actually kill your brother if you don’t come.”

“What?!” I screamed now.

Renée rolled her eyes, and took my hand, dragging me by force towards the castle, towards the entrance, up the stairs, so many stairs. She easily solved the riddle to enter the common room, and I could see all my Housemates gathered in the ample space, crowding the way to my dorm room.

I held my breath as Renée pushed through all the people, she pushed with her shoulders and elbows but as she walked by, the crowd returned to their previous positions, caging me in like an animal in an ocean of hell and torture. I felt naked skin brushing against my thin clothes – I didn’t even know where I’d put my robe – and I knew right then I was going to be sick.

Renée kept pushing, kept dragging, kept screaming to get out of her way. I followed mindlessly, my mind flat, my eyes empty, my heart aching.

I’d had a tough couple of days. After Moriyama’s attack, I had been more detached from reality. I had spent most of my days in the owlery, with a special permit from Flitwick granted by Lupin, who had heard about the incident and had quickly understood I needed time alone to gain back my confidence and my social skills. I needed time alone to process what had happened, and he'd asked Flitwick if I could be excused from the lessons for the next week. The excuse he used was that the pressure from the Tournament was getting to me, and I couldn’t handle much more stress.

That was true, in part. I hated that Tournament, and I could just endure a couple of things at once, but that school year seemed to be out to get me more and more by the day.

I could handle the fact that Neil hated me, because that was where I had pushed him to; I could handle the fact that my mother was dead, because I knew, even if that had affected me, that I did it to protect both Aaron and me; I could handle the fact that I was a powerful wizard that had to prove themselves by dealing with impossible, fatal tasks, because apparently that was just how I was born. What I couldn’t handle was the fact that nobody seemed to understand how all of that shit was getting to my head and I thought I was going insane just by being in school with everyone.

That was why I was desensitized at the rage fit Aaron was throwing. It was more of a temper tantrum to me, really. And I couldn’t handle it, right then, so I let Renée drag me in the hopes that the issue would resolve itself without me having to put my word in.

We arrived at the door, and my room was, indeed, in disarray.

The curtains around the bed were torn, and so was the duvet. Every drawer, every closet and every shutter were wide open and the things that were supposed to be in those were, instead, scattered around the floor.

On the floor there was also Aaron, struggling to get free of the tight grip Neil had him in, blocking his arms behind his back and keeping him knelt down.

“Let me go!” my twin brother was screaming, again and again, like a broken record.

“Stop throwing shit around and I let go of you,” Neil reiterated, calmly. On his face I could read that it wasn’t the first time he had said something like that.

“I need to find what he’s hiding,” Aaron yelled again, and Neil made a displeased face at the harsh sound in his ears, then sighed.

“You took it too far, Aaron,” Dan intervened.

“Yes, this is ballistic,” Allison commented, “this is not like you.”

Some people in the hallway, right outside my dorm, started whispering to each other about what could have possibly happened for my brother to completely loose his mind like that.

Most of the school, by that point of the year, had known about the passing of our mother. It wasn’t really a secret, but we could say that probably the voice wouldn’t have spread that quickly if I hadn’t been one of the Triwizard Champions, and if Aaron hadn’t utterly changed from the inside out since the last summer.

I looked at Renée, seeking comfort against that simply unsettling scene, but she had reached Aaron and Neil in the meantime and wasn’t next to me anymore.

“What do you even think Andrew’s hiding?” Matt asked, trying to keep my brother calm.

“I don’t know!” Aaron voice was sharp, “Something that might tell me why he killed our mother!”

“Aaron!” Nicky admonished, “I told you already that that is not true.”

“Fuck you for covering for him,” Aaron spat.

I closed my eyes. I could feel an intense pain in my chest, a heavy grip around my head, and my scars burnt, like I had just been lit on fire.

The people behind me kept talking. I wanted them to stop, but my lips were sealed shut.

“Nicky’s not covering for anyone,” Renée responded, “He’s telling the truth.”

“How do you all know that? Huh?” Aaron wiggled around in Neil’s arms, but the full moon was just a couple of nights away, and nothing was stronger than Neil in those last crescent moon days. He didn’t even move as my twin tried his hardest to push him away.

“Andrew was injured too, don’t you remember?” Dan asked.

“Why would he have gotten in that car if he knew it was going to crash eventually?” Matt insisted.

Aaron laughed, bitterly.

“Have you ever seen his arms?”

“Shut up.”

I didn’t recognize my voice as it escaped my lips. I didn’t recognize my tone, my words, myself. But I still said it, so I also forced myself to open my eyes again, just to look at the silence I had created.

Everyone, from Aaron, still struggling, to Dan and Allison and Matt in the far corner, was looking at me flabbergasted by my sudden intervention. Only Neil was proudly watching me from his position on the floor, with a slight smirk painted on his face that nobody could see but me and Renée.

I fished my wand from the back pocket of my pants and waved it in a circle. Quickly, in the blink of an eye, everything went back to its rightful place, and even the torn fabrics were restored to their original state. King, that had quietly witnessed every part of the tantrum from the entryway of the bathroom, was quite glad he could take again his spot on the bed.

“How did you do that?” Allison finally asked, looking around to the now tidy and clean room.

“I’m a wizard. Surprise,” I responded, wryly, “Neil, let go of my jackass of a brother.”

The redhead chuckled, but promptly stood up and freed Aaron’s arms from the ironclad grip he had on them. Aaron didn’t seem like he would throw a fit again, and I nodded.

“Everybody out,” I kindly, dryly ordered, “Except Aaron, if he’s got something to tell me.”

The group staggered in a single file towards the door I was standing next to, as I also waited for my beloved audience to disappear.

Nicky hauled Aaron on his feet and pushed him towards the door. As much as that behavior was unusual for my cousin, I could feel the anger my brother had created in him. As he passed me by, Nicky tried to kindly smile while whispering a ‘sorry’ and before disappearing down the stairs.

Neil was the last to walk out. He stopped in front of me.

“Are you okay?” he simply asked. He had his hands in the pockets of his black, silver and green robe, his curly hair was particularly fluffed from the fight he must’ve had with Aaron before I got to the dorm.

“Sure,” I gave a hint of a tight-lipped smile.

“I can tell you’re lying, Drew,” Neil whispered, carefully.

“I really hate that you can do that,” I dragged my eyes away from his, pointing them at the floor between us.

“Were you in the owlery?” he inquired, like it even mattered where I was after everything that had happened.

“Mhm,” I nodded, still trying to avoid eye-contact. I knew he wouldn’t like that: wolves had a weird thing about looking a person in the eyes.

“I’m about to put my hand on your right cheek,” he warned, “Can I?”

“Uhm, yes,” I gulped, looking back up at him, “What for?”

“You have ink on your face,” he whispered, and his thumb stroke a point on my face where I assumed there was an ink spot. I vaguely remembered putting my quill near there while studying in the owlery. I let him try to wipe the stain away.

When he felt like that what he was doing was accomplished, he smiled widely. His teeth were sharper this close to a full moon, whiter, and his lips were redder. His heart pumped more blood, his adrenaline was skyrocketing. He was his best self.

And I loved that fucking smile. And I hated loving it.

“See you in two days?” he said in the guise of goodbye.

“Sure,” I repeated. I couldn’t seem to find a lot of words that day.

I shut the door right as Neil went away. I leaned against it, hitting my head again and again against the hard wood. I looked around: everything was back at its place. I didn’t even know what spell I had used to do that. King was sleeping, at the feet of the bed. My head was spinning, and I felt like I needed a drink.

How could a sixteen-year-old go through all of that? How could I keep lying to Aaron, when the feeling I had taken everything from him was killing me, too? How could I admit that I wished that car crash would’ve ended my life, so that I didn’t have to put up with everything that was happening?

They had assured me that being a wizard was a new life, but it felt too much like the old one.

Fuck that.

I had to get out of there.

 

---

 

Whether Dumbledore and the teachers knew about them, there were still quite a lot of secret passages that led from the castle of the school to the near village of Hogsmeade. Maybe the catch was that none of the students knew about them.

None but me.

And, I guessed, Lupin and his friends when they were younger.

I opened the front door of the Hog’s Head Inn and the weird smell of raw meat, stale beer and goat cheese hit my nostrils just as I entered the bar. I looked around but couldn’t find the old man that was there the evening of my birthday. Instead, there was just the guy I was looking for.

From behind the counter, with the same old rug slung across his shoulder, Roland was smiling at me.

“If it isn’t my favorite Hogwarts student,” he called out. I chuckled.

I crossed the bar in an instant and sat at the counter, looking at the shelves full of bottles and alcohol. I twitched my lips and scrunched my nose. Roland spun around to look where I was looking, too.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to drink that stuff, lovely,” he suggested.

I smirked.

“Well, I’m not allowed to be here, either, but here I am,” I opened my arms in a wide gesture of presence.

The bartender howled with laughter, but then stuck to the rules and poured me a beer in one of the nicest glasses that place could offer. I took that as a treatment of favor, so I thanked him kindly with a shy smile.

“That’s right, though,” he pondered out loud, still pacing back and forth behind the counter, cleaning the grease off some of the silverware, “how is it possible that you’re here?”

“Snuck out,” I shrugged.

“Ouch, naughty,” Roland smiled widely, “What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know,” I responded, taking a long sip from the beer, “I reckon I can go back the way I came, if I want to go back?”

“If?” Roland cocked one eyebrow, I tilted my head to the side, a smug smile on my lips.

“I don’t know if I want to go back tonight,” I replied.

“Ah,” the boy nodded, “You’re feeling rebellious. I get it.”

I finished my beer and, in good spirits, Roland poured me another one.

“You seem happy,” he commented after a while.

“I’m not,” I said, and I couldn’t help but notice how he was different from Neil: the redhead knew I wasn’t okay just by looking at me, while the bartender assumed that I was fine just because he had seen me smile.

“Can I help?” he asked, and by looking into his eyes I knew that he wasn’t asking just because it was the right thing to do. He really wanted to help.

“Yeah,” I smiled, “That’s why I’m here.”

“My shift ends in half an hour,” he winked at me, “do you mind waiting?”

“If you keep pouring this beer, not at all.”

Roland scoffed and shook his head in disbelief. He put down the fork he was cleaning and stopped to look at me up and down, studying my appearance. I noticed then and there than in my hurry I may have forgotten to wear some decent clothes: I only had my black t-shirt, my pants, and my armbands on, along with my coat that I wasn’t wearing inside the tavern.

I shyly pulled at the hem of my right armband.

“You are really something, Andrew,” he leaned towards me, so close that, if I wanted to, I could’ve kissed him. I didn’t, though, and he slowly pulled away, “My room’s upstairs, if you want to get going.”

I nodded, but before I set off, I finished my second beer and asked for a third. Roland was happy to oblige. As a goodbye, I put two fingers to my forehead and then waved them, then I took my glass and my coat with me as I wandered upstairs.

The second floor was not better than the first, and the weird smell persisted – I guessed it did throughout the whole Inn. Between the few rooms that welcomed the guests, it was easy to find the one that had a little plaque with the name ‘Roland’ written on it.

I was astonished by the fact that Roland had so much trust in the people that came to that place not to lock his door when he was on his shifts, but still, the room was open. I entered it and it was as barren as I thought it would be.

There was just a wooden bed, whose frame was cracked visibly in a lot of places, a wooden table that was in the same conditions as the bed and a – surprisingly – wooden closet which I try my best not to open to reveal the bartender’s secret. There were very few items besides the meagre furniture, and I noticed it looked a lot like Aaron’s room back at our house.

I hang my coat on the back of the chair, then I sighed and went to sit on the bed, while also gulping down the alcohol: I thought that the drunker I got, the sooner I could’ve forgotten the smug looks on the Ravenclaws’ faces, the way Aaron was screaming, how gentle Neil’s hand had felt on my cheek. I wanted to forget, to empty my brain, to lose myself for a night.

I didn’t care what Dumbledore or Lupin or even my beautiful Neil might’ve thought. If they ever noticed I was missing, that was.

Roland came precisely half an hour later, as he had said.

“So,” he began, untying his apron and throwing it on the chair in front of the desk, carelessly, “what’s got you so upset, cutie?”

I smiled at the name. I wasn’t comfortable to be called that, but it was new, and new was the reason I had snuck out of school in the first place. I made myself like new, hoping that it would make me feel better about my life, eventually.

“My twin brother is a brat and now everyone at school thinks we’re a couple of sociopaths,” I replied, shrugging.

“Well, are you?” he asked, with a hint of a laugh, “I don’t want to get murdered tonight.”

“I promise I’m not,” I raised my hands in surrender, “I would need a very good reason to kill you.”

“I hope I will not give you one, then,” he smiled fondly and came to sit next to me on the bed, which creaked under the new weight. I really didn’t think that thing was safe to sleep onto.

Roland carefully leaned in, studying my side profile. He softly took my earlobe between his thumb and index finger, and I tried my best not to shiver at the contact with new human skin. It made me want to throw up, but if I was going to keep up with that nonsense, I also had to put my trauma aside for one night. Besides, I thought, how could it hurt to pretend that I liked to be touched? How could it hurt to pretend I was a normal human being, for once?

“You have your ears pierced,” he finally said. I nodded, surprised he was the first one to notice that small detail in year and a half of my friends knowing me – I wasn’t even sure Neil and Renée had realized that I had them -, “Where did you get them pierced?”

“I… uhm,” I stammered, playing with my fingernails as I often did when I was nervous, “I was in juvie, couple years back… There was this one bloke that was a piercer outside of prison. I asked him, and he did it with a frozen apple and a syringe needle. I don’t where he got either of those, but then again, he got the job done so I will not complain.”

“You were in juvie?” Roland chuckled, “Wow. You’re a constant surprise. What’d you do?”

“I’m not telling you that,” I smiled bashfully and slightly pushed him away from me, not enough that it would’ve actually moved him though. He stayed right beside me, with my ear still in his hand.

“Fine,” he shrugged, “Would you like some other piercings, then? I have a couple ones in mind that I think would suit you.”

“Sure,” I turned to look at him, finally setting my ear free, “What’d you have in mind?”

“Maybe an industrial on this ear, and one on the opposite eyebrow,” he said, getting up to go and search whatever he needed to pierce my face.

A part of me felt excited at the new change of look, but another part of me, the part the I decided to call ‘old’, was asking myself if it was okay to trust a stranger with such a delicate matter. I also thought that no matter what was going to happen, Abby probably had a remedy for that, so I shouldn’t have really worried. But then again, should I have worried?

I wasn’t done brooding over the matter when Roland came back from his search with a lot of studs, rings and other stuff in one hand, and his wand in the other.

“Oh,” I said, a tone of natural surprise in my voice.

“What?” Roland sat next to me again.

“I guess I had forgotten you’re a wizard, too,” I stated.

Roland simply giggled and put down the piercings only to take my face into his free hand and turning it around so he could see it from every angle. I held my breath, hoping I wouldn’t instinctively recoil from the feeling of his soft fingertips on my jaw.

“You’re so pretty,” he whispered, absentmindedly, but then seemed to come back to his senses and made me look at him in the eyes, “Alright. Be completely still or I may hurt you badly.”

I nodded and I let him operate. He pointed his wand at my ear and whispered a couple of charms I didn’t recognize. They stung a little, and from the places where it hurt, I could tell he had gone with the industrial plan. And, indeed, a few moments later he slid a bar into the new holes in my ear and secured it with two stoppers on each side of the metal bar.

“One down, one to go,” he smiled at me, and I nodded again, my head empty.

The new piercing didn’t hurt, and that was odd to say the least. But, as he did my eyebrow, I thought that there was something in the magic that might have made it hurt less. And, in the end, that frozen apple wasn’t that much of an anaesthetic when I had my lobes pierced.

“Done,” he announced, and then handed me a pocket mirror to see the results.

I didn’t know how much I would’ve liked those piercings until I saw them on me, and I could feel my smile grow as I watched how precisely and beautifully they were made.

“Thank you,” I said, lowering the mirror.

“I like make pretty people smile,” he replied, and I just scoffed.

“You don’t have to flirt with me,” I pointed out, “I’m already here, aren’t I?”

“For all I know, you’re a sociopath and you’re here to kill me,” he shrugged, but I slapped him lightly on the arm.

“I told you I wouldn’t!” I protested, but I was laughing too. I stopped to think, “How old are you?” I finally asked.

“I’m seventeen,” he responded, and by the blush on his cheeks I knew he knew what question was coming next.

“Why aren’t you in school? Why do you work here?”

“Dumbledore expelled me,” he sighed, “I did some fucked up stuff and he couldn’t keep me in the castle. But I didn’t really have anywhere to go to, so Aberforth took me in on Albus’ request.”

“Aberforth?” I asked.

“The owner of the Inn, and the Headmaster’s brother,” he explained.

“Oh,” I nodded, “So that’s why they look alike.”

Roland laughed, and I couldn’t help but join. That new part of my life didn’t seem half bad, if I said so myself. I scooted a little closer to the bartender, and he slung his arm across my shoulders. I was the one blushing, now.

“So,” I asked, clearing my throat, “What do you want to do?”

Roland made me face him. The smug smile on his face told me he knew precisely the answer to my question, but didn’t want to put any pressure on me.

“Whatever you want me to do,” he whispered back. A shiver ran down my spine.

What the hell, I thought, might as well.

“I find that a fine request,” I said as I leaned in.

I didn’t get to kiss him first. His lips crashed against mine way before what I had expected, and that made me want to pull back at first. But I forced myself to push more, to be into it, to enjoy the conquest of my freedom from my past.

His fingers slid through my hair and pulled at it. I crawled on top of him and sat astride with a leg on each side of his. One of his hands slowly ran up and down my back, stroking me. I reached back at the hem of my shirt and pulled it off, interrupting the kiss. Roland leaned back to look at my bare torso.

“You’re jacked,” he stated.

“Glad you like it,” I smirked, just to pull him back up to kiss him all over again.

Now his hand laid flat on the small of my back, skin on skin, while the other still tugged at my hair. He flipped me onto the bed, putting himself on top. He started playing with my pants' button and I felt like I should warn him.

“The armbands stay on,” I said, plainly.

“Yessir,” he whispered against my lips.

He tilted his head to the side and kissed the point where my jaw met my neck, and went down, down, down, leaving a trail of kisses from my collarbone to my hip. He pulled down my pants, playing with the elastic of my underwear. He kissed my inner thigh, then up, up – I was actually shaking –, and he pulled down my underwear – I bit my hand to prevent me from moaning – and then…

Bloody Christ.

Notes:

Mistakes were made. Andrew fucked up. I guess we're all human, aren't we?

Next chapter coming soon, we'll see how Neil will take this ;)

Chapter 25: Triggered

Summary:

TW!
The title says it all; the last part of the chapter is very deep and heavy, so be careful with that.
!!!mentions of self-harm!!!

“Oh, Jesus,” Lupin yelled, “Well, that’s something I didn’t need to see.”

I jolted up immediately, sitting straight and rushing to cover my torso with the thin bedsheet.

I had asked Roland not to sleep beside me, and I didn’t go into many details as to why it wasn’t a possibility, but he said it was fine once I explained it was a big issue for me and that I really didn’t enjoy sleeping with someone. He left me the bed, though, and he had slept on the floor, once he had kindly asked Aberforth for another duvet to lie down onto.

Still, we were very much undressed, and I could understand why Lupin must’ve been so upset by the view. What I didn’t understand was why Lupin was there in first place. How in the hell did he find me?

Roland slowly woke up, too, and smiled at the teacher, all teeth. Lupin smiled back at him, but then shot a look of reprimand at me as to ask me why I would ever put him in that situation. The thing was, I didn’t want to put him in that situation. He shouldn’t have been there.

“Alright, lad,” Lupin rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, like he had just woken up from a bad dream, “Get dressed and come with me; you’re lucky I won’t tell Dumbledore any of this.”

He closed the door behind him as he exited the room, and Roland bursted into a loud laugh. I shook my head, wanting to clear it from the fog of the sleep that was still clouding my mind. I then stood up and began searching around for my underwear.

“I think your clothes are there,” Roland pointed at a spot almost under the wooden desk. He was up, too, and went to open his closet to find some clean, new clothes.

We both hastily dressed up, I even put my coat on, and as Roland put his apron on to begin his shift, we went down the stairs to the bar section of the tavern. Lupin was already waiting for me at the entrance, and was chatting with Aberforth, maybe about the many troubles Roland had gotten into in the past. I could see how he looked at the bartender as sort of a son figure.

But, leaned against the doorjamb, there was Neil, with his eyes cold as ice, with the same color as pure glass or water, and his pupils so shrunk as to remark how displeased he was about the situation. He had his arms crossed against his chest and he was analyzing Roland like he was a potential threat.

Lupin noticed where I was looking and nudged Neil, in a silent invitation to correct his intimidating behavior. Neil didn’t move, though. He just tilted his head to the side to take a better look at me as Roland slipped behind the counter and I turned around to say goodbye.

“So,” I cleared my throat, “Thank you for having me. I’m sorry about the cut off,” I pointed at the two werewolves behind me.

“No worries,” Roland smiled kindly, “I should’ve gotten up to work either way.”

I nodded slightly, and almost spun around to go away. But the bartender blocked me halfway and put a hand on my face, stroking the new piercing on my eyebrow. I repressed the urge to step away and screamed inside as I felt Neil’s eyes burning a hole in my back.

“It’s healing already,” Roland stated, “They should be fully healed in a couple of days. Just don’t mess with them too much.”

“Sure,” I smiled a tight-lipped smile at him, dreading the endless conversation in the face of the obvious misstep I had taken.

“Andrew,” Roland bended over the counter to speak with me without being heard by the obvious audience behind us, “You don’t owe me anything, okay? It was a one-time thing. I get it. I don’t want more from you.”

My lips curled a little in a more genuine smile.

“I will try to come by, from time to time,” I assured.

“You don’t have to,” Roland’s eyes went past me for a moment, probably landing on Neil, “It seems you have your hands full.”

“You tell me,” I scoffed.

Roland smiled widely and leaned in a little more to plant a kiss on my lips. I pulled away, but I didn’t know whether it was for recoil, amusement or embarrassment. I thought the last one would be the most obvious to blame it on.

“Not in front of my professor,” I scolded him, but I could hear Lupin giggling behind me. I knew Lupin wasn’t the problem.

“Sorry. I wanted a goodbye kiss,” he shrugged.

I chuckled and waved at him, before turning around and heading straight for the door. I couldn’t handle dealing with Neil then, and I didn’t want to have to deal with him, so I just walked past him and exited the tavern, throwing a goodbye to Aberforth over my shoulder.

The two werewolves didn’t plan to leave me alone. I guessed that was only fair of them.

“Andrew, stop,” Lupin demanded, and for once I listened.

I had just walked a couple of meters down the way to the school and we were still very much in Hogsmeade, where people there led their normal lives as per usual, and we were going to have a fight in the middle of the road. Sounded like fun.

“How did you two find me?” I asked first. Neil still wasn’t talking, but that was fair too.

Lupin tapped his nose. Of course, they both could track my smell for miles. I sighed.

“You don’t get to ask us questions, Minyard,” Lupin pointed an accusing finger at me, “You shouldn’t have spent the night out.”

“I wasn’t in danger,” I protested, even though I knew it was useless.

“You don’t know that!” the professor said instead, “You don’t know that boy, and it was just out of pure luck that you ended up in the Headmaster’s brother’s Inn. In any other one of this places, you would’ve been out of your depths.”

I didn’t know what else to say. Lupin was right: I couldn’t have been sure that Roland was a good person, and I didn’t really know him. Plus, even if I would’ve wanted to have an adventure outside of school, I should’ve at least gone back to my dorm to sleep. I didn’t know how to respond because every reasoning would’ve been either false or quickly disproven.

“Why would you do that?” Lupin finally asked.

“I don’t know,” I sighed, “I’d had a long day and I just wanted to get out of that godforsaken school. Everybody knows everything about everyone, and they gossip and chat and talk and everything is just too much sometimes, okay? I wanted to be at peace for one night.”

“Did you find that peace on some boy’s dick?” Neil finally spoke up.

“Neil!” Lupin scolded him, but he couldn’t cover the laugh that phrase took out of him.

“What?” Neil was still looking at me with that vicious expression in his eyes, “He gets out one night, fucks a bloke he doesn’t know, and I’m supposed not to make comments about it?”

“What’s up with you?” Lupin turned to face the redhead, “You were all merry this morning.”

“Me?” Neil scoffed, “Andrew looks like the gay one to me.”

“Ha-ha,” I replied, crossing my arms against my chest, “Why don’t you mind your business?”

“Gladly,” Neil spat, “Maybe next time don’t make me find you naked with someone else.”

“Someone else?” I teased, smiling wickedly at him. Soon the color of his cheeks matched the one of his hair.

“Just…” he stuttered, “Oh, shut up, Minyard.”

He walked past me, and I knew he really wanted to push me, but even in our hardest days he always found that he cared enough about me not to touch me. I spun around to watch him stomp in the direction of the castle. Lupin, beside me, sighed.

“It’s too early in the morning for this,” he whispered, exhausted.

“I agree,” I shrugged, “Why did you come looking for me anyway?”

Lupin looked at me confused, like I should’ve known beforehand what that was all about, and I cocked my eyebrows to convey that, in truth, I didn’t know about anything ever.

“Oh, fuck,” he slapped his forehead, hard enough to produce a loud sound from which I flinched, “I forgot to tell you, didn’t I?”

“Tell me what, Remus?” I decided to use his name just to make him feel guiltier about his mistake, like I hadn’t been a piece of shit all morning.

“You have an interview today,” he urged, starting to walk again on the path to the school, “All three of you. With Rita Skeeter.”

“Who’s that?” I strolled beside him. I wasn’t in a hurry to know what that woman might’ve asked me, “Why do you say her name like she’s someone important?”

“She’s not,” he responded, “she’s just the mother of all gossip, I believe. And this interview is important, but she’ll try to get under your skin, so don’t make a scene and don’t throw a fit if she makes some indiscrete questions.”

“Am I just supposed to take the punches and stay silent?”

“Precisely,” Lupin reiterated, “Or speak up but, y’know… behave.”

“Yessir,” I sighed.

We kept walking in silence after that.

 

---

 

Neil and I were both waiting for Riko to finish his interview with Skeeter, standing in the shadow of a room while all lights were pointed at the chair where the Gryffindor was sitting, and there was some man roaming around snapping photos of the interviewer and the interviewee. Neil scoffed at an answer Riko gave about support from his family.

He couldn’t even look at me. I understood he had been mad at me before for the fact that I had avoided him for the first half of the school year, but that was a new level of pissed off. He had ignored me for a couple of months, but he could still smile at me from the other side of the classroom or look at me when we were both hanging out together with the group. Now, he seemed to be forcing himself to look away, like the mere view of me might’ve hurt him.

I swallowed, hard, feeling my throat suddenly very dry and burning. I coughed, trying to get his attention.

I didn’t know whether I should’ve apologized. I didn’t know what for, really, since it wasn’t like he cared if I had a boyfriend or whatever. Was he mad because I disappeared in the night, without warning him? Did he think I would’ve bailed on the full moon, leaving him to fend for himself? Was that why he was so upset, because he was scared that I had left him alone?

And if that was the case, why wouldn’t he just say it? Why couldn’t we just fight, openly have a discussion, so that we could be friends again?

Then I remembered. I couldn’t be friends with him. Whatever I had done the night before, I still loved him. I thought that rebounding, like Renée had said, might’ve solved the problem, but it didn’t. So, what was I supposed to tell him in that fight? That I tried to stop loving him by sleeping with someone else, but it actually backfired because now I felt ashamed by my actions, and I couldn’t bear the fact that he couldn’t look at me because it felt like shards of glass were pressing against my pericardium?

Yeah, sounded like a hoot.

I cleared my throat.

“Did you see the new piercings?” I tried.

Neil didn’t turn to face me but stared straight ahead at Riko.

“Yeah.”

“Did…” I stuttered, unsure whether it was safe to keep up with that conversation, “do you like them?”

“No.”

“Figures,” I sighed, slouching back to lean against the stone wall.

“What do you want me to say?” Neil asked, raising his voice so much that the cameraman turned around to shush him. He raised one hand in a gesture of apology, then pointed his eyes at the floor.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “I don’t like that you’re mad at me,” I admitted.

“Well, I’ve been for a long time now,” he rebutted. I swallowed again, and I felt like crying. I would’ve never had, though, so I just cleared my throat once more.

“I know that,” I carefully said, “Still don’t like it.”

“I just…” he sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, “I wish you’d just talk to me. I was there yesterday. I asked if you were fine. Why wouldn’t you just…”

“Neil,” I tried, but he shook his head, and gestured me to stop talking.

“You have friends here. You have Bee, you have Lupin, you have Renée. Hell, you have me. Do you hear me? You have me. So why would you go out of your way to sneak out and go out to be with someone who doesn’t know you?”

“Roland knows me,” I argued, but Neil scoffed. He finally looked up at me. His eyes were still that icy blue that I loved, that anticipated the arrival of the wolf.

“He doesn’t know you like I do.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, don’t I?” he laughed, bitterly, “You know me better than everyone else in here. I know, I just know that you look at me and you see me. I can’t lie to you, Merlin knows I feel like I can’t. So, please tell me if anyone knows you better than me. Tell me if the boy you fucked for one night knows you better than I do.”

We looked at each other for a couple of seconds, but it felt like an eternity. From the outside, I realized, it looked like nothing: our faces were too unmoved, impassive, flat-out stone cold to notice we were talking with our hearts on our sleeves. It was easy to interrupt such a nonconsequential conversation, in the mind and eyes of the viewer. For us, though, that was everything.

And everything just snapped as the cameraman, with his rough voice, called my name.

“Mr Minyard,” that was Rita Skeeter’s voice, “come take a seat with me, dear.”

I nodded at the woman and took a step forward. Neil, behind me, reached for my hand but ultimately didn’t touch it. Still, I heard him sigh.

“The piercings suit you, by the way,” he whispered to me, then yelled at the troupe, “I’m going for a run. Would you come to the Quidditch pitch for the interview? Thank you.”

Without waiting for them to agree to his change of plans, he took off without another word. He didn’t even look back at me. He just went away, jogging towards the entrance of the classroom and eventually disappearing in the hallway.

I staggered towards the center of the classroom, where there was the whole setup for the interview. I squinted at the bright light hitting my pupils, and I physically felt them shrink. I sat in the chair in front of my interviewer and I studied her appearance, which I guessed was just what I would’ve thought a gossip queen would look like.

She had light blonde hair and bright but deep blue eyes, and she wore all sorts of funny, colored, bright clothes. Her glasses had a thick, hot pink frame and her red lipstick was so vivid it was also a little unsettling. She was smiling, but I could see she had something bad in her, even if I couldn’t say what, precisely.

“So,” she began, “welcome to Andrew Minyard, the Ravenclaw Champion.”

“Hello,” I tried to smile as well, and the photographer caught the image of that. I knew it would be bad, but I really didn’t care.

“You know, I was a Ravenclaw myself when I was younger,” she commented, patting me on the knee. Fortunately, that was as far as she could reach. I gulped down the urge to vomit.

“That’s… nice,” I just said.

“Let’s ask you a couple of questions, shall we?” she crossed her legs. I nodded, “Are you excited to be one of the Champions?”

“It’s a big duty,” I answered, trying not to give her a way to ask more personal questions, worried about what Lupin had said.

“It must be,” she went on, “for someone who discovered to be a wizard just a year and a half ago. Why do you think the Goblet of Fire chose you?”

“My professors and the Headmaster, they think I might be talented in the magic arts. The Goblet must’ve recognized that trait in me, I guess,” I shrugged.

“Do you feel like you deserve it, though?” she tilted her head to the side, her creepy smile still on her lips.

“Why wouldn’t I? Doesn’t the Goblet decide who deserves it?”

“Yes, of course,” she nodded, taking on a condescending tone, “but your twin brother has been here since the first year, and you two don’t seem to have the best relationship. Is it because of this or is something else going on between you two?”

“How do you even know how’s my relationship with my brother?” I inquired, irritated.

“Voices, dear,” she smiled even widely, if that was possible, “Rumors. Didn’t you have a big fight just last night? Everyone is talking about it.”

I was taken aback. I couldn’t believe how much that woman knew about me. Was she going to ask me about my mother? About my uncle and aunt? About when I lived in the muggle world? Did she know about my past, and if she did, how much did she knew about it?

I could feel a panic attack coming, and I urged myself to remain calm. I slid into that calm state of mind, that void that engulfed me when I felt like everything was too much. My face dropped into a cold expression, unfazed by her questions and her teasing, unbothered by the pressure of the gossip she was trying to pin on me.

I understood what her trick was: she ambushed everyone with the things she knew about them, things that were supposed to be either secrets or not talked about, and the person in front of her felt the need to justify themselves to her, to admit even more secrets just to cover for the first one she’d say.

I wouldn’t fall for that trap. I was smarter than that.

“I’m sorry to tell you that what you might’ve heard is fake. It was a minor incident; you know, teenagers make everything bigger than it actually is,” I crossed my arms against my chest and smiled softly.

“So, why did you sneak out of the school to spend your night at an Inn in the near village of Hogsmeade?” she teased me again, but I laughed instead.

“I’m a teenager too, aren’t I? I wanted to rebel for one night. Nothing serious,” I shrugged.

“What about your new piercings? You realize they damage your image and what the people inside and outside of the school might think about you,” she insisted, but her fury about my careless responses was starting to break her impeccable façade.

“I look good with them,” I simply stated, one eyebrow cocked.

“And the hickeys on your neck? Don’t you care that your presence in this school is causing scandal after scandal?” she finally raised her voice, and her photo-perfect blonde coiffure came undone in the spasmodic move she made.

“Oh, honey,” I smiled wickedly, “My existence is a scandal.”

I got up from the chair and walked towards the door of the classroom. In disbelief, both Rita Skeeter and her cameraman looked at me appalled as I grabbed my coat from one of the chairs scattered around.

“Are we done? I’ve got things to do,” I pointed at the door. Since no one replied, I nodded and walked backwards towards the exit, “Oh, that last quote? It’s Oscar Wilde. I get the feeling you wizards need to brush up on some of your literature.”

I put my fingers to my temple and saluted the mother of all gossip with my new signature wave.

I exited the classroom with the feeling of having won.

But also, the gut-wrenching feeling of something being terribly wrong.

 

---

 

I rolled around in the bed again. King, tired of my movements, jumped off the sheets and curled up in his little bed right next mine.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t cry, I wanted to cry.

Oh God, I kept thinking over and over again, oh God, I slept with someone.

I couldn’t look at my bare skin, I couldn’t cover up, the clothes were too tight, my flesh felt on fire wherever Roland had touched me, wherever he had kissed me.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to rip my skin off my muscles, I wanted to break my sternum and clutch my heart and squeeze it so hard it would stop hurting altogether. I panted, sitting upright, wide awake as panic flushed over me like a waterfall.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

I got up from the bed, I went to the bathroom. It was mechanic, it was automatic, like I was programmed to do just so. I took my armbands off. I picked up my razor blade, carefully stashed in one of the bathroom drawers, and put it against my skin.

I slid the blade across my tortured skin once, twice, eleven times on each arm. I leaned back against the doorjamb and breathed heavily, waiting for the physical pain to take away the mental one. I waited and waited and cried and cried but it didn’t go away, it just didn’t go away. I sobbed, begging in silence that I would just pass out from the blood loss, but that didn’t happen either.

I stumbled into my room, knocking off some of ornaments I had put on my furniture to decorate the dorm. I found my wand on the floor and flicked it towards my forearms, mending the wounds on them, so I would stop bleeding. I was still crying; I still wasn’t able to breathe.

I only had my pajamas on, which consisted in a white tank top and some loose grey pants. I was barefoot, but I still went out of my dorm and down the stairs. I had a hand pressed against my mouth to stop my sobs from coming out of my lips, loud and vibrant. I cried in silence as the tears hit my fingers, burning my skin.

I rushed out of the Ravenclaw common room and ran down the various corridors. It was pure muscle memory, as my tears clouded my vision. I almost tripped in my run down the moving stairs of the castle.

I finally arrived at the infirmary, and I crashed onto the floor, knelt down, and bent down to curl up into myself and hopefully disappear. I looked up to check if anybody was there that night, but all the beds were empty around me.

Then, I broke down. I cried louder and louder, with sobs that resembled screams coming out of my mouth and throat and lungs, so loud they hurt, so powerful I winced every time one whimper convulsively exited my body.

“Bee,” I whispered, between a moan and the other.

“Bee!” I screamed.

I bent over again, my arms clutching my torso so hard I thought I could rip my own tank top.

“Bee!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

A door opened, and Abby and Bee came out of it, confused and sleepy. Once they properly saw me, curled up on the floor, they rushed towards me.

“Andrew?” that was Abby, that had hastily knelt down beside me, “Tell me where it hurts, Andrew,” she urged.

“Bee,” I whispered again, and held my hand out to her.

She knelt in front of me.

“What’s happened, Andrew?” she murmured, placing her hand on mine.

I screamed and retracted my hand as soon as she did just that. The two women looked at me in shock and then at each other. I was trembling and shaking and I still felt like my chest was collapsing within itself, preventing me from breathing. I hoped I would die. I hoped I would die then and there.

“Abby, you can go. I think I can handle this,” Bee whispered to her colleague.

Abby nodded and got up, returning to her room. I was still sobbing harder and harder, but I finally gathered the strength to look up at the woman in front of me, pleading with my eyes to help me.

“Tell me what is going on,” she whispered again.

“I…” I stuttered, my lips quivering as I talked, “I slept with a boy, I think? I think that’s the problem. I hate being touched. I hate it. I should’ve known. I forced myself to do it and now I’m… I relapsed. I cut myself, Bee. I hate cutting myself. I have new scars. I hate new scars. I hate being touched. I should’ve known it would end like this, I want to rip my skin and die. I want to cease existing. Bee, I hate new scars. I hate cutting. I hate, hate, hate being touched. I hate crying.”

She just watched me as I unraveled in front of her, as I came undone and crumbled under the pressure of my own ambitions. I couldn’t be free. I could never be free from what Drake and the others had done to me and I knew that now.

I didn’t know what else to do. The self-harm hadn’t took it away and the only thing I could think of was to talk about it with someone. Neil had said I could talk to Bee. So there I was, talking.

“Bee,” I called her again, crouching down once more as I felt the weight of my pain crushing me again.

“Yes?” she simply said.

“I hate myself.”

Notes:

two chapters in one day! I hope you like them.

Chapter 26: Two birds

Summary:

TW!
Mention of self-harm, depiction of graphic wounds (not too in depth, just loosely described)

Notes:

I wanted to share with you that I created a spotify playlist with the songs that give each chapter the title, so you know what song I'm referencing too. You can listen to it! Here's the link https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1SFYeQUht5wva2vYXAdqJ7?si=45c0f74811914bcb

I had to spend the night in the infirmary wing, while Bee watched carefully as I tried my hardest to sleep. As the morning came, she asked me to stay a little longer and, at the very least, rest, since I was going to spend the following night awake as well, and I agreed.

I slept for about most of the day before I had the pleasure to be assaulted by Aaron’s friends.

Woken up by the many voices I could hear approaching the medical wing, I shot Abby and Bee, that were watching me closely, a confused, panicked, and – quite frankly – annoyed look. Abby’s face became redder than a tomato, and I immediately knew she was the one to blame.

“I promise I haven’t told anyone you were here,” she promptly stated, but then guilt overcame her, “Well, I told David.”

“David?” I inquired, not recognizing the name.

“Wymack,” Bee explained, “She would tell him my deepest secrets if he ever asked about it. You weren’t at practice this morning.”

“First of all, that is not true,” Abby responded, pointing an inquisitorial finger at her colleague, “And secondly, I told him not to tell anyone. But he told Remus.”

“And Lupin told everyone,” I completed the story for her, while she pursed her lips in a face of regret, “It’s fine. Just don’t let them in here.”

“None of them?” Bee asked, cocking her eyebrow. Like she was surprised I would ever request that.

I sighed, still tired from the shitty night I had spent.

“How long till the full moon?” I asked in return, to no one in particular.

“An hour, I guess,” Abby shrugged, but turned towards the enormous windows to check where the sun was placed in the sky just to be sure, “Maybe two.”

I nodded, while closing my eyes so I could rub them by pressing firmly with my fingertips against my eyelids. When I opened them again, the two women were looking at me expectantly.

“Fine,” I repeated, “Renée can come. If Neil’s there, tell him I’ll see him in a couple hours anyway. Not that he cares.”

“What do you mean with that?” Bee inquired. And from the look on her face, I could tell that question was just a therapy session in the making.

I smiled dryly, then dropped the false act and returned to my desensitized, neutral expression. Something else popped into my mind, and I bit down my bottom lip as my finger grazed the multiplied scars on my forearms, safely hidden under the duvet as I did my best not to show them around.

“Abby, could you also ask Neil if he could go and fetch my armbands from my room? And could I also have a sweater or anything else with long sleeves?”

“Sure thing,” she nodded, getting up and going to interject the group of very loud – and, from the look on their faces, worried – people that were just coming through the entrance of the infirmary.

I took a deep breath in as she ushered them all away, and I waited for Renée to rush towards me. I closed my eyes again, trying to focus and appeal to little bits of sanity still clinging onto my brain.

“You shouldn’t be in these beds as much as you are,” Bee commented, “You should be safe at school.”

“Well, what can I say?” I replied, my eyes still closed while I tilted my head back to let it sink into the pillow, “I’m not safe as long as I am with myself, apparently.”

“Andrew,” she called me, and I knew she wanted me to open my eyes and look at her so she could notice whether I would tell her the truth or not. But I didn’t know what she was about to ask, so I just laid even further on the bed, like I was getting ready to sleep again.

“Andrew,” she said again. I took a deep breath in, ready to answer, but I wouldn’t open my eyes. I’d had a moment of weakness, that was sure, but I wasn’t ready to open my heart and soul to that woman, even though I actually thought she was really great at her job.

“What?” I asked.

“Was your mother’s accident premeditated?”

My eyes fluttered open, and I slowly turned towards the woman, sat at the feet of my bed. She was calm, her face wasn’t showing any sign of uneasiness or apprehension, and I couldn’t tell whether she would be scared of the real answer. I thought it would be fun to test the waters, see how much that doctor was going to forgive me before actually treating me like the menace I must’ve seemed to other people. To Aaron.

“How would I know? Who would try to kill her, anyway?” I asked.

“You, perhaps,” she stated.

A body slammed into mine and I didn’t have time to respond to the provocation by the Squib in front of me: I was too busy catching my breath after the harsh impact. Renée was sobbing in my ear, and I didn’t find it in myself to offer her some kind of consolation. I couldn’t even find it in me to comfort myself, really.

“Ms. Walker,” Bee intervened, maybe coming back to her senses, “may I, please, ask you to step away from Mr. Minyard?”

“What?” Renée obliged, but her eyes spasmodically jumped from my unnaturally blank face and Bee’s apprehensive expression.

I didn’t know what kind of news had arrived to her, but it seemed like Lupin hadn’t held back on how devastating the previous night had been for me. I didn’t know how many details Abby had felt comfortable in sharing with Wymack, but it looked like she didn’t want to spare him from the pathetic scene of me collapsing and begging for help.

That was utterly humiliating, if it was the case.

“I think it’s best for you two to break up the habit you have to be able to touch each other,” the therapist explained, “It might hurt Andrew, in the long run.”

“What?” Renée asked again, tone lower than a whisper, but her arms fell limp on each side of her, like she had surrendered before the fight even started, “Why?” she asked, too, nonetheless.

“Because Andrew’s becoming more insufferable when it comes to touching people and being touched, even by those he loves and cares for. We don’t want another accident like this to be caused by something genuine you do for him or to him, also because then you might feel guilty.”

“This really is because somebody touched you?” Renée then turned to face me, and I shrugged.

“We didn’t like,” I sighed, “hold hands. It was more than what you and I might usually do, but still. When Bee tried to take my hand last night, I felt like my skin was melting. I don’t want to resent your touch, too.”

Renée sighed as well but eventually, after a beat, nodded and walked away to drag a chair near the bed so she could sit beside me. While she was briefly gone, I tried to steal a glance of the entrance and check if the others had gone away from the wing altogether. Instead, I found Neil, leaned over the archway, waiting for Abby to come and take my armbands from his hands and staring at me from the distance. I didn’t wave at him, but the fact that I had acknowledged him was enough for him to call Abby over.

Renée came back with the chair, and Abby was there soon after to offer me the clothes before going away to her office again.

I awkwardly cleared my throat, coughing a little, and both Renée and Bee turned around to grant me the privacy to cover my scars. Despite the fact that Abby and Bee had seen them pretty clearly the previous night, while conscious and vigil I didn’t want anyone to see them, not even people that already knew them.

I put on the armbands, and immediately felt like a piece of me snapped into place. I drew in a deep breath and shuddered in relief, feeling as if I was complete again, somehow protected by some slim and thin pieces of cloth. Still, I also threw on the sweatshirt, which was way bigger than my size, so I assumed it was Wymack’s. I didn’t question why Abby had it on hand, lying in her room near the infirmary.

“You can look,” I assured my companions, and they promptly turned back to look at me.

Renée seemed relieved in seeing me, like she couldn’t recognize me moments before. I tentatively smiled at her, with tight lips, just to comfort her. Just to pretend that I was actually okay.

“So, what?” she finally asked, “I can never touch you again?”

“Not necessarily,” I answered, “But I’d be grateful if you didn’t, for a while. I’ll tell you, if I feel like you can again.”

“Are you sure?” she inquired, biting the inside of her cheek out of anxiety, “I don’t want to cause you any pain, and I sure as hell don’t want you to resent me.”

“For what it’s worth, I don’t resent the guy that touched me. I allowed him to, it’s not like he did it without my consent.”

“I feel like I should ask you about the details, but I don’t know if I want to hear them,” she grimaced, then huffed out a slight laugh, “That’s fine, by the way. What about sparring?”

“I think that’s okay,” I shrugged, “maybe I won’t perceive it as bad when it’s not aimed to… you know… you get what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, I believe so,” Renée smiled softly. Still, her smile had something sad to it, like she valued the fact that she was able to touch me, and not being able to do it might’ve taken away something important from out relationship.

“I’m sorry,” Bee interjected the conversation, suddenly awaken by our words, “Sparring?”

“We, um…” Renée blushed violently, and that made me giggle, much to my distaste.

“When I feel a little down and like I have to unload some stress, Renée and I spar in the Quidditch pitch,” I tilted my head to look at the therapist, “You know, like martial arts.”

“I know what sparring is,” Bee arched one eyebrow, but the curve on her lips indicated that she found the whole thing funny, even though she clearly didn’t approve of it, “And how many times per week does this happen?”

“I don’t know,” I knotted my eyebrows together, mumbling, “maybe four?”

“And you don’t… ache? Hurt?”

“She goes easy on me,” I smile at my best friend, and she giggles.

“I do,” she confirms.

“Either way,” Bee stressed, with a pointed look in her eyes, “I’d like you to come here after every spar, just to check for injuries. And one day we’ll talk about the fact that you only allow yourself to process emotions through your own suffering, but I think it’s best for me to leave you two alone for a couple of minutes.”

I nodded, and the woman rose from her seat, careful not to touch any part of my body as she put one hand down on the hospital bed to lean over me.

“You can always come talk to me,” she whispered, a pained expression on her face.

“Thank you, Bee,” I whispered back, lower than a murmur, “for everything.”

“That’s nothing,” she winked, then finally left.

For a couple of minutes, I looked down at the sheets, counting the hills in the creases of the duvet like it was a way to fall asleep quicker. The silence was deafening as I felt Renée’s gaze pierce through my soul and drag the guilt out of me.

“Have you actually gone insane, Minyard?” she hissed, eventually, “If I could touch you I’d beat the shit out of you. Sneaking out of school? Spending a night out, with a stranger? What’s gotten into you?”

“I get you’ve talked to Lupin…?” I tried, wincing as she slowly but steadily raised her voice at me.

“Lupin doesn’t care,” she huffed, “Or, well, he does. But Neil’s pissed off. Like, he might try to murder you. He was the one to tell me about Roland.”

“I told him it’s none of his business,” I muttered, but I knew what she meant by that.

“Can’t blame a guy for worrying about you, Andrew,” she scolded me, like I had no right to be angry at Neil, “Not when he’s right. Look where that little act of rebellion got you.”

“I know, okay?” I snapped, “I know. I regret it. There’s no need to further push the knife in the wound, thank you.”

Renée seemed to calm down at those words, and she finally sighed, fidgeting with the loose skin on her knuckles, slightly pulling and pinching it. I gathered that was her way to stop herself from trying to grab my hand or touch me in any way, but that still worried me. I twisted my face in a expression of concern, and she waved at hand at me, dismissing the matter.

We looked at each other for a while, eyes steadily locked onto each other, like we could communicate that way as easily as we did with words.

“So,” she cleared her throat after a while, dragging her eyes away from mine, “Roland, huh?”

I covered my face with my hands, shaking it slightly. I wasn’t in a mood to allow myself to laugh, but I knew I would’ve if I wasn’t in such a state.

“Is that so bad?” I asked, genuinely.

“Well, he’s a god piercer, for what I can tell,” she chuckled, “Was it a good time, at least?”

“He made me laugh a lot,” I shrugged, “he kept telling me I was pretty, or beautiful. At some point, he said I was marvelous. I think anyone with an emotional range wider than mine would’ve found it endearing. I just tried my hardest not to cringe.”

“He seemed like a good bloke, at your birthday,” she sighed, like she was trying her hardest to look at the bright side of things, “What did he do to get you so worked up?”

“He…” I choked on my words, so I took time to swallow the lump that had formed in my throat at the mere thought, “he was basically my first time. You know, the first time I did it fully. Plus, I’m not used to be on the receiving end of some things he did to me.”

“Oh, ew,” she basically screamed, swatting and waving her arms around to get me to stop talking, “I knew I didn’t want to hear the details.”

“I didn’t even say anything!” I protested, but, much my disbelief, she managed to make me giggle.

“Whatever, perv,” she teased, visibly happy to have gotten me to smile a bit. Her smile fell, though, and she looked at me with worried eyes and a pleading expression, “Listen, I know you regret it, and I’m not asking you why having your first time upset you to the point of ending up in the infirmary, because that’s something deep and it’s fine if I’m not the one you want to sort it out with. But, at the very least, you understand your boundaries better now. You’re going to be fine, Andrew.”

“I hope so,” I just replied, but it seemed to please her, because she had that playful expression on her face again, and I knew what was about to come the moment she started to wiggle her eyebrows, “Oh, absolutely not, Renée.”

“What?!” she seemed appalled, spreading her arms out in a gesture of astonishment, “Why not?”

“I’m not asking Roland to the Yule Ball. Is he even allowed in here?”

“Well, you weren’t allowed out of here, but that didn’t seem to have stopped you.”

“That’s… a fair point, actually,” I pinched the bridge of my nose, “But I won’t do it, regardless. It would be leading him on, and I’m not the heartbreaker kind of person.”

“Don’t you like him?” she tilted her head to the side, confused.

“I do like him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have let him… yeah,” I took in a deep breath, “But he and I both agreed to leave what we had alone, and I can’t hurt him like that. Not when he’s still in the picture.”

Renée seemed lost for a moment, but she quickly caught up as realization washed over her like a waterfall. She looked saddened by it. I was too.

“Oh,” she just breathed out.

“Yeah,” I confirmed, “oh.”

“So, what?” she pressed on, “You can’t go alone. You’re the Champion, you’re required to have a date.”

“Would you go with me?” I blurted out, “I would’ve asked you sooner, actually, but I didn’t want to rob you of an opportunity.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, I thought that a certain girl whose name starts with All and ends in ison would’ve wanted to go with you.”

“You shut your mouth, Minyard,” she went to slap me on the arm, but dutifully retracted her hand, so I laughed.

“What can I say?” I wore a proud expression, “I’m observant. And by that, I mean I have eyes.”

“I think I will let you Neil kill you,” she huffed, crossing her arms on her chest, but she was laughing too.

I felt better. With everything that was going wrong with my life, with everything that seemed to haunt me and taunt me, with ghosts of the past and apocalypses from the future looking at me straight in the eyes with their horrible threats, having a playful conversation with Renée seemed to be what I need to feel a little closer to being fine.

I knew I wasn’t. The fact that my body had shut down, the fact that my skin still felt like it was on fire, the fact that I still had the urge to cut again were just clues that I wouldn’t be fine for a long time.

While Renée took her time to explain to me the homework I had missed on that week of skipped lessons, I looked out of the big windows of the infirmary, while the sun was slowing setting. I thought about Neil, and that gave my heart a squeeze.

No matter what I did, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t shake that love off of me. It was painful, it was dreadful, I couldn’t bear it. And if my experience with Roland actually had some kind of point, it was that I couldn’t just have a normal relationship.

Yearning for Neil’s touch and love could only be precisely that. A desire unfulfilled, a dream.

A pipedream.

“Would you go with me to the Yule Ball, Renée?” I asked again, quietly, cutting in the conversation she was having with herself.

“What? Sure, Andrew,” she seemed lost. She bent forward to try to catch my gaze, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I flashed her a fake smile, “Of course. Don’t worry.”

 

---

 

It had just been a month, but so much had happened in the previous three days that I could safely say it seemed like I hadn’t been in the Forest for a year or even more. I had missed it, and I breathed in the chilly air blowing through the leaves.

Neil stood beside me, silently watching the Sun as it progressively hid behind her horizon. The moon was already faintly visible in the sky, and I could see by the shape of Neil’s pupils that the wolf was ready to come out, so much so that it was dangerous to be on the Forest’s border rather than in it already.

“Go,” I whispered, “I’ll be right behind you.”

Neil didn’t speak. I couldn’t tell whether it was because the animal form was gaining the upper hand on his human mind or because he simply didn’t want to talk to me. That morning in the infirmary he had seemed even angrier than the day before, when he had found me in the Inn with Roland.

Either way, he still nodded, and entered the Forest without looking back.

I still had to wait for about fifteen minutes before the moon finally fully rose and then I could hear Neil’s howl, worshipping the little grey sphere in the night sky. I drew in a deep breath, closing my eyes and focusing on my body, seeing clearly my shape and my body and my soul inside my brain, like I existed outside of them. I started running, towards the woods, and when I opened my eyes again, I was aware that I was running on my four legs, with the wind pushing its way in my black fur.

And just like that, the panther was back.

With my sharpened senses, it was easy to find the wolf. It was watching itself, reflected on the surface of a small pond which was moonlit. Its powerful breath created small waves in the pond, twisting and distorting its appearance. I wondered whether it felt like a monster, or whether, in this form, it thought that Neil was the monster within.

Either way, I – or the panther – approached it carefully. Close enough, I reached with my paw towards it, and it flinched, moving quickly to get away from me. It was a curious reaction, but I gathered I had startled it since it was so absorbed in watching itself.

Whatever that reaction was, the wolf spent most of the night ignoring me. It was peculiar, since even when Neil and I had fought, the wolf always seemed to find a friend in the panther and acted like nothing changed. Even when Neil and I were declared rivals, the wolf sought the panther out, played with it, spent the night together like our human and animal forms were completely distinct things. And maybe they were, so why act suspiciously all of the sudden?

I couldn’t ask, because I didn’t really have a voice, and I knew the wolf wouldn’t and couldn’t respond, so I let it be for most of the night. I never tried to go near it, and I simply mindlessly followed it to ensure it wouldn’t harm itself, since that was the whole purpose of my transformation in the first place.

I stayed close by, never fully interacting with it, never even getting too close. As the sky began to clear, becoming progressively pink and orange, I made a mistake.

I didn’t notice the wolf had stopped walking. It was hunting, which it hadn’t done the whole night – which, again, was in itself a strange behavior. But, bumping against it with my whole bodyweight, I startled it.

It immediately began to growl, turning towards me with its teeth on full display. I backed away, ducking my head down to show submission, hoping the wolf understood that it hadn’t been my intention to disturb it, to hurt it.

Maybe Neil was angrier than ever with me. Maybe the wolf got the best of him, maybe that was just what happened once in every full moon. But still, whatever explanation there was for it, it didn’t matter in the end.

What mattered was that the wolf charged against me, running towards me at full speed and eventually tackled me to the ground. With my animal body pinned under the wolf, which was at least two times bigger than me, I began to squirm, but it didn’t help me escape.

Instead, I had to dodge its teeth as they snapped at me, going for my throat. I ducked and moved and wiggled and struggled, trying my hardest not to have my head bitten off.

I looked over and saw the sun began to rise, but the wolf was still there, and it was very much still trying to kill me. In a flush of panic, I turned into my human self and began to pound on the wolf chest, avoiding its long claws.

“Neil!” I screamed, but the wolf just roared in my face, which was downright terrifying.

Still, I stood my ground. I tried to block the wolf thin wrists, but I didn’t menage to. So, I went back to screaming, still struggling to keep my head on my neck long enough for me to survive.

“Neil,” I yelled at the wolf’s face, “For fuck’s sake, Neil, come back!”

It was a moment. The wolf swung its claws at me. Every inch of my skin, from my right shoulder to the center of my abdomen, a little above my bellybutton, hurt and burned and stung. I grimaced, wincing, and yelled as I felt the pressure of the claws in my flesh.

That was when the wolf realized. It seemed struck, like something had hit it. It straightened up, rising from the ground, and took a few steps back. In a matter of second, it was Neil again. I averted my eyes.

“In the second tree on your left, behind you,” I struggled to get the words out, managing not to cry out in pain, “there’s a hatch. I hid some clothes for you. They’re mine, but you can have them.”

“You…” I could only hear his voice, hoarse, but I could imagine his expression, “What?”

“Get fucking dressed, Neil,” I urged.

“Yeah… I… sure,” his voice was soft, panicked, like he didn’t know what to say, like he couldn’t believe himself. Neither did I.

I backed up, forcing myself to find the nearest tree to prop myself against. I tried to sit up, grunting and holding in a painful scream as I pushed up with my arms. I panted as my back leaned against the trunk, I managed to lift up and take off the sweatshirt that Abby had lent me.

Finally, I looked down. I felt tears prick on the edge of my eyelids as the mere vision of my torn body hurt like hell incarnate.

There were three tears, the one in the middle was larger and deeper, and they went from the back of my right shoulder to the front, then leaning diagonally through most of my torso, crossing my chest and basically ending on the left of my sternum. Which, if I squinted, I could actually see, white and bright in the gushes of maroon that were exiting my body.

“I’m so sorry.”

I looked up. Neil was standing in front of me, trembling, exhausted. He was wearing an old Zeppelin shirt I didn’t use anymore and some of my old trousers, and they looked fine on him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I wanted to punch the hell out of him, that I was so angry with him that I couldn’t stand the sight of him.

“I didn’t mean to,” he kept on whispering, shivering, “I was… I was so angry. Maybe I was angry at you, Andrew, I’m sorry.”

I gulped down the pain, wand in hand. I shook my head.

“Don’t worry. Just don’t faint until I’ve handled this.”

Neil nodded violently, kneeling in front of me. He looked at my injury like I was dying. To be entirely fair, it felt like I was. I grimaced again as I tried to touch the jagged and uneven borders of the lacerations, only pumping more blood out in doing so. Neil made a high-pitched sound that sounded like he was crying, but I knew he wasn’t. He was just scared as hell. I could understand that.

I wordlessly waved my wand at the wounds, and they slowly but steadily closed. Three large, red and knobby scars adorned my chest and I sighed. I hated new scars. Those were magical: there was nothing I could do that could take those away. I would’ve died before I’d let Abby take a look at them and then run her mouth off to Lupin, or Dumbledore even.

Neil had panic in his eyes.

“Are you… Is this… Are you fine, now?” he asked, tentatively.

“No, Neil, it hurts like a bitch,” I snapped, and he flinched.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and I shook my head again, getting on my feet. He didn’t follow my movements and stared at me from beneath, knelt down like I was an executioner and I was going to take his head. I scowled at him. 

“I don’t want to seem rude, Josten,” I hissed, “but I don’t care that you’re sorry. I know you didn’t mean to do it, I know you feel bad about it, I can see it. But you almost fucking murdered me. And over what? The fact that I slept with someone, the fact that I avoided you for a couple of months? Why does it even bother you that much to begin with?”

“I…” he tried, but I cut him off.

“Shut up,” I urged, “I don’t care about excuses. I’m the pissed off one, now, get it?”

He nodded slightly, unsure. I took it as a win and kept rambling.

“I want to be clear: I don’t care if you hate me, and you might as well do for all I know, but in this Forest, once a month, we’re best friends. It’s not me and you, it’s not us, it’s not our problems: it’s the wolf and the panther and they have to get along or this,” I waved a finger between us, gesturing to the whole full moon situation, “won’t work. And don’t you dare tell me that Dumbledore was right and talk about this to him. Do you understand?”

He nodded again, choking out a small ‘yes’.

“Get your shit together, Neil,” I spat.

He lowered his eyes. My heart couldn’t bear his pain anymore – and I fucking hated that – so I forced myself to stop. Instead, I sighed and rubbed my face with the palms of my hands.

“Are you about to pass out?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

I picked up the sweatshirt and slung it across my shoulder, the healthy one, before hauling Neil to his feet and picking him up too, carrying him in my arms as he absent-mindedly rested his head against my scarred shoulder. He kept whispering, under his breath, that he was sorry. When he stopped, a few moments later, I knew he was unconscious.

I walked in silence all the way to the school and then to the infirmary. Nobody was up yet, but Abby was waiting for me. She seemed alerted when she looked at my face, and I knew I must’ve looked like I was about to murder someone. In all fairness, I was very, very, very angry.

I went straight for one of the beds, carefully laying Neil down and draping a duvet over him. I sighed and swiveled towards the exit, but on my way out I tossed the sweatshirt at Abby. She caught it, confused, seeing that Neil was fully dressed so I didn’t have any apparent reason to go around shirtless. But when she looked up, she saw the scars and audibly gasped. 

“It’s torn. I turned too soon while we were playing around and got nicked. It’s just superficial, though, and I already took care of it,” I added as soon as I saw Abby open her mouth. I didn’t find it in myself to smile at her, not even a fake one, “Tell Wymack I’m sorry about the sweatshirt. Bye, Abby.”

I headed for the exit and didn’t look back once as the ache in my shoulder tore me to shreds. I gritted my teeth all the way up to my dorm, fighting my screams and tears.

As soon as I hit my mattress, I passed out from the pain.

Notes:

Hellooooo
This took a while to write lmao
Sooo, I have to ask, does anybody actually read these at-the-end notes? Because I have a lot to ramble about, so let me know if you want me to put more of my own opinions at the end of each chapters. It would be like talking about it together at some kind of bar or something
idk maybe i'm just spiraling but leave a comment if you read the notes, just to let me know

Chapter 27: Castaway

Summary:

TW!
mild depression, discussions on scars

There are things in life that nobody could ever prepare you for.

That was my exact thought, the only thing I could think about for hours on end as I laid helplessly on my bed, looking at the ceiling of the canopy like it held all the answers to my seemingly never-ending problems.

And there had been things in life that nobody did prepare me for, and I couldn’t really handle them on my own. Admittedly, I was doing a pretty fucking good job at handling them, or at least so I took pride in thinking that about myself. However, I was sure I could’ve endured most of them better if I had had a little heads-up about it all.

For fourteen years of my life, I had thought I had no value whatsoever. If I had, why would've people treated me the way they did? Why had my mother abandoned me? Why should’ve I suffered in silence while the world crushed me down under its thumb like I was a meaningless ant in a universe of pretty, lovely, unique bloody unicorns?

I’d always been treated like 'less than'. Less than my biological brother, less than the biological children of my foster families, less than the other criminals that shared a prison with me. And yet, it had taken less than three days to turn my world upside down so that everyone would start to treat me like more than.

I was smarter than most people, more talented, quicker in learning and more able all around. I knew that. I didn’t need someone to tell me that. I knew that I was going to thrive the moment I had set my mind on the matter, and I honestly couldn’t help the fact that my blood, the power coursing through it, accommodated my wishes, my ambitions.

And yet nobody could prepare you for finding out that you’re a wizard; that you’ve lived with poor people, aching and hungry, your whole damn life just to find out that you’re rich; that you believed that you were worthless only to find out that you’re actually valued a lot by some people. Nobody could’ve prepared me for the fact that somebody actually wanted to be my friend, that most of the time I didn’t feel alone anymore, that I could experience falling in love.

Yet again, nobody could’ve prepared me for the fact that the presumable love of my life was a murderous werewolf that tried to gauge my heart out of my chest in a fit of blind fury.

That was a bit unfair for me to think, I knew that. I knew that most of my thoughts weren’t as innocent as I would’ve loved them to be, that I was more cynical than what I wanted other to think of me, than what I wanted to think of myself.

But Neil had, nonetheless, hurt me, badly even. I was sure he regretted it, I was sure that, if I had let myself wander into the infirmary that next morning, he would’ve said he was sorry a thousand times and maybe he would’ve cried – he seemed like he wanted to, when everything had gone down.

The things was, one of the only things I was prepared for in my life was that the people I loved would’ve hurt me, because that was what they’d always done. And I’d been stupid, letting myself believe that maybe it would be different for them, for Renée, for Neil. Hell, even for Lupin.

So, I didn’t have the heart to watch him cry, to watch him crumble and say he was sorry for what he’d done to me, for my new scars and for how he treated me. I didn’t have the heart to go and forgive him, because I didn’t know if I could’ve found it in myself to forgive him at all.

And that was a thought I didn’t want to let in. I could've managed a world where Neil hated me, but a world where I hated him? I couldn’t have possibly fathomed it.

And yet, I still felt it. Deep in my bones, right inside my sternum I could feel my pent-up anger getting the best of me, wanting to crawl out of its shell where it had been hiding for months and just explode. I could’ve done that. I could’ve bet that nobody would’ve ever held it against me if I did.

However, something inside of me still made me hesitate. I told myself that Neil was going through a lot, and it didn’t matter that I was too, because he was the one that mattered in the first place – to me, at least. I told myself that I had made him… jealous, if that was even possible, that I had made him angry because I was avoiding him and sleeping with other people and I couldn’t possibly gather why but it did bother him, apparently.

He was just mad. He wasn’t himself. He did nothing wrong.

But it still didn’t sit right with me.

I sighed and waited for King to come on the bed and curl up against my chest, while I ran my fingers through his black fur and daydreamed about being the panther, running away, going so deep into the Forest that I would’ve just emerged on the other side, unscathed, and escaped.

My enhanced nose picked up some smell all the way from the Great Hall, and I was painfully reminded that it was time for lunch. I had already skipped breakfast.

I sighed and King purred from beside me, urging me to keep stroking him. I obliged, and, in return, urged myself not to move from the bed. It was peaceful there, in my dorm, with quiet air and a docile cat and a comfortable bed.

I let that new wave of depression wash over me as I drifted off to sleep.

 

---

 

I heard another girl yelp from the common room and groaned. And yet another proposal had went well, apparently.

December had been kicked off, on the first night, by a full moon, and that was pitiful in itself.

However, December had always been and would always be a dreadful month for me. It was the month I was picked up from the orphanage the most, like I was some sort of Christmas gift for the plausible foster families that just pestered me, only to be tossed aside like trash when it came to Christmas gifts or family pictures or family gatherings.

I was mostly left alone, at home, to fend for myself. When I was very little, like 7, they at the very least would leave me a plate of food. When I had hit ten years of age, they told me that there was food in the fridge, and I could figure out a way to cook for myself.

I couldn’t even reach the stove.

I had always hated December, and that year was not an exception. It had been, in the past, when Cass was around. From what I could recall, something she gifted me on Christmas was one of the very few things that I’d had to my name before discovering I was a wizard.

I swiveled my face towards the shelf above the desk to look at the small cat plushie, so old and full of dust that seemed grey when it was originally a red kitten. I had taken it to prison with myself. I didn’t go anywhere without it.

For the most part of the months, since I had my affairs in order – most of the assignments of my classes I had handed before the end of the semester, most even before they were yet to be assigned; I had an official date to the Yule Ball; there weren’t any other Quidditch matches before the next semester – I’d just hidden inside my room, but it didn’t seem to have bothered anyone.

Renée had come by a couple of times, just to ask how I was and why I wasn’t setting foot outside my dorm, but I didn’t really answer, and we mostly chatted our heads off till she had to leave.
Neil hadn’t come by even once. No one of the others, either.

Renée, even though I never asked, tried to keep me updated with whatever was going on in our group of friends. Apparently, Allison did try to ask her to the Yule Ball, but she was already stuck with me, so she had to decline. I told her that I could’ve found somebody else, but when she asked who I might've taken if she would’ve gone with Allison, only one name popped into my mind. I hated the mere thought of it, so I shook my head and thanked Renée once more.

Allison did find a date, so did Aaron. Nicky was still on the hunt, while, obviously, Dan and Matt would’ve just gone with the other.

Renée cleared her throat, and I turned to look at her. I was laying down on my bed, still, like I did most days, as she was leaning against the doorjamb of the bathroom. She sighed, relaxing her shoulders as she clearly was preparing herself to tell me something I wouldn’t like.

I knew what it was. I just simply didn’t want to hear it.

“Neil’s going with Tessa,” she whispered, her voice laced with fear.

She didn’t need to fear me. I wasn’t going to react. I didn’t, in fact: I just turned back my head to look at the canopy and stayed silent until she got the hint that it was time to go.

When she left, I cried in silence.

And still, I stopped myself from hating him even then.

 

---

 

“Andrew, come here,” Lupin called me from the desk at the front of the classroom as I was getting ready to leave.

Aaron scoffed at my side, but still promptly got up, headed for the door. When I turned around to look at him exit the room, I caught a glimpse of Neil staring at me. I bit the inside of my cheek and picked up my bag, full of books, and went straight for the professor.

“Neil, close your door on the way out,” Lupin called out as soon as I was in front of him, not even looking up from the papers in front of him. I always wondered how he could have so much stuff to read all the time, “Thank you,” he added, as an afterthought, as he heard the door creak while closing.

When the sound of the door snapping shut finally reached us, he watched me carefully and sighed.

“Come on,” he simply said, “show me.”

“What?” I asked, actually eager to go back to my dorm.

I’d just decided to attend because it was the last day of the courses for that semester, and while no one would be leaving till the morning after the Yule Ball for the holidays – since the Yule Ball had to be on Christmas, apparently – I still decided it was best for me to make my rounds across the school before locking myself inside my room again.

I had made a mistake, there was no doubt about that. Lupin seemed to read through me and Neil like blank pieces of paper, like he knew precisely that we were the type to use invisible ink and he could read it without the special light.

“Whatever he’s done to you,” the Professor whispered back, cautious.

“Who?” I tried to play dumb, but I had to repress the urge to fidget with my fingers as I looked down, somehow ashamed of the whole situation.

“Andrew,” Lupin pinched the bridge of his nose while sighing, but when he looked up again there was nothing but compassion in his eyes. I kind of hated it, but I let him speak, “I’m a werewolf, too, if you don’t remember. And I could sense that on the last full moon something had gone wrong with another one of us. I could smell blood in the school. I can only assume it was Neil, since he’s the only werewolf I know about in this area. So, what’s happened? What has he done to you?”

“Why would you assume he’s done something to me? Why couldn’t I do something to him?”

“Well, did you?”

I looked at the ceiling briefly, before dragging my eyes towards the papers on the desk.

“No,” I muttered.

“Then show me,” Lupin insisted, voice firm and steady, like it was a proper command.

“Fine,” I hissed, then carefully but hastily dropped my bag to the floor and took off my robe, “Promise me you won’t tell Abby.”

“Why would I?” he looked confused, eyebrows furrowed as he stared at me in anticipation – I could sense it.

“Because you two like to run your mouth apparently,” I snapped, “and I will not let this be known by Dumbledore.”

“Is it that bad?”

“It could be worse.”

“Andrew,” he was scolding me, “how bad is it?”

“I’m… I’m fine, alright?” I tossed my hands up in a gesture of exhaustion, “I don’t need you lot caring for me, and I don’t need you looking after me like a fucking child.”

“I’m not,” he replied, calmly, “I would never treat you like a child. I just want to make sure that I can’t do anything more to ease your discomfort than what you surely already did.”

I exhaled like I had just been punched in the stomach. Fingers shaking and twitching, I took my hand to my shoulder and massaged it a bit.

“I didn’t think there was a cure for magic scars,” I murmured, a little astonished.

“There isn’t,” Lupin clarified, holding up his hands as to ask me to slow down my expectations, “but I’ve been a werewolf since my early childhood and the last medic here, Poppy, she experimented a lot on me about what I could use to make my scars thin and barely noticeable. This,” he said, pointing to the scar that crossed most of his face, “was really bad when I did it, worse than some other injuries I had inflicted upon myself. But still, it’s one of my lesser scars.”

“Well, in that case,” I sighed again, the burden of admitting I could’ve been wrong weighing heavily on my chest, “It is a little bad.”

That said, I loosened my tie and unbuttoned a few buttons from the collar down, basically stopping right beneath the end of my scars a little down from my chest. Then, I lifted the side of the shirt that was covering the three scars and lowered it on my arm, successfully almost getting undress in a classroom. From the point of view of whomever could’ve walked in at any moment, that was not an appropriate situation.

Lupin gaped at me for a while, before closing his mouth and shaking his head a little as to wake up from a strange dream.

“You…” he couldn’t seem to find the words, “You healed it yourself?”

“Well, you said it, greatest wizard of my generation or whatever, so yeah,” I shrugged, and I took pride in the fact that my shoulder didn’t hurt anymore like it had been hurting for the past couple of weeks, “Abby taught me some spells.”

“The basic ones, I presume,” Lupin nodded along, like he understood what had happened a year prior when McGonagall had decided to bestow that responsibility on me, and then leaned to the side to get something from one of the drawers of the desk, “If you told her, she would’ve been able to do more.”

“If I told her,” I reiterated, “she would’ve told Dumbledore that I was in danger during the full moons and he would’ve asked me to back down and Neil would be left alone.”

“And you don’t want him to?” Lupin re-emerged from the drawers to look at me, wariness in his eyes like he was actually curious and suspicious about my answer, “Even after this?”

“Well,” I swallowed my resentment down, “he would be in a cage, otherwise. I can stand a couple of scratches.”

“That’s not a scratch,” he pointed out, a little humor in his tone.

“Fine!” I yelled, “Fine. Yes, I actually am pissed off about it, and that’s why I haven’t been coming to classes and being happy about the whole situation, and that’s why I’m not talking to Neil - because I’m angry. But I can’t do that to him,” I slowly lowered my voice, “Now that I know what’s the alternative, I can’t just… leave him.”

“So you’re willing to put your anger aside to help him?”

“Of course,” I nodded, “I always have. I just…”

“What?”

“I just wish he cared about me enough to do the same.”

Lupin pursed his lips together and nodded. He promptly lowered his gaze, and when I followed it, I noticed he was holding a can of some cream in his hands, like the ones you could’ve bought at a beauty parlor. He was fidgeting with it, popping the lid on and off as he obviously thought about my last sentence.

“That was…” he finally whispered, “The last moon, it was a couple of days after that whole Hogsmeade thing? Right after Rita’s interview?”

“Yes,” I tilted my head to the side, confused, “Two days later.”

“Ah,” Lupin nodded again, then his minded drifted away and he played with the bloody lid. I grunted.

“What? What is it?”

“You read a lot about werewolves, while you were training for… Neil, yeah?” he asked, tentatively.

“A couple of books,” I conceded, even though I couldn’t really see the point in asking.

“Well, you know they’re- I mean, we’re,” he shook his head and furrowed his eyebrows, like he was scolding himself for forgetting that he was talking about himself as well, “Canine creatures. We behave like wolves, like dogs: we live in packs, we trust our family almost to a fault, and we love our friends with a burning passion. That means we’re also… very, very territorial about those we care about.”

He planted his eyes in mine, and I could see he was munching on his bottom lip in a pure expression of nervousness. I opened my mouth to speak, but quickly closed it again as I let Lupin’s words spin and turn around in my head, analyzing every single syllable to actually grasp the obvious deeper meaning Lupin was hiding.

I started to think about this dog that one of my foster family had: they’d had to put it down, because it bit one of the children’s hand off after it had smelled another dog on the little palm, since the little boy had petted one on the way home from the shop. The dog was the boy’s favorite creature in the world and they had a deep bond, since they grew up together – both of them were merely five.

In the end, it didn’t matter how much they boy loved the dog: the dog had felt some kind of betrayal, and when straight for punishment. It was a gruesome scene to witness. Either way, the boy, hand missing and all, had cried a lot when the dog had been put down. He loved it still, even when it had hurt him.

How fitting.

“Oh,” I finally breathed out.

“Yeah,” Lupin still nibbled on his top lip now, catching some of his mustache in his teeth. His canines were bright and sharp, “I guess maybe your skin still smelt like that boy and Neil… well, he can’t very much control his jealousy while wolf. I know I couldn’t, at his age.”

I tried not to show how his words had punched all the air out of my lungs, and instead pretended to chuckle before I presented the professor with a new, entirely different thought.

“Sirius was a heartthrob?”

“The Casanova of Gryffindor Tower, they used to call him,” he smiled to himself, eyes full a fondness that I could very much understand, even though our situations couldn’t be more different.

“Did you… did you ever hurt him, too?”

“Sometimes,” Lupin sighed, “Not always on purpose, sometimes we just played too rough. Always very minor, not as much…” his eyes traveled slowly towards my shirt, before shooting quickly back to the can in his hands, “Not as Neil did.”

“Right,” I nodded, finding the whole thing so ironic I could feel the anger rising back up in me like a destructive wave, “Can I go?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Lupin seemed to be woken up from a trance, handing me the can quickly, “It’s a paste I invented, a mixture of muggle creams and lotions and some potions of ours. It works wonders on me, and it won’t make yours disappear, but it will take the swelling down and dull the color, so it’s not bright red anymore.”

“Brilliant,” I bent over to drop the can in my bag, then buttoned up my shirt and put my robe back on, finally picking up the bag itself, “See you on Christmas, professor.”

---

 

Waiting outside the Great Hall for Renée to finally arrive while both Riko and one of his Gryffindor girlfriends and Neil and Tessa were chatting away like nothing was even happening made my nerves jump in ways I could've never begun to describe. I knew she would tell me she was sorry for being late, but for someone who didn’t have to look presentable for a true date, she sure was taking her sweet time to make sure she looked good.

I prayed that, at the very least, she would’ve been able to take some of the attention off of me.

I looked at the inside of the Great Hall, where the four, long tables had disappeared to make space for an ample dancing floor, where people were mingling while waiting for the three Champions to make their first dance, hence making the whole Ball begin in the first place.

In the far-right corner of the room, next to what usually was the Professors’ table and now was a normal, Christmas-themed table with a gargantuan buffet full of food, there was also a massive, white Christmas tree, trimmed with silver and blue ornaments. The pavement was so blue it looked like it was made of glass, or ice, while grey mistletoe wreaths hanged from the ceiling. I faintly touched the pin on my robe – which I had to borrow from Aaron, since I didn’t have a formal dress – that was adorned with the same colors. Dumbledore had told my cousin, who had brought me the clothes, to make me wear it.

I swallowed down my anxiety, closing my eyes and trying to loosen my bowtie with my finger.

“Why, don’t you look dapper, Mr. Minyard,” Renée’s voice hit my hears and I opened my eyes to finally look at her.

She was, indeed, beautiful. Her hair was tied up in a spiky updo that made her colorful ends stick up, creating like a rainbow aura around her head. She had a very artistic and bright silver liner on her eyes, which made them slightly narrower and deeper, like the ones of a siren, while her lips were painted in black on the edges as the middle part blended in an electric blue.

She was taller than me, which meant she had heels under her silver, sparkly gown, that was strapless and followed her curves precisely while on the left side went down in a long skirt that pooled on the floor, and the right side had a deep slit that reached above her thigh, on her hip.

“Why can you wear the cool stuff while I look a character from an 1800s novel?” I grunted.

“Because I have tits, my dear,” Renée announced proudly, before breaking into a bright smile, “Are you ready to dance?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” I sighed before taking her hand in mind and carefully placing it on my forearm, like Flitwick had told me when he tried to teach me to dance. He had failed, but whatever.

Somebody must’ve noticed that the last date had arrived, because the chatter in the Great Hall slowly died, leaving enough silence to make room for a powerful sonata of piano and violins. Riko passed me by, entering first, and Neil followed him. He and Tessa had their fingers locked together, and I felt jealousy tug at my heart but promptly swallowed it down. It would’ve been hypocritical to be jealous of him, while I went and fucked another guy all together.

Renée gently dragged me through the entrance and the corridor that the two walls of people at our sides had created between them. They were watching us closely as the six of us took our places in the middle of the dance floor, a bright white light shining down on us. The instruments stopped playing, and I drew in a sharp breath.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

That was literally all I could think; my brain couldn’t process even another world. Renée, in front of me, leaned so she could find my eyes that I was pointing directly at the sparkly sapphire rested comfortably on her collarbones.

“Snap out of it, Minyard,” she whispered dryly, but I could see the little smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. She was finding the whole thing extremely entertaining, “They’re all going to think you’re staring at my boobs.”

“Not my fault they’re in my face, Walker,” I hissed back, and she put the back of her free hand on her lips, stifling a laugh. I couldn’t help but to let out a small giggle at the thought.

The music suddenly started again. Renée gave me a telling look and I slightly nodded, keeping my chin up high as I had learnt.

In the face of Flitwick’s failure, while there was nothing in this world that I could've hated more than a Ball thrown in my honor, I couldn’t help but caring about not making a fool out of me, so I did what I could do best, hoping it would help even in the slightest to overcome the pure fear I felt towards the whole first dance thing.

Negotiating with myself about it, constantly debating whether I should’ve really cared that much about a dance that was basically celebrating the fact that I was being sent to perhaps die in three impossible tasks during the span of a year, I went to the library and picked up some book about traditional dances in the wizarding world.

I was lucky enough to have chosen books with illustrations, and, since I had nothing better to do with my lonely days anyway, except when Renée came by to gossip and chat, I started practicing by myself, praying that having a partner to do those twirls and steps with wouldn’t be much different than doing it alone.

At the end of every practice, sweaty and bruised from the falls and trips I took a couple of times, I launched myself on my bed, cursing my untalented self for being too stupid to learn how to dance, the blood in my veins for making me an option to that bloody glorified golden cup which had picked me to die at the hands of that godforsaken school, even my own birth for making me alive and able to endure that particular kind of torture.

On the other hand, it did wonders for my sleeping schedule, exhausting me so much that I basically fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

Dutifully, I put my hand on Renée’s hip, while hers reached for my other hand and my shoulder. She smiled kindly at me, and it somehow comforted me, so when we started moving, we did so swiftly and smoothly, but also carefully.

While our height difference with those heels of hers was a little off-putting, when I was able to erase the acknowledgement of my peripheral vision for long enough to forget that a whole school was watching us spinning around like two morons, it was actually a little fun to be able to dance with Renée, regaining a little familiarity with her touch and lifting her up in the air while she cackled out loud, careless.

When the music finally stopped, we mockingly bowed to each other, giggling all the way down. As we looked back up, we burst out laughing, hollering, attracting very curious and judging looks from all over the room.

Thankfully, the most strenuous part of the evening was done and gone with that first dance: the rest of the night was based on casual music from a band I had never heard of, playing from a little stage that had appeared at the center of the hall, and socializing. Even if there could’ve been another occasional formal dance, my presence was not requested.

So, away from the crowd, I was happy to spend most of my night talking about nothing in particular with Renée, sat on the empty chairs they had left against the walls of the Great Hall to let the people rest. From time to time, the other people from our group of friends that came over to chat – mostly with Renée, but I forced myself to put a word in every time I had the chance to. In the end, what use was there to sulking for an event I was already at?

At one point, Lupin came over, a glass of wine in his hand and a big smile splitting his face in half.

“Andrew,” he began, “You did splendid, lad. Didn’t know you had it in you, to be honest.”

“Neither did I,” I shrugged, but laughed along when Lupin did. He looked over at Renée, who was watching the professor with bright, adoring eyes. I bit my lip not to laugh – I admittedly had had a bit to drink and wasn’t properly stone cold sober – and eventually decided to look away and take a sip from my drink so I wouldn’t laugh at her.

“And you look simply dashing, Ms. Walker,” Lupin smile gently to her, to which she – who was, on the opposite, really drunk – let out a small whimper, but hastily shut herself up and blushed out of embarrassment.

I spat my drink and quickly covered my mouth with my hand. I looked over at Lupin to notice he was really enjoying making fools out of us, so I decided to engage war. I wore a smug smirk on my face and looked at the Professor up and down. I saw in his eyes the moment he realized he was in danger.

“So, Professor,” I asked, “do I have to put in a formal request to meet your beloved husband?”

“Ha! You think I wouldn’t have dared, don’t you?” Lupin pointed a finger at me. I stifled another laugh, “Well, you’re wrong. Sirius is here, he arrived this morning.”

“Are you serious?” I said, looking around for the man. I realized a bit late I didn’t really know how the man looked.

“No,” Lupin reiterated, and now he was the one smiling smugly, “he is.”

“Oh, Professor,” Renée whined, “That’s so low.”

All three of us laughed, loudly, but eventually stopped and Lupin glanced at the dance floor.

“Well, I better go find him,” the professor sighed, “Last time he was in this castle, he stole McGonagall’s clothes and came in the next morning dressed like her.”

“He seems like a good guy,” Renée commented.

“He is,” Lupin smiled fondly, “See you next semester, kids.”

“Bye, Professor,” Renée and I said in unison, but when he finally went away, Renée spoke up quickly, “I have to go, too.”

“What? Where to?”

“Allison’s calling me,” she whispered, then tilted her head to point at the archway entrance, where the blonde girl’s head was poking out of, and her eyes were practically drilling holes in the back of Renée’s head.

“I’ll be fine,” I assured her, “go.”

My best friend squealed in a high-pitched noise, releasing her pent-up excitement, to which I chuckled. Eventually she scattered away, no less than sprinting for the exit.

Left alone, I let myself simmer in the social event, looking around to analyze the people that were inhabiting the same castle as me. The Gryffindor Quidditch team stuck together at all times, while the rest of the House mingled with other people as well. That was the most I had seen the Houses mixed up between them in a year and a half.

As the evening was dying, I felt, before I could even see it, a presence at my side, sitting next to me, so close I could’ve assumed it was a friend, if only I didn’t know better.

“Headmaster,” I spoke up before he could take pride in taking me by surprise, “how can I help you?”

“I just wanted to congratulate you. You danced very well, even though Professor Flitwick told me you didn’t attend most of his dance lessons,” Dumbledore’s voice was calm and even-paced, as always.

“Then you should’ve talked to Mrs. Pince. She would’ve told you about the books I checked out from the library,” I assured him, turning slowly to look at the old wizard, “Is there anything else?”

“Why aren’t you with your friends?”

“My best friend just left, and I rather be alone anyway,” I tried to remain tranquil and relaxed, too.

“Do you feel out of place?”

“At a big Ball? I haven’t been to many, in my life, but I can safely say this is not my thing, Professor,” I smiled tentatively at him, lips sealed tight.

“I felt out of place, too, when I was a boy your age, attending this school,” he nodded, gaze lost in the crowd, “Maybe it has something to do with how lonely it is, knowing, in a room with hundreds of people, that you’re so different from each and every one of them.”

“Even if I was raised by muggles, I am not that different from any wizard or witch in this hall,” I responded, a little defensive.

“It’s not because of whom you were raised by,” he swiveled his head to look at me, his eyes full of a flame, an emotion so strong that it was blurred, and I couldn’t put a name to it, “It’s because of the raw power, the amount of strength coursing through your veins, my boy.”

“Ah,” I scoffed wryly, “that’s what you wanted to talk about.”

“You keep missing lessons, taking time outs,” the Headmaster explained, “You could do so much, you could be so much more if only you felt like you belonged here.”

“That will never happen,” I answered, “And, with all due respect, I suggest for you to stop trying.”

"I don't understand why you would try to resist your very nature, boy," he sighed, shaking his head. 

"I am under no obligation to make sense to you."

“Your defiance will bring you nowhere, Mr. Minyard,” his voice was harder, sharper. He wasn’t trying to appease me anymore.

“Maybe I’m good where I am, Professor,” I just said.

“Are you?” Dumbledore challenged, “Are you really?”

“What are you implying?” I crossed my arms across my chest, leaning back to better look at the wizard.

“The Slytherin boy,” his eyes left mine, fast, and landed surely and steadily on Neil, who was still dancing with Tessa across the room, “I know you don’t help him out of the goodness of your heart, Mr. Minyard, or out of an undying sense of duty. And everything that happens with your brother, your family, your mother’s recent passing… You’re stuck, Mr. Minyard. You’re stuck in a situation you’re unhappy with, and you have all the tools to get out of it. You just choose not to.”

I watched carefully as Tessa leaned in to whisper something in Neil’s ear, to which he laughed, a lingering smile left on his lips. The world started spinning. I knew, I knew it was hypocritical, but I couldn't help it.

“What can I say,” I whispered, out of energy. The only thing I wanted to get out of was that conversation, that room, “I like to suffer.”

“This Tournament,” he kept going, either oblivious to my pain or simply not caring, “is a chance for you to redeem yourself, to claim your power, to emerge, and rightfully so, as the powerful wizard that you are, Mr. Minyard. Not because you're better than other, not because you want to win, but simply because it would help you live more freely. Maybe even help you friends in ways that you can't do now. Wouldn't that make you happy? Don’t you want that?”

“How would I even do that? Riko and Neil have more training than I do,” I felt my chest give in to the Headmaster’s request, like I was leaning onto the closest steady thing I could find.

“I could help. It’s better to be prepared to face such things,” Dumbledore’s voice was calm again, smooth like silk and tranquil like the surface of creek. I was still watching the crowd, but I knew he was watching me again. I felt his gaze lift from the side of my head and lend on whatever I was watching so cautiously.

Neil ran through the room, Tessa in tow, laughing and giggling and dragging her by the hand as he reached the archway and disappeared out of it, in the direction of Slytherin’s common room in the dungeons. I gulped, tears prickling my eyes.

Dumbledore rose from his seat, a hand on my scarred shoulder. I was too stuck on the entryway to jerk away from his touch.

“In the end,” he said as he left me, walking away, “there are things in life nobody could ever prepare you for.”

Notes:

Hiyaaaaa!!!

Slightly longer chapter than our usual, and I want to talk about it so I'm going to lmao please forgive me

so, first of all, our friend Andrew is going through it, and rightfully so. I mean, imagine somebody tells you "the people that you love are going to hurt you", you might expect some mean comment, not them literally trying to shred you into pieces, I MEAN I WOULD SUFFER TOO YK??

Neil and Tessa. what's going on there? why hasn't Neil apologized? what is our boy waiting for? is he still mad at Drew? i guess we'll never now

Lupin being a supportive gay father figure, we always love to see it <3 he will also talk about his relationship with his adoptive son Harry in the future, so stick around if you want to read that

THE YULE BALL! what do we have here. Andrew being angry because they can't wear a sparkly dress (!!! I REMIND YOU THAT HE'S ENBY IN THIS FIC PLEASE KEEP THAT IN MIND !!!) and Renée serving cunt as always, unbothered queen. also idk if you remember in the last twin's birthday chapter she admitted on having a small crush on Lupin so she was about to PASS OUT when Remus told her she was beautiful, i love her

finally, Dumbledore wanting Andrew to come out of their shell. that's a complicated situation, because why in the hell is Dumbledore insisting so much like- live the kid alone, Albus. but at one point he seems to suggest he does it for Andrew's benefit? we'll have to find out what he wants, and mostly why he wants it.

SOOOO that's all my venting, hope you'll read it. I will take the time to inform you that next chapter - Christmas dinner at the Hemmicks - will be very rough in both content and new cameos, and I don't know when I'll be able to publish it, but I hope you're following the story and that you're liking it enough to wait for a moment. I'm so very sorry, I promise you I'll do better after my next uni exam.

Time to hear your predictions: next chapter there's a new character, who could it be? He's invited to the Hemmicks' dinner and he's someone from Andrew's past. LET ME KNOW YOUR GUESSES IN THE COMMENTS!

Bye babies <3

Chapter 28: The view between villages

Summary:

I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH! READ THE TRIGGER WARNINGS LISTED HERE.
- Various mentions of sexual assault
- Graphic descriptions of injuries
- A WHOLE SCENE OF GRAPHICALLY AND EXPLICITLY DESCRIBED SEXUAL ASSAULT AND RAPE (if you want to skip it, I'll leave a brief non-explicit summary in the notes at the end. Stop reading when Andrew uses the Silencio spell and start again when you read "He chuckled and slipped into his bed. I sighed.")

This chapter is rough. Please, take care of yourself first and read second.

Notes:

Another reminder to read the warnings, just to be safe.

The ride on the train back home reminded me so much of the first time I had been on that same train, just headed towards Hogwarts instead.

Just like at the time, the only one really talking was Nicky, while Aaron threw vicious looks at me from the seat in front of mine and I just left my mind drift away as I looked outside the big windows, watching as the landscapes changed.

Nicky talked, and talked, and talked, and teased me, but this time I didn’t stop him. Instead, I let the familiarity of that feeling wash over me, I basked in it, trying my hardest not to let the anger in my lungs burst out.

“Our luggage is already at my house,” Nicky suddenly said, “You won’t have to pass by yours, my father collected your stuff from there.”

“Aaron’s stuff,” I corrected.

“That wasn’t your home anyway,” my twin spat, leaning ever so slightly forward to look me in the eyes and make sure he got his point across.

“Yeah,” I smiled weakly, “Never felt like it, to be honest.”

“Oi,” Nicky sighed, “please don’t fight.”

Aaron opened his mouth, but I raised in my hand to gesture him to stop. To my surprise, his lips sealed shut, and I echoed Nicky’s sigh with one of my own.

“I am in no mood to fight,” I clarified, “Let’s just get this dinner over with.”

“There’s two of them, actually,” Nicky reiterated, and both Aaron and I raised our eyebrows, confused, “Ugh! Weren’t you two listening? My mom wrote that on the 28^th there’s going to be some special guest, so we’ll have the real Christmas dinner then.”

“Is it even a Christmas dinner if it’s on the 28^th?” I asked, rubbing the palm of my hands on my exhausted face. I hadn’t slept at all thinking about Neil running and giggling and holding Tessa’s hand, “Isn’t it just a dinner?”

“Whatever you want to call it,” my cousin waved a hand in dismissal, “Just get something decent to wear for that night.”

“Who’s this guest anyway?” Aaron asked this time, biting down on his lips like he was nervous about letting some outsider into our family dinner. Which, honestly, I did understand.

“Mum didn’t say,” Nicky shrugged, “From the sound of it, he’s someone important.”

“Who could they possibly invite? Isn’t Christmas a family thing?” I whined.

“Well,” Aaron said wryly, “maybe it’s someone from your side of the family, muggle-raised scum.”

“Aaron!” Nicky scolded him.

“No,” I shook my head, stopping my cousin from lightly hitting Aaron on the arm, “Just… it doesn’t even matter.”

“You can’t let him treat you like that, Andrew,” Nicky gained some kind of seriousness in his eyes that I’d never seen, “you know that.”

“I don’t care about what he says,” I leaned against the window, watching the outside world move as we did with it, “Besides, he said one thing right: I was raised by muggles, and your parents would never stoop so low.”

---

 

The first dinner, on the 26^th, as soon as we arrived, was anything short of an official rehearsal. My aunt Maria had apparently decided that we were heathens and couldn’t endure the arrival of such an esteemed guest in the next days, so she had to teach us how to behave in front of "actual people".

Luther just watched carefully, pleased, from the end of the table as Maria scolded us, stomped her feet, screamed as soon as one of the three of us put so much as the tip of their elbow on the table or used the wrong type of cutlery.

At the end of the night, after hours sat on a train and then others sat at the dining table, I was simply exhausted, tired and drained. Luther hadn’t shied away from making comments about how fortunate I had been to be called upon, selected by the Goblet of Fire, which had also made Aaron angry and non-talkative for the rest of the evening.

I could only hope the second dinner wouldn’t be that bad.

The Hemmick’s mansion was enormous, and it had rooms to spare. Maria had offered a room just for me and Aaron, but my brother told her that he preferred to sleep in Nicky’s spare bed in his bedroom, while I enjoyed my solitude and would be fine sleeping alone in another room. I, neither reluctant nor excited, simply agreed.

I laid on the bed for hours after that, trying to catch some sleep, but since the dance practice was over, it didn’t come to me that easily anymore. I just sighed and looked at the ceiling, wrapped in my pajamas, really careful to leave my armbands on – which made me feel uncomfortable, as I was getting used to sleep without them at Hogwarts.

Suddenly, I heard taps at my door. I swiveled my head towards it, pondering whether I’d had imagined it or if someone was really paying me a visit that late in the night, but the person knocked again.

“Who’s there?” I whispered, careful.

“It’s, um,” my cousin cleared his throat, “It’s Nicky. Can I come in?”

I bit the inside of my bottom lip, nipping at it and considering if I was in the mood to accommodate and indulge Nicky in his late-night talks that would’ve probably deprived me from the few hours of sleep I could normally get anyway.

I sighed and whispered back, “Come in, if you must.”

Nicky’s head peeked from the creaking, opening door a few beats after, while I watched him in confusion, careful not to show the distaste to that situation on my face. Whatever he wanted, it must’ve been important to him, I realized by looking at the pure dread in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, sitting up straight to better look at him as he sheepishly sat next to my bed, “Are you hurt? Did your parents do something?”

“Oh, no, don’t worry,” he smiled tentatively, lips sealed tight, “I… I just wanted to talk to you alone, and I knew Aaron wouldn’t have let me while he was still awake. I’m sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Don’t be moronic,” I replied, “Even if you did, it wouldn’t matter to me.”

“Why?” he seemed bewildered by my statement.

“Aaron’s being an asshole, and you’re defending me,” I shrugged, “If something’s troubling you, I want to return the favor.”

Nicky chuckled, which confused me even more.

“You know,” he whispered, eyes lingering on his fingers fidgeting in his lap, “For someone so stern and outright mean, you can be really sweet.”

“Say that again and I’ll snap your neck, Nicky.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“What do you mean, in fact?”

“I don’t know,” Nicky was the one to shrug this time around, “I know we don’t talk much, that you prefer Renée’s or even Neil’s company to mine – and I can’t really blame you on the last one –, but I have watched you for a year and a half now. I see how you defend me to people who are being nasty and homophobic behind my back, I see how you care for Aaron even if he’s an asshole – and he is, most of the time. And you are too, don’t get me wrong, but at least you try. It’s been hard for the both of you but… I mean Aaron…”

Nicky struggled, gesturing and stuttering, and I knew he didn’t want to say something bad about his favorite cousin, but I couldn’t help but smile widely and giggle.

“Come on,” I teased, “say it.”

“He’s being such a drama queen!” Nicky suddenly hissed, before quickly putting his fingers against his lips like he couldn’t believe the things that had just escaped them. I laughed out loud.

“Yeah,” I nodded, slowly calming down, “He sure is.”

“It’s just… What I mean is,” he was smiling again, which made my heart feel somewhat warm, “That I get that Aaron’s attitude is getting to you. I know I seem all kind and vapid and frivolous, but I can hold a grudge, and I would if Aaron was acting that way with me.”

“Did you come here in the middle of the night to compliment my insanely good coping skills?” I smiled kindly at him.

“Oh,” Nicky looked struck by my words, so much so that he pulled his knees to his chest and rested his chin on them, embarrassed, “Am I disturbing you?”

I giggled again.

“No, you’re not, not really anyway,” I waved a hand in dismissal, “But I don’t understand why you are here.”

“It’s just…” Nicky sighed, “It’s… stupid, really.”

“You can tell me. I’m prepared for stupid. I would be surprised if you told me something smart, for a change.”

Nicky snatched the pillow from behind me and smacked me on the head with it, while I still cackled at his expenses. Still, when he finally stopped whipping the soft cushion at me, he was smiling too, which meant he wasn’t offended. That was a surprise, actually.

“Hush, you,” he giggled in return, “So, you want to hear the stupid thing?”

“Hit me.”

“I just did.”

“Come on, Nicky.”

“Fine,” he bit his bottom lip and went back to his collected position, staring at the floor while evidently gathering the courage to say such a dumb phrase, “The thing you said in the train? That this has never felt like home? Well, I just… It didn’t sit right with me.”

“Oh?” I tilted my head to try and catch his gaze, but he moved it even further, on the wall on his side.

“Yeah,” he swallowed harshly, “I wanted to talk to you, because you… I know you think I don’t know you well, Andrew, but it doesn’t matter to me. You’re my cousin, my family… You’re my home, too. Just like Mum, and Dad, and Aaron. Just like Aunt Tilda was.”

“You don’t care that they don’t… accept you?”

“Aaron does,” he quickly corrected me, “Or, at least, I think he does. He never said it to me, that he does. But he doesn’t try to change me, so that’s… something, I guess.”

“But you deserve acceptance, Nicky,” I put my hand on his shoulder. He hastily turned towards me, a dazed look in his eyes, like he was surprised that I was touching him – just then, it occurred to me that I didn’t do that frequently. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time I did, “You don’t deserve to be something we can just live with. You deserve to be celebrated, to be able to be unapologetically yourself. For all that matters, I accept and support you.”

A quiet sob escaped Nicky’s lips, but he stifled it with his hands cupped against his whole face. His eyes were filled with tears, and one promptly rolled on his cheek when he batted his long, dark eyelashes. I smiled fondly at him.

“That’s why you are home, Andrew,” he whispered to me, and I felt my heart crack open. I couldn’t lie to him, but I simply couldn’t leave him hanging.

“Maybe you don’t feel like home yet,” I shrugged, “But I know you feel like family. And I’ll always protect you, solely for that. Do you understand?”

Nicky nodded messily and stifled another sob as he looked up at me with adoring eyes. Admittedly, at that moment he did feel like family, more like he had done in the previous year.

“I’ll always protect you too,” he whispered, “in any way I can.”

 

---

 

The next couple of days passed quietly but steadily. There weren’t many bumps, since I spent most of my days in my solitary room so that Aaron and I couldn’t openly fight and cause a scene. During meals, I strictly talked to Nicky if he asked me something and tried my best to act pleasant enough. It would've all been over soon, either way.

On the evening of the awaited family Christmas dinner, I started to dress up a little late: Maria and Luther had requested that we wore formal clothes, with suits and ties and white shirts. I didn’t really have a white shirt, since I had left all of mine at Hogwarts, but Aaron told me I could borrow one of his.

I was careful to fit the armbands inside the thin shirt, somewhat thankful that the jacket of the suit would cover the black cloth underneath the white one.

I looked at myself in the full-length mirror on one of the walls of my little room, straightening the knot of my tie. I lifted my gaze to make it meet itself in the reflection, and I just stared, stared, and stared, fingers playing with the fabric around my neck.

My pupils still had that edge that reminded me of the ones of a cat, and I still had those inhuman senses, hearing Nicky and Aaron bickering all the way across the corridor where our rooms were located, smelling the delicious roast-beef Maria’s elf was cooking, seeing perfectly my reflection in the dim-lit room, brightened by just one feeble candle flame.

I sighed, creating a little spot of condensation on the glass in front of me.

Whoever that guest was, I hoped he didn’t want to make much conversation with me. I was already exhausted before the dinner even started.
That conversation with Nicky had put me to an unexpected sense of ease, but I mostly didn’t trust it: in my experience, everything that seems easy and comfortable is just a blatant lie, just one hidden or sweetened enough for people not to notice at first.

Just as I had summoned a demon with my mere thoughts, Nicky barged into the room.

“Your brother is such a dick,” he stated, clearly yelling it as loud as he could to make Aaron hear him. I chuckled as I heard a door slamming from the other side of the corridor, but I didn’t turn towards Nicky, still staring at myself in the mirror.

“Tell me about it,” I shrugged, “What’s up?”

“What are you doing?” Nicky came closer, “Why isn’t the light turned on?”

“I like it better in the dark,” I shrugged, “I find it reassuring.”

“He’s a dick, and you’re weird,” he let out an exasperated exhale, “I don’t think I want to be part of this family anymore.”

“I can offer you my life, if you want it,” I finally turned to face him, and he looked like I had just punched him in the nose, which was all scrunched up.

“Sorry, that was a little tone-deaf,” he sighed, “Can you help me? The guest’s arrived, and Mum will freak out if we don’t make haste.”

“Sure thing,” I tilted my head to the side, “Help you with what?”

“Um,” he bit down his lip and pointed at the undone tie around his collar.

“What about it?” I asked again, unsure of what to do. Then, Nicky’s blush and his embarrassed expression tipped me off, “Christ, Nicky. You don’t know how to tie it?”

“Listen,” my cousin pouted, crossing his arms, “I’m gay. We queers use those things… for other purposes.”

“Yeah, well,” I began, then remembered: my cousin didn’t know I was just as gay as him. I swallowed down my previous response and came up quickly with some other thing that made sense, “It is part of our uniform at school, so you better watch as I tie it and learn.”

I made sure that I executed every step slowly and steadily, checking in every now and then to ensure he was following me. When I was done, I patted him on the chest.

“Let’s go downstairs, then?”

“Oh, right, yeah,” Nicky quickly nodded and exited the room, basically running down.

I descended right after him, not surprised to find Aaron already there, collecting compliments by our aunt and uncle. I rolled my eyes, making it so obvious that when I looked back at him, he was snarling, teeth showing and all, like a deranged dog. I smirked and winked at him, then put my hands behind my back as I entered the dining room where I could hear Nicky speaking to the guest.

The voice was somewhat familiar, but something in it, some kind of change of tone and pace, made it unrecognizable until I laid eyes on the subject.

No.

“Sweet Jesus, how much you’ve grown, Drew,” he basically pushed Nicky aside to stand up and come closer to me. I inched back, almost hitting a wall.

“Drake,” I whispered, in utter shock.

The name rolling down my tongue made the whole situation real, and it sent shivers down my spine. I started to clench my fists hard behind my back, till I felt my skin break under the pressure of my nails.

“It seems I’ve missed your puberty, little man. The last time I saw you, you were so little,” he cooed, like it actually mattered when the last time he saw me was, like he actually cared that he missed pieces of my growth and life. I took another step back as he moved closer.

“I was just thirteen, it’s not that long ago,” I reminded him.

He didn’t care. He'd never had. He put his fingers under my chin and tilted my head upwards, eyes locking with his. The smirk on his face told me he didn’t regret what he did to me one bit. The rage in his eyes told me that he was reliving it all in his head, and he was happy about it.

I didn’t know what kind of expression decorated my face, but whatever it was, Nicky seemed to get that was an unpleasant situation for me to be in, and he stepped up, trying to barge in between my body and Drake’s.

“Um, just so you know,” he tried, smiling widely, “I don’t know, maybe you’ve forgotten, it’s been so long… um, Andrew has a… sort of a problem, being touched? I’m sure he’s too polite to ask you to step away, but it would be good to make everybody feel comfortable at dinner, wouldn’t it?”

“A problem with touch, you say?” Drake seemed to consider it, pondering, but he didn’t even steal a glance of Nicky, eyes tied with mine, “I didn’t know anything about it.”

“Wait, really?” my cousin asked, careful.

“Nah,” Drake replied, voice low and cold. He smiled, “Must’ve picked it up from prison. You know how boys can get, in there. I'm sure my Drew can make an exception for me.”

“D-Drake,” I stuttered, my tone lower than a whisper, “Leave me.”

“What’s the magic word, Drew?” he said, leaning even closer.

I glanced at Nicky, whose face was contorted in some kind of anguished expression that made my inside turn. When my eyes went back in Drake’s, he smiled wide, happily, while his other hand reached for my hair and brushed it off my forehead. I felt my knees give in, and I wanted to crash onto the pavement and disappear, melted in a puddle, unable to ever feels so helpless again.

“I knew it,” Drake giggled, “You still can’t say it.”

“I won’t,” I hissed, “Not to you.”

“Have it your way, pretty boy,” he said, stern, before quickly letting go of me, so quickly that my recoil almost made me slam into the wall behind me.

I started panting as I watched Drake get farther away from me, reaching the table and sitting down next to Aaron as he began to chat with my twin brother. As much as I despised Aaron at that moment, I couldn’t help a surge of protecting feelings washing over me as I stared those two down.

I couldn’t really breathe, I wasn’t even really sure I was entirely alive. His touch burned, so much so that I could feel blisters forming on my soul and body. I couldn’t even hear what Nicky was saying, next to me, as my ears rang, a monotone drill echoing over and over.

I inhaled and exhaled, quietly, covering my mouth to stifle the horrifying sob that was forming in my throat.

I couldn’t believe he had really found me. In the end, even in the whole new world I had discovered, even with the power I felt in me, he still was always one step ahead of me. I wondered for how long he knew where to find me. If he would’ve been able to come and visit me at Hogwarts. How could I ever have thought I could’ve escaped him? He was so… so…

Maria announced that dinner was ready, and I moved quietly towards the dining table, Nicky in tow.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“My past foster brother. I stayed with him and his mother for a long time, right before juvie.”

“Is he… bad?”

“Kind of. Doesn’t show it around people, though. I hope he doesn’t fool you, too.”

“Are you safe, though?” he stopped walking, and I took it as a sign that I should stop too. I turned to look at him, his eyes desperate.

“Well, it’s one dinner, I think I can survive,” I shrugged.

“No, Andrew,” Nicky shook his head, “He lives too far away. He’s staying the night.”

“What?” I choked out.

“He’s…” Nicky looked like he was about to cry, “He’s staying in your room, since you were brothers and all, I think. Mum thought it would be nice.”

And it was back to not breathing again. I put my hand to my chest, urging my heart to keep beating, or to stop beating so damn fast I couldn’t even feel it. I couldn’t bear Nicky’s teary eyes anymore and I looked down at my shoes.

What could I have done, either way? I couldn’t just admit that man had raped me for years. Hell, I had committed arson and went to jail before I admitted that. I had endured Cass’ rejection, her disappointment, her abandonment, just so she could still think her only son was the perfect man, a military bloke that only did his duty and could do no wrong.

There was no escape. I just had to… make it till the morning. Once again.

“I’ll be fine,” I smiled, as fake as my words, looking back up at my cousin, “It’s just one night, how much damage can he do?”

 

---

 

The door creaked open, and I closed my eyes gently, waiting for it to just… happen, at that point. I knew I couldn’t avoid it. I could fight him, and I would’ve, but I’d tried a thousand times to do it: he was a soldier, a soldier way stronger than me in any way that counted.

I stayed still, lying on the bed.

“Are you awake?” he asked, his voice smooth like that could’ve helped me to handle things better, to just surrender. I turned my head towards the door and blinked at him, his massive figure coming in through the little sliver of the door. He turned around to close it, lock it, and then moved swiftly towards me, “Pity. It would’ve been easier if you were passed out.”

“Why?” I asked, but I couldn’t hear my own voice over the sound of my heart thumping, ringing in my ears, “Why do you do it, if you know I don’t enjoy it?”

“I enjoy it, Drew,” he shrugged, kneeling in front of the bed, “It’s all that matters to me. Honestly, when you eventually stopped complaining, it became almost boring.”

“Oh,” I snorted, a sad smile plastered on my face, “Do you want me to fight, then?”

“I’d like you to try,” his smile was more vicious than mine. All of the sudden, I was scared.

“They’re going to hear me,” I announced, “Pleading, crying. Someone will come; my brother or my cousin.”

“Then silence the room. Aren’t you a wizard? You have stuff like that, don’t you?”

“How do you even know that? I didn’t. When did you learn that?”

“They gave a certificate to Mum that said you were a wizard, just so that we wouldn’t be scared when you made things explode or appear and disappear. We were also told not to tell you.”

For a moment, I made myself linger in the feeling that I was having a normal conversation with a normal brother. That that situation wouldn’t escalate, that it wouldn’t end badly, that he wouldn’t hurt me.

I thought of Cass, her sweet smile, the wrinkles around her eyes when she smiled oh so widely, her soft laugh, the things she had knitted for me during the years, the first time she had called me her son.

How could a woman so docile raise two horrible human beings?

Oh, how I had loved that woman. My mum, my whole light and life. Too bad her son was the dark and death of me.

“Drake,” I whispered, “Don’t do it.”

“Is that an order?” he smirked, a foul look in his eyes. I swallowed.

“No, it’s… it’s a request,” I insisted, ever so carefully.

“Then say the word, Drew,” he put his hand on my calf, slowly worming his way up my knee and thigh. I held my breath. Tears were prickling my eyes, burning my eyelashes.

“Y-you know I just c-can’t,” I stuttered, utter panic washing over me like a waterfall, bringing me down, drowning me in it.

“Sorry, then,” he straightened up, raising so that he leveled his face with mine, “I can’t stop, either.”

“But you can,” I insisted again, voice cracking as I felt his hand tug at my shirt, untucking it from my pants, and then slide under it, pressing his palm right on my skin. I shivered, “Don’t make me beg for it.”

“Aw, pretty boy,” the tip of his nose crashed against mine. I jumped at the touch, recoiling and refusing it, “That’s exactly what I want, though.”

I just stayed there, lying down with my eyes closed, while he crawled on top of me and gently pushed my legs open so he can fit in between them.

“Cast the spell, Drew,” he urged, his voice rough in arousal and anticipation, and he squeezed my side to convey the order, “Let’s get it over with.”

“Drake…” I tried, but all I received in return was a punch right on my cheekbone. I could feel the sting of a bruise forming, and a tear rolling down burned when it touched my battered skin.

“Do it,” he hissed, raising his fist again and aiming for my whole face instead this time. I didn’t move fast enough, apparently, because the punch landed before I could even attempt to reach my wand on the nightstand. My mouth filled up with blood, my dry lip was split open, “Do it.”

I grasped the wand. I could’ve casted it wordlessly, but I didn’t want him to suspect that I hadn’t done anything, or, worse, that I had magically asked for help.

“Silencio,” I whispered, whipping the wand.

Drake seemed pleased. He didn’t speak much, after that: his lips were quickly on mine, kissing me breathlessly, forcefully, with a violence so sharp that made it seem like he had missed me, that he had longed for me, for years.

He undressed both himself and me, without so much as getting off me for a single moment as he bit my already swollen lips, as he kissed me on my whole body, as he played with it like it belonged to him. And maybe it did.

He stopped to caress the three scars on my shoulder and chest. With Lupin’s concoction they had gotten significantly smaller, but were still plainly visible to the naked eyes, still pink around the edges and still knobby.

“How did you get those?”

“None of your busi-”, a slap landed on my face, on the other cheek since the right one was already beaten up.

“Fine,” he spat, “Don’t tell me, you moron. They make you sexier either way.”

I thought about Neil and oh, maybe I shouldn’t have had. Because I hated him, God I hated him, with every fiber of my being, with every inch of my skin, with every molecule of my body. But, but, but, but I loved him too much to mix the beautiful memories of him, of his pretty face and his silky voice and his messy red hair, with the nasty memories of a man who had done nothing to me but hurt me, repeatedly, just because he could.

Naked under Drake’s massive body, though, I couldn’t help but remember how helpless I had felt trapped under the wolf, fighting for my life. And still, it was better than this, it was better than what Drake was about to do to me. Because in Neil’s eyes I could’ve seen that he had regretted it, that he was sorry for it, that he cared for me. In Drake’s eyes, I could only see violence.

Drake lifted my legs. I tried to put on some kind of resistance, but his hands were bigger than the circumference of my calf, and I could nothing against his brute force. He planted a kiss on my neck.

“I will flip you over,” he whispered directly in my ear, and I shivered at the contact with his wet mouth, “Just like old times. But first I want to keep kissing your pretty lips.”

He got off me for a moment to reach inside his pants, fishing a condom from the back pocket. Considerate of him, I thought wryly, to protect me while he rapes me. He must’ve read my face a little too easily, because he slapped me again, back and forth.

“Don’t judge me like that. I can never know what a whore like you has been up to.”

That said, he slid the condom on and just went right for it.

I’d had sex with Roland. And though I wasn’t quite proud of it, no, I still had enjoyed it while it lasted. Maybe it was the switch in positions. Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t feel like Roland was related to me. Hell, maybe it was the fact that I had generally consented to it, even though I didn’t really do it out loud.

Maybe it was the fact that I had somehow forgotten how brutal rape was.

But as Drake thrusted in and out of me, in and out, one of his hands keeping him steady on the mattress and over me and one grasping my throat so forcefully I nearly couldn’t breathe, I found myself weeping.

I couldn’t even tell why I was crying. Did it hurt? I didn’t know, I was generally numb from the waist down. Was I sad? Maybe. Was I disappointed in me for letting a few slaps and punches bend me again to Drake’s wishes, like I was his property? Yes. Definitely. But it wasn’t a reason to cry.

He kept going, ignoring my screams in horror and pain, ignoring my tears, slapping me from time to time just to assert his dominance, not even caring enough to flip me over and pleasure himself without hearing my yelps.

His hand slid underneath the pillow, and he froze. After a few beats, so did I.

No, no, no.

“What have we got here, mh?” he hummed.

I’m so stupid. I’m so fucking stupid. They should give me a degree in moron-ness. Jesus, I’m mentally deficient.

He hanged Renée’s knife by the handle from his pointer finger and thumb, dangling it in front of my eyes, so much so that I could only really see the sharp point of it. I swallowed.

“What did you have in mind, baby? Did you want to kill me?” he cooed, now gripping the handle firmly.

“N-no, I swear,” I stated, firmly, eyes wide in fear, “I forgot it was even there. It’s not even mine.”

“What if I don’t believe you? What then?” he asked, pressing the hand on my throat against my windpipe, like he actually wanted to crush it. For a moment, I thought he would, “Well, it means I’ll be using it instead.”

He used the hand on my neck to steady himself as the other pushed the knife against the point where my jaw and neck met. He began thrusting again, over and over, in and out, and I began screaming again, crying, punching him in the chest, telling him to get off.

The knife travelled slowly but surely on my whole body, and when Drake felt my resistance was disturbing his intercourse a little too much, he pressed the blade against whatever part of my skin it was touching, drawing blood. I screamed even more, but it made me stop resisting, even if temporarily, laying down stiffly as I waited for the sharp ache to evacuate my body.

I could always tell when he was about to come. He hadn’t changed much, in a matter of three years, for me to stop recognizing the signals. His thrusts became more intense, his grip on my body more powerful, and, ultimately, the pain in my insides grew exponentially.

At that point, he couldn’t bear my shrieks anymore. In one swift move, he planted the whole knife in the side of my thigh, like he couldn’t think of a better way to get rid of it, and as I let out an agonizing wail, he flipped me over, pushing my face onto the pillow to smother my outcry.

After a few moments, he groaned and pulled out. As he got up to dispose of the condom, Heavens know how, I took my time to lay back down on my stomach, my right leg throbbing. I could hear him pant, just as I was sure that he could hear me, my mouth so dry and my skin on fire where he had punched me, slapped me, stabbed me, kissed me.

“You know,” he even found the strength to joke about it, while he put on his pajamas, “I should’ve told you some time ago that screaming during sex like they do in porn is a real turn off. Stop being such a try hard, Drew.”

He chuckled and slipped into his bed. I sighed.

I didn’t let myself think about it too much. That was what I did, wasn’t it? I didn’t let it hurt me. I didn’t let it kill me, like it should’ve, like it could’ve. I slipped back in my numb state of mind, where I could feel nothing but the steady beating of my heart, and I tried to rejoice at the notion. Even after everything, I was still alive. Wasn’t that something? Wasn’t I so, so strong?

I rolled over and grabbed my wand again, ready to point it at my thigh. As I extracted the dagger, a gush of blood came flooding out, but I wordlessly casted the spell to heal it. It was red and botchy, but I promised myself to apply Lupin’s lotion to it once I had the time to do it.

I put my clothes back on. I couldn’t wear my pajamas, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I couldn’t stay.

Yes, it was done and over with, was it? I had survived it yet again, hadn’t I?

But the air in that room was suffocating me. The smell of Drake’s skin was choking the breath out of me, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t…

I had to get out of that house. My aunt and uncle had let him in, they had pointed the way to me, to my lips, to my body. I had to get far, far, far away from all of them. I had…

I had to go back to Hogwarts. Right that moment.

I got dressed as quietly as I could. When I got up, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: my face was black and bruised and I had cuts on my neck and my cheeks and my lips. I gulped down the fear and the disgust and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Drake whispered as I smothered the candlelight on the desk and opened the door.

“To wash away the blood and see if I can do anything for the bruises, so they won’t notice them in the morning,” I shot back, prepared.

“You’re such a smart boy, my baby Drew,” Drake’s chuckle was the last thing I heard as soon as I closed the door behind me.

I took a deep breath in. It was over. It was about to be over.

I lit up my wand and rushed to the door on the other side of the corridor. I opened a sliver of it, and it was enough for both of them to notice the light, but not enough for Aaron to see my face.

“Go to sleep, jackass,” Aaron basically screamed, as he covered his face with the pillow.

“Nicky, come out here?” I asked, but it sounded more like an order. Nicky, thankfully, didn't object.

He dragged himself outside the room, eyes still closed and scratching his head. He was mumbling something, but I couldn’t make out any of the words he was saying. Closing the door behind him as well, he finally opened his eyes.

Sleep washed out of him like he had been drained of all his blood. He looked quite pale, too.

“What… what the fuck happened to you?”

“Shush!” I urged, gripping his wrist. He hastily shut up, but his mouth was still wide open in shock, eyes travelling on my face to examine every injury, “He could hear you.”

“Did he… did he do this to you?”

I hesitated, but there was no way out if it now. I just sighed and nodded.

“Tell me there’s a way for me to get to Hogwarts.”

“What?” my cousin asked, flabbergasted, “Why would you…”

“Nicky, listen to me,” I locked eyes with him, hoping my face could convey the urgency of the matter, “I know the man in my room, alright? He said he would just spend the night. Tomorrow, sure of the fact that I would tell nothing to no one, and I won’t, because I know how to make all this,” I gestured to my face, “disappear, I just don’t have the time right now, he will tell me and everyone that he had missed me, that if he’s not disturbing he would like to stay until we go back to school, and he will do this to me again and again until I get out of here. So, I need a way out here, fast.”

“What should I tell him?” he seemed appalled, but he did get free of my hand and started moving towards the stairs, “What should I tell my parents?”

“I don’t know,” I whined, “Tell them Lupin has sent an owl to me and that I had to get back to Hogwarts on important Tournament business. Riko and Neil are both there for the holidays, so it’s plausible I must be there too.”

“Fine,” Nicky sighed.

I followed him down the stairs and through the little living room into Luther’s office. It was a weird room, decorated in a dark emerald green on all four walls with only a desk and a fireplace in it. Nicky went directly for the fireplace and lit it quickly with the stones. I looked at him, confused.

“Why didn’t you use Incendio?” I asked. Nicky growled.

“We’re not allowed to use magic outside of school until we are seventeen,” we both simultaneously looked down at my lit wand, “I’m sure they’ll make an exception for you.”

“Sure,” I nodded, more confused than before, then looked at the fire, “What do I do with this?”

Nicky grabbed a small pouch from the shelf above the fireplace and asked me to give him my hand, so I opened it, palm up, in front of him. He poured a thin, emerald green powder onto my palm from the pouch and then looked back up at me.

“This,” he pointed at the glittery stuff, “Is floo powder. It is used to activate the Floo network which connects most of the fireplaces in most of the wizarding world. There’s a fireplace in Lupin’s office, go there.”

I nodded, waiting for more orders.

“You just throw it in the fire, walk into it and state where you want to go, loud and clear or you’ll wind up in another place entirely. Do not panic, or squirm, and keep your eyes closed and your elbows tucked in. Am I clear?”

“Yes,” I nodded again.

“Then go,” he urged, visibly wanting to push me inside the fireplace but restraining himself from touching me.

I turned towards the fire and threw the powder in it, and the flame quickly became green and doubled in size.

I didn’t panic. How could I? I was apathetic: if I had let myself feel the fear of teleportation, I would also have felt the fear of having just been raped. I couldn’t let myself feel that; I had never, since the age of twelve, let myself feel that.

“Lupin’s office,” I said, as I stepped inside the fire.

With my eyes closed, the rest was a blur.

 

---

 

I tumbled onto the ground, rolling over and over. I would’ve expected a much easier landing, but instead I groaned in pain as the impact had me falling onto several of my injuries.

“Fuck,” I hissed, curling up on my side. Still, from what I could see, I recognized Lupin’s office. At least there was that.

I heard swift, scrambled steps rushing towards me. As they stopped, a pair of bare feet became visible in my field of view.

“For David Bowie’s cheetah-printed thong,” the man that was towering over me breathed out, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Hello,” I groaned, voice hoarse and rough and scratched, “Is Professor Lupin here?”

The man knelt beside me and gently turned me so I could lay down on my back and look up at him. He had long, long, long black hair with single strings of silver here and there, but he was so beautiful, of a beauty that would be almost feminine if it wasn’t for the evident stubble on his chin, with bright blue eyes and sharp cheekbones and full, round lips.

“Oh, dear,” he spoke in quite a posh London accent, that would’ve made me laugh if I'd had the strength, or the lungs, to actually do it, “Are you one of his students? Who got you beaten up like this?”

“I’m sorry,” I coughed as I spoke, “Who are you again?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he echoed me, pressing a hand against his chest like he really regretted his lack of manners in a situation like that, “I’m Sirius Lupin-Black.”

“Christ,” I croaked, “You’re Remus’ husband?”

Sirius smiled widely and nodded vehemently. Then, just as we had just summoned him, Lupin appeared.

“Andrew?” he asked carefully, “Did you come in through the Floo network?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you’re so battered?”

“Not really.”

“I heard your smell.”

“Of course you did, fucking bloodhound.”

"Can't help it. It's a full moon tomorrow."

"I had forgotten about that."

“Um,” Sirius looked up at his husband, still towering over us with his arms crossed on his chest, and cleared his throat, “I gather he’s not only a simple student, then?”

“Andrew here is one of my favorites, to be honest,” Lupin smiled, like it was something to be proud about, that your favorite student was lying on your office’s floor injured like they had just gotten out of a cat fight. He seemed to realize the situation and held out his hand, “Can you get up?”

“Sure thing,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite sure it wouldn’t hurt, and I took his help.

Lupin hauled me up on my feet and Sirius quickly stood up, too. I didn’t even let out a yelp as my body screamed to lay down again and perish.

“I’ll go back to bed,” the black-haired man said, kissing my professor gently on his cheek, “Call me if any of you need anything.”

Lupin nodded, and, as his husband disappeared in the adjacent room, he looked up and down at me.

“Do I even want to know? I smell somebody else’s scent on you,” he cocked one of his eyebrows.

“It’s not an Hogsmeade kind of situation, I can assure you,” I sighed.

“Fine,” Lupin scratched his head, “I assume you had to get out of someplace fast and the first place you thought was here? Or do you want me to handle something?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I shook my head, but it began spinning so I quickly stopped to look at the very, very still professor, “I’ll just go back to my dorm, but I have to warn you, I guess.”

“About what?”

“First of all, Nicky will tell my family that I was summoned here by you for some Tournament business, so they’ll probably contact you to know something more before they send in my luggage. I’m sorry, but it was the first important matter I could think about on the spot,” I explained.

“That… okay,” his shoulders dropped, probably in exhaustion, but he nodded, “And?”

“And I used magic outside of school, but I was forced to do so. The… person who did this to me forced me,” I admitted, but that was as far as I let myself tell him.

There was no reason to tell him the rest, as he seemed to have understood the situation.

“I’ll handle it. Dumbledore probably already knows, I’ll just go and talk to him in the morning,” he assured me.

“Alright,” I swallowed forcefully, “I’ll leave you to… sleep, then.”

I turned around, headed for the exit, but Lupin called me back. I swiveled to look at him.

“Andrew,” he said, tilting his head to the side. His eyes were fond and worried, full of a paternal instinct that I could just recognize because I had seen something similar in Cass’ eyes whenever I had gotten hurt, “Are you sure you’ll be fine, wondering around the castle on your own? Do you want me to walk you to the common room, at the very least?”

“No, don’t worry,” I tried to smile, but it came out all wrong, “What else can go wrong, am I right?”

I tried to laugh it off, but Lupin didn’t seem convinced. Still, he sighed and raised one hand in a gesture of goodbye, before returning to his bedroom.

As I walked through the corridor, I thought to myself that I was somehow right: what else could happen that could spoil my night more than what I had already endured? There was nothing else, right?

But, oh boy.

Was I wrong.

Notes:

First of all, for those of you who want to skip the SA scene:
Basically, Drake assaults Andrew. There are a few important details, like the fact that Drake still beats Andrew up, slapping them mostly, and that he finds Renée's knife hidden under Andrew's pillow, so he uses it against them, cutting him in multiple places of his body. In the end, he also stabs Andrew in the thigh.

For those of you who have finished the chapter:

So, alright. That was... a lot. Let's get the nice things out first.

First of all, we love Nicky. He's a precious baby. He loves Andrew just as he does Aaron, and that's so important for Andrew at this point in time. As I previously said - I think - I try to follow canon events as much as I can, so at one point that promise that Andrew makes to always protect him will be needed... sigh.

Sirius Black is here ;) sorry, I mean Sirius Lupin-Black, husband of our esteemed Professor Lupin. Ugh, I love Wolfstar.

Aaron is being a brat. Somebody slap him before I do.

I'm sorry, do we want to talk about how Andrew falls apart when they're touched willingly and with love - when they slept with their hands intertwined with Neil's, when they had sex with Roland - but when someone touches them to HURT them, Andrew is just... "it is what it is"???? I hate myself for writing that tbh.

Now onto Drake...
Well, some of you surely had guessed it was him. The plan is to slowly move into the direction of canon, where Drake has ruined Andrew so much that they can no longer smile or express emotion and become utterly "violent". But now Andrew technically already has support - Neil, Lupin, Renée, Bee -, so we'll see how much Drake is going to actually "ruin" our special baby Andrew. Be careful, though, this is not the last time we see him - unfortunately.

And, finally, there's trouble ahead! What do you think could spoil Andrew's night even more? What is going to happen? Let me hear your theories in the comments!

Bye lovelies!

Chapter 29: Easier

Summary:

TW!!
This is certainly lighter than the previous chapter but there are mentions of what happened there, and also a little retrospect on Drake and Andrew's relationship as a whole, so mentions of rape, blood, injuries and whatnot.
Also a brief but in depth description of suicide thoughts.

Overall, it's a good chapter if you get past the initial angst lmao

I limped all the way to the first bathroom I could find. There was nothing I wanted more than to get back to my dorm and crash on the bed and possibly never wake up again, but my leg hurt like a bitch, and it wasn’t long before my limp became a simple symptom of the fact that the wound of my leg had reopened and I was bleeding all over the castle.

I sighed and looked back at the trail of blood behind me, pitying Filch or whomever would have had to clean that mess.

I knew I had performed the healing spell somewhat wrong, since I had casted it without even looking at the injury itself, and I had a feeling the disastrous landing in Lupin’s office hadn’t helped with that, but I was still pretty annoyed.

Opening the door to the bathroom and gripping the edge of one of the sinks, I didn’t bother to lock the door with a spell. It was the dead of night, and, besides Lupin that was probably twisting and turning in his bed worrying about me – even though I’d told him not to – there shouldn’t have been someone up and strolling around the castle at that hour.

I took my clothes off without even thinking too much about it. I had put them on in a haste, so they weren’t even fully on, to be honest: most of my shirt wasn’t buttoned and the belt around my pants – Aaron’s pants, and he would’ve had my head for bleeding in them – was unbuckled and I, overall, looked like shit.

Still, I had made a point to put my armbands on when I had escaped. Drake had always taken them off when he did… well, that, like to make me remember how vulnerable I was, remember that he was the only one that could truly hurt me.

Because he knew I had begun doing it because of him. Yes, I had been sexually assaulted and raped before him, and but Drake? He was the cruelest of them all. The others didn’t pretend they did it for me, they didn’t pretend to care. Drake was, in and out, a full-on monster. He assured me that he loved me, he filled me with empty promises and sweet words and kind gestures; he used me and abused me and then promised me that one day I would’ve realized that he did it for me, he did it because it was what was best for me.

It never did feel that way, it never did feel like he loved me, and honestly, I knew better than that, I knew better than to believe him. And for the most part I didn’t, and for him to say that it just felt like adding more cruelty, joke to injury.

But then I realized I liked boys. I had wondered for a long time if my brain wasn’t just conditioned to enjoy what was being done to me, only because it happened so frequently I just grew accustomed to it. When I realized it, I had cried myself to sleep. I still did, sometimes, when I thought about it.

I hadn’t wanted to like it, I hadn’t wanted to like boys, I hadn’t wanted to like him. But there I was, somehow enjoying how Drake’s shape became better and better as he trained to be in the army, somehow thinking that maybe he did love me, that maybe he had known before me that I liked boys and was just… introducing me to the practice.

It was a difficult time. I learned about cutting. I learned about self-harm, and its many forms and shapes. I had learned about suicide, what it meant and why people committed it. I wanted to be one of them, I so desperately wanted to make my brain just stop thinking, forever. I wanted to stop feeling, I wanted to stop hurting, I wanted to stop crying, and so I started cutting, deeper and deeper, and I went online and bought the armbands and Drake had seen them, Cass had seen them, and they hadn’t asked.

Drake had undressed me and he hadn’t cared when he saw scabs and scars and bruises.

I reckoned that was the moment I realized I was nothing to him. A mere puppet on a string that he used as he liked. I had always known, because the people that had abused me before him never did care either, but some part of me had wished, had so ardently hoped that he would be different, just because he made me find out that I liked boys, and I wanted him to be good, to be better.

He wasn’t better. He was worse.

I became intolerant to his lies. I became intolerant to his face, to the way he talked, to the way he called Cass ‘mum’. She wasn’t his mum, she couldn’t have been: she was mine, mine, mine.

And I wanted to scream every time I saw him, every time he whispered into my ear, every time he told me what he’d do to me. I wanted to scream, and the cuts went deeper, and I swallowed pills, and I wanted to die, die, die, and I wanted to escape, so I just did.

I had a lighter. I knew arson was bad, so I just did it. The look on Cass’ face when they came for me had broken my heart, but really, all I felt was relief.

Nobody had touched me against my will ever since. The ones who tried, lost their fingers doing it. I either broke them, or bit them off.

Of course, the first to do it again would be Drake. He was just that horrible.

I sighed, looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. The light was dim, the only thing brightening the whole room was the feeble shine of an almost full moon. I took my time to assess the injuries, looking all around my body, trying my hardest to look if I had anything on my back through the reflection, and then I took my wand to heal them.

The thing about knives is they’re muggle-made, so the cuts and the stabs wouldn’t leave a scar unless I did the magic sloppily – which had happened when I had slept with Roland, for instance. But I did my best this time around, placing carefully the wand on each individual wound and even whispering the spell, to be sure I got it right.

The stab did leave a scar, though it was barely visible, and I guessed it would be completely gone when I would apply Lupin’s cream. That was a relief, and I sighed as I watched the new scar on my thigh.

The last thing to do was my face, still battered up by the punches and some cuts. I had just placed the tip of the wand on my swollen cheekbone when the door flew open.

“What the fuck are you doing here? Why is there blood outside? And- woah, where are your clothes?”

I closed my eyes. I hadn’t heard that voice, not really, in almost a month. The last time I had heard it, it was begging me to forgive him for hurting me. I didn’t want him to see that I was wounded again.

I slowly turned towards him, standing still at the entrance of the bathroom, a hand on his eyes and a slight blush on his cheeks. Like he’d never seen me shirtless.

“I was in the middle of something, Neil. And you can open your eyes and stare at my abs as much as your little heart desires, I don’t bite.”

“You do bite.”

“Yeah, but only when someone deserves it.”

“Fair enough, but know that if you end up biting me, I’ll just bite harder,” Neil said, dropping his hand. He didn’t stare at me, though, but rather looked at my pants, draped over the sink and still dripping blood from one of the legs, “Want to explain to me what’s going on?”

“No, not really,” was my only answer. That much was true.

“I saw you leave on the train. How are you here?” he inquired, getting progressively closer to me and slowly inspecting my face.

I just rolled my eyes and went back to looking at myself in the mirror, finally healing the bruise on my cheekbone.

“Came back. Surprise,” I replied, monotone, tilting my head to all angles to decide what to heal next.

“Who did that to you?” Neil asked next, and there was something sharp in his tone, something violent and ferocious. It sent shivers down my spine, but I remained still and hoped he didn’t notice, as I healed one bruise on my jaw.

I glanced at the moon through the windows. Of course he would get territorial like that, protective like that, less than a full day away from the transformation. I sighed and decided to cut him some slack.

“Nobody you know, I can assure you,” I whispered, caught in my image in the reflection.

“There’s blood on the floor. And on your pants. And you have a new scar on your thigh,” he listed, only succeeding in making me sigh again and swivel my head towards him.

He was closer than I had imagined, and I almost bumped into him, while he looked down at me with his mouth slightly agape, lips parted. His fingers brushed against my hip and he hastily took a step back, swallowing harshly.

The touch burned, just like every type of contact did those days, just like I thought it would after Drake had used me again. I felt the need to cry, savagely, terribly, but I couldn’t have in front of him. I wouldn’t have.

“What do you want, Neil?” I asked instead. My voice betrayed me, cracking while I said his name.

“Are you hurt?” he whispered.

“Not more than I was on the last full moon,” I hissed, but that wasn’t true. I was much, much worse.

“Andrew,” Neil called, helplessly, whining almost, and I closed my eyes, taking in the regret I could just smell on him.

“That’s it?” I said, turning to face the mirror, “You just wanted to know if I was safe? I am, now. You can go.”

“But you weren’t before?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does. Tell me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I started, tone high and deep, like I was about to yell at him, and I realized that maybe I was as I turned towards him again, getting in his face.

His eyes, so blue it almost broke my heart to look in them again, were full of terror. Neil wasn’t afraid of me, that much I knew with certainty: he had never been, not when I was the 'new one', not when I'd threatened Riko with a knife and told him I’d take out his windpipe, not when I was at my worst, hurting myself, not when I screamed at him.

He’d never been afraid of me, and he wasn’t still. He was afraid, though. I could feel it in my bones, by the way his heart thumped so hard it almost hit my own chest, by the way his eyes locked with mine, by the way he was breathing frantically. He wasn't afraid of me, he was afraid for me. That I was hurt, that I was hurting still, that someone had basically tortured me. It was true, someone had really hurt me that badly, but I couldn't just tell that to him, couldn't I? It wasn't the place, nor the time. I simply didn't want to do it like that. 

I swallowed down my anger. There was so much of it in me, but Neil wasn’t someone to unload it onto. I started speaking again, softly.

“Because I’ve had one hell of a night, really, and I need time to be able to talk about it.”

“So, will you tell me? When you’re ready?” he asked tentatively.

I rolled my eyes and went back to heal the cuts on my face. I healed the one on my lips first, which had opened again when I bit into it mindlessly.

“What are you doing up so late at night, anyway?” I asked instead.

For a moment, through the reflection, he looked skittish, uneasy. That’s when I heard it.

“I was- um, I had-” he stuttered, but his heart, his heart, I could hear it, just like he could hear mine. Just like he could tell I was lying, now I could tell he was. I glanced at the back pocket of his pants, under the black and green robe, where I had noticed previously there was something quite out of order. There it was, parchment sticking out of it.

I didn't know how I knew what it was so fast, but I just knew. Had I grown to expect the worst from Neil, just mindlessly accepting that he was lying to me most of the time and that if I had thought to myself that he wouldn't do something like that, he probably would've? Had I reached a point where I knew I just couldn't trust Neil's words at any capacity, even the ones he had seemed to speak earnestly?

I let the silence hang between us as I finished to heal my face. When I was done, I slipped my armbands, just those, back on. I wasn’t going to let a liar look at my scars, not again.

I turned around, resting my hip against the sink and crossing my arms on my chest.

“Neil,” I began, “how’d you know I was here?”

“I smelled your scent, the- the blood,” he stated, but his heart picked up the pace and hitched. Lie.

“That would be a good excuse, but it isn’t true, is it?” I said, calmly. I leaned forward, craning my neck to look at his clothes, “What have you got there?” I pointed at the parchment.

“Andrew,” he began, taking another step back, “I swear-”

“Oh, don’t you dare,” I shouted, still pointing the finger at him, “Show it to me.”

“Drew…”

“Don’t call me that,” I hissed, and he trembled, drawing in a sharp breath, “Take it out, Neil. Show it to me.”

He fished the parchment out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was seemingly empty, but I could feel the magic coursing through it: there had to be so many spells on that single piece of paper.

“Activate it,” I ordered.

Instantly, Neil took his wand from his boot and tapped the paper lightly, whispering ‘I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good’. From the point he had touched the map on, a whole design began to appear, and the magic was revealed. The front recited ‘Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers are proud to present THE MARAUDER'S MAP’.

I opened it carefully, and watched as the map showed every single passage and room and corridor and office in the castle, and also the people that were active in it at the time. I didn’t know how it deliberately chose which people to show, but it was showing some people.

First of all, in that bathroom, there were Neil and I, standing still. I could see Lupin and Sirius, in their bedroom, and Lupin was pacing back and forth, probably thinking about me. I sighed, but kept on looking: there was Riko, roaming around the third floor, and Renée was alone in her dorm.

I lifted my gaze on Neil, and he visibly gulped, eyes wide and lips sealed tight.

“You told me you never went looking for it,” I whispered. There was dread in my voice, betrayal, a crack that I didn’t want to hear, that I didn’t want Neil to hear.

“I-I…”

“You told me you had no interest in it.”

“Andrew, you have to understand…”

“You lied to me. And it was well before the Tournament, so you have no excuse. We weren’t rivals, we weren’t on bad terms, we were friends. You were my best friend at the time, Neil.”

“I-I know…”

“Why would you lie to me? Didn’t you trust me? I trusted you, once upon a time,” I screamed.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you…” he began.

“Then what is it? Just... just tell me, at this point, because I can't begin to imagine a reason why you should keep such a stupid thing from me, because I can't help but think that you don't care about me, or about our friendship, and you just keep casually lying to me and keeping secrets and I can't trust you if you don't trust me-”

“I don’t trust anybody!” he simply said, yelling as well. I promptly shut up, taken aback, while he continued, “I have a lot of secrets, okay? I have a lot of them, and being a werewolf and having this fucking map doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. I can’t just go around and tell them to everybody, because my secrets keep me safe. Can't you understand that?”

We looked at each other for a long time. He was panting, I was as still as a statue. I closed my eyes.

“You should just have stopped me from looking for it.”

“Why?” his voice was pleading, exasperated, “You were so happy to go on that little adventure. I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”

“Then you should’ve just told me you have it!”

“I wanted to!” he hissed back at me, “But I can’t bring myself to tell you some things, and there's no specific reason why. Sometimes I just have these little stupid secrets, little stupid secrets that don't really matter, but I've been raised to think that all secrets do, that telling someone even your smallest secret is basically giving away a part of yourself, of your security and life. So, I just can't. I literally, physically can’t. You know things about me that nobody else knows, I trust you with my life every goddamned full moon, isn’t that enough?”

It was. I wanted to tell him that it was, I wanted to tell him that he was enough, that I wasn’t really mad at him, that I had secrets too, secrets I couldn’t bring myself to tell him because I thought he would’ve looked at me differently if he only knew how much I had endured, how much I had hurt, how I was still hurting. If he knew why I didn’t like being touched, if he knew how much I trusted him, if he knew…

All of the sudden, I felt an urge I hadn’t felt in a long time: to just kiss him, hands on his cheeks, bodies touching. Kiss him senseless, in that bathroom, in the middle of the night, because some part of me knew that it would be healing. Another part of me was scared to death of falling even deeper in love with him.

Since we had been friends, since we had gotten closer, the urges to have him physically had dialed down to a low hum. But I still wanted him, heart and soul, it just was for a completely different reason: I didn’t want to just fuck him, to just have him in my bed for one night, or even a thousand, and then kick him out at the end, like he didn't matter.

I wanted him, I wanted to fall asleep beside him while he talked to me about his days, I wanted to steal kisses in the hallway when no one was looking at us, I wanted to hear him say that he loved me just as much as I loved him.

I wanted to kiss him senseless not because his lips attracted me, or because he was beautiful; I wanted to do it to convey just how much I cared for him, just how much I wanted to put aside the many differences we’d had and go on with our life, together just like we were before. I wanted to convey just how much he was enough, what he was doing was enough, but I didn't know how. I din't know how to love him right, how to talk to him about those things, and maybe I never would've.

I had to remind myself that he didn’t want it. I had to remind myself that I hated him, that I hated, hated, hated him and that it was probably for the best if he hated me too.

So, I stopped, looked at him, simmering in my anger. He was still gorgeous, no matter the circumstances. I sighed.

“Why were you looking at the map? I can tell if you lie,” I tapped my finger on his chest.

“Now I know why you hate when I do it,” he whispered back to me.

“Tell me, so I can go and get some sleep,” I picked up my shirt from the sink and put it on loosely, suddenly remembering that I was basically naked. Maybe that was the reason of the previous tension.

“I was watching Riko,” Neil replied earnestly, and he kept telling the truth, “It’s- um, it’s for the clue? My arrow pointed at Riko, and I’ve been basically stalking him, but I really don’t understand what the second task will have to do with him.”

I blinked a couple times, shocked, before chuckling, helplessly, at him.

“Did Riko’s arrow point at him?” I asked the redhead, and he looked up and scrunched his nose, clearly trying to remember. When he did, he blushed profusely and shook his head no, muttering and mumbling excuses under his breath, “You’re smarter than this, Neil. I honestly thought you had figured it out before me.”

“I’ve been distracted. I never really thought about if before now,” he shrugged.

“Distracted by what?” I asked, carefully, grasping my pants to put those back on as well.

“By the fact that I slashed your whole chest open like a piece of paper,” he breathed out.

“Yeah, that must be distracting,” I nodded absent-mindedly, while slipping my shoes on.

“Do you want me to apologize for that?”

I stopped to think about it. I had been waiting for it, really. I had thought I wanted him to, because he had done wrong by me, and I had been really, really pissed off. I still was, not precisely at him, but he was certainly included in the long list of reasons behind my burning fury. Would it really have made a difference, if he had, though? Would I just have forgiven him because he spoke the word ‘sorry’?

I still didn’t know if I wanted to forgive him. I still didn’t know if I could trust him again, if he wouldn’t just hurt me again, because I still didn’t fully comprehend why he would be so jealous of me.

But in the end, saying sorry wouldn’t matter. If he was sorry, he would show it; and if he wanted forgiveness, he would ultimately work for it. Words didn’t matter, not as actions did.

“No,” I said, finally, “There’s no point.”

“Do you hate me?” he asked.

“I have always hated you, Neil. Since the moment you first opened your mouth to talk to me.”

“I think you already told me that.”

“Something like that, I did, yes.”

“Why do you hate me?”

Because you make me want things I could never have.

“The answer is the Forbidden Forest,” I said instead, “All the arrows pointed at it. It’s where the second task will take place.”

“What?” Neil said simply, shaking his head as I walked past him, headed for the door.

I pulled the door open and turned my head back. Neil was still not facing me, back turned to me, and his shoulder were a little slouched down, hunched over, like someone had just hit him in the stomach with a raquet.

“By the way,” I whispered, “don’t worry about me. I really am safe now. And, for what it’s worth, I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

“Why?” he asked simply, not turning to face me. That was fine.

“Trust me, Josten. If you knew what happened, you’d probably kill the guy.”

“Yeah,” he breathed, a soft scoff in his voice, “I probably would.”

I exited the bathroom and closed the door behind my back.

I didn’t let myself think about the whole night as I finally reached my dorm. And, while my eyes fluttered close, my mind was still alive, dreaming about what my life would've been if I hadn’t been damaged by Drake, how the love I had for Neil would’ve felt if I’d have let myself really feel it.

 

---

 

There was a light tap on the door and I yelled to whomever it was to come in. The school was still basically empty, with the students mostly off to their homes to spend the holidays. I gathered I would’ve had a couple more days of solitude before the crowd would’ve flooded back in.

Still, I was very much pleased when Sirius’ head peeked from the dorm’s door, a grin latched on his lips. He carefully carried my luggage to the foot of my bed and left it there, before straightening up and looking at me.

“You look much better,” he sentenced, and I just scoffed in return, “I gather you know a lot of healing magic.”

“Just the fundamentals, really. But it’s plenty when it comes to muggle-made wounds,” I shrugged, and the black-haired man just nodded.

“Well, I better go,” Sirius announced, hands placed on his hips, “Remus is talking to your uncle and aunt, and I have to say, they’re not pleasant people. They remind me of my parents, so I had to get the hell of out there, but I feel bad for Remus now.”

He swiveled on his heels and headed for the door. I didn’t know what precisely got into me, but before I could stop I heard myself calling his name, and he whipped his head around, looking confused.

“Yes, Andrew?” he just said, slowly turning his whole body towards me.

“Can we…” I began, but the words died in my throat. I cleared it and held my chin up a little higher as I said instead, “I have some things to ask you.”

“Sure,” he responded, the grin back on his face. He smiled a lot. He sat on the chair, legs crossed on each other and arms hanged loosely on the chair. He sounded a little less posh and poised than what he did when I had caught him off-guard in the middle of the night, “Fire away.”

“What was it like with Remus, when you were kids?” I just inquired, biting my lips. At his bewilderment, I felt the need to explain, “He says… he always says that me and him are really alike, but I can’t help but seeing the similarities between him and…” I stopped, swallowed, closed my eyes and exhaled helplessly, “some bloke I fancy. They both seem to have a lot of secrets and I don’t know how to act when I simply discover them, in one way or the other.”

“I see,” Sirius nodded along, then bit the inside of his lips, “The thing is, I tried not to make him feel at fault for having them. It hurt when I discovered I didn’t know everything about the boy I loved, and the guy that had been my best friends for years, but he had his reasons not to tell me. My mind just went to the things I had to do to fix the problems he had, or to how to protect him. That’s why I became an animagus, it was my idea to do that.”

“Did you know you were in love with him?”

“No, not really,” Sirius scoffed, shaking his head, “I didn’t let myself think about it. I didn’t know I like boys at all, to be honest, but the moment I felt something for Remus I… I am not proud of it, but I threw myself to every single girl in the school, like I wanted to compensate my feelings, balance everything out. When he finally took matter into his hands and kissed me, I knew I couldn’t run from them anymore. What I feel when I’m with Remus is just different, and it was different even back then. Also, he’s a hell of a good kisser.”

“Too much information,” I winced.

Sirius laughed, proud and loud, shrill even. He wasn’t a flamboyant man, and he didn’t seem like the dramatic teenager he had once been, but he was open about himself, about who he was, about what he wanted and what he cared about. I felt some kind of envy towards him, like he was living the life I wanted.

“Sorry. Anyway, I didn’t care about the secrets, I just wanted to keep him safe, and if the secrets helped with that, I tried to keep them. I didn’t always…” he cleared his throat, eyes glossy, like he was remembering an event in particular, “I failed to keep him safe, one time, and he was so mad, and rightfully so. He didn’t talk to me for weeks, and I thought he wanted to break up with me, but he didn’t. It took a lot for him to forgive me, completely, but he trusts me now. That’s what matters, yes? Not how many things we hide from each other, but the fact that we trust each other enough to know that, if we said our secrets out loud, the other would just keep them, keep them and us safe. That’s what you should focus on. Are you in love with this boy?”

“I-I…” I swallowed harshly, biting down my lip, “I’ve never been in love before. I think so?”

“You’ll know for certain at some point,” Sirius shrugged, “There’s a moment when everything goes dark and the only light you can see is them. It could be anything: when they’re especially happy, when they touch you in a way that’s simply different, when they’re in danger, when they’re just doing nothing in particular and you look at them and your heart just falls at your feet and the floor seems to slip from beneath you. You know, when you realize they’re special, in a way. Not special in general, special for you.”

“Got it,” I nodded, mindlessly, “So, that’s what I do? Don’t get mad, just keep them safe? I get mad really easily.”

Sirius laughed again, and I couldn’t help myself from feeling the corners of my lips twitch upwards, curling in an involuntary smile, because his laugh was just contagious like that.

“You really are like Remus,” he shook his head, “But yeah, that’s what you do. If you let yourself get mad because of it, you’ll never love them right. It can hurt, sure, and you can point out that it hurts, but ultimately, if the secret was needed, why should you get mad?”

I nodded again, turning the last phrase in my head over and over, ruminating on it, pondering. Finally, I spoke up again.

“Maybe it’s best if you don’t leave Remus alone with my family any longer,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” Sirius jumped up from the chair and basically ran for the door, suddenly remembering why he was in my room to begin with, “See you around, dear.”

He threw a wave over his shoulder as he ran off, a flutter of long, black, silky hair bobbling around his figure. He closed the door behind him, and I laid down on my mattress, sighing.

Maybe, after all, I was the one to owe an apology to Neil.

 

---

 

“ANDREW!”

My door busted open, like someone had just kicked it in. In its frame, a raging Renée was standing.

When did everyone get back from the holidays? Had days passed and I hadn’t even noticed? When was the last time I ate? Did I miss the full moon, did they cage Neil, was he hurt?

“What?” I jolted, straightening my back and looking rather shocked at the girl that was barging into my room like a feral animal, “Also, do you mind telling me what day it is?”

Renée stopped on her way to my bed to blink at me, once, twice, a third time. She cocked her head to the side, now more confused than me.

“The second of January. Why?”

“Oh… nothing,” I shook my head, mentally berating me for missing the full moon, making a point to go and visit Abby in the infirmary to ask about it later in the day. Not only that, but now I could hear my stomach growling in hunger. Perfect.

“Have you been cooped up in here all the holidays?” she was still screaming at me. I flinched.

“For days, apparently. On the bright side, I haven’t smoked in a long time,” I just said, reaching for my luggage to fish out one of the packets Nicky had surely stashed in there without telling his parents. I really liked my cousin as of late. I picked up one of the cigarettes directly with my mouth and snapped my fingers to get it lit up. Renée was looking at me with her jaw slack in pure disbelief.

“So, why are you disturbing my peace?”

“You are the embodiment of mental,” she just shook her head, “I get that you haven’t read this, then?”

She pushed a paper in my hands, and it took me a while to find the article she obviously wanted me to read. It was easy, really, once I found the moving picture of Neil pushing Kevin against a wall and getting in his face rather dramatically, like he was shouting at him. Something in me was wildly attracted to it and my stomach turned on itself. I took a long drag from the cig.

The title read ‘New flame for Hogwarts Triwizard Champion? An article by Rita Skeeter’.

I'd only scoffed initially, but then I just burst out laughing fully, bending myself over to clutch my stomach. My abs hurt from the hard laughter when I finally calmed down, ash from the cigarette scattered all over the duvet from how harshly I had moved. I took another drag, slowly exhaling the smoke.

Renée was appalled.

“Aren’t you jealous? He told you he didn’t like boys!” she protested. I thought she was a minute away from stomping her feet like a toddler. That made me want to laugh even more.

“Are you serious?” I choked out, my stomach still hurting as I smoked. Renée looked at me wide-eyed, “Oh, fuck. You are. You are serious. God, this is exhilarating.”

“Andrew, it is serious! Neil is seeing someone from the Gryffindor team, it’s… it’s…”

“It’s not true, Renée.”

“What? But… the picture…”

“They’re clearly fighting. No, wait, it seems like Neil is basically threatening the bloke. And, by the way, that’s so hot.”

“You are completely insane,” she sentenced, before snatching the paper from my hands and looking at the photo again. She sighed, finally, “I guess you’re right; it does look like they’re fighting.”

“Thank you for validating me, Ms. Walker,” I bowed to her mockingly, which she obviously didn’t like, since she smacked my head with the rolled-up paper. I took the last drag from the cigarette, burned down all the way to the filter, and put it out on the ashtray on my nightstand, “I don’t think you have to worry about it. It’s just another piece of Neil’s life we don’t know about.”

“Doesn’t that enrage you?” she asked carefully, “The fact that he still doesn’t talk to you?”

I replayed my conversation with Sirius in my head, basically asking myself what I could possibly do in that situation, then slightly shook my head.

“Nah. But I’ll go talk to Kevin, see what this is all about.”

Renée’s eyes got wide again.

“You what now?!”

I shrugged, “I’ll help if I can.”

---

 

The Fat Lady in the portrait was really testing my patience.

“Listen here, boy: you don’t know the word, so you can’t get in. It’s how this common room works!”

I took out the Swiss army knife from my pocket and I smiled wryly at her. She flinched.

“Open up.”

“At least say please.”

“Never,” I hissed, “Open up.”

“You’re so rude,” she cried out, but she eventually opened the entrance. I slipped inside.

I looked around the room, taking in the details of the only common room I’d never been it. It looked antique, like some kind of living room in one of those old houses full of portraits and vintage furniture. It was all so red. It was hurting my eyes.

The first person who noticed me, thankfully, was Dan. She skipped towards me, confused.

“What are you doing here? And, maybe more importantly, how did you get in?”

I raised the knife again, and she flinched too. God, it wasn’t even that sharp. These people.

“Got it,” she nodded carefully, “So, what do you want?”

“Day’s dorm.”

“What?” she was stunned, even took a step back.

I would’ve laughed at her face too, just like I did with Renée, but I was walking a thin line between maintaining my calm and losing my collective shit, so I just shot her a venomous look, repeating, “Day’s dorm, Danielle. Where is it?”

“Is this because of Skeeter’s article?”

“Why does it matter? Just tell me where the bloody man is.”

“Fine,” she sighed, but promptly whipped around and began walking.

She led me through various stairs and kept going up, and up, and up, but finally stopped at one of the doors. It was pretty isolated from the rest of the dorms, and I could’ve guessed that Kevin lived there alone, just like I did in my room in the other tower.

“Just,” Dan began, before starting to descend the stairs again, “Don’t kill him, alright?”

“I don’t make any promises,” I found myself replying, and I just opened the door and entered Kevin’s room, without even knocking.

Kevin Day was on his bed, seated on the soft white mattress with his broom in hand, and he was polishing the handle. The two on his cheek was still there, even though he hadn’t been playing in the Quidditch tournament since he had broken his hand. Coincidentally, the broken hand was the one propping the broom up, still bandaged, but not in a tight plaster, which told me he could use it, just not to play.

That must’ve been hard for him. All I knew about the guy, all I really knew, was that he cared about nothing more than Quidditch. It was somewhat of a legacy for him, since his mum was a famous player as well, so much so that she threw the foundations for some of the rules that were still applied to that day.

He didn’t seem to have noticed my entrance, and I leaned against the door, waiting for him to snap out of whatever trance he was in. When he did, he jumped and the broken hand shot to his chest, like I had just given him a heart attack. I probably had, but whatever.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Minyard? And how the hell did you even get in?”

“Everyone seems to be asking this today. I’m here to help,” I announced, rolling my eyes.

“What- who- what are you talking about?” he stuttered, getting up to put his broom on the little hooks on the wall that were there specifically for that.

“I hoped that you would tell me,” I shrugged.

“Have you finally lost your mind, Andrew?” he teased, crossing his arms on his chest as he looked at me.

The true answer was yeah, probably, since I had willingly walked in a room in which lived a man that notoriously hated me, or was friends with someone who hated me, at the very least, and that had helped said someone to make me fall to my death just a year prior to that. But that wasn’t what I was there to talk about.

“Let me review what I know for you, just so that we can understand each other,” I cleared my throat, beginning to pace around the room, “I know that you’re Riko's second in command, almost a brother to him. I know that you are a powerful wizard, and that you were chosen by the Goblet of Fire first, just like me and Neil. I know that Riko abuses you, beats the shit out of you, and you, God knows why, let him. I know that Riko wanted to be Champion, just like his uncle wanted him to be. I know that you don’t break a hand just by falling on the stairs.”

“I-I broke other bones, too,” Kevin tried, but he was shaking in place, trembling all over.

“Let me just say it out loud, so that we also don’t run into any kind of misunderstanding,” I smiled at him, tight-lipped, “I am not stupid, Day. I know that Riko did that to you, and I’ve known for a long time. I just didn’t care until now.”

“And why do you care now?”

“Because it somehow involves Neil. I always knew that you and Riko know him outside of the school, but I don’t know how. Just tell me, and I can help you with Riko.”

“What do you mean, help with Riko?”

“He’s scared of me, isn’t he?” I asked, face blank, and I had my response when Kevin didn’t deny it, “Knew it. So, you fill in the blanks for me, and I’ll protect you from Riko. It’s a deal.”

“It’s not that he’s scared of you,” Kevin hastily corrected, like Riko could hear him talking shit about him. Maybe he actually could, because Kevin was still shivering, “He just… you piss him off. You’re not scared of him, you’re obviously better than him, and he can’t stand it. He can’t stand you, and can’t stand Neil, but Neil is… different.”

“Why?”

“What else do you know?” Kevin asked instead, diverting the subject. That was fine: I could play that game.

“I know that Riko’s not entirely human. I think everybody knows, just doesn’t exactly know what he is. I also know you’re the only one in the Gryffindor team that’s not like him.”

“What? How?”

“You skin and eyes are different. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s there. Nobody stops to really look at it, because when you move like a pack it’s impossible to see, but I noticed when we talked on the train last year. You’re human; Riko just likes you with him because you’re pureblood and you’re really good at what you do.”

“You’re a sneaky bastard.”

“I wish I was a bastard, trust me. So, what is Riko? I have my theories, but I would like to hear it from you.”

“He’s, um,” he fidgetted with his hands, biting the inside of his cheek as he carefully chose the words that follow, “His parents are vampires. He isn’t. He has the blood of a vampire, they all do, and they all have benefits from it, but only the first born is bitten by the head of the family and gets to fully be a vampire, part of the pack. Riko’s father is the head of the family, and his older brother, Ichirou, has been bitten. Both he and his uncle, his father’s brother, have been trying to prove they’re worthy to be bitten, too, but the Moriyamas are just that cruel. He hasn’t talked to his father in years.”

“Where does Neil fit into this?”

“Do… do you know about him?” Kevin asked back, careful.

“Yes,” I nodded, “I’ve known for a year now. What about it?”

“Let’s just say that vampires get a kick out of pissing werewolves off when they can’t use them. They have some power over werewolves that I can’t quite comprehend, but Neil isn’t subject to it. He never has been, since I’ve known him. We were… friends, when we were little. As much as two people with a shared interest and that don’t really talk to each other can be friends at that age.”

“So, what was happening in that picture that Skeeter thought was proof of your love?” I chuckled, while I looked at how Kevin scrunched up his nose in plain disgust.

“Neil was telling me to speak for myself and get rid of Riko. He thinks I’m foolish to keep following Riko around, and he says he can’t trust me as long as I align myself with Riko and the vampires. He wanted some help for that clue thing for the tasks, I believe? But Riko doesn’t really talk to me anymore. It was near a full moon, so he just got mad and yelled at me about getting rid of Riko before Riko gets rid of me in a more... drastic way.”

I laughed again, thinking about Neil pushing all of Kevin’s buttons to just make him crumble at his feet. That bloke was really something.

Kevin grunted, though, and I went back to our conversation.

“So, that’s all?” I asked, “Riko’s family has some kind of hold on Neil’s, and Riko taunts Neil because he doesn’t bend to his requests. Meanwhile, Riko uses you as he pleases, and you clearly suffer the consequences of it every time you disobey in some way. Neil knows about it and wanted you to fight back.”

“That’s about it, yeah,” Kevin shrugged, his voice going soft all of the sudden, helpless as I’d never seen him, “Can you really help?”

I thought about it, glancing at Kevin’s bandaged hand lying flat at his side, while he stood in front of me with pleading eyes.

Riko was partially a vampire, and that explained why he was so cruel, most of his power and also some of his quirks – why he was so fast, athletic, overall, a skilled wizard. The fact that Neil and Riko had problems wasn’t lost on me, but I never thought it went way back to the time they were children. Did they meet when Neil was still living on the other side of Europe with his father and mother? Did Kevin know Neil’s mother, what had happened to her?

I looked at Kevin, munching and nibbling on my bottom lip, and then I exhaled.

“How is your hand?”

“Mostly healed,” he replied quickly.

“The tournament resumes in a month. Could you play, then?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll talk to Wymack. Would you prefer to be a part of another team?”

“Yes,” Kevin nodded frantically, a smile growing rapidly on his face, “Whichever is available, I’ll play.”

“Perfect,” I nodded along, then drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment before letting it out, “From this day forward, you stick by me no matter what. No matter where I go, or who I’m with, no matter what happens to me: I’ll speak to McGonagall as well and make it so that you can follow your classes with me, except the ones you chose since I’m fairly certain Riko isn’t in those. Not only you stick by my side, but you notify me every time Riko comes looking for you, so I can and will handle it. If Riko so much as lays a finger on you, he will pay.”

Kevin was still shaking, just a little less at that point. He smiled widely at me, slowly, like he was really happy like he hadn’t been for a long time.

I didn’t a problem in figuring that it was true: he hadn’t been happy with Riko, and how could he even have been? That boy was being basically tortured into submission, grabbed and pushed away from every accomplishment and triumph, all because a little bitch that wasn’t even a full dark creature thought he had the right to be the center of the world.

“Would you really do it?” he whispered, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Neil will be pleased, you will be free, I’ll get the chance to beat up that piece of shit at some point,” I shrugged, “I don’t why I shouldn’t do it.”

“This…” Kevin struggled with his words, opening and closing his healthy hand in a fist, “This was all really random and out of the blue.”

“I’m learning to help Neil with his secrets instead of getting mad at him for them,” I breathed, exhausted. I really was hungry, and I needed to eat as soon as possible, “This is one of his secrets, as far as I can tell, and I want to help. Either why, no one deserves what is being done to you, and that makes me want to help even more.”

“You’re really weird, Andrew,” Kevin scrunched up his nose again, giggling, “Do you have a crush on Neil?”

“Don’t push it, Day. We’re not friends,” I replied, monotone and face neutral.

“Alright, alright,” he held his hands up in surrender, “You are clearly losing your mind, so I won’t push it.”

“That I know,” I sighed, “So, do we have a deal? Will you let me help?” I extended my hand out for him to grab. I realized later that he wouldn’t be able to shake it, since I was waiting for his wounded hand.

Kevin didn’t even think about it, it seemed, because the bandaged hand reached mine and shook it vigorously. That man was strong.

“Yes!” he basically screamed, “Yes, deal.”

“Deal.”

Notes:

hiyaaaaaa

and we're back.

I'm not really going to get into that angsty scene in the bathroom, because we all know Neil and Andrew: they bicker and fight until they decide they're better off kissing instead. Still, we know Neil has a lot of secrets, and Andrew will make a point in knowing all of them, but for now they can just... well, do that. Fight, and scream at each other, and wait for the sexual tension to consume them until they burn.

BUT!!! Andrew helped Neil with the clue, and Neil was worried about Andrew, and maybe we can see the end of this... sort of break up of theirs. I promise you we're getting close to the "burn" part of this slow burn. REEEEEEALLY close.

SIRIUS!!!!!!!! you cannot even begin to comprehend the love I have for this man. so, we have daddy Remus and papa Sirius: the second one teaches Andrew how to love and be all soppy and romantic; the first one just tells Andrew that life is shit and y'know, just keep swimming and stuff. I love them all dearly, lmao

Renée being shocked about Andrew slowly losing his mind is so funny to me help. She was really like HELLO??? YOUR BOYFRIEND IS SEEING SOMEBODY ELSE!!! and Andrew was like... no he isn't, lol? that whole interaction is hilarious.
also Drew please take care of yourself you haven't eaten in days :/

Last but not least, Kevin. we finally have their deal! Andrew promised to protect him from Riko and the Moriyamas, just like it happens in canon. The slight difference, here, is that Andrew basically goes to Kevin just for Neil, and we'll see what Neil thinks about this later. Either way, Kevin is free, so we'll also see a lot more about him too! comment YAY if you're happy we have our king now!!!
Kevin also unpacked a lot of the fundaments of Neil's secrets, so it's like a win-win situation here

Finally, I have to warn you, this chapter has a LOT of foreshadowing in it, mostly about Andreil, so keep this in mind when you'll read the next two or three chapters lmao

I've kept you for too long. I hope you enjoy that the chapters are getting a bit longer? I don't really think I'll keep this length as the standard but it is for now, I guess

See ya next time, let me know what you think about this chapter!
bye lovelieeeees ;)

Chapter 30: Don't blame me

Summary:

TW!
mentions of SA, injuries - no blood - and depictions of anxiety inducing scenes.
Be careful, this chapter starts all cute and fun and slowly picks up the pace till it's fast and chaotic, so don't be fooled

I'd always been used to the stares.

Since I could remember, and honestly my memory went far back to the early years of my youth - much to my dismay -, people had always stared at me for one reason or the other, always curious about me and my presence, always curious about my history. My foster parents had stared at me, Drake had stared at me, every single student at Hogwarts had always stared at me.

Neil had stared at me, still did, but that was different, I believed. For different reasons entirely, in a way.

Either way, Kevin was used to it, too. That made it easy, to handle all the whiplash of our new deal as we strolled together casually around the castle. We didn't talk, not really, but we didn't need to for our plan to actually succeed.

Kevin stuck by my side, just as I had asked him. I didn't know whether it was out of desperation, clinging to anything that promised to keep Riko out of his sight, or out of fear. There were a lot of things he could fear. He didn't seem to fear any of those, though.

I pushed the door at the entrance of the Hog's Head Inn. It was the first Hogsmeade weekend of the semester, and for once I hadn't shied away from attending. Mostly, it was because Kevin had really insisted that we went.

So, we went.

But I dictated what we should've done.

First and foremost, I wanted to go and say hello to Roland. In a way, I felt kind of bad for basically ghosting the shit out of him. It wasn’t like he hadn't taken my virginity - it had been the first time I had to consented to a full sexual intercourse. And, as much as I knew he didn't ask anything from me, he was still a nice boy, and he deserved to be treated as such.

Kevin visibly flinched upon entrance, like he couldn’t believe I would’ve taken him to such a nasty place. That made me smile, ruthlessly, as I watched the boy squirm in horror and shiver all over. The second reason why I had gone for the Hog’s Head Inn was so that I could specifically watch Kevin’s reaction to it. I adored it.

"I'll go find us a table," Kevin announced, while all eyes were on him. I gathered he was used to be stared at even outside of school.

"Oi, aren't you that Day boy?" some drunkard from one of the tables, pint in hand at eleven in the morning, called after Kevin. The Gryffindor just groaned in response, pushing through the people asking him questions about his mother to actually find somewhere to sit.

I felt my lips twitch, tugging at the corners, but I repressed the smile forming slowly on my face. There was something utterly hilarious about Kevin being in clear distress, but I didn't want to show him that I enjoyed it that much. Just a little bit, really.

As I approached the bar, I finally noticed there was no one behind it. Confused, I looked around to see if maybe Roland was just collecting glasses and cleaning tables, but he didn't seem to be anywhere to be found.

Aberforth appeared from the stairs that led to the top half of the Inn, carrying a chest with unfolded and clearly dirty sheets. I flinched at the sight, scrunching up my nose.

"What? You've never seen dirty laundry?" the younger Dumbledore grunted, which made me relax my face into my more natural, expressionless expression.

"Not that dirty, old man," I responded, then carefully leaned on the counter when Aberforth slipped behind it, "Where's Roland?"

The old wizard took a moment to assess me, looking me up and down, and then hummed in recognition. I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah, you're that boy of his, aren't you?" he simply asked.

"I'm hardly his boy for a shag," I deadpanned.

"You have a filthy mouth on you," Aberforth acknowledged, "I reckon that's why he likes you."

"What's not to like?" I smiled wickedly at him, even if I didn't believe a word I said, "So, where is he?"

"The Hell if I know," was his only response, along with a dumb expression on his face, "He took a couple days off from today on, says he's sick or something. Never asked for a day off since I took him in, and also, he lives here technically, so I don't know where the hell he went with this sickness he talks about. I hope he's just being careful."

"Oh," I nodded, "Well, thanks anyway. Would you let him know I came by when he comes back?"

"Sure thing," Aberforth grinned widely, "What was your name again?"

"Andrew," I said, before pushing myself carelessly off the counter and turning around.

I whistled and Kevin's head, buried in the requests for an autograph or a story of his late mother, snapped up. I stifled a laugh: he looked like a lost dog.

"Come along, Day, let's go somewhere more appropriate," I called out, "Lupin will actually decapitate me if he finds out I've been here."

"I can guess why," Kevin replied absentmindedly, waving at each and every one of the drunk people so they would've left him be. As soon as we walked out of the Inn, I heard him sigh, "Well, that was an experience."

"Nothing but the best," I retorted, sarcastic and poignant.

"You can't really mean that," he whispered, a sharp edge to his tone.

"This is the most you've talked to me in a week. I could call it progress."

"Want me to shut you up?"

"Want me to call Riko?"

"Stop bringing me to weird places."

"Stop being such a little cunt."

"Oi!"

I chuckled, dryly, but Kevin stopped complaining once he noticed we were headed for the Three Broomsticks anyway.

The stares were easy to handle. Mostly, though, I physically felt the heads snap to our directions, and I knew precisely whose those heads were.

I tilted my face towards the small group friends at their usual table in the bar, where I used to sit with them. Matt’s jaw was on the floor as I passed them by with Kevin in tow, but they didn’t utter a word. In the end, I just greeted them, placing two fingers on my forehead and waving them away right after. I smiled, too, which made Dan instantly flinch in horror.

Kevin did, in the end, find us a table to sit at, and also promptly stood up to go and fetch us something to drink. When he returned, he cleared his throat. My gaze lazily fixated on him, glancing from time to time to the butterbeer pint right in front of me.

“So, what are we going to do about… him?” Kevin finally spoke up.

I placed my hand on my chest, feigning commotion.

“I thought you’d never ask!” I gasped.

“And I’m the little cunt?”

“When you say it, it sounds so Irish.”

“I am Irish, Minyard,” Kevin took a long but quick swig from his pint before settling it down on the table again.

“I keep forgetting that,” that was a lie, but one that didn’t really matter, nor hurt. In fact, it seemed to quite light the Gryffindor up, as he smiled tentatively at me with a cautious smirk. It hit me right then that he might’ve not liked to be constantly reminded of the legacy he had to uphold for his dead mother, “What do you mean, do about him?”

“I mean… are we just going to act like nothing’s changed?”

“Kevin, David wanted to step down as captain for a long time. He’s more than happy to give you his spot in the Ravenclaw team,” I waved my hand in dismissal.

“I don’t… Well, yes, that too, but also, and maybe more importantly, he’s been watching us all week. He’s going to do something, so maybe we should do something.”

“Like what?” I asked, rather tired of the sheer drama, “Announce our engagement? Fuck on a table in the Great Hall?”

Kevin blushed violently. Did I hit a nerve or something?

“What?” I asked, “What’s got you so riled up, Day?”

“What a stupid question,” Kevin rolled his eyes at me, like it was something so painfully obvious that he couldn’t even begin to question whether I knew about it or not, “Seriously, Andrew, don’t twist the knife in the wound.”

“I have plenty of knives. I wouldn’t know which one I’m twisting right about now, though,” I shrugged, plainly staring at the butterbeer. I wanted real beer, so I felt a small frown form on my face.

“What is your problem?” Kevin chuckled, still blushing. That was absolutely odd, and also wrong somehow.

“Spit it out, Day,” I urged, getting rather uncomfortable at the implications of that conversation.

“You’re… well, you’re kind of a heartthrob. I thought you knew,” he shrugged back at me, which made me want to gag, shrivel up and disappear into the nothingness.

“What do you mean?” I asked carefully, not sure if I even wanted to know the details, since the simple thought made me feel so utterly defenseless.

“I mean… You know, during the first task you were all sweaty and stuff, with that tight shirt, and you’re quite… buff? You have a lot of muscle. What I mean is, you’re basically eye-candy and half of the castle would probably die if you ever got a partner,” Kevin kept sipping his drink.

I actually felt the need to throw up, so I slightly pushed my butterbeer away from me since I couldn't stand even looking at it, now. Kevin seemed to catch my mood and gave a sympathetic look. I guessed he would've known everything about being everyone's sexual fantasy, wouldn't he?

“What, you’re interested, too?” I tried to joke.

“Oh, as much as you are attractive, I already have a girlfriend,” he announced, proudly.

“Where is she?” I smirked at him, “I kind of want to meet her.”

“She’s… older. Already finished school,” he didn’t seem so sure of his relationship anymore, gazing lazily at the finished pint between his hands, “We exchange letters and stuff. That’s who I go to every holiday, both summer and Christmas.”

“What about your dad?”

“I- um, I don’t have one.”

“Ah,” I nodded, then drew in a big breath, releasing it in a sigh, “Alright, that’s what we are going to do about Riko, if you want to actually do something.”

“Tell me,” his smile grew bigger on his face, and I rolled my eyes at his excitement.

"Maybe it's time we make him confess all of his crimes. His bullying, his taunting, his physical assault, especially on you. Maybe he'd be kicked out of the Tournament entirely, maybe even both of them."

"I like it. How would we do that?"

"Have you ever heard of Veritaserum, Day?"

 

---

 

On the first Monday of lessons, I went to Great Hall to retrieve Kevin and then head straight to Lupin’s class. Before I could even reach the Ravenclaw table where the Gryffindor was sitting at, I was basically tackled by a worried Allison.

“Oi,” I called, pushing her away slightly, not really intending to send her flying through the room, “What’s your problem?”

“Look,” she pointed at the Slytherin table, where people were nothing short of freaking out completely, raising their voices and gesturing wildly and some were even crying. I turned to Allison again, curious, “Tessa, she disappeared from her dorm. Her dorm mates say that she was there on her bed one second and the next she was just… gone.”

“Oh,” I bit down on my lip, searching for Neil in the flurry of agitated people, but not finding him, “So that’s why you’re like this, sprinting around in the Great Hall?”

“No, no, that’s not it,” she shook her head frantically, her eyes wide with something that resembled fear, “But, um, listen, have you seen Renée? It’s late, and she’s never late for breakfast. She loves breakfast.”

“I know she does. But no, I haven’t seen her. Have you asked Matt?”

“Neither has he. Fuck, fuck,” she just cursed before sprinting past me and exiting the Hall in the direction of the Hufflepuff common room.

“What was that about?” Kevin appeared next to me, making me startle.

“Jesus, a little warning?” I snapped.

Kevin just shrugged before taking the route to our first lesson of the day. I rolled my eyes – I seemed to do it a lot more since he came around – and followed him blindly. I tried to ignore the eyes and the whispers on us, other than the general chaos erupted throughout the hallways at the news that some students were missing. But I had noticed something that the other people must’ve missed: the ghosts, the professors strolling around the castle, everyone that was not a student didn’t seem to care that someone was missing.

It was orchestrated. Somehow, for an obscure reason, at one point of the dusk.

I didn’t have time to think about it more thoroughly, as Kevin pushed open the door of Lupin’s classroom, and I was greeted by Neil’s sharp gaze and Aaron’s glare.

Ugh.

Kevin and I occupied the last remaining desk, sitting next to each other with a nonchalance that intrigued most of the Ravenclaws and Slytherins sitting all around us. Kevin huffed a laugh, feeling the eyes on him, which made me smirk.

“We sure make an impression,” he commented, voice low as a whisper.

“You could say that,” I rebutted, still amused by the whole situation.

Lupin appeared a second later, a grin etched on his face. Sirius was right behind him, so I reckoned that was the reason my Professor couldn’t seem to stop smiling. Their love was both cursed, from what I’d known about their history, and blessed, dark and light, somehow both sullied and pure. It made me want to smile widely as well.

Lupin stood at the front of the classroom, making his voice bounce off of the walls with a ‘Morning, lads’, while Sirius found a chair and sat in one of the corners, not really visible but clearly close to the professor.

“I have brought in my husband with me,” the Professor announced, gesturing vaguely to black-haired man, “because today we’ll deal directly with a Dark creature, and I could and would use his help if anything goes wrong. Otherwise, he will be essentially invisible, so ignore him as much as you can.”

Lupin whirled his wand in the air and a trunk appeared beside him, apparently calm.

“Who knows what a boggart is?” Lupin called out, and I didn’t swivel to look at whomever might’ve raised their hand, “Yes, Aaron.”

“A boggart is a non-being and we don’t know exactly how one looks, because when in the presence of a person they take the resemblance of their worst fear, even cycling through various of them,” I heard my twin explain.

“Very, very good Aaron. Five points for Ravenclaw,” Lupin was still smiling, “Anything else? How can we defend ourselves from something that looks like what frightens us the most?”

I carelessly raised a hand, and Lupin pointed his wand at me as to signal me to answer.

“We can’t. Boggarts can’t just disappear as they are amortal, and even if we make them go away, they will eventually come back. We can, however, turn them into something that doesn’t look scary to us.”

“Precisely! Good, Andrew. Five points for you, too,” he winked at me, and I heard Kevin chuckle beside me and whisper ‘teacher’s pet’. Lupin went on, but I knew he had clearly heard the Gryffindor, “I brought you a boggart here, it’s in this box. Once I let it free, you will take turns to face it and cast the boggart-banishing spell on it, Riddikulus, which will turn the boggart into something laughable, amusing, sometimes even enjoyable. Are we clear on the lesson plan?”

An echo of ‘yes, Professor’ made Lupin’s smile grew even wider, and he clapped his hands together in excitement.

“Good. Stand up then,” he called out, and as we all raised from our seats he waved his wand in the air, wordlessly pushing all the desks and chairs against the walls so that a corridor would be formed in the middle of the room, “Get in line, lads, let’s do this.”

We did as he told us, and Lupin dragged the trunk right in front of us. Neil was right before me, and Kevin was between me and my twin behind me. I sighed, waiting to see with my own eyes each individual fear of my classmates, like it was any of our business. As much as I understood the necessity to prepare the young students to face a creature like that, I also wasn’t looking forward to that kind of invasion of privacy, and I could guess that no one of us really was ecstatic about the exercise.

Either way, Lupin carefully freed the boggart, which simply took the form of a white mist of sorts while probably analyzing the person in front of it, a Slytherin girl that was already trembling. When the boggart quickly decided which shape to take, it sadly was the image of Tessa, clearly dead on the floor of the classroom. The girl at the front of the line released a terrified yelp, and Neil’s shoulders slouched a bit.

Lupin sighed, “Come on, Vanessa, you can do it. Say the spell,” he encouraged her.

The girl tried to avert her gaze from Tessa – or the boggart in the form of Tessa, anyway – and pointed her wand at it, before saying the spell with a little stammer in it. The spell worked nonetheless, as Tessa seemed to regain consciousness and began to make funny faces at the girl – Vanessa, apparently, who released a wet laugh and then went at the back of the line as Lupin congratulated her.

Between two people, the boggart didn’t seem to acquire that misty form anymore, just switching between a fear and the other. They were vastly diverse things: spiders, ghosts, the death of a dear person, someone they found particularly intimidating, heights, fire, and so on. The line advanced slowly as each student faced their worst fear and tried to fight against it, someone succeeding on their own, while some other needed Lupin’s aid. Sirius stayed seated.

When it was Neil’s turn, he stepped up with a blank expression on his face, presumably already knowing what he was about to face at this point, since already more than half of the class had gone through with the experiment. I, on the other hand, didn’t know what I was expecting him to fear. Maybe the moon, maybe Riko – even though I knew Neil really didn’t fear him – or maybe even another werewolf, maybe nothing at all, but…

It was a mirror. A simple, plain mirror, reflecting his image, nothing odd or changed about his appearance. It was simply him, his expressionless stare and his fiery red hair, his rosy lips and his school uniform, the way he was clinging to his wand and his fists were clenching hard, the way his jaw worked and his gaze sharpened even more. It was all simply reflected on the mirror.

He was only scared of himself.

I felt a lump in my throat, not really knowing what to do or say. Lupin seemed calm about it, like there wasn’t anything more horrible than fearing yourself, and I knew what that reflection meant, feeling it chill my bones.

He feared his story, his life, his family. He feared what he was able to do, what he’d done willingly or unwillingly, what he would do again, perhaps, if put under the same circumstances. He was frightened by his ability to hurt others, by the fact that he probably didn’t feel as much remorse for it as he thought he should, by the fact that sometimes he’d wished to hurt others knowing for a fact that it came easy to him.

He just scoffed, his shoulders shaking in front of me as he laughed silently.

“Figures,” he whispered under his breath, before raising his wand and pointing it at the mirror, “Riddikulus.”

The mirror changed appearance, becoming one of those weird ones that distorted the image of the reflection, making it funnier. Neil now looked double his height, and Lupin chuckled at the sight. They shared a fleeting glance, and I knew then and there that they must’ve done that experiment already.

“Ready, Andrew?” Lupin said, while Neil stepped aside to go at the back of the line. His knuckles brushed against mine as he walked past me. I closed my eyes, trying not to recoil.

When I opened them, I took a step forward and waited for the mirror, that now was reflecting me, to change its shape. A beat passed, maybe two, and it was no surprise when it finally did acquire the form of what most frightened me.

Bright green eyes and a shiny smile, he had. He had fluffy hair, when I had met him, which was also his appearance when he had first assaulted me, and that was the form the boggart decided to take. But it was changing as I looked at it, becoming bigger, his muscles growing, his hair becoming darker and then a buzzed cut for the military. But what never changed, what had never changed, were his eyes and his smile, always so charming, always so endearing. Not for me, though.

“Hi, Drew,” the boggart – which I refused to acknowledge as the true Drake, or else I would’ve probably been crying for a while - said, and I wasn’t aware that it could speak, so I winced ever so slightly. It was nothing, compared to the reaction I could hear my brother having behind me.

Aaron was clearly gasping for air, and I felt Kevin whip around to check if he was having the panic attack it seemed he was indeed having. At the same time, Neil rushed to the front of the classroom, and he was right beside me again.

“Did he just call you Drew?” he whispered carefully to me, but my mouth was dry and I couldn’t seem to respond, “Did your biggest fear just call you Drew?”

“He’s always called me like that,” I heard myself say, even though I hadn’t really processed the thought.

“But… but I call you Drew,” Neil seemed more wounded by my biggest fear than his, “I call you Drew,” he repeated.

“You both do,” I swallowed harshly, then raised my wand, the tip placed at the center of Drake’s chest, “Riddikulus.”

I didn’t get to see what the laughable form of Drake was, maybe because there really wasn’t any. I didn’t get to see Kevin’s biggest fear, even though I was sure it was either Riko or his uncle. I didn’t even get to see Aaron’s, even though I was sure that it was our mother’s death, or maybe it was me killing her.

I didn’t get to see any of it, because it all went black and dark and cold around me, while the classroom basically disintegrated and all I could see was Neil next to me, until he wasn’t there anymore, too.

 

---

 

The first thing I knew was that my head hurt like a bitch and there was a strange ringing in my ears like I had just been near an explosion, which would’ve made more sense than whatever had just happened.

The second thing I knew was that I was knocked down, on my side, lying on the ground, which felt like dirt and earth under the scrutiny of my fingers. I wasn’t in the castle anymore.

The third thing I knew, regrettably, was Dumbledore’s voice, that I could barely hear over the pounding of my own heart.

“Champions,” he was saying, and a sudden urge to just strangle the man washed over me, “welcome to the second task.”

I pushed myself up and sat on the soil, looking around me. It wasn’t a point of the Forest that I could swiftly recognize, but maybe my head was just fogged up by the sudden change of scenery. I kept looking around me, trying to decipher where I was, but it seemed deeper in the woods than what Neil and I had ever felt the need to explore. Dumbledore, just as well, kept speaking inside my own mind.

“The Forbidden Forest is called as such for the number of Creatures, dark and not, that inhabit it and that are potentially dangerous to inexperienced wizards. The three of you, on the other hand, know the Forest intimately, and that’s why it has been selected to host the second task, just as the clue from the first task, if carefully acknowledged, suggested.”

Slowly, I stood up. I noticed that the change of scenery also entailed a change of clothes: I wasn’t wearing my uniform anymore, but a pair of joggers and some kind of thermic shirt that fit closely on my body, enhancing the shape of my abdomen, chest, and arm muscles. The sleeves were long and went even a little past my wrist, but still, when I checked, I found that my armbands were not beneath them. I grimaced, mentally making a note to myself to actually strangle Dumbledore when the task was over.

“As someone as familiar as you are with the Forest, you’ll be able to navigate it with a slight superior aptitude than the rest of your fellow students ever could. As such, that is your task: you will have to save someone from the animosity the creatures of the forest feel for those who come from the outside world. If you think that’s fairly simple, I want to warn you: the person you must save is someone whom you’ve grown to despise, for one reason or the other, so you will have to fight your own interests in order to reach the end of this task. You might’ve noticed that people went missing in the last few days, either from inside of the school or outside of it, but deep inside of you, you know who you’re supposed to be saving.”

Fucking Tessa, I grimaced. Of course.

But then I remembered. Roland, who must’ve been for Neil, the jealous bastard.

The next thought made my whole body freeze and come to an halt as I was spinning around to assess my surroundings.

Renée.

My best friend was somewhere in that Forest, lost and defenseless, and I couldn’t even help her. I had to go and find Tessa, hoping that Riko could stop being an asshole for as much time as it took to actually go and save her, if only for the glory he so adamantly seemed to seek.

Dumbledore went on, as if that ramble of his was going to help.

“You’ve all been teleported to different points of the Forest, so it’s unlikely that you’ll run into each other before you find the person you’re looking for. Even if you do run into each other, remember: the point is to get your person out as fast as you can, not to slow the others down. That job will be fulfilled by the creatures all around you.”

I closed my eyes, praying that Renée was safe, that Roland was safe. That Neil was safe from Riko’s family, apparently lurking in the Forest all year long. Maybe we wouldn’t be bothered, maybe we could’ve just found the person we were looking for and come out of the Forest unscathed. I knew it was an irrational hope, but I dug around in myself to find that hope, because I needed it. Because, for once, I couldn’t make sure that the people I loved were safe, I couldn’t keep them safe, I couldn’t protect them.

My stomach made an odd twirl in my abdomen, and I felt the urge to be sick. I fought it, biting the inside of my cheek.

“I think that’s all,” Dumbledore finally said, “Good luck.”

In the sky, a firework exploded. That was the sign to go, but I couldn’t move. I still felt Drake’s eyes – the boggart’s eyes – on me, the growing fear of something bad crawling on my spine like a hairy spider tickling my senses, and I swallowed harshly before being able to inhale a deep breath.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself, still spinning on my axis, “Okay, okay, okay.”

Tessa. Who had told Dumbledore that I despised her so much that I would want to put her safety in danger, let alone be dumped in the middle of the Forbidden Forest likely without even her wand to defend herself from whatever monster came looking for her once it had sensed her?

Roland – that much was maybe explicable, since that drama had entailed Lupin and Aberforth and Abby and what not, but, apart from Lupin, they couldn’t possibly know how Neil felt about him, because Neil hadn’t even really talked about him or even to him.

And what was this thing between Renée and Riko? I knew she despised him, but as far as she told me it was only because he was a bully and he taunted Neil every chance he got, but I didn’t know why he would ever feel so strongly about her in return. Maybe it was only because she was muggle-born, just like he despised me because I was muggle-raised. Perhaps, I thought, if Neil and I weren’t champions as well, one of us would’ve been in Renée’s place instead.

Could Dumbledore read our minds? Did he know our deepest emotions, could he know them in some way I hadn’t thought about? Had he forced Lupin and Professor Moriyama to spill every secret they knew about Neil, Riko and me? Lupin would’ve never done something like that. That much I knew for certain.

Spiraling, on the other hand, wasn’t helping in the slightest. The Forest, that I usually sensed mostly quiet and still in the dead of night, was alive around me, so much so that I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over the rustling of the leaves on the ground and the swoosh of the wind between the bare branches and the calls of the creatures, most of which didn’t feel even partially human.

But, well, that gave me an idea.

The truth was, as much as I didn’t like to think about it, Tessa had been on my mind for a while now. The truth was that, since the first night, at that Slytherin party, that I had seen her drag Neil by the hand towards her room, her lipstick stain on his neck, his own lips swollen and red, his eyes confused in a dazed amusement, I had memorized everything about her.

I’d watched her talking to her friends at the Slytherin table every morning; I’d listened to her chats about everything and nothing at all; I had felt her gaze on my own nape every time we were in class together, just like I was sure she felt mine. I had memorized the color of her eyes, the soft brown of her skin, the number of coils in her hair that fell in front of her eyes when she laughed, the ever so slight hint of honey in her perfume.

To clarify, I wasn’t some kind of stalker driven by my own jealousy, but my memory worked in funny ways, ways that helped retain information of single instants and moments of a person even if I didn’t want to. I knew a lot about a lot of people: Tessa just had the bonus of being relevant to me.

I transformed into the panther and sniffed the air around me. The smells of winter filled my animal nostrils, as well as some other scents I couldn’t decipher or recognize. But I caught the whiff of Tessa perfume, latched onto it, and ran through the woods as fast as I could, trying my hardest not to think about her reaction when she would’ve inevitably found out that her safety depended on me.

Neil could’ve hated me if I returned her with as much as a scratch on her face. I forced myself not to grimace at the mere thought of them together, and just ran. And ran, and ran, and ran.

When the smell felt closer, I transformed back into human, reminding myself that nobody but me, Neil and the Professors should’ve ever known that I was an illegal animagus, and, while my enhanced humanoid senses were not as nearly as sharp as my animal ones, I was clearly as close as I could get without spotting her still. In the end, it was her loud shrill that paved the direction to her.

“I told you to let me go!” she screamed, and I still ran towards her, panting.

When I finally saw her, I had to look so far up that my neck made a loud pop, cracking a joint that I hadn’t used in a while, apparently.

Just my luck, I thought, I am as tall as one of its toes, for God’s sake.

Squirming and agitating every free limb, so mostly her legs and the one arm that wasn’t trapped in the tight grip, Tessa was clutched in the hand of a giant. Or a half-giant, because he seemed slightly smaller than a giant would’ve been. Either way, the thing was huge.

I cleared my throat, loudly, clinging to my wand for dear life. We had to still cover giants in Care of Magical Creatures, and I didn’t know what to do. Was it intelligent enough to understand me? How could I even fight that enormous being, that looked as tall as fucking hill? Was it good, bad, caring, sweet, a monster, cruel?

What the fuck should I do?

The sound I had made in both arriving and basically coughing was enough to direct the giant’s attention towards me rather than the girl in distress in its hand. The grasp on the girl loosened, as much as I could tell from her being able to free her other arm. She also seemed to be able to breathe a little more freely, which I assumed it was a good sign, unless it was about to drop her to the ground and just pick me up instead.

It was clearly confused, so I carefully stepped forward.

“Hello,” I greeted, and why the fuck did I do that?, “Um, I’m Andrew.”

Tessa’s eyes widened as she dragged her gaze from the giant to the ground, to me.

“You?” she hissed, “You’re the one that’s supposed to save me from this?”

“Yeah, I’m not thrilled either,” I said in a tone as flat as I could muster in that stressing situation, “I will help, okay?”

She simply snorted, while the giant was still staring at me dumbfounded. Then, she started pounding on the strong fingers of the creature with her fists, making it turn to her instead and starting to shake her like a doll. I groaned.

“Would you stop making this more difficult?” I whisper-screamed at her, when the giant finally gave the whole shaking thing a rest.

Tessa just whined, probably worn out and dizzy from what had just happened. I began to jump up and down to regain the giant’s attention, and that, gratefully, worked. Otherwise, I would've felt so stupid. 

“So, as I was saying,” I tried again, being as polite as possible to something that probably couldn’t even understand me, “I’m Andrew, and what you have there is a person that I- um, that I am supposed to take back to the castle. You know? That big castle outside the Forest?”

The giant grunted, tilting his head to the side, but then pointed at Tessa, who was going limp inside its big hand. I realized then and there that it was squeezing her, the grip suddenly tightened enough for her not to be able to breathe properly. I became more attentive and took some steps forward to get closer to the giant, hoping that it wouldn’t just crush me under his gargantuan foot.

“Yes, her,” I pointed at Tessa too, “I need her. Can you give her to me?”

The giant didn’t seem to like my request, as he stomped his feet on the ground, making it tremble so much that I lost my balance a little and had to steady myself to avoid falling on my backside. When he stopped moving, I looked up at it again.

“What’s your name? Do you know how to say your name?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Tessa wheezed, “Just hit him with some spells and be done with it.”

“Let me work, you snake,” I retorted, then went back to look at the giant in his monstrous eyes. The both of them must’ve been as big as me, “So, do you know how to speak?”

“Grop,” the giant finally spoke up, but his voice came out cavernous and rough, like he hadn’t spoken in a while. And who would he even talk to, alone like that in the Forest?

I smiled tentatively at him, trying to make it credible even if I knew it was as fake as it could be.

“Hello, Grop,” I said, “Can you give me back my friend?”

He shook his head forcefully, then tightened his grasp a little more, making Tessa scream as much as she could in that condition. I clearly heard one of her ribs crack, and I could’ve healed that, if only the giant would’ve just dropped her.

“Why won’t you?” I asked, basically begging at that point. There was no way I could’ve retrieved Tessa without him giving her up willingly, so I had to find a way to make him let her go.

“You no even like her,” Grop answered, “I want friend,” he added.

That took me a little by surprise, made me stumble back a bit.

“That’s no way to make friends,” I told him sternly, “Grop, you’re hurting her. She won’t be your friend if you hurt her, okay? Besides, there’s… there’s this friend of mine, at the castle? He really likes her, and he would be very sad if I don’t return her to the castle safe and sound. Do you understand me?”

The giant grunted again and began to stomp his feet like I was punishing him for liking his new toy. I sighed, exhausted.

“Listen,” I tried once more, “Why don’t you have any friends?”

“No wizard like Grop,” the corners of his lips tipped downwards, and all of the sudden he was frowning. He really did look like a child, “They scared I hurt them, but I want play.”

“That’s alright,” I raised my hands as to soothe him. I really didn’t have a fucking clue about what I was doing, but as I heard Tessa gasp and start to take many deep breaths in, I realized it was working, “I’m not scared of you. I like you. I like you more than I like her, actually, but I really need her.”

“You be my friend?” Grop asked, while crouching down and still looking at me with big sad eyes. There were tears in them, and it kind of broke my heart on the spot.

“I’ll be your friend, yes,” I nodded, gracefully, “And I’ll come back here every month to check up on you, and we’ll play. How does that sound?”

Grop smiled widely, his wonky and dirty teeth showing, but that was… strangely endearing. Still, he didn’t seem to have any intention to drop Tessa, that was beginning to squirm again.

“Can I have my other friend back now?” I asked.

The giant looked at the girl in his hand and then back at me, and, after a beat, he nodded, still smiling. I was relieved momentarily before realizing that he wasn’t going to lay her gently on the ground. He was actually going to drop her.

There was a split moment between the instant Grop just opened his hand mid-air and the one when I had to whip my wand and cast the levitating spell on Tessa’s body. Fortunately, I was quick and she landed softly on the ground, wincing anyway when the probable broken rib touched the soil. I sprinted towards her, kneeling down next to her.

“I’m going to touch your side to feel which rib is broken and then mend it. Okay?” I asked her, then waited for her to nod frantically to begin to palpate her ribcage. Finally, I pointed my wand at the right spot over her shirt and whispered the healing spell.

Tessa thanked me weakly and passed out right after. Why were people on the Forest always fainting on me?

Still, I managed to look up at the preoccupied giant, who was twisting his hands in an anxious motion. I smiled fondly at him and patted him on the enormous foot closer to me.

“You’re a good giant, Grop,” I reassured him, and a grin broke on his face, making me smile as well, “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

He nodded again and I stood up. I picked up Tessa’s limp body with a groan, basically tossed it on my shoulder and then waved at the giant who was still looking at me and who waved back enthusiastically.

I started running again, transforming back into the panther so that I would’ve had a better sense of direction while moving in the unknown spaces of the Forest. I still felt Tessa securely on my back, which told me I shouldn’t have had to turn back to human again until I was close to the exit of the Forest.

It was fairly easy to find my way back as the panther, as I simply followed the noise of hundreds of students waiting and whispering and speculating between themselves. I even heard someone make bets about who would’ve been back first, and I made a note to strangle them, too, as well as Dumbledore.

When I was close to the border line, recognizing some of the patterns of the trees and general landscapes around me, I turned back into human and adjusted Tessa’s body on my shoulder, making sure not to press on her ribs.

Finally out, the first thing I heard was a startling applause and cheers and even someone straight-up yelling ‘whohooo!’, whom I recognized as Sirius. I was panting and looking around for someone to come and retrieve the girl on my shoulder while I carefully placed Tessa on the ground in front of me. Abby was right there in an instant.

“It’s fine, she’s fine,” I breathed out, “Broken a rib, I think I was able to mend it, then passed out from the pain.”

Abby nodded, but still examined her body meticulously.

“Good job on the rib,” the doctor finally judged, then called for a Slytherin boy – one of Tessa’s friends, whom I also recognized – to come and pick her up and take her back to her dorm to rest.

Probably a few minutes after me, Riko and Renée came dashing out of the Forest. I was instantly relieved to see her, and while she was bending forward and gasping for air, I approached her calling her name loudly. She looked up and smiled widely when she saw me.

“Are you okay?” I asked, crouching right beside her, “Do you need me or Abby? Some water? Tell me.”

“I’m… I’m fine,” she stuttered, out of breath, but still nodded as to signal she was really okay and not just pretending for my sake, “I just… I never ran that fast in my life. There was something chasing us, I don’t know what it was, and I simply don’t want to find out.”

I chuckled, stroking her back in a comforting motion, but she was soon tackled by Allison in a hug that looked more like a chokehold, with Nicky, Matt and Dan in tow. Aaron was a little behind them, not really part of the group, and he was still staring at me like he had seen a ghost.

I didn’t have time to unpack that.

While I listened to Renée say over and over that she was fine, just so scared she had felt like her soul was crawling out of her own skin, Roland came walking out of the Forest, shaking like a leaf in the wind. I felt solace and some kind of peace of mind wash over me like wave on the sand, and I went to him carefully.

But there was something odd about him.

He wasn’t panting, out for air, he wasn’t hurt, he didn't even seem to be worried about the fact that he had just exited the Forbidden Forest. In fact, his face was so blank that it looked almost unnatural on him, and perhaps it frightened me more than the agitated state in which Renée had come out.

He lifted his gaze upon me when I was finally close enough for him to notice me, and he didn’t seem more at ease. He almost seemed even more shocked.

“Andrew,” he whispered.

“Hi,” I said, cautious, “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did you see something… um, scary?”

“No. I… not really, um,” he was talking so slowly it almost felt like that phrase that wasn’t really a phrase had taken him weeks to say, “I just… I…”

“Roland, what’s going on?” I asked, raising my tone. There was something wrong, so wrong, and he just wouldn’t talk.

“Well… well, I…” he was still whispering, barely even that.

And then I noticed it.

It was impossible to miss, really. It was really fucking dumb that I hadn’t noticed before, actually, because it was right there in plain sight, and I still didn’t bloody see it, at first.

Because there was nothing to see, that was the problem. There was something missing, something lost, and the distinct lack of a person, of a figure beside Roland’s, of sharp blue eyes, of bouncy curly red hair.

I almost choked on my own breath.

“Roland,” I spoke up, a crack in my voice, “Roland, where’s Neil?”

“I-I…” he still stammered, and it was beginning to get on my fucking nerves.

“Where’s Neil?” I asked again, a bit more forcefully, loudly.

“He… well, you see, he…”

“Roland,” my voice was firm, cold, low, “Tell me where he is or I’ll break your arm.”

“He stayed back.”

A complete sentence, finally. A complete sentence with full meaning that actually said something about the whole situation.

A sentence I didn’t like.

My voice wasn’t firm anymore. It was shaking.

“Back? Back where?”

“In the Forest.”

I felt my heartbeat beginning to race.

“There’s a moment when everything goes dark and the only light you can see is them,” Sirius had said.

“What do you mean in the Forest? Why, Roland?”

“Some centaurs had found us. There were so many.”

“It could be anything.”

“What did they want from you?”

“I-I don’t know. There… there were so many, and I know they didn’t have good intentions. Neil must’ve known too.”

“When they’re in danger.”

“What happened?”

“He told me to run. That he’d handle it, that I should go and make it back to… to you. Safely.”

“Your heart just falls at your feet and the floor seems to slip from beneath you.”

I wasn’t sure whether my heart had fallen at my feet, but the ground didn’t seem as steady as it had been just a second prior. The beating in my chest had just plainly stopped, or maybe it was so fast I couldn’t detect it anymore, but Roland’s and Sirius’ words were ringing in my ears like bells before a war.

I was shaking from head to toe. I could barely hear Roland’s excuses, Renée’s and Nicky’s alarmed questions, Lupin’s inquiries about where Neil was and what had happened to him. I couldn’t hear anything but the blood in my body, still circling, still pumping, still alive.

How could I be alive? How could I be alive when I didn’t even feel my heartbeat? Was I crying? Was that how heartbreak felt like?

“I have to go back in,” I announced, to no one in particular, and at first no one had responded. I took it as a general consensus that yes, I should go back in, I should go after Neil, I should find out where he was.

“Andrew, no,” that was Renée, I believed, “It’s too dangerous. You’ll get hurt.”

“I don’t care,” was my simple response. Easy. It came easy, because if he was in danger, if he was hurt, why shouldn’t I be?

I hated him, I hated him, I hated him.

“Andrew, just- wait,” Nicky.

“No,” I shook my head. I felt a small crowd gathering behind my back as I swiveled towards the Forest.

I hated him, I hated him.

“Andrew, perhaps we should-” Lupin began, extending a hand to touch my shoulder, grip it, hold me back. Hold me there, while Neil was somewhere in the forest, without me.

I moved out of range, in a trance. Lupin didn’t make another attempt.

I hated him.

“I’m going in,” was my last warning before I sprinted forward, running so fast I didn’t even have the time to breathe through it, between a step and the other, between a blink and the other. I wasn’t even sure I was blinking. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing.

I wasn’t sure of anything but the fact that I had to get Neil back.

I had to, I had to, I had to just for the sake of slapping the shit of him, of yelling at him how could you? How could you even begin to think that Roland was more important to me than you are? You said it yourself, you bloody moron, you said it yourself that nobody knows me like you do, that nobody cares for me like you do. I can’t live without you, I won’t live without you, so why did you have to stay back? Why did you have to sacrifice yourself when all I ever wanted was for you to be safe, even from me, from the monster that I am?

I had to get him out, and get him back, and hug him, and kiss him, and cry, and cry, and cry some more, because Jesus, it hurt, just the mere thought of him being hurt, being dead, it hurt. I had to get him back because... because I... because... Fuck.

Because I loved him.

Notes:

*cue Taylor Swift playing in the background* DON'T BLAME ME, LOVE MADE ME CRAZY

alright, i know you want to hear about neil, but let's take it from the top

first, kevin and andrew being a chaotic duo>
i love them so much you can't even begin to understand. so they're both heartthrobs, and they're out for riko's throat, and they look hot doing it. we'll find out about the veritaserum plan in the next chapter as well, so stay tuned!

allison panicking because renée's missing?? hello?? idk whether i really ship them or not, and they weren't really in the tags to begin with, but a little sapphic love never hurt anybody, did it? they are cute. they love each other. you can't stop me.

the boggarts lesson. i mean, ouch? neil biggest fear being himself. i might cry (the idea was given to me by my bestie who's a neil kinnie btw, which means we are the perfect duo bc i'm an andrew kinnie. hate us, love us, we're the shit)
andrew's boggart was predictable, i guess, but neil finding out that his petname for andrew is the same as drake's and being distraught??? heartbreaking. gut-wrenching. i cried while writing that, i don't know why i do that to myself honestly lol i'm deeply sorry. this will cause some angst in the future
I know that in canon Andrew, just as the word 'please', never lets someone call him what drake used to call him - AJ - but you have to remember that Andrew in this fic is still finding out what actually triggers them and still is using the coping mechanism "replacing bad memories with good ones", so that's why they go stumbling head-first into having sex with roland, or why they still allow people like Renée to touch them. It's a gradual thing, slowly building up to the Andrew "nobody touch me or i will murder you and everything you hold dear" that we all know and love

lastly, tessa is a cunt. there, i said it lmao

soooo neil's missing and andrew went berserk. love that for them i guess?? if you need to be reassured, neil's fine. well, he's not fine, he's lost in the forest surrounded by centaurs that want him dead, but still, he survives. no, the MCD tag isn't for him, no need to worry!

 

and that's it for today, i guess. since this one ended in a cliffhanger, i'll try to write the next chapter as fast as I can and post it hopefully before the week passes.

see ya next time, lovelies!

Chapter 31: Take me to church

Summary:

TW!
Alright the first half of the chapter is rough ngl so
- mentions of blood
- depiction of serious injuries (a stab wound, a very badly broken arm)
- mentions of past death
- murder
- possible medical inaccuracies? idk babes this is a magical world take it up with JKR

i think that's it?? Let me know if I missed something

“Who even are you?”

“I’m Neil.”

“You… talk a lot.”

“Well, it’s just damned luck that you don’t talk at all, then.”

I realized as I was running that I should’ve asked Roland for direction, maybe. But would he even had known where he had been, where Neil had found him, where he had lost him? Could Roland have even described it to me, the place where it all went wrong? Would I even have been able to recognize it, to track it down?

Perhaps it was a stupid thought, that I should’ve had asked him. But for some unknown reason, my nose wasn’t working anymore, my eyesight was as blurry as it had always have been when I had to put on glasses, until I didn’t need them anymore because my senses had been enhanced by my animagus form. However, my senses weren’t sensing anymore, and I was lost, running between trees I had never seen, or maybe that I was just too blind to recognize.

I stopped, raising the back of my hand to my cheek, and I felt my wet skin. I didn’t even know when I had started crying. I pressed my fingertips against my closed eyelids and hoped to squeeze the rest of the tears out, so that when I opened my eyes again, I could at least see where I was.

It worked, in a way, but I still spun around, helpless, crying, wanting to scream. Should I have been screaming Neil’s name, looking for him with such intensity? What if Riko’s family was around? What if they found him before I did and finished whatever damage the centaurs had started doing to him? I couldn’t risk it, I wouldn’t risk it, but I couldn’t find him.

My memory, the only certain thing I’d had going on for me for the most part of my life, was suddenly playing tricks on me. I couldn’t remember whether I had seen those trees before, those leaves, those scratches on the trunks, the Forest looked all the same, all the same all around, there wasn’t a clear path and I knew that Forest, I knew those places as the palm of my hand, but I couldn’t remember them.

I could only remember him, and my heart was clenching in my chest every time I heard is voice in my mind, I saw his face in the back of my head.

“So, let’s see them.”

“What?”

“Your glasses. Put them on, I want to see them.”

“Fine. But the moment you laugh, you’re banned from here.”

“They look good. Why don’t you wear them more often? They suit you.”

“They make me feel silly. And they’re old, so they’re not that useful. I didn’t notice that, when did you get it?”

“I got it the last time I fell ill. The night you hurt yourself.”

“I like it. It makes you prettier, in my opinion.”

“You think I’m pretty?”

I was hyperventilating, and I shook my head vigorously. There was no time to reminisce, to bask in the fond memories, even as they were haunting me, pushing me to create new ones. I wanted new ones, I wanted to say to him that he was pretty again, I wanted to look at him in the eyes and say that I didn’t even need glasses anymore but I would wear them if he thought I looked good in them. I would’ve done anything, anything to get him back.

So, why couldn’t I move? Why couldn’t I sense him, smell his scent, follow the steady sound of his heartbeat or the hitched one of when he was blatantly lying to my face? I wanted him to lie to me again, lie for the rest of his life, his long, long life. Where the fuck was he?

I rubbed my face with the palms of my hands and found them dirty of soil. I didn’t care. I spun around once more, frantic, my heart beating so fast that when I placed my hand on my chest it felt like it was breaking out of my ribcage.

I closed my eyes and took a steadying, quivering breath. I was trembling all over, my hands felt as inconsistent as jam, and I couldn’t really feel the ground beneath my feet, but I tried, I tried to start thinking rationally about the whole situation.

Centaurs had a reputation for being mostly savages, without a moral compass and also not really fond of wizards, let alone wizards who were also Dark creatures. I didn’t know how much of Neil’s appearance and aura said werewolf to the other creatures in the Forest, but I didn’t have a problem imagining that whatever those centaurs wanted from him, it couldn’t be pretty.

Still, Neil knew how to defend himself. He was a powerful wizard; his magic was enhanced by his werewolf abilities, and he wouldn’t go down without a fight. I had to believe that he was strong enough to fend for himself just a little bit more until I found him. Because I would find him, eventually.

Better if I hurried up, though.

Neil needed me. I knew he did, because, for as strong as a wizard he was, he was also alone with dozens of creatures that probably wanted him dead or hurt, and that were approximately and individually just as strong as him.

Freaking out wouldn’t help anybody. Crying wouldn’t help anybody, wistful thinking wouldn’t help anybody. Begging him to please come back to me, make me find the way, wouldn’t help him. Saying please never helped.

“You’re safe. You’re with me, you’re okay.”

“Neil. Neil, let me go.”

“You know I can’t, Drew. You have to drink this.”

“Neil, please. Please, let me go.”

“Fucking dammit, Drew. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

I peeled my eyes open again, looking around once more to make sure I really didn’t know where I was, and I started to recognize some patterns. Yes, I knew those scratches on the trunks of the trees, because Neil had left them there. Yes, I knew some of the routes between the woods because one of them brought to the pond where Neil and I hung out almost every full moon. Yes, I knew where I was. I knew where I was and I knew where to go, I knew what to do.

Praying that I would make it back to him or vice versa was pointless if I didn’t put in any kind of effort. So, that was me. Putting in some effort.

I took another breath in and transformed into the panther.

There was a scent, but it was mostly faint, and it didn’t smell like Neil, to be exact. There was something off about it, something that I couldn’t quite pinpoint as I moved slowly through the Forest, as stealthy as I could be with the leaves crunching under my paws.

As an animal, I found it easier to stop crying. My eyesight became better quickly, and I looked around accordingly, identifying new clues that told me I was getting closer. There were signs of hooves on the ground, there was a rut that indicated that a body had been dragged through the dirt and the mud, there were droplets of blood that wet the terrain.

I bent over to smell the blood, and trying to see whether I could detect a familiar scent, to see if I was right to follow those trails and if they’d actually lead me to Neil.

It never dawned on me that the blood could as well not be from Neil or any of his wounds, because what I smelled was clearly magical, but also not human. Neil must’ve had injured one of the centaurs on their animal body, and if that was the case, he was indeed fending for himself pretty decently.

I kept following the clues, never really knowing where I was going. Until I heard it.

A soft heartbeat, but a heartbeat nonetheless. A weak pattern of breathing, irregular, but breathing nonetheless. So well-known, so clear in my memory.

I moved in that direction, and I finally heard voices, ones I didn’t know.

“Is he dying?” someone asked, and a sound of somebody kicking something, a quiet thud, followed.

“I don’t think so,” somebody else answered, but it sounded more like another question, “It looks like he fainted, though. He’s in a pretty bad shape.”

“It’s for the best,” a low voice, someone clearly older than the previous two, “Werewolves are dangerous, and we can’t have others roaming around the Forest every full moon. One of them is bound to come and hunt us, and what will we do then, mh? Better to kill him while he’s still small and defenseless.”

“What about the wizards? He’s a student at that school, someone’s going to come and search for him.”

“The Headmaster knows better. Nobody ventures this deep in the Forest: it’s forbidden to the students, so they’ll know he’s dead when he just doesn’t come back. It’s not the first time this has happened.”

“What about his family?”

“His father will only thank us, along with the vampires. As far as I know, this one is a little headache for them.”

“So, that’s it, then? We just kill the boy? How old even he is?” it was a female voice, maybe the only one who seemed to make some sense out of the whole situation.

“Not sure,” a wondering silence, then a hum, “Mustn’t be older than fifteen.”

“He’s young. Too young to die, Maximus.”

I turned into my human form again and hid behind the closest log, glancing at the scene before my eyes. Four centaurs, what seemed like a family – there were two older ones, a woman and a man, and two younger, two boys –, were studying a little body, a human body, still on the ground, dirty and unrecognizable. What I did recognize was the thermal shirt, the same one I had on, only his was torn apart in different places, exposing wounded skin and dried up blood.

A glimpse of red, fluffy, curly and filthy hair, matted because he had been clearly dragged through the soil, almost made me sob, but I swallowed the thick sound so that I wouldn’t be noticed.

Clearly injured, clearly passed out, unmoving and laying down on his back, Neil looked already dead. But I could still hear his heartbeat, I could still hear him breathe. I swallowed again, harshly, this time because I felt my throat go dry.

“What do you want me to do, Lucrezia? The others are waiting for us to join them, and he’s already half gone,” the man was saying.

“And you’re okay with that? You’re okay with leaving him to die here?” the woman protested, her voice raising.

“Stop,” the man hissed at her, which made the two boys wince. One of them kicked Neil, I supposed the one that had done it before, too, but this time more lightly, like if to see whether he’d wake up if hit, “He’s not a good person, do you understand that? He’s a monster. He may look innocent enough now, but he isn’t.”

“How could you even say that? What if someone said that about our sons, Maximus? What would you say then? He may not be a good person, but he’s a person nonetheless. Maybe he has someone who is waiting for him, maybe he loves someone. Maybe he has plans for a future he’ll never get to have because of us. Don’t you feel guilty, not even a bit?”

The older centaur half grunted, half scoffed, as to suggest that it was impossible for someone to love the boy at their feet, just as it was impossible for him to love someone in return. As to suggest that someone as despicable as a werewolf couldn’t possibly want more from life than being the monster that they are. It broke my heart all over again, and I closed my eyes.

“I’ve got to balance Drew out. Would you prefer Abe?”

“Abe?! Don’t you dare.”

“Sorry, Abram.”

“I shouldn’t have told you about my middle name.”

“I have one too, y’know. The only way you’ll get it out of me is if you marry me, though.”

“If it means that I can vex you about your middle name until the day I drop dead, Andrew Minyard, I’ll marry the shit out of you, one day.”

“Wait.”

Memories washed me over and I thought I couldn’t tell the present and the past apart anymore. I didn’t know if it was me when I spoke up, I didn’t know if it was me when I walked out of the thick of the Forest into the small, rounded space where the centaurs were, I didn’t know if it was me when I heard a loud gasp, a strangled sob, when I finally and properly laid my eyes on Neil.

I could sense the centaurs’ eyes fixated on me, probably on the top of my head, as I looked down at the senseless body at my feet.

His arm was angled in an odd way, broken in multiple places, while the one he’d been probably dragged by was covered in big, black and blue bruises. His face was full of small cuts from the little pebbles on the ground, dirty and muddy like his hair, and his upper body was mostly in plain sight, his shirt ripped to shreds, so I could see the old scars, the new wounds, and also a deep cut that looked like it had been caused by a sharp object.

If the bows on the centaurs back were anything to go by, I reckoned someone had shot an arrow at him. There was dried blood all around it, and the margins were uneven and covered in filth, so I also guessed that the tip had been ripped out forcefully before he had fainted and dragged away.

The cold slipped cautiously through my veins. Just like it had with Tilda, once upon a time, not that far away in time even if it felt like ages before. Everything inside of me froze over, blocks of ice where my organs should’ve been, and for the first time in minutes, hours, maybe days, I could finally feel my heart slowing down, down, down, until it down-right stopped.

I stopped caring, I stopped fretting, I stopped spiraling, I stopped crying and hurting and reminiscing. As soon as Neil’s battered body had entered my field of view, I knew something in me had shifted. I felt so distant from myself, like I was watching the scene from the outside of my body, like my soul had left whatever part of my organism it inhabited.

Violence was all I felt. My brain was screaming. Hit them, make them bleed, make them pay, make them beg for mercy. But oh, oh, you don’t have mercy. You never have mercy on them, don’t you, Andrew? You never have mercy for those who hurt the one you love. You murdered your own mother because of it, and you’ve never even felt an ounce of remorse. What’s one more life? What’s the disgust of having taken a life compared to relief of knowing you have successfully protected your people? Just do it. Make them regret ever crossing your path. Kill them all.

And I would’ve. Deep inside my bones, I knew I would’ve done just that.

“Who are you?” the man, Maximus, spoke up first.

The two boys had already picked up their bows, arrows ready and pointed at me. My wand was clutched into my hand, tight grip never shaking, never wavering. I cocked my head to the side, flicking the wand carelessly towards the younger centaurs.

“Diffindo,” I muttered, while deep cuts appeared on the humanoid arms of the two, making them shout out in pain and drop their weapons.

Slow, so slow, all of them. Careless, really. What did they expect? That I’d just crumble in front of them, sinking on my knees and cry, and beg, and ask that they’d spare both me and Neil? That was never going to happen.

Perhaps I would’ve spared them if they asked for forgiveness. Perhaps I would’ve spared them, if only they’d let us be, they’d just run away and let me carry Neil to safety. If only they had just stayed calm, hadn’t reacted to me harming two of them without a second thought, perhaps they could’ve gone about their day without thinking back to that moment and asking themselves what had gone wrong.

If only, if only.

“My children!” Lucrezia cried out.

“You’ll pay with your life for harming my sons, foreigner,” Maximus announced, reaching for the bow on his back.

So slow. Painfully so.

“Immobulus,” I pointed the wand at him.

He came to a screeching halt, arms froze midair as he moved to retrieve the arrows from the quiver. I scoffed, while the woman still wept and went to check on her bleeding children.

“What do you want from us?” she cried, hugging the one that seemed to be the youngest.

“Your mate here,” I approached Maximus one step after the other, a small smile etched on my face, “was going to kill the boy I love. He didn’t even have a good reason, after all, did he? He feared you all would’ve been better off without the boy, protected somehow by the fact that he wouldn’t be around anymore. But you know what? Lucrezia, isn’t it?”

She made a small sound at the back of her throat, something guttural and pained, while I casted the cutting hex again and again on each of the centaurs’ legs, making him kneel in front of me, limbs giving out from the ache. I was still smiling wickedly at him, his face now level with mine albeit a little taller, but I turned to look at her when I reached to grab a fistful of his hair in my hand.

Still immobilized, he couldn’t scream in pain, talk or defend himself. I took in a deep breath, savoring vengeance.

“You haven’t answered. Is your name Lucrezia?”

“Y-yes. Yes,” she nodded frantically, and I saw her throat bobble as she swallowed.

“Well then, Lucrezia. The thing is, when the people I care about are in danger, I become far, far worse than Neil, the redhead boy you’ve got there, even though I’m not a werewolf, I’m not a dark creature. Maybe I am a monster, though: plenty of people have called me that. And Maximus wasn’t going to feel guilty about leaving me distraught, with only the memories of Neil to keep me company for the rest of my own life, so I’m not going to feel guilty when I do the same thing to you, too. And doing it with magic is not going to bring me any satisfaction. No, no. I have to do it with my own hands.”

I snapped his neck, plain and simple. The loud crack that it produced before I lifted my hands and let the lifeless body fall to the ground made the woman scream, loudly, for a long time. I stayed there and listen as she and her boys cried.

“You made orphans of my children,” she accused me.

“I’m an orphan. I kind of like it,” I shrugged.

“You made a widow of me,” she shouted again, more forcefully.

“Do you want to die too, then? Because I will kill you.”

“You humans are supposed to have a heart, to have a soul that’s far kinder than ours. Where’s yours now, wizard?” one of the two boys asked, voice shaking with deep sorrow and grief.

“I think mine died a decade ago, when I was seven,” I left Maximus’ body lying there, while I approached Neil’s and the other three centaurs.

I partially knelt down on the ground, looking at Neil’s calm, tranquil face. If it hadn’t been for his bruises and injuries, it would almost have looked like he was sleeping, like I had seen him countless times before. I couldn’t help the urge to smile tugging at the corners of my lips, making them twitch. Safe, safe. He is safe now.

I quickly healed the deepest wound on his abdomen, trying my hardest not to memorize the scars on his body, the ones he didn’t want me to see. When I saw the successfully new, small scar formed on his lower stomach, I stroke the one on his cheekbone, the one I always caressed when we hadn’t let our differences come between our friendship, when I hadn’t let the fear of falling in love tear me apart from him.

I looked back up to the centaurs, all curled up against each other as to offer both psychological and physical support. The children were scared, trembling, their arms too sore to pick up their bows and attempt to harm me again. Lucrezia was glaring at me, a scowl on her face, tears dried up on her cheeks while their trails left a shimmering stain behind. She was unarmed.

I hummed, passing my wand from a hand to the other, pondering while I got back up on my feet.

“I will let you go,” I announced, “and I suggest all three of you to run before I change my mind.”

“You didn’t tell us who you are,” she stated.

“Does it matter? I’m the one who killed Maximus. That should suffice.”

“I want to know your name.”

“I won’t tell you,” I replied, simply.

“Well, then, be warned, stranger. You might think you can outrun danger forever, that those whom you love are safe under your ever-expanding, black wings of revenge. But it comes a day when we all must face loss and grief, and you’re not a god, nor a soulless being as you like to claim: the day will come for you, too, and it may be sooner than you’d expect.”

I gritted my teeth, jaw working, fists clenching.

“Run,” I hissed, “I’ll spare you because you were intelligent enough to question your mate’s choices, but do you want to lose your sons too, today? Hasn’t this been enough?”

She didn’t let herself ponder whether I might’ve been bluffing, as she urged her children to go and followed them quickly. I glanced at the dead body behind me, reckoning that they’d be back to collect it once I would’ve left.

“I’ll come and look for you.”

“Thanks, Drew.”

“ It’s our thing, isn’t it? You save me, I save you. We’re a great duo.”

“We are.”

I knelt down next to Neil again. With his most serious wound being closed, his heart had seemed to pick up its pace. I sat there for some minutes with a hand flat on his chest. I felt ease in how it raised and lowered my palm as it rose and lowered itself. Comfort in knowing he was alive and coming out of his daze.

He was still dirty all over, but I tried to analyze and assess his injuries, so that I could start healing them before he woke up. Silently, still waiting, I fixed his arm first, my voice thick with tears that were threatening to fall and low for the lump forming in my throat.

I caressed his face again, unwilling to let myself unravel in front of him, afraid he might’ve woken up and found me in shambles.

Then he coughed. And suddenly, the world was a little brighter.

He looked around, lost. It took him a few attempts to find my face, but when he locked eyes with me, he drew in a breath so sharp I was frightened he might’ve choked on it. Inexplicably, it made me chuckle.

“Hi,” I managed to say.

“Andrew,” he croaked back, “Am I dead? Are you real?”

“As real as they make them,” I echoed the words he had said to me when I had woken up from the car crash with Tilda, unable to grasp how I could’ve been still alive.

“Did you come for me? I sent Roland back,” his voice was raspy. My eyes stung with the pressure of tears.

“I know, he told me. You shouldn’t have done that,” I scolded him.

“You came for me,” he tried to smile. He failed.

“I came for you,” I nodded once, then exhaled a little shakily, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. I laughed, so loud it almost scared me.

“Lie after lie. Such a liar, you are. You know, you told me once that you can’t lie to me, but you do it quite often.”

“You know me better than everyone else in here. I know, I just know that you look at me and you see me. I can’t lie to you, Merlin knows I feel like I can’t.”

“Did I?” he was really smiling now, managing to give me a half-assed cackle, “I must’ve been lying then, too. But you’re the only one who can tell when I do.”

“I know you well, Josten,” I rebutted.

His face crumbled right after, and he took a couple deep breaths while reaching for his newly mended arm. I stopped him, gentle but sure.

“I’m tired,” he whined. I scoffed.

“Rest,” I ordered, “I’ll get you home.”

He nodded, or at least tried to do so, while closing his eyes again and either fainting once more or just simply nodding off. But his heartbeat was still steady under my hand, so I didn’t really let myself think about it as I stood up, picked him up from the ground, one hand behind his back and one cradling the back of his knees, and carried him towards the castle.

 

---

 

Abby had taken Neil straight to the medical wing, and when I tried to follow Renée had ordered that I went back to my room to rest instead. No matter how much complaining and threatening I did, she was still able to lock me inside my dorm, exhorting me to get some sleep. I told her to just keep an eye out for Kevin, or even to ask him to come to my dorm too, but she just asked me in return to let her handle things and relax.

I laid on my bed, staring at the canopy above me, maybe for hours on end trying to actually close my eyes. Most of the students had waited for me to come back with Neil from the Forest, so dinner had been delayed and everyone was eating then while I waited, and waited, and waited.

Kevin slipped in some time later, a plate in hand. I sat up and looked at him.

“You look like you’ve gone through hell and back,” he commented.

“Something like that for sure,” I whispered.

He placed the food next to me on the bed, then straightened up and sighed. I looked at the plate, a simple soup. It was my favorite, but I didn’t seem to be able to make myself eat it.

“Riko’s tired and angry at Dumbledore for making him save Renée today,” he simply stated.

“Fuck,” I hissed, face-palming myself, “Renée was in the Forest too and I didn’t even ask-”

“Stop,” Kevin cut me off, “She’s fine, just worried sick about you and Neil, but mostly you. Roland’s fine, or so Aberforth told me when I went to him to ask while you were in here moping, and Tessa’s better than she’s ever been. Neil’s fine, too.”

I looked up at him, finally.

“He’s been released by the infirmary, he had mostly superficial injuries, and he’s resting, now. You should too.”

“I can’t,” I shook my head.

“Should I ask why that is?”

“I healed Tessa. I healed Neil’s most serious injuries and took him back. I have been running and fighting the whole day, right after having undergone the terrible experience of reliving my worst fear. I befriended a giant, I interacted with centaurs. My adrenaline levels are through the roof and there’s no way I can sleep now,” I ranted.

Kevin’s eyebrows were raised in shock.

“Then find yourself something simple to do while you wait for them to go down,” he suggested.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “Maybe I’ll do that.”

He nodded back and exited the room, assuring me that he’d be fine and he’d just go back to his dorm and call it a day as well.

I ate the soup in silence, while King made his way to my bed and curled up against my restless legs. I had the physical need to do something, to make something, to be useful, in a way. I sighed time and time again, telling me mental reprimands to stay still, to just wait it out, that I had to sleep because the next day I should’ve gone back to lessons.

The thought of the next day stung, like I’d been poked with needles all over my body. I couldn’t believe that, just like nothing had happened, life should have gone on. Classes in the morning and the afternoon, practices for Quidditch and training with Lupin, like I’d never been to the Forest, like I had never fought for Neil’s life.

Like I hadn’t just killed someone.

I shuddered, suddenly hit by some kind of regret. I looked down at my hands, the bowl of soup now empty, placed carefully on the mattress. My palms were clean. Well, they weren’t really: they were full of dirt and earth and small, small cuts. But there wasn’t any blood on them. I hadn’t spilled any, none that could attest that I had murdered someone with my own bare hands.

I swallowed, closing my eyes. I shouldn’t have felt remorse, that was the whole thing, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have felt guilty, because they weren’t going to feel guilty about doing the same thing to me. But Lucrezia’s words rang in my head, the warning about not being able to always protect the ones that I loved.

That didn’t mean I shouldn’t have tried, did it? I had to try. I had to do it, because sometimes it helped. I did save Aaron; I did save Neil. I was going to save Kevin, just like I had promised to.
I took a deep breath in. That was it. I was going to start moving on with my plan to make Riko confess his wrong doings.

“Accio potion book,” I lifted my hand just as the book flew from the shelf to the bed, catching it. I roamed through it quickly, landing on the Veritaserum potion with ease. I read the ingredients, muttering them under my breath, then I glanced at the invisibility robe that I still had, folded neatly on my trunk at the feet of the bed.

Fine, I thought, let’s go brew this bad boy.

 

---

 

I exited the shower with a towel wrapped around my waist and, while rubbing my hair with another one to partially dry it, I went into my bedroom. I looked outside of the window, but there was really nothing to be seen but the slight outline of the Forest: it was the dead of night, and the moon was merely reflecting some feeble light on the land.

The potion had been brewed perfectly and was sitting on my nightstand, ready to be used the next morning. I just had to find a way to slip it into Riko’s morning mug in a way that he wouldn’t have noticed, and the game was won. Easy, wasn’t it? Should’ve been.

I couldn’t steal any vial from the Potions classroom, so I’d just put it in a clear glass and took it back, while also doing my best to clean the cauldron that I had used so that Professor Moriyama wouldn’t have noticed that somebody had broken into his classroom.

I didn’t even bother to put on my pajamas, just slipped on some underwear even if the cold air of winter was blowing through the open window. My skin was red from the boiling shower I had just taken, and I sat on the bed.

The thing was, I was very tired. It was very late at night, and I wasn’t sure when was the last time I had drank some water. And the potion was crystal clear. So clear that my brain short-circuited for a moment and I just… drank it. Just a drop, a sip, nothing more. But I knew it was enough.

The taste was foul.

“Oh,” I whined, “I’m so stupid.”

Perhaps it was the Veritaserum that brought me to do what I did next, but I didn’t care that it was well into the night and by the morning I would’ve been probably free of the effects of the potion. I wanted them gone right that moment, so I took a piece of parchment and wrote a hasty note to the only person who might’ve known the counter-magic and whom I wasn’t scared to tell all my truths to.

I charmed it so that it would reach Neil as fast as it could while I dressed up and ran to our meeting place.

 

---

 

“Really, Minyard? The prefects’ bathroom? So cheeky,” Neil giggled upon entering, taking in my image.

I shook my head and sighed. I so wished it could’ve been anywhere else, but I couldn’t really think straight and the first thing I thought about was the fact that the last time we had been able to have a conversation at night was in a bathroom. The prefects’ one was just… a little more private. I waved my wand at the door and locked it wordlessly.

“I’m sorry. It was the only way I could talk to you, I stole Aaron's prefect pin which I am not so proud about but I needed to see you, and I just now realize that I have facial piercings and it's easy to tell me apart from Aaron so that was pointless, but I don't know I'm not really thinking at the moment,” I babbled away, and sighed again at my own stupidity. I could really say anything, right about then.

“Wait, so that’s silver?”, he pointed at the pin on my chest. I nodded and he did it back, then snapped his fingers. I felt the weight of the pin change, suddenly remembering that silver was lethal for werewolves, “What do you need, then?”

“I need to call in the favor for saving your life,” I spat.

“That’s low even for you,” he laughed again, then came closer to me, “what’s going on?”

“I really don’t know, I was in my bedroom drinking some water and well I thought it was water but I just snuck inside the Potions classroom to brew some Veritaserum to give to Riko and so I didn’t drink water, I drank the potion and it tasted so bad and I can’t stop talking and I hate it!” My voice got progressively louder, which only made Neil laugh more.

“So, what do you want me to do about it?” he asked, smirking.

“I don’t know, do you know how to counter it?”

“No, but I can wait with you until it passes,” he shrugged.

“Well, that’s a hard pass. I don’t want to know what this thing will make me say to you.”

Something gleamed in Neil’s eyes as he took a tentative step towards me. My head was spinning, and I didn’t really know why. I fucking hated that potion.

“Really? How’s that?”, he came closer and closer, “Now that I think about it, I could have my fun with it.”

“You can literally do whatever you want with me and I wouldn’t complain,” I slapped my forehead. Well, that was that.

“You wouldn’t mind if I asked you some questions?”

“As long as you tell me your secrets, too, sooner or later,” I said.

“Fair enough,” he seemed to nod, once, as to ponder whether it was an actual good agreement. I swallowed when he opened his mouth again to ask the first question, “Who was the man of your boggart?”

I swallowed again, rubbing my face with the palms of my hand. I tried to resist the magic-induced urge to spill out every single thing about it, but I knew it would come out eventually.

“The last foster brother I had before being put in juvie. He was an abuser,” I forced my mouth shut, so that I wouldn’t tell him more. I wished that I could’ve, but it was so complicated that I didn’t think it was fair to either of us for me to say it when I wasn’t in control of my words.

“Was he the one that… you know, over Christmas?” Neil bit down his chapped lip, a small dot of blood coming out and glistening under the light of the bathroom.

“Yes,” I confessed. He just nodded, dragging his eyes to the floor while he visibly thought about it over and over.

“You know I won’t call you like… like that, anymore, don’t you? It makes me so mad that you would even allow me to call you like someone who scares you that much did,” his voice seemed colder then, but he still wasn’t looking at me.

“I probably wouldn’t let you call me like that again even if you wanted to do it, anyway. I think I went about it wrong the first time, believing that I could replace the bad memories with some good ones, but maybe I was just fooling myself,” I admitted, and he looked up again, still nodding, still nibbling on his bottom lip.

“You think that’s why you didn’t want me to call you like that when I hurt you? Because you didn’t want any more bad memories associated with it?”

“Probably,” I nodded. He nodded back.

A silence fell, thick and suffocating. It was asphyxiating me, choking the life out of me as Neil took another step closer and looked up and down at my body, searching in his mind for his next question.

“Why did you come back to save me? You’d already won. Renée was safe, so was Roland.”

“You weren’t. I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“Why not? We’re rivals. And also, we haven’t been the best of mates for a while. We fight all the time.”

“Yes, but you’re also my friend. I think,” my mouth was dry, and I was wringing my hands together. To be fair, I really felt like I was going to have a panic attack at any given moment.

“We’re friends, you say. I thought you hated me,” he frowned a little.

“I hate every inch of you,” I said, and I surprised both of us with the crude honesty, “I hate you, and your perfect everything. You make me so mad sometimes I just want to kick you in the stomach and leave you agonizing on the floor.”

The corners of his mouth twitched, like he wanted to laugh but wasn’t sure he should’ve. It made me want to smile as well, but my body was the only thing I still had some control over, so I refrained. He seemed to weigh my words, then spoke again.

“So, what? You hate me and we’re friends?”

“I said I hate you, but I didn’t say I would enjoy seeing you getting hurt.”

“I’m pretty sure you just did.”

“For Christ’s sake, Josten.”

“Okay, okay. So, you hate me?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.”

“I hate you but I also adore you, in ways you would never do me.”

I closed my eyes, pressing my lips into a thin line. I didn't want to say that. 

He took in a raspy breath and took another step closer. I could feel his eyes burning my skin and the tension he was trying so hard to keep hidden but was clear as the morning sky to me. He knew that: he knew I was able to read his every emotion, to understand whatever was going on in his messy head, and he knew that because he could do the same for me. And in the moment, he probably realized, for the first time since we had met, there was something unspoken between us that could only come out right then, when I was unable to lie.

“What did the amortentia smell like?”, he whispered.

I knew it was coming. I just didn’t want to say it.

“Neil…”

“Andrew, tell me what the amortentia smelled like so many months ago. Tell me,” he reiterated, trying to catch my gaze and lock it with his, but I was avoiding those blue eyes, like I’d been avoiding that conversation and the fact that I had a crush on the only boy in my life I could count as a real friend, that what I thought was a silly, stupid, teenage crush was really a full-on loving feeling I couldn’t seem to shake, that I couldn’t say anything about it to him because he didn’t like men, he was asexual, he would've never liked me back, he would've never felt what I felt and that shit had killed me for over a year and I couldn’t believe I was about to mess it all up just because of the stupid Tournament and bloody Riko.

“It smelled of wet grass and the way the Quidditch pitch smells right after everyone uses it for practice and metallic like the snitch and of roses and violets because that’s what your shampoo smells like and I don’t know how I know that but I really, really like your hair and I guess I just caught onto that and…”

“That’s enough,” he wheezed, taking several steps back, and placing a hand on his chest like he was about to have a heart attack, “I- maybe you were right, I didn’t need to know this.”

“Why?” my truthful self couldn’t seem to shut up. I really wished it did.

“Because I… I didn’t want to know that you fancied me.”

“Why?” I asked again. He looked up at me and I could see fear and confusion in his eyes and thank God for Arythmancy because it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together, “you, on the other hand, said the amortentia smelled like a pipe dream. Like something beautiful and magical that could never exist.”

“Yeah, I said that,” he nodded.

“But it wasn’t true, wasn’t it?”, he shook his head no, his breath audibly hitching, “It was something more specific. It was something… what was it?”

“Ashes,” he said, out loud, without missing a bit, “it was mostly ashes, like smoke, and wind and the air of the pitch and something in the background that reminded me of the owlery…”

I felt my eyes widen and my heart skip a beat, then fall to my stomach, then rise into my throat. I felt lightheaded, like I was about to pass out - honestly, I didn’t put it past me at that point, I didn’t know what that potion was really doing to me - but also like I had the energy to jump to the moon or even Pluto.

“You said you didn’t swing,” I half gasped, half scoffed, “you said you didn’t like boys. I thought I was going insane.”

“I do not like boys, Andrew,” he seemed angrier now, “I don’t. I don’t swing, I don’t like men, I just… I don’t know…”

“Say it.”

“Why does it matter? You don’t like to be touched, and I don’t like men, it’s not like it means anything-”

“It means something to me!”, I yelled.

Neil was quick to cast a silencing spell - it was the middle of the night and, prefects or not, we shouldn’t have been hanging around alone in the bathroom. His eyes were sharp, accusing when he looked back in mine again.

“Why should it mean something to you? I don’t want to lose our friendship or even what it’s left of it just because of a silly crush!”

I groaned loudly, tangling my hands in my hair and pulling at it like I wanted to rip it all out. How could he have been so oblivious and obnoxious? Was Renée right for saying that I didn’t really show it when I was interested in someone?”

“It’s not a silly crush, you dickhead! I’ve been pining over you for a year and a half. I don’t just fancy you like I want to put my tongue in your throat for a couple of times just for the hell of it! I really, really like you like I could kiss you all night long and I could spend hours listening to you talking about that stupid fucking game you love so much just because I like having you around. And you were so busy and so convinced that I fancied Renée last year that you couldn’t even see how much I was longing for you, and you were so jealous and fixated on this stupid Tournament to realize that my feelings had grown from a crush to something so deep and full and intense that I didn't know how to act around you anymore. But that was fine by me because I never stood a chance with you. So if I do, I want to know. I was ready to sacrifice my life to save yours, Neil, doesn’t that mean something? Do you think I’d do the same for everybody, anybody else?”

I wasn’t sure if it was the Veritaserum talking anymore or if it was just my exasperation, but it somehow felt good to actually dish it all out, see his reaction as each of my words slipped out and landed in his ears, making him hear, making him see how much I loved him, how I longed for him, how I yearned for him. 

“Maybe I was wrong about Renée, but I found you sleeping with a man just about some months ago. What about that, huh? What about Roland?” he was screaming too, at that point.

“Well, aren’t we jealous,” I spat, “Roland was just a pathetic attempt to get over you since I thought you’d never give me a chance to begin with. You are stupid if you think that it meant anything more than that to me.”

“What do you want me to do?”, he whimpered, voice strained.

“I want you to admit it!”

His breath was shaking just like his body. He rubbed a hand on his face, pressing firmly two fingers on his closed eyelids like he was trying really hard not to cry. I understood that, because I was on the verge of tears myself. I didn’t like to cry in front of others, but I also didn’t expect that to happen when I summoned Neil to the prefects bathroom.

I was just thinking he’d know how to counter it and would send me to my dorm laughing like a maniac because of the stupid error I made with the Veritaserum. I wasn’t expecting an heart-to-heart conversation I had been fantasizing about for almost a year. I wasn’t expecting him to know he liked me back and be too afraid to admit it not only to me, but to himself.

When he lowered his hands, he let them dangle on each side of his torso and he looked tired, like he just went on battle against himself and his head, already messy, had suffered the consequences. He sighed, then came again closer to me. He was taller than me - that was something I’d never get used to - so he leaned forward a bit and raised a hand to my cheek. He didn’t put his palm on it, it just hovered over my skin, as he usually did every time he wanted to touch me but knew he couldn’t.

“I…”, he sighed again, defeated, “I’d noticed sometime last year that you felt… different from the others. You caught my attention more often and you were pretty intimidating, under certain circumstances. I urged myself to believe I just admired you for the way you could easily control your surroundings and the things you went through in a way that I never could, but I just… after the amortentia I realized that… I just can’t stop thinking about you. In a way friends aren’t supposed to think about each other.”

I closed my eyes, letting myself bask in the statement, absorb every single word. We were so close that I could feel his throat bobble when he swallowed.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” I whispered. That was definitely the Veritaserum, “But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t feel like it because I know what it feels like to be forced into something like this and I want you to be comfortable, and what we said right here can just stay here and I can go back to my dorm and pretend nothing ever happened and we could stay friends, or whatever we are, and no one has to know, not even Renée.”

“Not even Renée?” he cackled, leaning in even more, “Merlin, Minyard. You’re really down bad.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“I… I only ever kissed someone once in my whole life.”

“I know about that.”

“I don’t really know how to do it.”

I laughed lightly, then placed my hand on the back of his head, pushing him gently towards me.

I wasn’t the one to close the little space left between us. Like I had been singing some kind of siren song, his lips crashed onto mine before I could even think about how to go at it. My eyes fluttered close the moment I felt the pressure of his mouth on mine, our noses oddly pushing against the other. His hand that was hovering on my cheek left its spot, lowering slowly, and I felt him shove it in his pocket, like he didn’t know what to do with it.

It took a moment to sink into it. It took a second to realize what was really happening, my mind still fogged up by the potion circling through my body. It took less than an instant for something to switch inside my brain, a light either turning off or on, and what must’ve been an awkward kiss if seen from the outside suddenly changed its pace.

I tangled my finger into his hair, playing with it, curling the little strands around my fingers, pushing him closer and closer to me. His body was a little distant from mine, wasn’t really touching it, but I thought, for now, that was for the best. My other hand shot to his cheek, stroking the same old scar, the one on his cheekbone that made him so pretty, so so pretty to my eyes.

I felt my heart explode, recompose and then break into pieces again, my chest felt tight and relaxed at the same time, my face was warm, warm, warm from the heath radiating from out contact, my stomach felt like a puddle, and I wasn’t sure I had any actual organs anymore.

I was kissing Neil Josten.

I was kissing Neil Abram Josten.

Fuck my life.

I angled my head to the side, slightly budging his to move to the opposite direction, so that it would’ve been a more comfortable position. My hands slid down towards his neck and nape, tugging at them to make him come closer, give me more, more, more.

When he carefully opened his mouth I slid my tongue into it, careful, cautious, but still demanding, asking, begging. He hummed, low and a little pained, then broke away from me. He didn’t get far: my hands were still pressing his face close to mine, so he just managed to get his lips as far as he could to speak to me. His hot breath hit my skin and I wanted to melt.

“Tell me,” he panted, out of breath, “Tell me if- where- if I can touch you. Tell me.”

I was the one to take a step back and look at him in the eyes. The color of his irises was deep, dark like I’d never seen it, like cobalt blue instead of his normal indigo or his sharp icy tone. Dazed, dizzy, drunk. His pupils flicked to my lips and then back to me, and oh, oh, I was gone.

“Here,” I took the hands he had put in his pockets and placed them carefully on my hips, a shiver running down my spine. Neil must’ve noticed, because he seemed hesitant to actually place the hands on my body, “That’s… It’s supposed to be fine, there. Nobody really ever touches me there.”

“Are you sure?” he whispered, “I won’t do it if you’re not comfortable. I-I like this, I want you to enjoy it as well.”

“I am enjoying it,” I nodded, “I really am, I swear. Trust the Veritaserum if you don’t trust me. Just… don’t move them, okay? Keep them there and we should be fine.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I echoed, then crashed onto him again, keeping a safe distance between his body and mine, not wanting my trauma to make me hate that moment like I had hated my night with Roland the morning after, not wanting to tarnish and stain this good, brilliant, fantastic memory with my stupid, deficient, faulty brain.

When Neil became surer and more confident about what he was doing, both with his lips and his hands, he seemed to gain control of the situation. His shoulders slouched a bit, releasing some pent-up tension, sinking into the moment, gripping my hips tightly between his hands. Even his hands were bigger than mine.

He started moving us, pushing and shifting, until I was backed up against a wall, head tilted up and hands travelling on his face, neck, chest, hair, everywhere.

Had minutes passed? Hours? Days? I couldn’t tell. The siren on the stained-glass window had gone away long before I could remember, and there was no sign that we should’ve stopped any time soon.

Still, we did, after a while. We broke apart, stared at each other, gasping and panting and wheezing. Neil was a mess, with his glassy eyes and jumbled hair and swollen red lips. He swallowed harshly, eyes taking in every angle of my face, while I slowly came to the conclusion that I probably wasn’t in a much different condition than him.

“Hi,” he breathed out after a beat. He was beaming at me, a grin so wide that the corners of his eyes wrinkled.

“Hi,” I said back, smiling softly as well, as much as I could manage.

“You, um…” he cleared his throat, cheeks flushing red, “You’re a good kisser.”

I giggled, “Thank you,” I bit my lip, cocking my head to the side, “You as well.”

“Well, yeah, I haven’t had lots of practice but I’m a fast learner,” he was still blushing, all the way from his neck to his forehead, and he dragged his gaze away from me for a moment. When he looked back, he looked full of a fondness that I hadn’t quite ever seen on him, not towards me, “You’re beautiful.”

“That’s not fair, I can’t lie,” I smiled, hands still buried in his hair. I made my eyes crawl on every inch of his face as well, then sighed, “You’re so pretty, sometimes I think you make my eyesight hurt a little.”

He burst out laughing, clinging to my hips as he hung his head for a moment. His shoulders were shaking with silent laughter after a while, and surprisingly, I was smiling too. He licked his bottom lip, preparing to say something, but there was a sudden noise coming from the corridor.

“Has anyone seen Josten? He was on rounds this morning!” Allison’s voice hit us loud and clear from the outside world.

We both glanced at the window, finding it slightly brightened by the dusk’s raising sun. I bit my lip, my smile suddenly gone, as I watched Neil realize it was time to go. He sighed and pushed himself off me, his hands finally leaving my body as he glanced at the door behind him.

“See you in class?” he asked, voice lower than a whisper. He shoved his hands in his pockets again.

“I-I,” I stammered, then sealed my lips shut, lowered my gaze and nodded, “Sure.”

“Andrew?” Neil called me, and I slowly faced him. He seemed out of his depths, like he didn’t really know why he had called my name in the first place, “Is this… was… Does it end here?”

“I told you,” I assured him, “I didn’t want just a snog. I want you.”

His gave me a small smile, nodding, then headed for the door walking backwards.

“Then have me,” he simply said, before unlocking the door with the wand he had in his boot and slipping out of the prefects bathroom.

All alone in a room where I didn’t belong, I found myself grinning like I hadn’t done in a while. I felt a little like myself again. And my hips, the places he had touched and kissed, didn’t burn, didn’t hurt. Quite the contrary: they felt cold now that Neil’s body wasn’t near mine anymore.

For the first time in my life, when I thought back at the fact that I had just been kissed, forcefully, passionately, I didn’t want to turn myself into ashes. I didn’t want to catch fire and make the whole world burn down with me. I wanted to scream, but not like I was used to do, not from pain. I wanted to yelp, jump, shriek, dance, let the joy I nestled in my heart out and free and careless.

For the first time in my life, I wanted more. And Neil just told me that I could have it.

Notes:

how i love when the slowburns burn.

let's take it from the top, folks

alright, there are a few memories from the previous chapters, if you want to go check them they are, in order, chapter 1, 8, 17, 19 and 25
andrew just casually killing centaurs?? you go, you little menace. let them know who rules.
no but andrew being like a ruthless killer and then just being there and cry when neil wakes up and crack jokes like nothing happened??? i love them, so chaotic.

kevin trying to make andrew feel better. idk, i feel like their friendship in the original trilogy is severely overlooked, but i think they care deeply about each other, not only because their deal, so i will slip in some cute moments between them from time to time. this was one of them, even if very brief

andrew: i brewed a veritaserum potion and i put it on the nightstand
also andrew like three seconds later: is this water??? i drink.
THIS IS SO FUNNY TO ME PLS HELP.

and lastly... well. the kiss. the very PASSIONATE kiss. that was the first scene i wrote out of the whole story lmao

i know, i know, it was a little cruel of neil to take advantage of the fact that andrew couldn't lie to him, but they're both super proud people and i believed that if neil hadn't done that they would just have gone on bickering and fighting and wanting each other but never admitting it, so props to neil for actually saying "you know what, bitch? tell me you love me so i can kiss the shit out of you"

andrew feeling safe after being kissed is so precious. we all know they're there giggling and kicking their feet.
andreil are so cute pls

 

that's all. it was a very long chapter i don't even know how the hell i finished it so early lmao

see you next time!!

Chapter 32: All I wanted

Summary:

I don't think there are warnings for this chapter? let me know if I missed anything please!

Neil had asked me not to look at him transform to and back from the wolf, even if I had already seen it once when he had attacked me. Still, it was an easy enough request to follow, so once I noticed the sun was on the horizon, ready to rise, I went away, leaving the wolf alone as I went back to my human form and retrieved Neil’s clothes from the hatch I had built some months prior.

The hatch was not far away, and it was filled with some muggle clothes I didn’t really use anymore, not even outside of school. I picked up a shirt and a pair of joggers, as well as underwear. Neil didn’t need socks or shoes, since I’d be carrying him to the castle, so I hadn’t put any in there, but I made a mental note to ask him if he wanted some as well.

I heard a rustle near me, coming from the woods, and instantly looked up. A pair of eyes was staring at me, half covered by the trunk of a tree, but it was easy to recognize with my impeccable sight in the dark: it was one of Maximus’ children, the youngest.

Inside, I hoped he hadn’t been that near to us all of the night, knowing damn well I couldn’t have stopped Neil if he had identified the centaur as a prey, but I couldn’t help but toy with the evident fear in the boy’s eyes. I smiled wickedly, and he startled, panicked once he knew I had noticed him.

“Boo,” I hissed at him, making a move as I was about to chase him, and he just gasped and ran away.

With no intention to follow him, I just chuckled under my breath and went back to where I had left Neil. He was there, hand on his chest to steady his heart, completely naked in the dim light of the rising sun. I swallowed harshly and averted my gaze, forcing myself not to look at him while I passed him the clothes.

“Thanks,” he whispered, evidently out of breath.

I turned my back to him, deciding that the Forest was so interesting and pretty, so much prettier than the boy behind me, naked, he was naked, he was-

“Done,” he announced.

“Oh, thank God,” I muttered in return, twirling around.

Neil giggled, then took the hand I had promptly extended towards him to pull him up and haul him to his feet. He faltered, unable to have a good balance after his whole bone structure had changed in a matter of minutes, so I also opened my arm to catch him when he inevitably stumbled and fell.

He grasped my forearm, then looked up at me, a growing grin on his face.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied, one corner of my lips curling upwards.

We looked at each other for a couple of beats, just smiling, but he straightened up and let go of my arm.

“Sorry,” he murmured, pointing at my forearm, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“It’s fine,” I waved a hand, dismissing the point entirely. Neil’s touch didn’t seem to cause any troubles, not when I was expecting it to happen, not when it was out of any sexual context, “How are you feeling?”

“A little light-headed,” he was nodding carefully, eyes glazed over, “You?”

“Well,” I smirked, “It went considerably better than the last time we’ve done this.”

“I sure hope so,” he scoffed, feigning offense, “Have you shagged another bloke in the last twenty days or so?”

“Wait, let me think about it,” I made a face as if I was actually considering the possibility, to which Neil laughed and smacked my arm, on the bicep, “Fine, alright, what do you want me to say? That I’m all yours, forever and always?” I mocked him.

Neil widened his eyes, blue and clear as the sky above us, and blushed all over. I cackled, taking his hand.

“What are you doing?” he asked, still flushed. I couldn’t stop laughing.

“You’re going to faint at any moment now, idiot,” I reminded him, so he nodded hastily, “I just want to be ready to catch you, so you don’t fall face first on the ground. Wouldn’t want to ruin your pretty face, would you?”

From the subtle shade of pink his cheeks were previously tinted with, Neil became bright red, eyes basically a moment from popping out of their sockets.

It had been like that for a couple of weeks, me blatantly flirting with him any moment we were alone and him blushing, not really knowing how to respond to it. It wasn’t like I wanted to make him flustered or embarrassed, but it was really funny to see how he began to stutter and sway and cuss under his breath.

We hadn’t kissed again, not like we had the first time, anyway. Sometimes, in the endeavor to make his toes curl and see how much I could get him to turn red, I had stolen a peck or two, but they weren’t really kisses, and they weren’t really on his lips: I kissed the corners of his mouth, tugged a little at his bottom lip, but nothing more.

We were careful around each other, mostly because we didn’t get much time to be just the two of us, and I had sensed Allison watching us like a hawk, like she had felt something had shifted between Neil and me.

There was an unspoken agreement that the developments in our relationship – friendship? Partnership? Whatever? – had to be kept between us, but that was also mostly because we really hadn’t had the time to speak about it, and, since we had the whole rest of the day by ourselves, I reckoned that was the day we would finally set the record straight between us.

At the moment, though, Neil, in the midst of mumbling and murmuring words to brush aside my flattering statements, started to close his eyes, dizzy, and faltering, so I tightened my grip on his hand and concentrated on the most pressing matter at hand.

“Passing out?” I asked, plainly.

“Right on time,” Neil breathed out, then closed his eyes and went limp in my arms.

I grunted as I flung him up in my arms, adjusting his body against mine as I made my way back to the castle.

Entering the medical wing, I found Abby ready as always.

“Oh,” she seemed surprised, “You’re back.”

I nodded, making a beeline towards one of the bed and placing Neil on it, then taking my time to adjust the duvet around him, cover his whole body that was way underdressed for the current weather, and checking if I had missed any injuries and bruises.

“Why weren’t you here the last time? After Christmas? I know you were back at the castle,” Abby asked when she came next to me, putting the potions on Neil’s bedside table.

“Was it bad?” I asked instead of answering. What would have been the answer anyway? 'I was sexually abused and beaten to the pulp, so I fell into a deep catatonic state that didn’t make me notice that days had passed'? Yeah, sure I would’ve said that.

“Not really,” Abby shrugged, “He seems to deal better now. The wolf cried all night long though, not sure what that was about.”

The little shit had missed me. 

“I…” I looked down at Neil, him peacefully sleeping, “I think I have an idea why that was.”

“Is it something I have to worry about?” she asked, then waited for me to shake my head, and finally hummed, “Then I don’t care to know, he obviously wants to keep it a secret.”

I nodded again, stepping aside so she could inspect Neil’s body and search for anything to mend, fix or heal. She came in empty-handed, evidently, because she turned towards me with a pleased smile.

“He’s completely fine. And it’s still pretty early, so would you mind taking him to his dorm?”

“Wouldn’t his dorm mates notice if a Ravenclaw sneaked in to place Neil’s unconscious body in his bed?” I crossed my arms on my chest.

“Yeah, well, when you put it like that…” she trailed off, seeming to think about it, “Are you going to sleep?”

“Me?” I asked, caught off guard, “I… don’t think so?”

“So, I’m thinking,” she cleared her throat, eyes pleading, like she was about to suggest something deeply inappropriate, “It’s better if we don’t make it known that he spent the day in the infirmary, right? So… what if you take him to your bedroom? You’re friends. It’s not suspicious.”

It was deeply inappropriate.

I looked at her, then glanced at Neil, then looked at her again. My mouth was agape, lips parted, not sure what to answer. She placed her hands together, begging, eyes bright with hope.

“I-I… Well… I mean, alright?” I said, to which she squealed and clapped her hands.

“You’re the best,” she said.

I picked Neil back up and carried him… towards the Ravenclaw tower, apparently.

 

---

 

Cass would have a stroke if she saw what wizarding math looks like, I thought. I sighed, scratching my head while I looked down on my Arythmancy homework. I glanced at Neil, his figure barely visible wrapped up in the stuffy duvet as he was, checking if he was still asleep. Not seeing him moving, still listening to his shallow breathing, I went back to my homework, finally putting quill to paper as I started to write.

It all lasted for about twenty minutes, before I heard sheets rustling and a low grunt.

“Hello there, sunshine,” I greeted, looking at the parchment still.

“Hi,” Neil groaned, “Head. Hurts. Bitch.”

“So eloquent. Do tell me more,” I giggled while I turned to look at him. He had bags under his eyes, dark and purple, and his hair was messy and untidy. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, like a kid, and I tried my hardest not to laugh at him for the little idle motion.

“Not funny,” he yawned.

“Whatever you say, sleeping beauty.”

I finally left my desk, getting up to go and sit on the edge of the bed, looking at Neil while he still had visible difficulty to understand where he was or probably who he was.

“What time is it?” he asked gingerly.

“I think you slept for the most part of the morning,” I glanced at the window, finding the sun high in the sky.

“What did you do?”

“Essays upon essays,” I sighed.

“Sleep is better,” he sentenced, then he rubbed his closed eyelids again and opened his eyes. As soon as his gaze met my face, he smiled, “Good morning.”

“I guess,” I chuckled again. He looked, talked, and acted like a baby, “Did you find my bed comfortable?”

“I might ask for a swap of rooms,” he announced, eyes playful with a gleam dancing in his irises, “Why am I in your bed?”

“Abby’s orders,” I shrugged, “she said that it’d be less suspicious if people knew you were here instead of the infirmary. Like breaking the pattern before someone might’ve noticed you go to the infirmary once a month.”

“She’s a smart woman.”

“That she is.”

Neil seemed to take in the room, and I remembered the last time he’d been in there: the night Aaron went crazy and destroyed the whole dorm, the night I snuck out and went to sleep with Roland instead. I was lost in the memories of what seemed to have been ages before and was, instead, just a couple months prior, when I felt him shuffle closer to me.

I focused back on Neil’s eyes, finding them expecting, waiting, besieging me.

“Hi,” I breathed out, suddenly out of air.

“So, we have the whole day to ourselves, locked up in your room?” he asked, eyes still gleaming.

“S’pose we can go on a walk if you want to,” I swallowed.

“I rather like it in here,” he answered, “It’s cozy.”

“Huh,” I nodded, Neil’s face inching closer.

“Who’s the one blushing now?” he whispered, basically against my lips, brushing them with his own. I swallowed again, suddenly feeling the heat radiating on my neck and face.

He pulled back.

I seemed to be breathing evenly again.

Jesus.

“Do you have a spare toothbrush?” he asked, pushing out of the covers and up from the bed entirely, reaching the bathroom.

Jesus and God.

“Andrew? Did a big, bad, scary werewolf steal your tongue?” I heard Neil yell from the other side of the room. I heard his rummaging around in my drawers and then the water from the shower turning on.

Jesus, God and the fucking Holy Spirit.

“What are you doing in there?” my voice sounded like a squeal. I hated it.

“Taking a shower. Haven’t you?”

“No.”

“Want to come with?”

“Neil!”

“What?”

“You’re so frustrating.”

“You adore me.”

“I do not.”

“You admitted it under Veritaserum, you can’t take it back.”

“I will kill you.”

“Sure thing, handsome,” he laughed loudly, then the sound got muffled as he entered the shower.

Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. He was going to kill me. 

 

---

 

We did end up staying in, even if it wasn’t said out loud when Neil got out of the shower. He just asked me to lend him some other clothes, muggle ones still, and that was when I realized he had no intention of going out around the castle, because he wasn’t going to wear the uniform.

He stalked back to the bed and sprawled himself on it, stretching his muscles like a tired cat. I was still – pathetically – in the same shell-shocked state he had left me in since he’d gone to shower, but looking at him made me chuckle. He looked up, curious about the sound.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I shook my head, “Are your muscles sore? From the transformation?”

“Yes and no,” he replied earnestly, “It just takes some getting used to a wholly different set of muscles and bones when I turn back.”

“I think I can understand that,” I nodded.

I was still sitting on the edge of the bed, legs dangling from the side, while Neil raked my whole body with his piercing eyes. His voice was slow and deep when he spoke again, thick with something that could’ve been mistaken for lust if I didn’t know better.

“You can come closer, you know?” he said, “If you want to. Lay with me, or whatever you want.”

It felt strange to have been invited to lie down on my own bed, but I took the invitation nonetheless, adjusting myself so that I would be laying on my stomach right next to him. He offered me a small smile, looking up, my face directly above his.

His hand twitched, like he was about to touch me but refrained. I didn’t understand that, since we had come to an agreement of sort. Or maybe I was just presuming that he knew it was fine to touch me now, I didn’t have any big issues being touched by him.

Even though I couldn’t possibly know that for certain.

“Andrew,” he whispered, “Would you kiss me?”

“I-” I stammered, taken aback, “What?”

“I said, would you kiss me?” he repeated, voice steady, “We should talk, really talk about… stuff, but I want to kiss you.”

“Then kiss me,” I said, but I was leaning over him anyway, “Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I don’t want to trigger you,” he answered, “As much as I like this, I like you more, and I don’t want to ruin it by doing something reckless.”

“That’s considerate,” I acknowledged, at the very least.

It wasn’t really our second kiss; I had kissed him times before. Perhaps it was the fact that his whole body was so close to mine, or perhaps the fact that he kissed me with such sweetness and care that it made me shudder all over, but it actually felt like the first time it was happening. His leg touched mine, while his hand finally rose to clasp my hip.

I gasped at the touch, expected even if somehow sudden, and he took advantage of my surprise to deepen the kiss. He had a tight grip on my shirt, like he was holding on for dear life, and I felt like I was going to crumble to pieces if he let go.

He pulled away first, joy in his pupils as his eyes opened carefully to look at me.

“Okay,” he said in a soft whisper, “Let’s talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“You,” he replied, maybe a little too quickly, “and me. Us.”

I giggled, rotating to lay on my side and watch him better, my head propped up on my hand. I was still smiling when I nodded.

“What do you want to know?”

“What happened with Roland?”

“Woah,” I laughed, a little appalled by the request, “why would you want to know about that?”

“I’d like to know what I’m competing with,” his lips curled up in a smirk.

“It’s not really a competition, Abram,” I teased, “And, even if it were, you’re winning.”

“Still,” he insisted, looking up at me with fondness in his eyes, but also a fleeting hint of jealousy, “What happened between you too?”

“Normal stuff,” I shrugged, “he gave me a blowjob, I shagged him. I’m used to things the other way around, but it was fun. Until it devastated me to the point I had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized.”

“Wait,” Neil turned a dark shade of red, his cheeks bright with heat, “Wait. You’ve done things before Roland, too?”

“Willingly? A couple of times, in juvie,” I tilted my head to the side, looking at how he became more flustered by the second, “Does that bother you?”

“N-no,” he stuttered, crossing his arms on his chest, a little pout to his lips. I giggled, to which he smacked me with a pillow, “It’s not that it bothers me because I’m jealous. I couldn’t care less who you’ve been with before me. But I’m… You’re basically my first real kiss. I didn’t even enjoy kissing Tessa, it was something I did out of pure curiosity. And it felt… it felt nothing like this,” he added, becoming warmer and warmer with that pretty blush of his invading his neck.

Slowly but surely, I lifted my hand and placed it on Neil’s throat, two fingers pressing on his beating pulse and my thumb on his Adam’s apple, so I felt it bobble when he swallowed harshly. I smiled down at him.

“Don’t worry about that,” I urged, whispering, “It doesn’t matter to me. I like you for you, not for your experience. And you feel different from the others, too.”

“Do I?” his voice seemed to be broken with tears that weren’t really pooling in his eyes, but they were a bright and deep blue with hints of insecurity in it.

“Yeah, you do,” I nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of my lips, “And even if you are inexperienced, Hogsmeade is not that far-”

I was interrupted by another pillow smashing onto my face. I hollered with laughter, battling Neil’s hands as he tried to smack me again or to grab other pillows with his free hand. We fought a lot – he was weakened by the passed full moon, but he was not weak – and somehow, we ended up with me straddling him, knees on both sides of his torso as I pinned his wrists against the bed with my hands.

I leaned forward, getting in his face to taunt my victory with a wicked smile.

“Got you,” I whispered, panting.

“Yeah,” he choked out, in a way that confused me, “Yeah, you got me.”

He craned his neck up, but he didn’t kiss me. He merely hinted at it, giving me full access to his mouth as he waited for me to close the gap.

He didn’t have to wait long.

I trapped both of his wrists with one hand, freeing the other with the purpose to cup his jaw and keep him steady as I worked my way towards his lips. I didn’t just crash into them again, but slowly brushed them against my own, over and over, savoring the feeling of a piece of his skin on mine. When I finally placed the first kiss, it was only a peck, lingering on his face when I didn’t fully pull away.

“Andrew,” Neil whispered, begging, hot breath against my cold face.

Welp, I thought, that does it.

Passion is a fragile word, with a wide spectrum of meanings that couldn’t begin to describe the feelings tugging at my heartstrings, pulling, pulling, pulling as I pushed, pushed, pushed further, sank into the relentless joy filling up my lungs and liver and stomach and heart and everything, everything, he was everything.

It wasn’t simple lust, it couldn’t be just passion, whatever tied me to him, whatever kept me with my lips locked with his, tongues twisting together in our mouths, my hands pinning him down and his hands keeping me tight against his own body. I couldn’t budge, couldn’t shift, couldn’t move even if I wanted to, his wide palms flat on my hips and keeping me still. And I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to go.

I didn’t want it to end.

All good things do, though.

“You know, I’m tired of being your servant and Kevin- holy fucking shit!”

I broke apart from Neil immediately, straightening up to look at the girl who had just entered my room, Kevin – who she’d mentioned – standing right behind her. Their expressions were twinning, looking like they’d just seen an uncanny, paranormal event: eyes wide, jaws slack, pure shock. From the door, the bed was the first thing seeable, directly in front of it, and, as Neil and I laid perpendicularly to the mattress, it was clear as day what had been happening just moments before. Suddenly, I was grateful for not having followed through with my thought of undressing the both of us.

Renée kept shaking her head, a plate of food in her hand. I glanced outside the window, to see that it was full day, and, I imagined, lunch break for the other student that hadn’t spent the whole night up running through the woods with a werewolf.

Under me, Neil began shuddering with silent laughter. I gave him a pointed look, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

“You have to admit,” he gasped, “It’s a little funny.”

“It’s not,” I shot back, then looked at Renée and Kevin and scowled, “Get out.”

“Nuh-huh!” Renée protested.

I sighed, then snapped my fingers and willed the door to close behind their backs. If they wanted to stay, at least I could make sure nobody else would get in too. Neil let out a louder laugh as Kevin twirled around to watch the door snap shut.

“How did you-” he began.

“Not now, Day,” Renée interrupted him, “There are more urgent matters at hand. What’s going on here?”

“I think that was pretty self-explanatory,” I deadpanned.

“Yes, but when- how- who- what?!” she screamed.

“He used wandless magic. Renée, I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Kevin tried again.

“I use it all the time as for a couple of weeks until now,” I tried to reassure the one of the two who was making more sense, “You should’ve noticed. I’m with you all the time.”

“Are you seeing him, too?” Neil teased from under me, squeezing my hip – with the hand they could see.

Renée gasped; Kevin’s eyes widened even more – if that was possible. Neil giggled with mischief.

“Not helping,” I hissed at him through gritted teeth.

“I know, but I’m having so much fun,” he wheezed.

“Can someone explain this situation to me?” Renée reminded me that she was still in the room, even though Kevin, just like Neil, was starting to find the whole thing a little amusing, if the slight smirk on his face was anything to go by.

“Renée, the situation is what you see,” I answered, gesturing to Neil’s body still locked beneath mine, and he wasn’t even attempting at getting out of there.

“How long has this been going on?”

“Can you spare the interrogation for later? I was kind of in the middle of something,” I urged, groaning.

“That was sexy,” Neil remarked.

“Shut up,” I hissed, not even looking at him.

“That was even sexier.”

“Neil!”

“Fine, I’ll shut up.”

“Good boy,” I sighed, “So? Are you two planning on staying here much longer? Do you want to watch?”

“Who knows about this?” Renée answered with another question. That was starting to get frustrating.

“I believe we were just about to discuss that,” Neil intervened, this time with something actually useful, which I was grateful for.

“That didn’t look like discussing to me.”

“Renée. Get out,” I gritted out.

“We were just about to go,” Kevin said, placing his hands on Renée’s shoulder and beginning to pull her towards the door.

“I’ll come back,” Renée threatened, pointing an inquisitive finger at me.

As they opened the door and made their way out of my dorm, I suddenly realized something: that was a good piece of gossip, something that would spread through the school like wildfire, and there were plenty of people I didn’t want to find out just yet.

“Day, Walker,” I called them, and they wisely turned back to look at me just as they were starting to go down the stairs of the tower, “Not a word with anyone, or I’ll cut your tongues and feed them to the owls.”

“Your threats are always so intricate,” Kevin mused.

“I’ll keep my mouth shut, you have my word,” Renée used her sweet voice again, like she’d been grounded by the fact that I would assume she’d spread a secret of mine with just anyone. Maybe it’d been a bit unfair for me to point it out, but I had to be sure.

I nodded at them, and then closed the door with a snap of my fingers once again. I looked down at Neil, still beaming from beneath me.

“That was exhilarating,” he cooed.

I just grunted, letting myself fall to the mattress on my side and finally leave Neil some space to breathe. He turned on his side too, looking into my eyes as he curled up on himself.

“So,” he breathed out, “I think that’s… that’s the matter, yeah?”

I furrowed my eyebrows, giving him a puzzled expression.

“Me and you. What we are, whom do we say it to, what we can and can’t do,” he explained.

I nodded, thinking about it. In the end, I came up with an empty head.

“What do you want us to be?” I asked, plainly.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “Can’t we be just two boys who enjoy each other’s company and kiss and flirt sometimes, just for a while?”

Two boys, I repeated in my head. That was something worth mentioning, wasn't it? I had deeper, darker secrets to hold for him, even though they were really a no-brainer if he looked carefully at the various cues I gave him - which I knew I did -, so it shouldn't have been difficult to admit something so stupid and inconsequential. But was it inconsequential? If it were, I would've told more people, not just Renée. If it was, I wouldn't have been scared to tell Neil. 

But it felt like something I had to tell him. It felt like something he should've known. 

“Well,” I cleared my throat, “I… I don’t think that’s possible, no.”

“What?” he jolted up, concerned, “Are you regretting it? Did I hurt you in some ways? Is this triggering you? Andrew, I swear, I didn’t mean to-”

“Hey, hey,” I called, cupping his face with my hands so he would stop talking so quickly. He seemed out of breath, like he was having a panic attack, “It’s not that. I phrased it badly. The kissing and the flirting and enjoying each other’s company, that we can do.”

He seemed to relax a bit, but I could still feel the edge to his shallow breathing, like he’d pounce out of the bed at the smallest sign he’d made me uncomfortable. How could he even be asking me if I wanted to be with him? Wasn’t it painfully obvious that I couldn’t be with anyone, anyone else? I just wanted him. Him, him, him.

He was the air in my lungs and the blood in my heart and the muscles in my body. He kept me steady and grounded and in his small ways, he made me feel loved. That wasn’t something easy to accomplish. And I wanted him, I wanted to feel loved, I wanted him to feel just as I did, because I loved him. And, as I looked into his eyes, I was afraid I could never stop doing just that: I would’ve loved him forever, whether he’d love me or not.

That made it ten times harder to confess what I was about to confess. I felt my palms beginning to sweat, and I carefully removed them from his face so he wouldn’t notice.

“I have to tell you something, though,” I began, biting down on my bottom lip.

“What? You got an STD from Roland? I mean, I knew he must’ve slept around but you could’ve at least used a condom.”

“Neil…”

“But, really, what did I expect? He seems like the kind of guy who’d want to get shagged without protection. Does it feel better? To do it without?”

“Neil.”

“But, anyway, I think like he should’ve told you before you’d done it. It’s just mean and cruel to say it afterwards, isn’t it?”

“Neil.”

“Yes, darling?” he beamed down at me.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I groaned, rubbing my temple. That pet name shouldn’t have felt that good, like honey spread on my lips, “Would you let me talk? It’s difficult enough as it is.”

“Yes, go on,” he encouraged me, still smiling.

I gave him a shuddering breath, shaking as I was. I knew he had noticed, because he was glancing repeatedly at my arms, as if he was wondering whether to try to stroke them, caress me, calm me. In the end, I started speaking before he could stop thinking.

“If you want to embark in… whatever this is, if it even is a ‘this’, you need to know that I’m… well, I’m not a boy.”

Neil didn’t seem startled by the information. He smiled wider.

“I’m not a simple boy too, Andrew. You know, the whole turning-into-a-wolf-each-month thing?” he joked.

“Neil, I’m serious,” I urged.

“I know,” his smile lost the edge to it, becoming soft around the curves and corners, sweet and caring and endearing and everything nice, “I guess you’re not a girl, either?”

“No,” I shook my head, “I wouldn’t feel comfortable in my skin if I was fully a girl. But I’m not fully a boy. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“You’re non-binary,” he sentenced.

“I’m… I’m sorry, what?” I propped myself up on my elbows.

“Non-binary,” he shrugged, “It’s a term, like gay and demisexual and biromantic. A label for people who don’t fit into the words ‘man’ or ‘woman’, who feel like they’re something else entirely or maybe just a mixture of the two, or maybe neither of those. There are more specific terms for the gender spectrum, terms I gather you don't know about, and I could tell you some, if you want. But the broader label always covers everything, in a way. Does that seem to cover it?”

I blinked at him a couple of times, shocked. It was a lot of information to process.

“Do you mean there’s more people out there who feel like me?”

“Yeah,” he seemed to melt at the words, like he was finding me cute in my discovering of myself, “I can assure you it’s nothing weird or unheard of.”

“So…” I looked at him hopelessly, with fear in my eyes, a fear I didn’t even know I had, but so raw and exposed it felt like I was being skinned alive, “So, it doesn’t bother you?”

“Why would it? You’re not a girl nor a boy. I don’t like girls nor boys. I think it’s kind of perfect, actually,” he grinned widely.

I felt like I could’ve cried. Instinctively, I opened my arms, and he was quick to nuzzle between them. I placed my chin on the top of his head, which was only possible when we were laying down like that, and for the first time since the time I woke up from the car crash I felt the whole weight of Neil’s body against mine, steady like rock and soft like butter and tender under my fingers as I squeezed him tight.

“We tell no one about this,” I whispered, after some time, “We let ourselves enjoy our privacy and explore this thing together. Nothing has to change between us, we can still be just best friends. Best friends who kiss and cuddle and flirt. I think it's the best I can manage at the moment.”

“Sounds about right,” he nodded against my chest, his nose buried in the bend of my neck.

“Do you want more than what I can offer you?” I asked tentatively.

He struggled to look up at me in the weird tangle we had created. He offered a small, tight-lipped smile as he watched me with full adoration. I lifter my hand to stroke the scar on his cheekbone, and he leaned into my palm, humming as let himself sink into the touch. Another one of my heartstrings rang in my chest with pure devotion.

Oh, how I love this boy.

“I don’t want anything more than you, Andrew.”

Notes:

ANDREIL FLUFF ANDREIL FLUFF!!!!!!

let's begin!

first of all, Andreil respecting each other's boundaries is just too cute to me. Andrew won't look at Neil when he's naked, Neil won't kiss or touch Andrew if they don't initiate things. They both know what it feels like to be violated in any way possible, so they're careful around each other because they know they have something precious between them and don't want to fuck it up. they're so sweet help me

Andrew being a tease with Neil and then Neil repaying them with the whole shower bit I'M DYING Neil "did a big bad scary werewolf steal your tongue" Abram Josten didn't come here to play, I love him. And Andrew being just - in the name of the gods, spare me? JSHWDHIWI THEY'RE SO FUNNY

the whole scene in the bed is precious to me. we cover things that aren't really out in the open - Neil being scared about his lack of experience when Andrew's fare more experienced, sexually speaking, than him, Andrew coming out, them being scared about being in a full relationship (this is going to be explored more later, we'll understand the reasoning of both of them) - but that are important to know before embarking in something like they wish to have.

the bit with Renée and Kevin is hilarious. Andrew being like "i will kill you both" and Neil cracking jokes like it's a party jhddsojco while Renée is being completely shocked and appalled and Kevin is like "ayo??? wandless magic???? was i the only one who saw that????" (we'll also discuss the evolution of Andrew's powers later). It's so chaotic i love that scene

Not Andrew coming out and Neil being like "i know who you are, bitch" it's so important.

the last bit of dialogue. them hugging on the bed. "I DON'T WANT ANYTHING MORE THAN YOU"????. they're in love, your honor. they're both deeply, helplessly in love. bye.

(if you want to read the chapter where Andrew comes out to Renée again, it's chapter 4)

so this was a bit of a filler, but we're slowly nearing the most complicated and excruciating part of the fic, so treasure these sweet moments before I rip your heart out lmao

see you next time, lovelies!

Chapter 33: Kiss me Kiss me

Months passed idly.

The training for the Quidditch Tournament resumed, just as David stepped down as captain and Kevin took his place. Aaron – and some other people on the team – weren’t pleased by the change, but it was for the best: Kevin, although careful with pushing the stereotype of the nepotism baby, was really good at what he did. He was a champion, born and raised, and put most of his efforts in the game.

I did notice him steal some glances at Wymack as the flying and Quidditch instructor watched us play and train, but I hadn’t thought to ask about it. I also noticed the thing happening the other way around, just how Wymack seemed to soften around the edges when Kevin laughed a little louder or spoke with the tone of a captain. I thought about asking Abby whether the two knew each other outside of the school, but it seemed like a waste of time.

The Slytherins were winning the Tournament, like it had been predicted, and Allison would’ve been the second Slytherin captain in a row to win and then fly out of school, having finished her years. That didn’t seem to install any kind of jealousy in Dan, even though it was her last year too, and Renée seemed to be too proud of her girlfriend to care about losing at Quidditch.

Speaking of Renée, she had been on my case since walking in on me and Neil kissing. She had followed me around all the days after that, until I locked her into my room and explained what had happened. She’d been happy for me, told me that Allison was actually making a move on her too, and so we laid on my bed chatting and gossiping about our new flames.

The thing was, Allison’s and Renée’s flame grew into a real relationship – I never did understand what had happened to Seth, because Allison’s eyes pooled up with tears anytime someone mentioned him – while Neil’s and mine stayed still, without growing, but without losing its shine.

We were both painfully aware about the fact that the whole group was suspicious. Renée hadn’t told Allison the news, and, even if he was hanging with us a lot more, Kevin wasn’t really as much a part of the group as he would need to be to be confident enough to expose us. But Dan had found pretty odd the fact that suddenly Neil and I had made peace, and that I was hanging out with them all over again after avoiding them for months.

Thankfully – and regretfully -, her dumb boyfriend had said that it was clear as day – he’d said that winking at Kevin, to which the Gryffindor had arched his eyebrows – that Neil wanted me to be near him. That had cleared the air about me returning to the group, but it also had sparked up some questions about the two of us that Neil and I weren’t really able or ready to answer.

We had kept seeing each other for months. He hung around my room most of the days, and we tried to do our homework, but we always ended up talking and kissing and giggling and talking, talking, talking again.

We talked about everything, we talked about nothing in particular. He always tried to learn more about my life, and I always tried to coerce him into giving me some details about his.

When he talked about the past – his life before enrolling into Hogwarts – he always seemed to talk about his mum. She seemed like a sweet lady, but also really focused on getting Neil as far as possible from the place he’d grown up in. That meant that she scolded him a lot, that she was harsher than I had expected with him, and also that she had taught him that love was a waste of time and strength. He never talked about his dad, but that was one of the things I never pushed him to reveal.

Like he would never talk about his dad, I would never talk about Drake; but he talked about his mum, so I told him about Cass. I told him about how I had been into at least ten foster homes, only to be kicked out a short period of time after. Sometimes I got to stay a full month before they were fed up with me. I didn’t even know what I was doing wrong, they’d just… get rid of me as soon as they possibly could.

I told him that Cass was my real mother, the mother that Tilda never was. I was with her for the best part of two years, and she gave me the love that I never thought a mum could experience. I told him that she was ready to adopt me, if only I hadn’t gone to jail.

He had asked me what I did, and I had told him. He’d asked why I did it, and I’d shut up.

Still, we didn’t really talk about us as a couple. We avoided the subject, referring to it as a ‘this’. As soon as one of us brought up the topic of a relationship – it didn’t even have to be ours, maybe we’d bring up Dan and Matt or Allison and Renée – we’d hastily change the matter at hand.

It was a little fun, though. Neil still blushed whenever I told him he was pretty, and I still melted when he watched me with big, blue, loving eyes.

We talked about love quite a lot: what it meant to us, how many meanings a single word could cover, how much love had we felt in our lives. Neil didn’t seem to long it, yearn for it like I did. He was content with the love that he had received during his life, the love his mum gave him before she died, and he didn’t need more. But he still wondered what romantic love felt like.

I wished I could’ve told him, but I would’ve sounded delusional. Love is what I feel when you smile at me and my heart feels at peace, like you heal every wound on it, like you’re able to sedate the war in my head. I told him I never really had love in my life, and that those who had said they’d loved me were lying to me.

He’d kissed me, sweet and sour, for long, long minutes, until he pulled away and nuzzled into my throat, kissing me there too as he fell asleep.

That had happened a lot, too. We slept together, not every night but at least some of them, in my room, to the point that one of his dorm mates had interjected him at breakfast to ask him where he'd go when he didn’t come back. I had tried to stifle my laugh with eating the porridge in front of me, while Neil lied his way to the Slytherin boy and the group eyed us suspiciously.

We didn’t really touch each other – he had told me that he had his own issues with being touched – except when we kissed, and when we slept together, we were usually on our own side of the bed, only our hands tangled and intertwined together in the middle. He kept a toothbrush and some of his clothes in my room, just in case.

One day, we were sitting at breakfast when Dan slammed her hands on the table, making everyone startle. Neil and I were sitting next to each other, Kevin and Renée across from us, and we had linked our pinkies together under the table so nobody would notice.

Someone had, indeed, noticed.

“Alright, that’s enough,” she accused, “What’s going on between you two?”

“What?” Aaron asked, looking up and down at me and Neil, like he was missing something, “Between Andrew and Neil? What should be going on?”

“You’re so naïve it hurts my ears when you speak,” Allison rolled her eyes, “But I want to know, too. Spill the beans, the both of you. Renée won’t tell me anything.”

“Wait,” Matt interjected, “There’s something to tell? Does that mean they’re together?”

“What?” Aaron repeated, growing more and more disgusted by the minute, “No. Andrew isn’t gay.”

“Neither am I,” Neil replied, calm, as he carefully drank his tea.

“Pity, truly,” Nicky intervened, sighing, “But Aaron’s right. I would notice if my cousin was gay.”

Kevin and Renée stole a glance at each other, side-eyeing, then went back to eating in silence. That raised more suspicion as Dan replied to what Nicky had just said.

“I don’t care what you say. There’s something fishy going on there,” she spat.

“I’m in on the bet. I think they’re shagging,” Allison crossed her arms on her chest as she leaned back to look better at me and Neil.

“Gross,” Aaron pointed out – and it was – before turning to Renée and basically beg, “Please say something that’ll dismantle this whole debate.”

“Yeah, Renée,” Kevin chuckled, “Tell them it isn’t true.”

Matt gasped, replicating his girlfriend’s gesture of slamming his hand on the table. The wood shook so much a bit of my tea spilled out of the cup.

“Kevin’s in on this too! For the love of Merlin’s beard, they’re together.”

“We aren’t,” Neil chuckled softly, but promptly squeezed my pinky under the table, “But you can keep betting on it, for all I care.”

“Please don’t,” Aaron grunted.

“Why do you care so much anyway?” I asked, going back to eat my toast. With my non-dominant hand, which nobody had seemed to notice, but that wasn’t my problem.

“Because Neil’s perfect and you’re going to ruin him, because you’re mean and rude and everything bad in this world,” Renée was the one to answer, because she knew I wouldn't be upset by the words if she was the one pronouncing them.

Neil’s eyes became colder, sharper, as he took in the group. That was the only moment he let go of my hand.

“I hope you know that if Andrew and I really are together, it’s none of your business, so stop discussing it. Also, while we’re at it, don’t talk about Andrew like he’s some stain on my perfect demeanor. I’m not perfect, I’m far from it, and the only thing Andrew could do is make me better,” he sentenced.

There was a tight silence that followed, while I tried my best to hide my grin and Kevin did his best not to start laughing like Neil had just said the funniest joke ever.

It was Allison who broke the silence.

“Yep. Definitely shagging.”

“Piss off,” Neil stood up, making his cup of tea clash onto the table as he stomped away.

I stood up right after, following him with my gaze as I watched the direction he took into the corridor so that I could chase after him. I didn’t care that most of the eyes of the Ravenclaw table, nay, of the school were on Neil as he stormed off, let alone the ones of our friends: I just kept looking at him, gaze lost in the bobble of his red hair.

I clenched my jaw, suddenly angry at the whole group. I scowled at them, sneering.

“Oh. Yeah, I see what you mean,” Nicky whispered at Allison, who gave him a pointed look.

“You’re all exasperating,” I rolled my eyes and took a last swig at my tea and a last bite of my toast before finally taking off to find Neil.

I strolled casually around the corridors, hoping I would just see him looking out of one the windows as he seemed to do often when he was frustrated and alone. But I couldn’t seem to find him anywhere, until-

“Pst,” I heard.

I turned around towards one of the doors in the hallway. It was of a classroom nobody really used apart some students when they organized study groups for certain subjects that were particularly hard to pass. The door was ajar, just a sliver open, but an icy blue eye could be seen in the dark, pretty and magical and everything sweet. I smiled absent-mindedly, then got inside the room, hoping no one had seen me.

I locked the door with a wordless spell, just needing a snap of my fingers to cast it. Neil still looked impressed every time I practiced wandless magic, which only made me chuckle, but that reminded me I had a meeting with Lupin that day about just that. Suddenly sullen, Neil took a step towards me.

“I’m sorry they said those nasty things about you,” he whispered, “They can be so annoying when it comes to me.”

“I’m not upset about them, Neil,” I reassured him, carefully caressing his forehead and twirling my hand in a loose curl that was hanging in front of his eyes, “I swear, I couldn’t care less.”

“Yeah, well,” he sighed, “maybe I do care a little.”

“You want them to give you their approval of me?” I teased, moving closer and locking his body against mine.

He visibly fought the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth, hanging onto his bleak mood and his fierce pride.

“It’s not like that,” he protested, pouting, “But it’d be nice if they thought better of you, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, one hand cupping his cheek while the other still raked through his hair, careless, “I don’t think I really care about their approval, or what they think of me. I just care about you.”

He grunted, dropping his head forwards so it’d be placed carefully on my shoulder. He seemed to be getting taller and taller by the day, to the point I either dragged his mouth down to mine or I’d have to stand on my toes to kiss him.

“Why do you have to be so lovely when only I can hear you?” he slammed his forehead against my shoulder a couple times, lightly, and I giggled at his frustration.

“Because you deserve it,” I said.

Because I love you, I thought.

“Neil,” I called him, then sighed when he slowly raised his head again, a sulky expression etched on his face. I caressed the scar on his cheek, so fond of him my heart could’ve burst at any given moment, “I really don’t care about what they think. Do you?”

“S’pose,” he muttered under his breath, “They’re my only friends, like ever.”

“Then I’ll try to behave with them,” I whispered softly, placing a lingering kiss on his forehead, “But I won’t make any promises that they’ll like me better eventually. You can still count on Renée, she likes me.”

“Kevin likes you. And Nicky, of course,” he seemed to say that more to himself than to me. I giggled again.

“Yeah, they like me too. I think Dan mostly respects me, and Matt does whatever she does, so you’re set on that front,” my hands were buried deep in his red curls as I locked eyes with him.

“Allison’s Renée girlfriend, so she’ll grow to like you eventually, for Renée’s peace of mind,” he nibbled on his bottom lips, “That leaves…”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “You can’t do much about him.”

“You never told me what happened between you two. Aside from killing your mum,” he said it casually, like it was no big deal.

It made me laugh, and I placed a second kiss on the bend of his jaw, enjoying how he shivered at he contact. He instinctively grabbed my hips, like he did every time, and I sank onto him.

Chest to chest, heart to heart.

“It’s a long story. A long story of foster homes, and adoption, and letters, and running away from bad people,” I whispered against his skin, “And she wasn’t my mum.”

“Right,” he nodded, but his voice sounded spirited, like he had lost the point of the conversation entirely, “Cass is your mum.”

I straightened up, looking at him. It rolled right off his tongue, right off his lips, just a phrase, just one word after the other, just a few letters cramped together. He’d had his eyes closed, relishing in the feeling of my lips on his neck, so he opened them when I had hastily pulled away, scrambling back so much that he’d had to tighten his grip on my hips to stop me from stumbling.

“What did you say?” I whispered.

“That Cass is… I’m sorry, did I remember the name wrong?” he frowned.

“No, no, no, Neil,” I shook my head, a grin spreading on my lips, “you said it right. You’re so right. You- you-”

“Andrew,” he was laughing, taking in every inch of my face, “Andrew, darling, what’s happening?”

“I’m just-” I stammered, my mouth dry and my head spinning with giddiness, “Nobody ever said it out loud. Nobody ever said it like it was a fact, you know? I just felt it. I was the only one who knew it, I’m not even sure she felt that way too…”

“Oh, oh,” Neil placed a tentative kiss on the corner of my mouth, “You’re so sweet. Of course she felt it too, darling. How couldn’t she?”

“Thank you,” I gave him a small smile, the realest I could manage, the realest I had ever felt, as I whispered the words and looked up at him, “You should really stop growing. It’s annoying that I have to tip my head back to look at your eyes.”

He leaned forward, still smiling, eyes peaceful and glimmering with happiness. Happy, happy, happy. We were so happy.

“I’m just a year younger than you. You should get over it,” he teased, squeezing my hip.

“When’s your birthday?” I asked, suddenly hit with the realization that his was the only one the group never celebrated, “You never said.”

“You never asked,” he said simply, offering me half a shrug, “It’s the 19^th of January. It’s registered differently at the school, so that I could attend your year instead of setting me back one.”

“What’s the registered one? Still in January?” I felt a pang of discomfort knowing that his birthday had been while we had already started… this and I hadn’t given him any present.

“No. It’s the 31^st of March, actually,” he announced.

“Oh,” I was taken aback, “Neil, your birthday is the day of the last task. It's the fake one, but still.”

“It’s Dumbledore’s doing, because he knows I'm the only one who will notice, even if I don't know what it means,” he rolled his eyes, “I swear, that man sometimes tries to get on my nerves.”

“Are you going to wish to win the Tournament?” I teased, playing with the curls at his nape once again. The air shifted, the previous tension abandoned and I grinned playfully at him.

“Would you let me if I asked?” he smiled, leaning closer and closer.

“Absolutely not. I’m ranking first before you, I’m not leaving that post, Josten.”

“Mh. I have a feeling you’ll regret this, Minyard,” he squeezed my hip yet again, bringing me back to the situation at hand, “Can I kiss you?”

“Let me think about it.”

“Andrew,” his whisper sounded pained, hot breath fanning my neck as he tilted his head to push his lips in the position to kiss me there, “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

 

---

 

I looked back at Neil and found him simply smiling at me as he exited the classroom. I wasn’t surprised to find a playful smirk on my teacher’s face when I went to the front of the class, ready to speak to him.

“So,” he started, “I gather playing hero has rewarded you.”

“I think that’s highly inappropriate for you to suggest,” I shot him a glare. He only laughed at me.

“Sirius wanted you to know he approves, by the way. He’s so much sweeter than me, believes in romance and pretty things,” he waved a careless hand, as to signify how much he did not mind about those things himself, “As much as I’d do anything for him, sometimes he’s just to soppy for me to handle.”

“Well, that must not be a deal breaker, if we’re here talking about him,” I shrugged.

“That’s true. I actually like that he’s passionate about this sort of things,” he smiled at me softly, eyes empty as he looked past me to some fond memories, but then he seemed to snap out of it as quickly as he had lost himself in them, and looked at me sternly, “So, do you know what I want to talk to you about?”

“I think I have some clues,” I crossed my arms on my chest, swaying on my heels.

A part of me knew Neil was waiting for me outside the classroom and we had a very brief lunch break before we had to part our ways. We weren’t the clingy type of couple – we weren’t really a couple either – but there were days we seemed to be more needy, reaching for each other more than usual, like we were the only thing that could somewhat comfort the other even if we didn’t even know what the problem was to begin with.

Lupin sighed, leaning back in his chair to look at me up and down.

“He’s waiting outside?” he simply asked.

“Yes.”

“You want to go to him?”

“Yes.”

“Are you two in a relationship?”

“No.”

“Why not? You seem quite fond of each other.”

“Remus, get to the point.”

“Alright,” he raised his hands in surrender, “It’s just… You look nervous. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Neil is bound to hurt me, one way or the other,” I announced, matter-of-factly, “I’ve always known it. He has too many secrets and won’t tell me any,he has lied to my face more times that he’s told the truth, and he doesn’t like boys. He says he wants me now, but that could and will end sooner or later, so I don’t have any expectations for this to work on a long term. I have very little time with him, and I would like to spend it with him and not with you.”

“That’s… a very sad description of the situation,” he furrowed his eyebrows, “Are you sure he doesn’t feel the same way you do?”

“I don’t feel anything,” I gritted my teeth.

“You mean to tell me you’re doing this out of pure physical enjoyment? You don’t strike me as the type to want that kind of relationship with someone,” he seemed to ponder his words, then added, “Although, there was that boy from Hogsmeade-”

“Would everyone stop bringing Roland into this?” I was fuming at that point, while I could hear Neil’s pacing back and forth on the other side of the closed door.

“I’m sorry,” Lupin sighed and frowned, “I know it’s none of my business-”

“It’s really not,” I interrupted him again, fists clenching at my sided.

“And I’m aware of that,” he said calmly, one syllable at the time, “But…”

“But what?”

“It’s stupid,” he shook his head, “but I care about you. You and him, you are not only my protégés as a teacher, but you’re also like… sons to me. A family, someone I look for and care about, and I would hate for any of you to get hurt in this messy situation.”

I softened at the words of the Professor. After months spent with him in close quarters, after most of my days and afternoons and some of my sleepless nights gone by talking to him about nothing and everything, about me and Neil and werewolves and the Forest and the Tournament and the unexpected events that were turning my life upside down, maybe I hadn’t realized that I thought about Remus as somewhat of a father figure, too.

Why else would I talk to Sirius with that frankness before the second task, over the Christmas break? Why else would I be so comfortable in telling Remus how I felt about Neil and our situation, while I had various restraint in telling even my closest friends?

Kevin and Renée knew something was happening, but they didn’t know all. Remus seemed to read right through me and Neil like sheer sheets of paper, and I couldn’t do much but smile timidly at him and attempt to reassure his fatherly instincts of protection.

“I won’t get hurt. And, even if I do end up hurt, I know it’s coming,” I said, simply, offering him half a shrug.

“That’s a pathetic attempt at hiding your feelings, Andrew,” Lupin cocked one of his eyebrows, “You forget I’m a werewolf too. I can tell you’re lying, and I can tell you love him.”

“Ugh,” I groaned, hiding my face behind my hands, “Don’t say that out loud.”

“Why? You don’t know?”

“I know,” I hissed, “But I refuse to acknowledge it.”

“That’s not going to work,” he snorted, “Especially if you keep seeing each other.”

“Remus,” I sighed, “I really don’t want to talk about this, alright? I know it’s dumb, and idiotic, and I am probably doing it despite all expectations just because I get very few good things in life and I am determined to make the most out of them, and I’m being very selfish in not telling him how I really feel about him and I know all of this, but I want… I want…” I struggled to get the words out, then finally breathed out, “I want him to be close to me for a few months. I have waited for this for a year and now that I have it, I can’t let it go to waste just because my feelings for him are much greater than his for me.”

“That’s not what I was saying. And I wouldn’t be that sure about the last part,” he sighed again, then rose from his seat, “But fine, I won’t push it. Let’s talk about why you’re really here so you can go be with Neil.”

I breathed out a “Thank you,” as he circled the desk to come and lean onto it on the same side I was. He crossed his arms on his chest and nudged his chin forward, as a sign of telling me to go on.

“Show me your abilities, oh great wizard,” he teased.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, a little dazed by the abrupt change of subject.

“Do you know the spell to tidy a room?” he asked, then, when I nodded faintly, he prompted, “Then move all the tables and then put them back into their spot again. No words, no wand. Show me.”

Tired, I whirled around to face the classroom and did just as he said. One snap of my fingers, and the tables all piled onto the other, just like I'd thought, creating a tall, unsteady tower; before it could fall and crash, I snapped my fingers again as the tables floated back to their places.

I swiveled towards Lupin, who was watching the desks. He was expressionless, neither amused nor preoccupied, just plainly watching the objects more around at my will.

“How do you feel?” he suddenly asked, “I mean, physically. Does that tire you? Do you feel drained or weak?”

“I suppose at first, I did. But I mostly do small casts this way, and now I just feel a little light-headed,” I explained, careful about the details, because I felt it was important.

“What do you use it for? I saw you unlock doors in the hallway, is that all?” his eyebrows were furrowed again, a deep line created in between them.

“Lighting cigs, locking doors, summoning my wand or books when I don’t feel like getting up,” I shrugged, “Once, I used it to charm a quill so it wrote my essay as I dictated it because I didn’t feel like writing. That did make me feel like I was about to pass out, but it was brief and then I went back to normal.”

“Alright,” Lupin was nodding, carefully, his eyes travelling through the room as he visibly thought about every point of my list over and over, “So, it’s not difficult for you?”

“Not really, no,” I tilted my head to the side, examining the anxious expression on the Professor’s face, “I just… I thought that if I could do it wordless, I could also do it wandless. Is this… Is it supposed to be difficult?”

“Yes,” Lupin replied almost instantly, “Not many wizards can do it, not in the cultures that are not accustomed to doing it. I can do it, but that’s only because I have the additional power of being a Magical Creature, and, with time and experience and practice, so could Neil. Dumbledore can do it, but he’s Dumbledore. You? You shouldn’t be able to. Even if you should be able to, it should come out sloppy and mostly inefficient, even when using small charms. But yours are flawless.”

“Wait, I don’t understand,” I waved my hands in front of me, a rush gesture to urge him to stop talking, “Didn’t you say I’m… powerful and stuff?”

“Yes, Andrew, but a sixteen year old boy shouldn’t be, couldn’t possibly be this powerful,” he was raising his voice, slightly more concerned by the second, “Who knows about this?”

“Um, like, who did I tell this to?” I asked, then to his positive response I went on, “Neil, that’s for sure. Kevin and Renée, because they asked me about it and saw me use it. And I guess anyone who has noticed it like you did.”

“I can work with that, I think,” he started pacing and his steps were echoing Neil’s from outside the door and I sensed the edge grow inside me, anxiety and panic and uneasiness creeping up my spine as I watched Lupin fret, “I’ll have to tell Albus and Minerva. You have to tell no one and ask the ones who know to keep this a secret. Can you do that? Wait, scratch that, you must do that.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I declared, hoping he’d stop and explain to me why he was so tense.

He stopped, gratefully, and turned to me. His eyes were rimmed with red, pupils small and sharp, and I counted just a few days to next full moon. I swallowed harshly, suddenly jittery and nervously nipping at my bottom lip as the Professor looked me up and down again, examining me like a doctor with a patient.

“I thought you were just a prodigy,” he whispered, maybe just as painfully aware as I was that Neil was probably listening to our every word with his inhuman hearing, “But perhaps, almost surely, you’re more than that. Does Aaron have any of your abilities? Maybe they’re tied to your unknown father.”

“I don’t think so. Magic doesn’t come to him as easily as it does to me,” I replied, my heart pounding.

“Dumbledore will know more. There must be a reason why he’d drag you here only now and not before, and I’m sorry that I’m just now thinking about it,” Lupin sighed, and he looked almost worn out.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Dumbledore’s known for actions like this. He…” Lupin swallowed, “When we were younger, Sirius used to complain about the fact that Albus relied on a ‘baby army’, because most people in the Order against Voldemort were teens or barely past that, recruited in Hogwarts. J-James,” his voice broke at the mention of his late best friend, and he took in a steading breath, “James always said that he didn’t care that we were going to war that young, it was the cause that mattered. I’ve always wondered what he’d think about what Dumbledore has done to his son. To my son, Harry.

“He’s not a bad person, Dumbledore, not all in all, I believe. But he justifies the means with the ends, and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt in the process of reaching the greater good. I reckon he’s the only one capable of taking such rush and difficult decisions at times, but I almost lost my husband during two of the wars he orchestrated, and my son has been a pawn in his game of chess since the moment he came out of my best friend’s belly. He’s not a monster, sure, but he’s not a good person either. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I nodded, even though I was tempted to admit that I wasn’t that much of a good person either, with two murders on my conscience, “I understand. But what does that have to do with me?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past him to do it again. He’s old, much older than you would entirely believe, but he’s smart, cunning, astute. If he senses there will be a problem at the school or in the wizarding world, he’ll be eager to intervene, and it’s much easier when you have a powerful wizard like you on the good side,” Lupin explained, resuming the pacing.

“What? Like- wait, another war?”

“No,” he shook his head, which was hung low as he watched his feet go one in front of the other, “I think this time it’s more personal, intimate. It won’t be on a national scale, which will make your job somewhat simpler.”

“You’re losing me again, Remus,” I tried to come off as demanding and intimidating, but my voice was trembling, and my hands had begun to quiver.

He stopped to look at me, again, mid-pace, then rushed towards me with a preoccupied step. He looked at me with a soft expression that should’ve been sweet but made me even more uneasy, and I started to pick at the dry skin on my lip again.

“You shouldn’t worry about this,” he shook his head again, like he was scolding himself, “I’m sorry. Just stop using wandless magic and I’ll deal with the rest, alright? If Dumbledore has something in store for you, I’ll find out before it comes to pose a problem.”

“Right,” I answered, a bit out of the loop, my head light and my heart still beating fast and hard in my chest.

“What’s wrong?” Lupin asked carefully.

I’m scared, I thought. And maybe I was projecting that thought out, maybe it was the way my heartbeat was crashing against my ribcage, maybe it was the foul, tense air that had come to be in that classroom, but I guessed Neil had had enough of waiting.

The door swung open and it hit the wall with a loud thud. The redhead boy was snarling, teeth showing like a wild animal, dashing through the room to reach both me and the Professor, who took a tentative step back. Neil took the small space between me and Lupin, facing him, but he glanced back at me.

“Can Andrew go now, Professor?” Neil spat that word like it was degrading. And it was: Neil called Lupin by name, like I did. Because Lupin was right: he was sort of a father figure to the both of us.

The Professor was struck by it like Neil had just slapped him right across the face. He nodded, almost sad, and took another step back.

Neil swiveled to look at me at that point, giving a pointed glance to my shaking hand. I took his in mine, feeling suddenly steady enough to walk and breathe again as my fingers slid through his. He smiled fondly at me, but then turned his face to shoot Remus another venomous glare.

“Don’t,” I whispered, and Neil seemed to calm down a bit.

“Just because you asked,” was what he said instead, then began to drag me across the room and past the door.

When we were out, we found the same empty classroom of that morning and slid inside it. Neil let go almost instantly of my hand and looked at me with icy blue eyes.

“I won’t pressure you to talk,” he started, “I don’t want to know the details. But I have to ask you what he’s told you to get you so worked up.”

“Weren’t you listening?” I asked, careful, voice below a whisper.

“Only to your heartbeat. I wanted to grant you privacy,” he shrugged, but inched forward, “So? What did he say to you?”

“Things. About me and my power and how it is… unheard of, basically,” I sighed, trying to let out some of the tension, “I also have to ask you not to mention my wandless magic to anyone.”

“That can be arranged. I don’t talk to many people anyway,” he smiled gently.

“You’re tougher than what you look like,” I laughed.

“What can I say? People tend to underestimate me,” he shrugged again, half-heartedly.

Suddenly exhausted, I leaned forward and rested my forehead on his chest, breathing in his deep scent. He smelled like violets and roses, because he had taken a shower that morning in his dorm. When he took them over at mine, he always smelled like my shampoo as well, and I pretended not to like it just as much as I really did.

“He said that Sirius approves of us,” I blurted out, and then tensed up when I realized I didn’t actually want to say it – I had just been thinking it, but it seemed my rational thinking was impaired when I was around Neil.

Neil’s chest shook with laughter under my face while he put his hands on my hips in such a natural, beautiful way.

“Sirius is the coolest of the two, anyway,” he sentenced, then after asking his usual – it was mine, actually. It was a formula I had invented, but he used it way more often that I did – ‘yes or no’, placed a kiss on the top of my head, “We should go to class.”

“I’m not really feeling it,” I grunted.

“Want to skip and lay in bed and do nothing for the rest of the day?” Neil asked, drawing lazy circles on my hips with his fingertips.

I looked at up at him, mesmerized.

“You’re my hero,” I announced, even with a hint of sarcasm. Neil got it and laughed loudly.

“Shut up,” he said, as he took my hand again and dragged me up and up and up through the stairs towards the Ravenclaw tower, towards my room, my bed.

Our room, our bed.

Notes:

HIYAAAAAAA

Andreil is so soft???? i love them btw.

From the top, loves!

Hints at Kevin's and Wymack's relationship... before you ask, no, Wymack doesn't know he's Kevin's dad, he just looks fondly at Kevin because he reminds him of his mother. Should Abby be jealous? Perhaps lmao, but anyways we'll find out about all of this later

NOT DAN AND ALLISON BEING ON NEIL'S AND ANDREW'S ASS LIKE SDISOJDOHOA they're so funny. Matt is my favorite himbo, his wink at Kevin when he says "it's clear as day" PLEASE he's adorable. Kevin and Renée trying not to crack during that whole conversation and Aaron being like "somebody save me" the whole interaction was hilarious bye

Neil being in protective boyfriend mode. I love him.

Shout out to Nicky "I see what you mean" Hemmick, you go king, fix your gaydar.

NEIL LOOKING FOR THE FOXES APPROVAL AND ANDREW LIGHTING UP WHEN NEIL CALLS CASS THEIR MUM I'M GOING TO CRY??? WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF?????

had you noticed that I had never mentioned Neil's birthday before this? It will be important in the next chapter ;)

so... the whole scene with Lupin... mh. BEFORE YOU COME FOR ME I like Dumbledore as a character, but I don't like him as a person. He's manipulative and has let children go to war for him and, well, what Lupin said in his little monologue, I guess. He's a morally grey person, who, in order to do some good, did some really fucked up stuff. If you're in the marauders fandom you'll get what I'm saying, if you're a Potterhead... I'm sorry, I guess? Pls don't hate me because of this

That said, Lupin is being a little bitch as well. What are you doing, scaring Andrew like that, Remus??? Tbh, he does feel like a father to Andrew, so he also feels it's their job to protect them. And, after raising Harry, would you blame the man? He's concerned about the safety of his kids. (and he's right to be worried)

NEIL COMING IN AS A PROTECTIVE BOYFRIEND AGAIN! i love him. Did I already say that? idc, i love him.

Also, special mention to the 'yes or no?' question. I couldn't not include it. they're precious.

that's it. Sorry if this feels too much like a filler, but it has some important details. From the next chapter forward, you will miss these little idillic sceneries (there will be some more in the near future, but after that it's all hell break loose) so enjoy them while they last lmao

byeeeeee <3

Chapter 34: Can you feel my heart?

Summary:

TW!
mention of self-harm scars, graphic depiction of violence, mention of blood

“Do you think it’ll be dangerous?”

Renée kept pacing around in my room as I dressed up for the third task. She was nipping at her carefully painted fingernails, the polish chapped by the quick and sharp nibble of her teeth.

She had been constantly preoccupied about the Tournament since the second task, and I reckoned being kidnapped in a state between sleep and wakefulness would’ve done that to anyone, but she couldn’t seem to bear the thought of me having to go back to the tasks when both Neil and I had risked our lives that day in the Forest.

I couldn’t be bothered to tell her that Neil and I had also been in the Forest several times since that day, and that the children of the centaur I had brutally murdered for trying to kill Neil were still following me wherever I went. I couldn’t be bothered to tell her that I risked my life every time I went back to the Forest with my somewhat-somehow-maybe-boyfriend, because he was a werewolf and could lose control and kill me, because I was a cold-blooded killer and centaurs were out for revenge.

That would’ve just made her worry even more. And by the state she was in, it was probably more cautious to never tell her any of that, because she had escaped the Forest unscathed and I didn’t want her to wound her after months, just by recalling what had gone on. I simply watched her as I tied the shoelaces on my combat boots and didn’t utter a word as she babbled her paranoias away.

“What do you think he’ll make you do this time? Should it be harder than the second task? Will it? That man is insane. Dan was right, you are not prepared, none of you are, and what Lupin might have managed to do in these months is pointless if Dumbledore keeps sending you on suicidal missions. And what about Neil? What if he has PTSD or something?”

“He doesn’t,” I barely succeeded in putting the two words in between her ranting, but she mustn’t have heard my muttering because she simply went on.

“What about you? Will you just go and try to save Neil if he so happens to be in danger again?” she assumed an accusing tone, turning to me with rage and fury and fear and worry in her eyes.

“Yes,” I simply said, because it was the truth.

“Will Neil come save you if you’re in danger?” she clenched her fists on her sides, not able to control herself any longer.

“Why wouldn’t he? Besides, I don’t need him to,” I replied, then raised my hand to stop her when she tried to object, “I won’t be in danger, Renée. I merely need to find a cup and take it, how hard could it be? Who will attack me? The guy whom I stole the right-hand man to and who tried to kill me and failed? My… whatever Neil is?”

“What if it’s a ruse to get you to lower your guard so he can attack you and win?” she argued.

“I don’t think Neil cares about the Tournament enough to come up with such an elaborated plan. Not to mention endure the torture of kissing me for so long for, and I repeat it just in case I was unclear before, a cup,” I pointed out.

“Maybe that’s part of the ruse, too. Making you think he doesn’t care,” she pointed a finger at me, eyes wide like she had made a discovery of some sorts. I chuckled.

“Renée, I promise I can tell if Neil lies. And, as much as it might be easier to believe than anyone actually liking me, I really think he does,” I couldn’t help the slight blush I felt raising on my cheeks.

“Maybe-”

“Renée,” I rose to my feet, grasping her wrist that was uncontrollably shaking, and tried my best to soften my eyes as I took in her whole face, wrinkled and consumed by the concern for me, “I enjoy your conspiracy theories, I do. But you won’t do me any favors by being like this. We spar all the time, don’t we? You know I can defend myself if it comes down to it. Even when I went back in the Forest to save Neil, he was the one battered up. I was fine. Tired, worried about him in a way you couldn’t possibly imagine, but fine. You’ll have to trust that I’ll be fine this time around, too, or I won’t be able to accomplish anything because you’ll get me as anxious as you are about it. Alright?”

She took a moment to answer. The tremble extended from her hand to her entire body, bottom lip quivering and eyes swelling with tears. But, after a beat, she just nodded once, a little unconvincing but still it was there.

“Alright,” she finally breathed out, a wobbly and faint whisper.

“Thank you,” I whispered back, offering her a small smile.

Right then, there was a light knock at the door and Neil’s voice coming in from behind it. ‘Ready?’ he’d asked. I let go of Renée’s wrist and sighed, while she looked at me confused.

“Would you mind?” I asked her, whispering – and praying that it worked – so Neil couldn’t hear. The full moon had passed a little over a week prior and his senses weren’t as sharp as they were on a rising moon.

“What?” she asked, just as low, maybe sensing that I needed to be discreet, “What do you have to do?”

“It’s just… It’s silly, but I want to have a moment alone with him.”

“Fine by me.”

“Thanks,” I breathed out, then I yelled at the redhead boy, “Come in, Josten!”

The door opened carefully as Neil stepped inside my room and peered at both me and Renée standing awkwardly at the center of it. He tilted his head to the side, looking like a confused puppy. I fought the urge to chuckle at him, his furrowed brows and the deep crease between them.

“Renée was just going,” I told him, then basically ushered her away, “Kevin must be in the common room already. Go find him.”

“Yeah, I just walked…” Neil didn’t get to finish as I closed the door right behind Renée’s back, leaving the two of us alone and him with nobody to inform about Kevin’s whereabouts, “You’re acting weird,” he sentenced after trailing off, his eyebrows now up in his forehead.

“It’s for a good reason,” I assured him.

“What might that be?”

I sighed. I closed my eyes. I snapped my fingers, and an object weighted in my palm right after. I opened my eyes again to find a wrapped gift in my hand, then offered it to Neil.

“Happy fake birthday,” I said, cringing a little at the blank expression on his face, “I didn’t want the others to find out about your secret.”

He stood there for a couple of minutes, lips slightly parted, mouth agape, not a sound coming out of him. He stared at my gloved hand and the little pack on it like it was gold and he had been poor his whole life, like it was water and he’d been strung in the desert for years.

I looked at him, because he hadn’t been sleeping with me for a week – he had papers to write, things to sort out, so I’d let him be the day after the full moon – but he was still a sight for sore eyes that early in the morning.

Clutched in the fitted thermal shirt that had been given to us for the task – Remus had told me that probably meant we were going to be somewhere either cold or humid –, with joggers hanging low on his little waist, I found myself gulping down on a dry mouth and restraining myself from inching closer and closer to him.

Instead, I looked up at his face, his bottom lip trembling with uncertainty, his mouth opening and closing like he was trying to find the right words to say, his eyes bright with unbridled joy. I smiled tentatively and took his hand, opening it palm-up to put the gift there.

He shook his head, but still said nothing.

“What’s gotten into you?” I asked, eventually.

“I haven’t celebrated my birthday in years. Not even… not even the fake one,” he swallowed harshly, “My mother didn’t give me lots of gifts. I…”

“Neil,” I called, finally stepping forward to cup his cheek and forcing him to look at me, “is this your first birthday gift ever?”

“Yes,” he said, so low I didn’t even really hear it, “in a way, it is.”

“Well, that sure doesn’t put any pressure on my stupid gift,” I sighed and looked at him pointedly, “Open it.”

“I-I… alright,” he nodded, but visibly swallowed down once more.

He gave the gift a once-over look, deciding where to start picking at the wrapping paper. He attacked one of the sides with tape on it, scratching it off carefully as if he wanted to keep the paper and the box as a gift as well. I watched him, him with his gentle fingers and cautious hands, him with his knotted eyebrows and his deep, blue, concentrated eyes, him with his hair ruffled and messy and red and fiery and beautiful, beautiful, gorgeous, and handsome, he was so… so…

I took a steadying breath, hoping he wasn’t hearing my heart beating fast as I could hear his, tachycardic in a way that was also slightly concerning. But he seemed calm on the surface, tranquil as the sea when there’s no wind, and I prayed that I looked as unbothered as he did at that moment.

Deep down, I knew I wanted to scream. I love you, I love you, I’m so in love with you.

Thankfully, he finished unwrapping the gift before my judgement got clouded enough to actually shout it at him. He gasped a little at the inside of the little box, and I started to explain the reason of the gift before he could tell me he didn’t like it. I was so scared he didn’t like it.

“The Quidditch robes,” I started, and his eyes shot up to look at me, a gleam in them I couldn’t identify with any particular emotion, “they slip up during games. I know you’re far from most of the students when you’re up in the air and they can’t really see your arms, but I also know – well, I believe – that it makes you uncomfortable nonetheless. The armbands help me, and you love Quidditch so much it’s a shame you have to feel that way every time you play, so I thought-”

“It’s perfect,” he whispered, eyes glossy with tears, not enough to swell up and fall but they were there, “I like them. No, I love them.”

He looked down at the box again, then picked the armbands up and watched them in awe. When he turned back to me, he grinned widely, happy as I’d never seen him.

“Can I hug you?” his voice was shaking.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

He threw his arms around my neck, squeezing so tight I thought he might’ve choked me, but it was fine. It was so fine. My arms slipped around his waist, holding him tightly, oddly comforted by the familiar weight of his body against mine, by our difference in height that kept growing, by the way my face fit perfectly in the bend of his neck and I could inhale the deep scent of new clothes and fluffy hair.

“Thank you,” he whispered against my head, voice soft and silky.

“It’s nothing,” I shrugged.

It wasn’t nothing. I had to call aunt, warn her that a muggle package was coming in a few days and tell her to send it to Hogwarts with an owl, hoping and praying it would come fast enough for me to present it on the right day, at the right time. That meant a lot of bickering with my aunt and arguing with my uncle, not to mention the fact that Drake might’ve still been there for all I knew and might’ve offered to take the package to me himself.

Thankfully, everything had gone as planned, and there was no reason for Neil to be grateful as he was being: I would have done anything for him, even though he didn’t know that just yet.

“It is not nothing,” Neil argued, “It’s a thoughtful gift. That’s more than I could ask for.”

“Your standards are low, Josten,” I scoffed, “You ought to raise them a bit. Even though you might find out I’m not very good for you, at that point.”

“You are good for me,” he tightened his grip on me, nuzzling his face on the top of my head, burying it in my hair, “Does this bother you?”

“The hug?” I asked, a little clueless.

“Well, yes, also. But I meant this,” he pulled away a bit, just enough to look at my face. He seemed to light up just then, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, which he quickly, but not smoothly, repressed, “This thing we got going on. Does it bother you? You can tell me when you want to stop. I have a lot of unresolved business and I wouldn’t want you to get caught in it. And you… whatever that man, that one from your boggart, did to you, I’m sure it doesn’t make this easier.”

“Why are you bringing it up now? We’ve been seeing each other for months,” I tipped my head to the side, analyzing his suddenly expressionless face.

“I don’t know. I guess not knowing your full story makes me wonder things and I thought you were wondering about me, too. Secrecy isn’t really the best foundation to build a relationship upon.”

“This is not a relationship,” I clarified.

“You know what I mean,” he rolled his eyes.

A surge of panic rushed through me. Was I out of time? Was he stepping away as I had always expected for him to do? Was that the time when Neil finally hurt me, gave me the fatal blow while I stood there, helpless, wondering when everything had gone wrong and I hadn't noticed?

“Fine. Whatever, we can talk about it after the task, alright? We should get going anyway.”

“Nice way to avoid confrontation,” he scoffed, finally unraveling his arms from around me just as I did the same.

“Shut up,” I simply said, then went to open the door and exit.

Neil put down the armbands on the desk and followed me out. I guessed that meant he’d be back to my room after the task and, internally, I was grateful for that.

 

---

 

Renée and Kevin had escorted us to the Great Hall, but no one was there, so we went in search for Lupin that, when we found him, was searching for us in return.

Where was everyone? In the dungeons. The dungeons? Why? That was where the third task was going to take place. No one really knew the extent or the blueprint of the dungeons of the castle, so Dumbledore thought it would be the best place to hide the cup and make us search for it.

Remus filled us in during our fast-paced walk towards the crowd reunited in front of the Slytherin’s common room to watch us begin our task. Except, there was something he didn’t say, something he communicated to me with a sly side-eyed look, a glance that told me ‘this task is made for you’.

On the day of the Yule Ball, Dumbledore had told me that he would help me win the Tournament, because it was a chance for me to redeem myself and tap into my endless power, or something like that. That he would make sure I was prepared for what was to come, and even if he hadn’t reached out to me since then, what better way to help me than putting me into an environment that only I knew like the back of my hands?

I doubted that Riko had any knowledge about the dungeons, and Neil had read the same book as me and had been in possession of the Marauder’s Map for quite some time, but I also doubted that he’d remember the details, the secret passages, the secret rooms where a cup could’ve been hidden. I remembered everything and, as much as I didn’t know how Dumbledore knew about my eidetic memory, I knew it was meant to be used then and there.

But there was something fishy about the whole deal. It was Neil’s birthday and we were closest to his common room, and Riko seemed to have known before any of us where the task would’ve taken place, if the way he was already standing there, with McGonagall and Moriyama – who hadn’t gone to fetch Neil like Remus had come for me – behind him and the smirk on his face were anything to go by.

Still, I took my place beside him, just as Neil took his place, silently, beside me. Between the two, I glanced once on my left and once on my right, to see that while Neil seemed utterly shaken by the choice of location, Riko, on the other hand, looked comfortable and confident, in a way that was excessive even for him.

I sighed. I didn’t know what to expect, and there wouldn’t be any introduction speech from Dumbledore this time, because we all knew what we had to do: run, look around, survive the traps set up just for us, find the trophy, finally win. This time around, just like the first time, we weren’t really supposed to attack each other, but it was fair game. I knew Neil wouldn’t just come at me with something, but I wasn’t so sure about Riko.

Either way, I looked over at the crowd to find Renée fretting again and Allison and Kevin trying to reassure her, but not really managing to do just so. Matt and Dan were looking at the scene, not really doing anything, but Dan was holding Matt’s hand spasmodically, like she was afraid of something, or nervous. Nicky and Aaron were talking amiably, not paying attention to the rest of the people. They were next to the Gryffindor’s Quidditch team. Jean, usually so cold and detatched, was looking at them, at Kevin, with something that resembled longing in his eyes.

Remus was in front of the group, watching me carefully and a little terrified. I winked at him, expressionless as I could muster, and he snorted, like he didn’t expect that reaction from me. Still, he raised his hands in a thumbs-up sign and I, for a small moment, felt like everything was going to be alright.

I was wrong.

The siren that signaled the start of the task came unexpectedly, in a moment when I was distracted. Maybe I was the only one who didn’t see it coming, because Riko and Neil both bolted before I had the chance to even understand what was happening. Once I got a hold on that, I was running forward too, cheered by the crowd in the back.

The dungeons weren’t really unexplored territory, but much like the Forbidden Forest, it was a place most students were scared of. There were some places where students hung around often, like the Potion class or the Slytherin commons, but most of them were dark and gloomy and no one really knew where the spare doors led, and what the spare rooms were for.

I had read all about in the book that Remus and Neil had also read, and I knew where to find secret passages and how access rooms no one could access, so I started wandering about through some of them. At some point, I came across one enormous snakeskin, and I remembered some years before there had been a case in Hogwarts of a Basilisk roaming around the castle. I guessed it had molted there, and I wondered how many others there were in spots nobody seemed to look into.

Room by room, hallway by hallway, I always came up with empty hands and I couldn’t seem to find the cup. I also had lost track of where Riko and Neil had gone, but I guessed that wasn’t a problem: neither of them knew the passages I was taking, from what I knew, so they theoretically wouldn’t have been able to find me easily.

It had crossed my mind that maybe I was just reading too much into the situation and Dumbledore might’ve hidden the trophy in a much simpler environment, more accessible and easier to find that what I had ben searching. I was sweeping up rooms after rooms, and there weren’t many left of the ones that I knew were hidden to the untrained eye.

I stumbled upon a little door, it was creaked open, but I didn’t think much of it. One thing I knew for sure about the castle was that it changed over time, because it was inhabited by powerful wizards, only the last of whom was Dumbledore, that modified its structures times and times over. The Chamber of Secrets was only one of the many hidden places created just for the purpose of abiding the wizard’s wishes.

I didn’t know that door. Could it have been made just for the Tournament? Could Dumbledore have created a room that knew would’ve caught my eye, because I was sure I hadn’t seen anything about that door ever? If that was his intention, he was right. Maybe I was too quick to take the bait, but part of me wanted that Tournament over with so that I could go back to live my normal life, if my life before the Tournament could even be described as normal.

I opened the door some more and slipped into the room. I didn’t know what I expected to find. An altar with the trophy perched on it, gold and shiny and ready to be snatched, perhaps. Maybe another scavenger hunt, the cup hidden somewhere in the room that wasn’t as evident. I really didn’t know, but the thing was, I surely didn’t expect to see Riko there.

The trophy was behind him, atop a set of stairs that lead to a tall, marble stand. He didn’t seem interested in taking it, he wasn’t even looking at it. He was sitting on one of the steps, lazily picking at his sharp nails, his wand abandoned beside him on the ground.

For a moment, I stood there watching him, confused. Wasn’t this made to help me? To make me find the cup before any of them? To prove that I was a powerful wizard that deserved the honors of the highest type?

Riko looked up and a smirk, evil and cruel, grew on his face. He went back to picking at his fingernails and didn’t look up at me a second time.

“I knew you’d be the first to find this place,” it was like he was reading my mind. His voice was slow and hot like melted wax dripping from a surface, “In the end, it was designed to make you win.”

“So I was right about that,” I started, trying to regain some control over my body and thoughts, “Then why are you here?”

“Dumbledore might be powerful and everything that comes with his age. Wise, driven, whatever. But he’s old, and weak. He’s lived too long, and he’s not immune to torture or coercion,” Riko explained.

He didn’t make a move to pick up his wand, so I didn’t raise mine either. I didn’t want things to escalate and for us to fight before I gathered as much intel on this as I could.

“Why won’t you take the cup if you want to win that bad? Torturing someone to win a Tournament is low even for you, Moriyama,” I taunted.

“Silly you,” he laughed, low, then finally raised his gaze to lock it with mine, “Winning the Tournament is not why we’re here, Andrew.”

He’d said my name sharply, an edge to it that I couldn’t quite define, though it sounded like sarcasm. He then stood up and began pacing around, his wand still on the steps, resting there as a forgotten tool. I thought about summoning it so he wouldn’t be armed, but I sensed it wouldn’t help me as much as I believed.

“Then why are you doing this? What do you want from me?” I crossed my arms on my chest and assumed a relaxed, bored stance, “You want to try to kill me again?”

“As much as you like to flatter yourself, this trap is not for you, little pet,” Riko smiled at me wickedly over his shoulder, his back to me as he walked and walked and walked, “Although I must say, it will make me happy to cause you some harm. You have been a pain, I will admit. You stole my second in command, and the fact that both of them seem to gravitate around you all day doesn’t make my job any easier.”

“What can I say,” I shrugged, “I don’t like to share. And what’s mine stays protected.”

“Is that so?”

Riko stopped. His voice was a humming, sing-songing like he found the whole situation amusing and entertaining, but he still wouldn’t turn around to face me and he still wouldn’t make his plan clear.

“I know you have a problem with that,” I spat, “With the fact that you can’t hurt Kevin anymore as you wish and please. But maybe you brought this ruination upon yourself, haven’t you thought about that?”

“You’re a silly, silly boy, Andrew Minyard.”

In an instant, he swiveled on his heels to turn to me, he summoned his wand and locked me in place with a wordless freezing charm. I struggled as I tried to move, but my position didn’t budge. I gritted my teeth as Riko strolled carelessly towards me, his steps slow and steady.

“You really think you can protect those two? Haven’t you questioned, even for a brief moment, that what you were getting yourself into was way bigger than yourself?” he whispered in my ear, as close as he could get.

Still immobilized, I couldn’t help the shivers that ran through my spine as Riko began to run his fingers on my body, leaving a prickling, pesky sensation on his trail. I took in a sharp breath.

“I know,” I managed to say, through the spell, “I know all about you and your family. Kevin told me.”

“Did he now?” Riko laughed again, in a villain-esque way that suited him at the moment, “So, what? You think you can defeat us? You, a scared little boy raised by muggles that didn’t even know that magic existed as per two years ago?”

“I am stronger than you believe,” I rebutted.

“Oh, yes, that’s what they say, isn’t it? That you’re powerful enough to bring this whole school down, if you wanted to. That you have no equals throughout history, that even Merlin might’ve feared you, had you been his opponent,” Riko rambled, moving in a circle around me, round and round and round, “This is what the Professors say. Do you really believe any of that? Do you have such delusions of grandeur?”

“If you really think I’m that useless,” I hissed, his magic somehow becoming tighter and tighter around me, or maybe that was just the feeling of my organs collapsing at his malicious touch, “Then why did you bait me here? What do you want?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want what you are so desperately trying to protect,” he shrugged, like nothing of this meant anything to him, “I want Kevin. I want Neil, which I believe is the way he’s made himself known to you all,” that phrase chilled me to my bone, not because I was surprised about the fact that Neil had lied to me about his true name, but because I didn’t want someone to tell me his secrets when he obviously didn’t want me to know, “I want to make them pay and to make them suffer, and I can’t when you stand beside them like a guard dog.”

“Ah,” I smiled, “so you admit I’m powerful enough to fend you off.”

“Perhaps,” Riko was now in front of me, and he smiled back, just as wicked as before, “Or maybe I just see the way Kevin is dependent from you and the way Neil looks at you. Maybe I know that if I hurt you, I’ll hurt them. Maybe I know that if you don’t seem quite so indestructible yourself, Kevin will come crawling back to me, afraid that your protection might not be enough, and Neil will come barreling towards something he isn’t prepared for.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked then, my jaw clenched, “Don’t you think I’ll tell them about your plan?”

“Oh, how sweet,” Riko cooed, “You really think you’ll get out of here alive, don’t you?”

“Riko, what-”

With that, the Gryffindor took hold of the sleeves of my shirt and tore them off, leaving my arms bare, my scars for all to see as I wasn’t wearing my armbands. The shirt was too fitted. Riko grinned at the sight of them, then went ahead to tear apart the whole shirt. The air in the dungeons was cold against my skin.

“There,” he smiled, pleased, at my bare torso, “Look at those pretty scars,” he stroked the ones on my chest, the ones Neil had left on me months before, then looked back up at my face, “Let’s get started, shall we?”

He pushed me onto the ground, my back hitting the brisk stone pavement with a thud. I groaned in pain but Riko was quick to push a piece of dirty cloth between my teeth. He had a knife in his other hand, and I recognized it as one from the same kind and same brand as those Renée had given to me. Stricken, my eyes widened and Riko laughed, loud and proud.

“You might want to bite down, pet,” he said, “This is going to hurt.”

And it did.

He had climbed over me, sitting with his legs astride on each side of my body, and he was pinning me down with all his weight even if I was still paralyzed by his spell. He blocked my right arm first. He took a sweeping look at it, then carefully opened a couple of old scars, before starting to carve something in my bicep.

I did bite down, but it did mostly nothing to hide my screams. I shouted and yelled and cursed at the boy who was torturing me, cutting me up, a pain so sharp and crisp I didn’t know how I hadn’t passed out already.

It didn’t take long for him to attack my left arm, giving it the same treatment as the right. He opened a few cuts of mine before making some of his own. When he was done with that, he pushed himself a little backwards on my body and started to cut my chest open, precise as he was clearly writing on my skin with his knife.

My screams didn’t even have a sound anymore. I was just crying, aching, mouth clenched on the cloth and simultaneously open in a wordless and silent shout. Riko took a long pause, admiring his newly done piece of art, then stood up.

It hurt to breathe, chest throbbing every time it rose and lowered, a weak wheeze exiting my lungs. I closed my eyes but heard Riko pace around the room again. His knife hit the floor, clinking on the stone loudly.

“W…” I tried to say, but my chest ached, “Why?”

“Kevin might’ve told you that my father doesn’t consider me worthy enough to enter the family officially,” Riko began, his voice deadpan, “And Neil is my ticket to make sure that changes. His father works for mine, you see? But Nathan has become nearly useless in the desperate search of his son. If I brought Neil back to him, I would’ve solved one of my father’s major headaches, and he will take me in.”

I don’t think it’s going to work, I wanted to say, but the words weren’t coming out of me. I don’t think Neil will be so easy to trap and kidnap, I wanted to add, but there was still nothing I could do to speak up. So I laid there, helplessly, vision blurry, as I listened to Riko’s step, to his quick heartbeat, to the way he breathed shakily.

Then I heard the door creak open. For a split of a second, I thought it was Riko leaving me there with unattended, deep wounds, because I didn’t think anyone would have come looking for me and because it was the whole point of it to let me bleed to death. But that idea was quickly dismissed. There was another heartbeat, one I knew so perfectly that mine synced up with it as soon as it appeared.

I was relieved, maybe. I didn’t really know. Everything, from my memory to my understanding of the current events and feelings, was as blurry and unintelligible as it could get. I was still on the floor, I still couldn’t move. The only thing I could do was listen as Neil’s heartbeat got quicker and he got hotter and he got angrier.

The both assumed I had fainted, I gathered that from the way they spoke.

“What did you do?” he spat, basically yelling.

“Ask your pet,” Riko replied, idly, “I don’t care about the stupid Tournament. Grab that trophy, win, for all I care. Just know this is only the beginning, Wesninski.”

“You will pay for this, Riko. If you plan to make me sink and drown, I will bring you down with me with all my might.”

“Yeah? I’d like to see you try,” Riko scoffed, “Your father waits for you, puppy. And if you won’t go home, home will come hunt you down.”

I heard the door slamming shut. One heartbeat remained. My own was getting slower and slower by the minute, and I could feel my fingers slick with thick and copious blood running out of them.

Neil kneeled beside me.

“Alright, alright, you’re alright,” he said, out loud, though it seemed more to reassure himself than me, “You’re going to be fine. You’re always fine, aren’t you? We should really stop getting ourselves hurt over and over.”

I’m sorry, I wanted to say, I hadn’t believed it when Riko said that you would be hurt when you’d find me like this.

“I’ll take care of you,” he announced, still talking to himself, “You’re going to be fine. I’ll… I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

He still hadn’t touched me. I couldn’t believe that, even in such a atrocious situation, he would still refrain from touching me at all. He could’ve gained some comfort by hugging me, by holding me close, by touching my face and neck and making sure I wasn’t going cold, but still, he didn’t make a move.

He silently healed my wounds, which I only knew because I could feel my skin remerging, like the cuts hadn’t really been there. From the way his breath hitched and hiccupped, I knew he was crying as he did it. When everything was fixed, he sighed.

He stood up and lifted me up with magic, taking me up the stairs with him and approaching the trophy. I knew the cup was a Portkey and that it would take us directly at the start of it all, in front of the Slithering commons.

As an afterthought, he seemed to remember my scars. I didn’t know how he did it, but right after I felt the familiar texture of the armbands slide on my forearms, hiding away my past. Slowly but steadily I was beginning to regain some strength, but I couldn’t find it in me to fight to regain consciousness.

‘You’re alright, I’ll take care of you,’ Neil had said. For once since I had been born perhaps, I chose to trust someone. I chose to trust him with my life, with my body, with everything that was in his power to do. Because I fancied myself a protector, but he was the one who had healed me, he was the one that worried about everyone seeing my scars before returning me to safety bare-chested.

I felt time and space warp around us, but it didn’t matter anymore. As soon as I heard the cheer around us explode, I let myself slip into a state of unconsciousness, and I didn’t know if it was sleep or if I had passed out.

 

---

 

I woke up to the sound of two familiar voices and the comfort of a familiar mattress under my body. I was in my room, I noticed as I peeled my eyes open and tried to emerge from the torpidity and numbness. I yawned, maybe rather loudly as the voices stopped talking and I felt two pair of eyes settle on me.

I looked in front of me to find Kevin and Neil at the foot of my bed, standing one in front of the other, both visibly upset as they’d been arguing just a moment prior to my waking, but while Neil’s eyes softened at the sight of me, Kevin remained sharp and focused.

“Hi,” Neil whispered, crossing swiftly the length between where he was and the empty space on the bed right beside me. He sat down, “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” I replied, earnestly, but wasn’t in the mood to be coddled, “Where’s Riko?”

“In the Gryffindor common room,” Kevin replied, “Being burned alive by Dan’s death stares.”

I nodded, not really inclined to that kind of humor too, not just yet.

“What happened, after he left the dungeons?” I swiveled my head towards Neil, who was looking at my still bare chest, haunted. He snapped back to reality and cleared his throat.

“I healed your wounds, took the cup and then took you back here. Theoretically, we’re joint-winners of the Tournament. I tried to explain to Dumbledore that you found the room first so it should be just you, but he wasn’t having it,” Neil shook his head, “I think he’s officially gone insane.”

“If Riko really has gotten his hands on him, it’s only natural he’s lost his mind,” Kevin sighed.

“Whatever happened in the room, only the four of us know. The rest of the group might have understood what happened overall, but not the details,” Neil explained, “So, Riko will go unpunished. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I wouldn’t like anyone but me to be the one to punish him. What about,” I had to clear my throat, my mouth was dry as sand, “What about the writing? By his precision with the knife, I knew he was carving something in my flesh. What did it say?”

Neil looked away, something like shame and anger tinting his cheeks with a pink flush. He had clenched his jaw so hard it looked like it might snap in half and, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch his gaze again. Helpless and without any other resource, I turned to Kevin, who seemed just as angry, but maybe more scared than Neil was.

“It said ‘Happy Birthday Jr.’ on your arms, and…” he coughed, to hide the crack and tremble in his voice, “And ‘The Moriyamas and the Butcher send their regards’ on your whole torso, from the clavicle to the hip bone. It was a knife wound, so when Neil healed it, it disappeared completely. It hasn’t left a scar.”

“The Butcher? Who's that? What does that mean?” I asked.

I had a theory, but maybe I just wanted Neil to admit it out loud. Maybe I wanted to feel like I had earned that piece of information about Neil’s life, instead of knowing it because I had eavesdropped on a conversation between him and Riko, because Riko had tried to expose Neil’s secrets to me without his consent.

Neil sighed, opened and closed his mouth a couple of time, then grunted and covered his face with the palm of his hands, rubbing it forcefully.

“It means my goddamned father is coming for me.”

Notes:

hiyaaaa

i don't really like how i've written this chapter but there you go lmao i'm sorry, i've been having an hard time with my mental health and writing doesn't come as easy as it should, but i didn't want to leave you waiting

from the top.

Renée being a sweetheart and looking after Andrew 3 it's even sadder when you know she was right. Andrew does end up hurt, and the fact that in the beginning they dismiss Riko as a real threat and then rethink it as soon as they see him just adds to the pain. Sigh, Riko is a cunt.

Fluff moment for Andreil my beloveds. The armbands gift, just as in canon. Don't worry, we'll get to the keys as well, but we're not there yet ;) Neil's worries about their relationship and Andrew basically denying they're together... yikes. Yeah, that's going to be a problem for a while. But rest assured, most of the angst has passed

Soo the third task. I'll say it again: Riko is a cunt. You should imagine the scene - if you've watched the harry potter movies you know what i'm talking about - as the one where Bellatrix tortures Hermione. It's just as bad. Also the "happy birthday jr", chills. Literally chills. Why use pig blood when you can use the blood of your enemy's partner, am i right? :D

Neil will get mad. He's mad, he's angry, he's OUT FOR REVENGE!!! you go boo, protect Andrew.

Now begins a series of scenes where Kevin is like... there with the Andreil being Andreil. "Just us... and your friend STEVE, dudududu STEVE!" kinda vibe lmao

Kevin's scared, Neil's angry, Andrew finally knows about Neil's real last name and he knows Neil's not really his first name.
Nathan is coming, Dumbledore seems to be incapable of protecting Neil.

Are you ready for it? As they say on GoT, winter is coming ;)

Chapter 35: One Day More

Summary:

TW!
mentions of self-harm scars and scars derived from child abuse.

Honors, money, parties, fame, increased stares, girls blushing in the hallways and boys giggling loudly when you pass by them, Professors suggesting you know more and better than the others, people wanting to be your friend.

Those were only some of the things that nobody had told me I would’ve gained by winning the Triwizard Tournament. Attention was something I wasn’t really fond of, something I despised to be at the center of. The fact that I was strolling around with the other winner couldn’t have helped much, but maybe the fact that Neil and I weren’t really public figures helped a lot.

There were other things that I gained from that Tournament.

Nightmares, for example. I had suffered from insomnia for a long time, since I could remember basically, but the little time I did sleep had been mostly peaceful until then. I replayed scenes in my head: Neil left half-dead on the cold, muddy ground of the Forest; Riko polishing his knife after torturing me and tossing it on the floor. Sometimes, I did make up some things that hadn’t happened. Once I dreamt about that big snakeskin I had found in the dungeons coming to life and swallowing me whole.

I had phantom pains, after the third task. Suddenly, in the most unexpected and unguarded of moments, my chest and arms would begin to ache so intensely I had to bend over in pure agony. It was like I could feel the blade carving my flesh all over again.

Neil was there for the most part, but even when he was there, he seemed to be in another place entirely, in another universe even. The simple remark his father had made of his presence seemed to haunt him, and I often caught him staring into the void with eyes so sad he looked on the edge of a meltdown.

We didn’t talk about it, his big secret, his most treasured one coming up without a warning. I hadn’t asked about his name, because that was the only piece of information he hadn’t given up willingly. I was burning up from curiosity, but I simply couldn’t do that to him.

There was a crack between us, and I was painfully aware of that. I was also aware of the fact that there was nothing I could do to mend it, to tend to it, not even to act like it wasn’t there, out of respect for the obvious grief Neil was going through. I just didn’t know what exactly he was grieving, so I also couldn’t help with that either.

The whole situation was a mess and, somehow, Kevin got stuck in the middle of it. He had seemed to have latched onto Neil over something as stupid as Quidditch, because they were always together and that was the only thing they could talk about. He still clung to me too, more so now that we knew that Riko was getting violent again, despite what Riko thought.

Deeply attached to the both of us, Kevin often found himself in the middle of banters and quarrels and fights that Neil and I seemed to engage more often than not. We never really yelled at each other or anything that maybe normal couples did; we just scowled at the other, intensely, throwing deeply cutting and offensive phrases in the air that we never apologized for.

It wasn’t that we weren’t sorry for having hurt the other, but we both knew that to apologize was meaningless, because we would’ve done it again. We also knew that we didn’t really believe any of the words that came out of our mouths during those fights, so there wasn’t something to apologize for.

There was tension to work through, and the most consumed by it was Kevin. We were in the middle of yet another argument, both Neil and I gritting spiteful words through our teeth while Kevin asked helplessly to stop and calm down, whining a little even, when I heard a knock on the door.

“What?” Neil and I shouted at the door in unison.

“It’s me,” a bored Aaron answered from behind it, “and Nicky. Flitwick wants to see us in his office, now.”

“Can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of something,” I said, not bothering to ask my brother to let himself in.

“No, it can’t,” Aaron replied, “And whatever you and Josten are doing can wait instead.”

“I’m here, too,” Kevin pointed out, as to clear the air about Neil and I could possibly be doing that couldn’t be paused that late in the evening.

“Just hurry up!” Nicky finally urged, “I have a date and I won’t waste a minute more than I need to in the office of that miniature wizard.”

I rolled my eyes, then fixated my gaze on Neil that was no longer seething. He frowned at me, sad and hurt. I had told him something nasty about his lycanthropy that I couldn’t even remember and I knew that that had upset him more than what we both had expected. I swallowed harshly, not knowing what to do. Finally, Kevin spoke up.

“You should go,” he announced, “And I should get back to my dorm, too. Neil will make his rounds and then come back here. Will you, Neil?”

“Yeah,” the redhead nodded rather sheepishly, “I think I will.”

“Good,” Kevin sighed, “Let’s go, Minyard.”

“I’m right behind you,” I said as Kevin got up and exited the door, met with the unwavering gaze of my dreadful twin.

When the door closed behind him too, I took a step towards Neil.

“Will I really find you when I get back?”

“If you want me here,” Neil shrugged, “I would like to spend the night. Without Kevin, for once.”

I was taken aback, breath punched out of me. He hadn’t slept with me in weeks, maybe even months.

“That’s fine,” I finally whispered, “Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

I smiled tentatively, rising on my tiptoes to kiss him on the corner of his mouth, gentle and sweet. He smiled back, not uttering a word as he watched me walk out of the room.

 

---

 

 

Flitwick’s office was just as little as him, but I supposed that was as much as he required for a comfortable life. Unlike any other Professor – not even Remus – he was humble and modest, didn’t make many requests to Dumbledore and enjoyed his life as it was, unpretentious.

His office was poor of any embellishment and only contained a bookshelf, some portraits, a desk and the door to his sleeping quarters. On the desk, though, there was a tray of freshly baked muffins that were dancing around on the silver plate, charmed by the Professor himself.

Aaron, Nicky and I walked in, mostly pissed off but each of us for a different reason: Nicky wanted to be with his date, I wanted to be with Neil and Aaron just wanted to be everywhere else in the world but there. I supposed Flitwick guessed our bad moods from our faces and greeted us as charmingly and warmly as he could.

“Come in, come in,” he ushered us to some chairs, “Make yourselves comfortable. Mr. Hemmick, those muffins are usually for my students, but you’re welcomed to take one as well, if it pleases you.”

“Thank you, Professor,” Nicky beamed at him and reached up to take the muffin before sitting down next to me.

Aaron was on my other side, sitting with his ankle crossed on his knee and his arms crossed on his chest. I sighed, trying my best to match the Professor’s energy.

“Thank you for your kindness, sir. May I ask why we’re here? It’s late and we wouldn’t want to be caught out past curfew,” I smiled at him, lying through my teeth.

“Of course, of course,” Flitwick waved his hands around, “It’s not going to take much long at all, my boys. As the Head of your House, I have to oversee some of the aspects of your life both here and at home, and that’s why Nicky’s here as well. You’ll have to pardon me if I may appear a bit blunt on some of the topics, but I believe it will be best for all of us if we just get to the point.”

The three of us, dazed and confused, nodded a little spasmodically. Aaron was holding his breath in, like he knew he was about to get punched in the stomach or even stabbed in the back.

“You know the school year is coming to an end. A month and half will pass swiftly and then summer vacation will start. Since your mother passed last year, no one was registered at the Ministry as your legal guardian,” his gaze bounced between me and Aaron. My twin swallowed loudly and visibly, “And your aunt and uncle have made the request to welcome your in their home if you wish to go there this summer. They are not your legal guardians, but they are your family.

“However,” he sighed, glancing at me in particular, “You’re almost of age and in a peculiar situation. The school has offered to host both of you in your respective dorms even when the school is closed, just like it has for some other students as well. You surely know Mr. Josten stays here, and Mr. Day will stay in the school too, this year. My duty here is to present you these options and ask which one you’ll take.”

“Of course, we’ll go home to our Aunt’s and Uncle’s with Nicky. There’s no discussion,” Aaron said, still a little pale since the mention of our mother’s death.

“Wait,” Nicky rebutted, voice shaking, “Don’t be so sure. Andrew, what do you want to do?”

Nicky leaned over to catch my gaze and, once he managed to do so, made a sympathetic expression that conveyed that I shouldn’t have felt compelled to go with them if I didn’t want to.

I was as safe as I could be in Hogwarts, and far, far away from London and the monstrosity within it. Drake couldn’t find me there, and without Remus in the castle, if something bad happened, it would be harder to find a way to escape. And then there was the problem of Kevin staying there as well, in an empty castle where Riko could basically hunt him down like a lost, helpless deer.

And then there was… yeah.

“I’d like to stay here,” I blurted out. Nicky let out a shaky breath, but I knew he was okay with my answer. I turned to Aaron, “You can go, really. Don’t feel obligated to stay with me. You’ll feel much better with family around, and you won’t be pestered with my presence as you obviously feel.”

Aaron snorted but didn’t object to my points. I took that as a win as I turned to Nicky to smile at him and nod.

“Then it’s decided,” Nicky announced, like he was the one calling the shots. Maybe he was just in a hurry – Dan would’ve killed him if she knew he was going on a date past the curfew –, “Andrew stays here and Aaron comes back home with me.”

“Fantastic,” Flitwick clapped his hands together, “I will communicate your decisions to the Headmaster. If you change your minds, my door is always open. To you too, Mr. Hemmick.”

“Thank you, Professor,” the three of us said at the same time, standing up from our chairs.

Flitwick took us to the door and closed it behind our backs. Outside, there was a blond guy, lanky and with pale skin, with his hands shoved in his robe pockets, clearly waiting for us. Well, for Nicky, since he skipped over to the stranger with a large grin on his face.

“Hello,” Nicky said, then swiveled on his heels to look at us, “This is Eric. Say hi.”

“Hi,” Aaron and I replied.

“Good evening,” the stranger – Eric, apparently – raised a hand in a wave-like gesture.

Silently, the four of us parted ways: Nicky towards the Great Hall, Aaron towards the Hufflepuff commons and I towards the Ravenclaw ones.

 

---

 

Neil was pacing around in my room when I got there. He stopped in his tracks to look at me with the same expression of a deer in headlights, and you wouldn’t have thought for anything in the world that that same boy was a merciless werewolf. I almost laughed at him, but stifled it and went straight towards my bed, walking past him.

“Any trouble?” he asked.

“Not at all,” I sighed, “Flitwick had to be notified about our accommodations for the summer, because we’re orphans and homeless.”

“That sounds like a fun little chat you had,” Neil was the one to chuckle, coming over to sit next to me on the edge of the bed, “So, you’re going back to your uncle’s house with Nicky?”

There was something beautiful in Neil’s eyes after one of our fights. Maybe it was some resemblance of the affection he must’ve felt for me once upon a time, when everything was easier and we didn’t have the faintest idea that his father was close to catching him. After that, something had shifted in him, and perhaps I noticed it when it came back, suddenly aware that Neil was looking at me with different eyes entirely.

“No,” I whispered, conscious of how close out mouths were, “actually, just Aaron will go. I’m staying here.”

“What?” Neil jumped back, eyes wide in surprise, “Here?”

I nodded but lowered my gaze, feeling myself blush, “With you.”

Neil scoffed, and looked down when I looked up again at him. I could see the big ruffle of his red hair, but nothing past it, nothing of his face. I reached with my hand and forced his face up, fingers under his chin. His eyes were swelled up with tears.

“What it is?” I inquired, instantly worried.

“I-I,” he stuttered, “I’d thought I’d lost this.”

“What? Me?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there even a this to lose?” I asked carefully.

“Yes, there was. There is,” he insisted, fists balling up on his legs, “I’m just… My head’s not in it now. I thought… Maybe I was foolish, but I thought that you wouldn’t mind if I stepped back. That you would still want me when it was over.”

“I do not mind, if that’s what worries you,” I confirmed.

“I don’t know when this is going to end. It might not end well,” he announced, and for a moment I thought he was actually breaking up with me. Even though that wouldn’t have made any sense since we weren’t together.

“Neil,” I scooted closer to him, “Your father’s not here and Riko’s manageable. Do not let them get to your head, it’s what they want in the first place. You can't let the fear they install in you take control of your life. Tale something back from them, be happy.”

“I know,” he nodded, some of the tears started rolling down as I moved my hand from his chin to his cheek to brush them away, “But I’ve built a life here. I have classes and friends and lo- and you. I don’t want this to end, ever. And they'll put an end to this if they catch me.”

“You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine,” I assured him, “I promise.”

“I believe you.”

“Liar,” I smiled, “You have the pulse of a liar.”

“Maybe I’m just happy,” he shrugged, giggling under his breath.

“Perhaps,” I bit my lip, “Perhaps I’m happy too.”

“That’s all I could ask for. Yes or no?”

“Absolutely yes.”

 

---

 

I almost screamed from the bleachers when Renée nothing but threw herself off of the broom basically mid-air, to run and cheer and hug Allison. Her girlfriend was already in the middle of the pitch, arms tossed in the air in sign of exultation between the rest of her Slytherin teammates. Renée kissed her on the cheek, basically strangled her while hugging her from behind.

The Slytherin had won the Quidditch tournament yet again, and Allison was the captain on her last year at the school. Renée and Dan, pillars of the Hufflepuff team, hadn’t gone down without a fight but, with Nicky and Matt in tow, they went happily to celebrate the victory of their friend.

There was someone missing, it was easily noticed by anyone with a set of eyes. Neil had detached himself from the Slytherin huddle and had come straight under the Ravenclaw bleachers, with Aaron, Kevin and me looking down on him. He smiled at me, waving the little golden snitch in the air.

“Come down,” he mouthed, or maybe he yelled but I couldn’t hear him over the screams coming from the Slytherin bleaches right beside us. Either way, I understood him enough to oblige at his request.

When I finally reached the pitch, the teams had retreated in the locker rooms. Aaron and Kevin had followed me silently while the others waited for us.

Usually, our group, so heterogenous in its constitution, would leave the locker rooms and the bathrooms to the rest of the people in the teams so we could hang together there after people uncomfortable with others from different Houses had left. Once the place was cleared, we would occupy it for as much as we pleased.

“Hi, boys,” Allison was beaming, “Party in the Slytherin common room, will you be there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Al,” Kevin smiled back. He was always so fond of the others when they showed excitement over Quidditch and had become tight friend with the rest of the group while following me around like a puppy on a leash for the previous months.

Neil, out of everyone that had participated in the match, was the only one fully clothed, robes sticking to his abs because of the sweat. I swallowed down on my dry throat, and, sneakily, Neil winked at me. I must’ve been blushing, because Allison passed by me in that exact moment, headed for the shower in only her underwear.

“You’re drooling, Grumpy,” she taunted me, taking advantage of a moment of loud chatter between the many friends in the little space.

“Must’ve mistaken me for your girlfriend,” I smirked, “I would be shocked if she won’t follow you in the shower, by the way she’s looking at you.”

“Oh, don’t be so elusive, there’s no use. Renée broke, she told me,” she explained, still half turned towards the bathroom and half towards me, and glanced over at Neil that was laughing loudly at something Nicky had said, “Treat him right, would you? He deserves everything nice in the world.”

“Think I don’t know that, Reynolds?” I scoffed.

“I think that maybe you’re too aware of that, so to speak,” she was being uncharacteristically serious, “You’re nice enough, you know? Might not like you, but I respect you. And Neil? He likes you. He was right, you are good for him. So, be nice and get together. For real.”

“Is that some sort of order?” I crossed my arms on my chest.

“Let’s say it’s a favor. A graduation gift for me and Renée, how does that sound? I only ask you because I’m leaving and I’ve been on both of your cases since you enrolled this godforsaken school. He looks at you like you’ve stolen the moon for him,” she laughed softly, “He always has.”

I glanced at Neil, only to find he was already looking at me, with a light in his eyes that I couldn’t put a name to. I bit down my lip again then looked over at Allison, but she had left. A couple of seconds later, as predicted, Renée, clammed in sweat, dashed past me to get in the shower with her girlfriend.

Aaron, Nicky and Dan were talking with an half-naked Matt, a towel dangling from his waist and another rubbing his curly, coiled short hair to dry it from the shower he had been the first one to take. Kevin was ranting excessively to Neil about Quidditch strategies, but Neil was clearly not listening to him.

With the snitch lazily clutched in his hands, leaned over one of the lockers with his back, still dripping wet from the headband on his forehead, clad in tight, black and silver and green robes, he was looking at me. His face was serious in a way I had never seen, he seemed both torn and excited, happy and perplexed.

Only later did I understand why.

 

---

 

Slytherin’s parties were always loud, but not the obnoxious kind the Gryffindor’s parties were. It was quite comfortable, music only loud enough to inebriate someone and not completely dismantle one’s brain. Also, it was easy to hear someone else that might’ve been talking to you, which wasn’t really a problem for me, since I stayed sat on some couch most of the time and only watched people interact instead of doing it myself.

Neil, half-drunk, strolled over to me and sat down next to me, basically crashing on the cushions. I laughed, biting down on my bottom lip not to burst out loud. Neil glared at me, then looked at me with puppy eyes.

“Can I?” he asked under his breath, and maybe it was the very little distance between us, but I thought it was a miracle I had heard him.

He was looking at my neck, and I really didn’t know what he wanted to do but I shrugged and nodded. Excited, he nuzzled his face against the bend between my neck and shoulder, sighing loudly once he got comfortable. Then, without a warning of any sort – not that I did mind, it was a nice feeling –, he began peppering my jaw with slow, wet, sloppy kisses. I got flustered hard, quickly and visibly.

“Neil,” I basically cried out, “Stop, what are you doing?”

He looked up, a little embarrassed and red on the cheeks as well, but maybe that was only the alcohol in his bloodstream. He was so pretty, all red from the top of his hair to the bone of his clavicle. I couldn’t help but smile at him.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, “I thought you consented to it, I would’ve never-”

“What?” I interrupted him, and now I was laughing out loud, “You moron, it’s not that. We’re in public, people are going to see us.”

“Oh,” he bit the inside of his cheek, looking around, “I don’t think anyone will notice. Everyone’s going at it, you should see the way Allison and Renée were basically sucking their faces off.”

“First of all, extremely disturbing,” I raised my finger to stop him, “Second, it’s not about that either. It’s about the fact that we’re not a couple and nobody knows about us, remember that?”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, sorry,” he apologized again, “I didn’t… Well, I didn’t think about that,” he hiccuped, and maybe that was the final sign that I should’ve taken him to his bed and let him rest until the alcohol washed out of his drunken brain, “You were sitting here and you’re so gorgeous and I just… Maybe I didn’t think at all. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I tried to muster a gentle smile, reaching up to caress the scar on his cheekbone, “It was nice. What you were doing, I mean. It didn’t make me uncomfortable.”

“Yeah?” his eyes lit up immediately, like stars on a Christmas tree, “Can I do it again? Your skin is so soft.”

“Not here,” I said, “But sure, why not.”

“Oi, mates,” Matt materialized in front of us, my hand dropping from Neil’s face in an instant, but Dan was still eyeing it and there was no hiding what I had been doing. Fuck, “We’re going back to our rooms. Nicky is with a guy from Ravenclaw, I think his name’s Eric? Kevin went to sleep already. And Allison and Renée… well, you know.”

“Where’s Aaron?” I asked, glancing at the scowls Dan was sending me.

“Merlin only knows,” Matt sighed, “I lost track of him right at the start of the party. Must be with someone as well.”

“Fine,” I said.

“What are you two going to do?” Dan asked, suspicious.

“We’ll get going in a minute,” I answered, since Neil was only staring at me adoringly. As much as I liked it, I couldn’t bear Dan’s gaze any longer, “Come, Neil, I’ll take you to your room.”

“What?” Neil snapped out of his trance, only to pout, “I thought we were going back to yours.”

“Uhm, yeah,” I glanced at Dan again, but now she and Matt were laughing, “Okay.”

So, that was what we did. Unstable on his legs, stumbling over his own feet, Neil was falling over half of the time in our route towards my dorm. At some point, I gave up on the appearances and just picked him up, one hand under his neck and one under his knees, which made him giggle like a little child and cling to me with his arms around my neck. I laughed at him while he, lovable and gentle as ever, simply placed his head on my chest and closed his eyes.

When we finally arrived in my room, I placed him on the bed. He began to laugh and squirm and battle against the sheets to slip under them. I chuckled, placing my hands on his so that he would stop fidgeting and, to my surprise, he pulled me onto him.

My chest crashed against his, his breath smelled like punch and beer and maybe something else, but his skin smelled like grass and his usual shampoo he had used in the shower after the game. My lips were so close to his that it made me dizzy, head spinning around like I was the drunk one, and the slight smirk on his mouth wasn’t helping the situation.

At almost seventeen years old, I had had enough sexual encounters that a normal therapist – Bee didn’t count, as she wasn’t at all normal – would’ve asked me why I would launch myself in such nasty situations at such a young age. The response was right there, obviously: being that way had helped me a lot with my trauma with touch and sex and love, because it had reaccustomed me to a world where those kinds of things weren’t weapons meant to hurt the other, just acts and feelings meant to create pleasure.

With the people in juvie, it was mostly fun, nothing that really mattered. With Roland, it had been important for me but also a way to get Neil and my family drama out of my head for one night. It felt good, surely, but sometimes I wondered if it was supposed to feel even better. When Neil acted like he was doing at that moment… well, let's just say I hadn’t had such a positive response from my own body ever in those predicaments.

“Hi,” he whispered, hot breath fanning my own lips, “May I?”

“What?” I asked.

“Touch you,” he replied, earnestly, like it was obvious. I mean, maybe it was, “Kiss you.”

“You’re drunk,” was the only thing I managed to say. My heart had stopped, and my head wasn’t thinking straight. There was no one in command of my actions right about then.

“I’m tipsy,” he rebutted, “Does that matter?”

“Yes,” I answered, and maybe I was shaking a bit, “You might regret this in the morning. You’re drunk or tipsy or whatever, you’re not in control of your actions or your words, you-”

“Andrew,” his voice had dropped low, serious, and he was looking at me with lucid eyes, which was not helping my case, “I wanted this before I got drunk. I will want this tomorrow and I will want this the day after that, so if you want to wait until I’m stone-cold sober, I’ll wait. But I also want this tonight, I just needed a little boost because… because I’ve never done anything and I know you’ve been with Roland and others and I was nervous.”

“You’re anxious because I have more experience than you?” I chuckled, pulling away a bit to look at him better, taking in his face, “You don’t have to worry about that. You’ll be perfect. But I’m not comfortable when I can’t have your full consent, and you can’t give it to me now that you’re… intoxicated.”

“But I want to,” he whined, pouting. He was so cute I thought I could explode.

“If you’ll want to tomorrow night, we’ll see what we can do about it,” I shrugged.

“Fine. Can I still kiss you?”

“That we can do.”

I adjusted myself on top of him, straddling his waist and leaning forward to cup his face with my hands. I kissed him slowly, gently, kindly, I didn’t want to overdo it. But Neil’s kisses were hungry, starved and pained: he kissed me furiously, jealously, roughly. At some point, without even pulling away from me, he flipped us over, my legs still wrapped around his torso.

He still had the habit of touching me just on my hips, the most he would do was squeezing my hipbone and drawing invisible sketches on my clothes there, but he hadn’t dared to see my reaction to anything more.

Still, we were both in muggle attires, robes forgotten on the floor of my room, and the fitted, elastic tank top that I was wearing didn’t do a great job at staying put. It slipped up, exposing my skin, a good portion of my lower abdomen just above the band of my underwear.

Neil’s eyes trailed there, just for a moment, as he had detached himself from my lips to get some air. His irises glistened, maybe just from the hazy glaze of the alcohol, but whatever it was, when he looked back at me he seemed both begging and demanding of me. I slid from under him to sit up, suddenly eager to obey his every order and, without a word, I took off my top and threw it on the floor.

Neil was just in front of me, sat on his heels with his hands still on my body, and he swallowed harshly while his pupils travelled fast on my chest and abdomen. I laughed, not able to contain the giddiness huddling up in my stomach.

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen already,” I pointed out.

“Shut it,” he replied, almost instantly, “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

His lips were on mine once again, pushing and pulling and biting and licking. He had never been a bad kisser, but he seemed to be putting a lot of effort in that moment, like he wanted to make it count more than the others. A beat later, I understood why.

The sound of a shirt hitting the pavement, the heat radiating from Neil’s body stronger and stronger. I pulled way, covering my already closed eyes with my hands too.

“You don’t want that,” I sentenced.

“I do,” he said, “I really do. Open your eyes.”

“Why?” I cried.

“You’ve also seen it already. But it was when I couldn’t control it, when you didn’t want it, when you thought I didn’t want you. I want you to look at my body the way I can look at yours. Open your eyes, Andrew.”

“Come on. You’ll regret this.”

“I promise you I won’t. I-I have my issues with scars, but you said that I can’t let my father take everything from me and so I’m doing this. This body… it’s his fault. But I want you to see it because I know you’ll treat it right. Andrew, look at me.”

“Are you sure? One hundred percent?”

“I am. Look at me, love.”

I opened my eyes, maybe more for the shock of the pet name than for the request Neil had made. He was right, I knew that body: I knew the many scars on it, the way they made his skin tortured. I knew every one of them, because I remembered everything even when I tried my hardest not to. My eyes almost instantly fell on the one on his shoulder, the mark bite by his father, the one that had turned him into a werewolf.

I reached to brush my fingers over it, slow and light. Neil closed his eyes and breathed out, basking in the moment, something like relaxation on his face, peaceful in a way I had never seen it.

“Is it bad?” he asked after a while of silence, while my fingers travelled on his body, never really touching it but never pulling away.

“No,” I replied with every inch of honesty in my body, “Your scars never make you worse. They just make you prettier.”

“Yours as well, you know?” he smiled.

“When you say it, I believe it.”

In the spur of the moment, I took off my armbands and tossed them with the rest of our unworn clothes. Neil opened his eyes and looked at my forearms, quiet, then reached to take my hand in his.

We both fell on the bed, on our sides, looking at each other in silence. I was suddenly exhausted, the emotional fatigue of the implications of that night weighing on me like boulders. But I didn’t mind. I never minded when it came to him.

Neil bit his lips, raising his hand and mine together to let them rest on the pillows between us. With one swift move, he bent over to place lots of quick but forceful kisses on my scars, the one I had inflicted myself and then the ones on my chest that he, regrettably, had caused.

“Goodnight, love,” he said, his head returning to the pillow.

His eyes were already closed, his legs tangled with mine in a mess of limbs, and I struggled to adjust the sheets so they would cover us both. In that position, looking at the peaceful, tranquil face of the boy I had almost forgotten I loved so ardently, I closed my eyes.

And, for the first time in months, I didn’t have a single nightmare.

Notes:

AREN'T THEY SO SWEET?????

i'm sorry for what is about to happen next. i had to give you a little sweetness when i still could lmao.

i don't think i have a lot to say about this chapter?? i mean, i guess there are some honorable mentions so here they are:

- Kevin "I can't do this anymore" Day being a couple therapist i love him
- Andrew and Neil being insecure about their relationship after the third task... if i see Nathan it's on siGHT
- Allison "i see right through you bitch" Reynolds really saying "get you shit together and marry the man"
- Neil and Andrew thinking sexually about the other. somehow it's so stupid yet so important?
- them letting see each other shirtless and they know it's something only they could do <3
- DRUNK NEIL!!! he's so cute
- Erik!!!!!! Happy Nicky!!! we love to see it

i think that's it??

well, as i said, next chapter is r o u g h. be prepared. it's the center of the fic and we're going to have a breakdown together! sounds like fun right? :DD

BEFORE YOU GO! I WANTED TO ASK MY READERS SOMETHING
i have some one-shots about Andreil in the future, in the canon universe but after canon happens. some of them are really cute and they're all Andrew pov like this fic is. some are also retellings of some canon scenes from andrew's pov... idk would you be interested in reading them? let me know!

that's everything! bye loves<3

Chapter 36: Crawling

Summary:

!!!TW!!!
- mentions of rape and self-harm (very brief)
- depictions of severe injuries (we don't see them in details)
- depictions of sexual encounters (not in details but you definitely know what was going on)
- death

“What do you mean you won’t be back?”

Neil was basically shouting. I chuckled at his anger: he was uncontrollable on the days right before the full moon, and while all the exams were over we both were dealing with hard goodbyes on the last days of school.

On June 15^th, the day of the full moon and coincidentally the day after the exchange that was happening, Remus would’ve been the first one to leave. Sirius had come back to the castle to help him pack, because, much to our distaste, Remus wouldn’t have been our DADA teacher for the next year.

Let’s say that Neil wasn’t handling it really well.

In Remus’s office, I was trying to lend out a hand to the couple, busy with dismantling every trace of Remus ever being there to leave enough space for the next teacher to come. Even with the lump in my throat coming up every time I acknowledged Remus leaving, I tried my best not to question his decision.

Neil, on the other hand, wasn’t having it.

“But you just came back! Why would you leave so soon?” his eyes were wide with panic, icy blue in the way I loved most, sharp and edgy.

“My son’s having a baby, Neil. I want to help. It’s just a sabbatical, like the other one I took. I won’t be away forever,” Remus explained.

“I know Harry needs you,” Neil protested, “But I need you, too! And what about Andrew, huh? Andrew needs you!”

“Don’t bring me into this,” I shouted at him, with the calmest tone I could muster while standing next to Sirius, from the other side of the room.

“Come on!” Neil stomped his foot on the floor, “I can’t be the only one who doesn’t want you to go.”

“You’re not. And I will miss you just as much as you’ll miss me,” Remus sighed, stopping to reach for Neil and engulf him into a hug, “I’ll think of you every day, alright? And I’ll write. Check on you both. Andrew, you’ll better respond.”

“You won’t catch me dead doing that, Lupin,” I scoffed.

“I better not catch you dead at all, Minyard,” the Professor snapped back, then turned to Neil, still clutched into his arms, “Both of you, you’ll be alright.”

The went on talking in ushered tones, so much so that even my enhanced hearing couldn’t make a word out of it. I kept packing, picking up family photos of Sirius, Remus and a young man with a nasty scar on his forehead that I assumed was Harry, photos in which they laughed and hugged, and putting them down in big boxes.

“Hey, Andrew,” at some point someone called. I turned around to meet the sweet eyes of the black-haired man who I had grown up to look at as basically a father figure in a matter of a few months, “How’s it going?”

“Great,” I replied, maybe a little bitterly.

“You don’t want Remus to leave as well, huh?” he went to sit on the desk that I was emptying item by item.

“Not really stoked about it, no,” I whispered while avoiding meeting his eyes.

“I understand,” Sirius nodded, “I know he means a lot to you two. But you’re not making a scene about it like Neil is.”

“It’s a bad day,” I explained, like I needed to justify Neil being upset about something that was indeed upsetting for the both of us, “Full moon tomorrow and all.”

“How’s it going with you two, then? Are you still together?” a shadow of a smile appeared on Sirius’s lips, hinting at some mischief.

“You could say that,” I couldn’t help but smile myself. I had the feeling my skin still smelled like Neil’s from the night that had just passed, our bodies entangled while we talked and talked and talked, our chests pressed together, skin to skin and heart to heart, “We’re trying to make the most of it.”

“I bet,” Sirius chuckled, “Has it happened yet? The moment we talked about on Christmas?”

“Something like it,” I didn’t mean to grin as widely as I did, “It was just like it kept going. Once I knew for certain, it somehow grew even more.”

“Love’s a sneaky bastard. It does you like that,” Sirius winked at me.

I was about to tell something else to Sirius, to explain what I meant by my previous statement, but suddenly Remus called us out, asking us to join Neil and him. When we arrived there, Neil had a troubled expression on his face, so much so that I instinctively reached for his hand and squeezed it, in a way that wanted to ask what was wrong. Sirius, coy as ever, noticed and smiled wider at his husband, who, though, was not smiling back.

“Andrew, do you remember before the third task, when I told you that there must’ve been a reason for Dumbledore to come and pick you up from juvenile prison exactly when he did?”

“I thought my Uncle found me,” I tilted my head to the side, confused.

“Yes. Well, Dumbledore tipped you uncle on your existence so that he would find you and bring you here, so it’s the same. I think I finally figured out the reason,” Remus sighed, “I think it’s because of Neil’s father.”

“What?” I asked, bewildered, “What do you mean?”

“Andrew,” Neil called me, “Dumbledore took me and Jean in to shield us from what our families were doing to us. He offered a safe harbor, even though it came with a price. I… Maybe a little foolishly, I thought that he would be able to protect me from my father forever but…”

“Dumbledore is dying.”

It was Sirius that finished that sentence, but a simple look on his face revealed that he wasn’t expecting that just as much as I wasn't. His eyes were wide and wild, completely lost, looking at Remus for answer. In the face of his husband being so shocked, it was the only time I’d seen Remus façade of coolness falter.

“Yes,” the Professor said, “Yes, he’s dying.”

“Merlin,” Sirius cursed.

“Wha- how?” I asked.

“Well, the man isn’t young. He must be one hundred and sixty by now, and he fought in three wizarding wars. That must wear one out,” Remus simply rebutted.

“I can’t believe this,” Sirius leaned over Remus like an unsteady trunk fastened to a steadying pole for safety.

We all sat there, in silence, for long moments, taking in the words that were just said with the utmost confidence. The way Remus was talking about it didn’t leave room for doubts: it was happening. Dumbledore was dying, and what would happen to all the people he swore to protect then? What would happen to Aaron and me, who were basically being fostered by the school? To Neil, to Kevin, to all the kids that used to call that castle home?

It was Dumbledore, mostly, that made it just that. Dumbledore, with all his power and his might, with his history of winning over and over again against evil. The end did justify the means and he did all sorts of despicable things, but what mattered in the end, maybe, was that people in that school were safe. Safe because of him.

And when he was gone, what would’ve been left? Might’ve his name alone, still haunting the hallways and the classrooms and the hearts of the people, protected the weak just as efficiently as he had in life?

Where was he now? Where had he gone to die? Alone, in a remote island at the end of the world? Surrounded by his trusted friends – McGonagall, Flitwick, his brother even – in his airy office in the castle?

Neil and I stood still, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Remus to carry on with exposing his discovery.

“I think that’s why he needs you,” the Professor finally spit out, “I think he knows you’re the only one as powerful as him, as able as him to do what needs to be done.”

“That’s the reason he wanted me to win the Tournament,” I whispered.

“It would’ve been a clear sign of strength from your part,” Neil muttered, “My father must not be that far away. He would’ve heard, obviously. After that stunt you pulled with the centaurs…”

“Oi,” I scowled at him, “I was saving your ass, thank you very much.”

“And I’m grateful,” Neil smiled softly, but it almost instantly disappeared, “But killing a centaur is unheard of for someone who’s not a magical creature. You scared them. You must’ve scared the Moriyamas and my father as well.”

“That’s a good point,” Sirius pointed out, “He wanted to show you off. Make them see that it won’t be easy to get to Neil if you’re around.”

“And it won’t,” I said, “No matter what they throw at me and what mystical creature birthed them, the first one to lay a finger on him is dead meat.”

“You’re insane,” Remus said, matter-of-factly.

“I have a therapist,” I shrugged.

There was another silence. Remus bit his lip and, shyly, he sighed when Sirius nudged him in his side, as to invite him to do something he was clearly compelling himself not to do.

“Andrew, you’re going to be put under a lot of stress the next year,” Remus finally announced, “And I would miss you even if I knew that you’d be sleeping on lilies and clouds. Can I… I know you don’t like it, but-”

I nothing but ran towards the Professor, my arms snaking around his torso – that man was freakishly tall – while I waited for him to hug me in return. With the corner of my eyes, I could see Neil smiling at us, peaceful, but I could also see the storm already forming in his sky-blue eyes.

Neil and I, after a couple of hours with our wannabe-healthy-fathers, bid our goodbyes to the both of them. Remus and Sirius cried, moved, but Neil and I remained stoic for the rest of the exchange. Only when we went back to our room did Neil crumble completely, curling up in my lap and holding onto my black shirt while he cried, and cried, and cried.

“I don’t want him to get here,” he whispered at some point, “I don’t my dad to ruin you.”

 

---

 

The group went away for the summer just a couple of days later than Remus, and Neil and I were left virtually alone in the castle. There was always some presence roaming about, starting from the various ghosts and poltergeists, but also some of the students and the elves.

Kevin was still around, just like any member of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and they were always occupying the public spaces. They made the Great Hall, the library, the Quidditch pitch and even some of the hallway bathrooms basically inaccessible. Neil and I, mostly, didn’t mind. We stayed up in my room, sometimes with Kevin with us when he felt like he could and wanted to be the third wheel. Which was most of the time.

Neil and I got free of him at night, when he couldn’t stay with us. With a special permission from McGonagall, he was granted an accommodation in the Ravenclaw tower for the summer so he would be closer to Neil and me and, more importantly, farther from Riko. But he was a smart bloke, filled with common sense, and he knew better than to bother us.

Since he knew about his father coming for him, Neil had had trouble sleeping, which I knew about mostly because he refused to sleep anywhere else but next to me. He didn’t say it out loud - maybe that would’ve wounded his pride, to acknowledge that he was clinging to me at night - but he simply never made it back to his dorm, making a beeline towards the Ravenclaw dorms instead, up to the stairs to get to my room.

We spent the summer in a haze of kisses and cuddles and love bites and laughs. We did our best not to think about the fact that Neil was walking target, that Kevin was walking on eggshells around Riko, that I was a human shield preparing to fight against the unknown. I didn’t ask Neil about his father, about his powers, his abilities: somehow, I thought I would manage without. Somehow, I thought it didn’t matter, that he didn’t know me like I didn’t know him, that he wouldn’t be able to hurt me. Not like I had been hurt in the past, not in the ways that mattered.

I thought I could withstand anything on out path, because why wouldn’t I? The only life I had ever known was suffering through and through. I didn’t know much joy, I hadn’t known love until I had met Neil, I hadn’t had friendship until Renée had held me in her arms and had told me I was home. I hadn’t known home until I’d had her.

What could Nathan, this Butcher bloke, possibly steal from me? I was already aware that he wanted to kill what I believed to be the only love I would have in my whole life, and I was determined to protect it or die trying. I had already killed to protect it. I didn’t have morals to shatter, feelings to mine, faiths to dismantle. I was unbreakable. Or maybe, just maybe, I had been so confident about being unbreakable that, although it was partially true, I was also easily blindsided.

Neil and I developed into sort of a dream couple, and maybe it was just that, because in my mind nothing about it was real. We were too sweet, too gentle, too adolescent, young, those silly relationships made of feeding each other strawberries and whispering in the dim light of the rising sun after a sleepless night full of acts of service. I knew it wasn’t meant to last, but I deemed myself lucky enough to experience it while it lasted, so I didn’t have half a thought to put an end to it, even a temporary one.

We had lived two months in a bubble of the purest, the cleanest water and soap ever made by humankind, under the most transparent, clearest dome of glass. It was easy to see the world coming to an end, the apocalypse unraveling just a mere matter of meters from us, but it was also easy to ignore it when it couldn’t touch us.

So easy, in fact, that we forgot almost entirely of our problems to begin with. We thought about it – I did, most of the time, and by the way Neil got lost in his own mind so often I knew that he did too – as it was normal to do, but like it was something extraneous, foreign, alien to us. Like it was happening to someone else.

On one night in the middle of August, a couple of days after the full moon, Neil’s leg twitched under my palm, just as he moaned softly into my mouth, muffled by the deep kiss. He pulled away right after, looking down at our bodies, apart where they were joined just a moment before. He looked at the shirt I had refused to take off – I had declared that that night was going to be entirely dedicated to him – and made a face, frowning.

“That’s going to stain, you moron,” he sighed.

“Who are you calling a moron, jackass?” I flicked him on the forehead, and, despite himself, Neil laughed, “It was an old shirt anyway. I should’ve thrown it away months ago. I’m glad I didn’t.”

After that show of sheer will after the Slytherin party months before, Neil had asked me again if I was ready to take our this - whatever that had been - to a new level, a more profound one. And, while I was happy to oblige - I would've been lying through my teeth if I said that I didn't think of Neil sexually - I had also asked him to take it slow. For a couple of months, then, we had started to play with each other's body, mostly touching and making out till one of us finished. I still wasn't sure about engaging in the full act with him, but whatever we were doing seemed to please him, so I just went with it. 

Blowjobs and handjobs were fun anyway. 

“Right,” Neil nodded sumptuously, clearly mocking me, “I’m going to take a shower, then. Care to join?”

“The moment I say no to that, for the love of everything Holy, euthanize me.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“You like that I’m dramatic.”

“Do I now?”

“Do I really have to remind you the state you were in seconds ago?” I arched one of my eyebrows, teasing him, then feigned awe, with the back of my hand on my forehead, “Oh, Andrew, you’re majestic. Oh, Andrew, never stop touching me with your rough hands. Oh, Andrew, Andrew!”

“Alright, I heard enough,” Neil announced, and it was the only warning I got before a pillow got smacked on my face so hard it actually hurt a little. Either way, I started laughing loudly and obnoxiously as Neil, face as red as a bright tomato, walked sheepishly towards the bathroom to get himself clean, “You’re a downright bastard, you know that?”

“Technically speaking, I really am,” I taunted, a smirk on my face still hidden under the pillow I had yet to move, “But you do get poetic when I touch you.”

“What can I say? You inspire me.”

“That’s so fucking corny, Josten.”

The sound of his chuckle was drowned by the one of the shower turning on, and only at that point I began to undress, starting from the stained shirt. It still came as a surprise to me that I didn’t have to take my armbands off anymore: I was so used to being around just Neil most of the time that I didn’t wear them often during the evenings. Only when Kevin came to our room or when we had to go to dinner in the Great Hall did I wear them. As much as I was getting used to being seen by Neil without them, I was also painfully aware of their absence and, as soon as I stepped out of the dorm, they were on my arms again.

Still, I stalked slowly to the bathroom and yawned before getting in the shower. Neil was already in there, soap in his hand to wash his body. His broken skin looked like artwork in the feeble lights of the candles, and he swept me off my feet all over again.

“You’re staring,” he stated.

“You’re gorgeous,” I replied.

Neil only blushed again at my remark, which motivated me to finally enter the shower. I ran a hand through my hair, while Neil’s curls hung in front of his eyes and I had to open the curtain of deep maroon hair to get to his face.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

He leaned forward and our mouths were together again in an instant. Still, as head-spinning kissing Neil was, we silently decided it was best not to waste water and bathed instead of just fooling around in the shower. Either way, I did get to shampoo his hair while he laughed about how stupid that request was, so I counted that as a win.

When we got back to the bedroom, I crashed onto the mattress without any grace and Neil crawled next to me with the delicacy of a lizard. I guessed it was only fair that he was stealthy, given his wolf-like features, but it still mesmerized me how he could move without making any noise whatsoever.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, plopping down on his side so he could look at me.

“You,” I replied, “wolfie.”

Neil groaned, “I thought that had died with the novelty of discovering I was a werewolf. Why do you still call me that?”

“I don’t know, Abe, why do I still call you that?”

“Just stop it.”

“What would you like me to call you?” I smiled, reaching his face with my hand to caress the scar on his cheekbone.

“I don’t know. I call you by your name,” he shrugged half-heartedly, “Can’t you just call me Neil?”

“Of course, but you do have some pet names for me, so I want to have them for you. It’s about balance, Josten.”

“What pet names?”

“You call me darling,” I specified.

“It’s a joke.”

“Sure it is,” I giggled, “You called me love once,” Neil’s eyes widened in shock. I laughed louder, “What? Did you think I wouldn’t remember?”

“It’s not that,” he said, embarrassed, “It’s that… that word. You remember when we talked about love in our life? How you said that you’ve never really known what it’s like be loved and I said that I was fine with the love that I had known, that I didn’t need more?”

“Yeah,” I said truthfully, “What about it?”

Neil stirred on his place, visibly uncomfortable, and bit his bottom lip forcefully, drawing blood. My hand slid from his cheek to his mouth, thumb wiping the crimson off of it, then, absent-mindedly, I put the finger to my own mouth and sucked it off. Neil watched, a little dazed, eyes glazed over, but soon he shook his head.

“I have to focus,” he announced rather loudly, though he was clearly speaking to himself.

“What are you getting to?” I asked, quite amused by his bewilderment to my actions. I could still taste his blood dancing on my papillae, iron-y and warm.

“The thing is,” he cleared his throat, “Do you still feel that way? Do you still think… love is missing from your life?”

My heart stopped for a few second, and maybe he noticed because he took a sharp breath in and didn’t let it out. We stared at each other for a moment, both equally shocked. Should we have been having that conversation? We weren’t even a real couple. There was no room, there should’ve been no room for love.  

But there we were, looking into each other’s eyes, captured by each other in a way we hadn’t expected, still falling, falling, falling so hard and letting ourselves do just so even though we couldn’t have known if the impact of the fall would’ve killed us. My lips trembled, he bit his own again; my eyes widened, his closed in anticipation.

For a second, I thought I could really say it out loud. I thought it was safe for me to state it, to announce it, to shout it from the top of the Ravenclaw tower. Because there was nothing wrong with being sixteen and being in love, right? There was nothing wrong with being young and magical and in love, so deeply in love the world disappears from around you when you’re with someone.

Why wouldn’t I say it? He obviously wanted me to. It was Neil, just Neil, and I could be my true self around him, couldn’t I? I should’ve been able to say it. I wanted to say, for a moment, just for a moment, I wanted to say it.

“Neil,” I began, “I… You know how I’ve liked you for a long time, right?”

“Yes,” his eyes were still closed, but he nodded to let me know I could go on.

“Well maybe… You know after this long… What I’m trying to say is…”

A sharp knock on the door. Just two hits – knock knock – quick and steady, something rushed. Neil opened his eyes, the moment vanished and went up in slivers of smoke, and I groaned, annoyed beyond imagination.

“What?” I yelled at the door.

“Andrew,” it was Abby, her voice a little clipped, “You should come to the infirmary.”

“I’m getting really tired of being interrupted by you people,” I said, “Get lost.”

“Andrew, wait,” that was Neil. I turned towards him, his eyes were bright and alert but not sweet and docile anymore. They were icy and sharp and everything bad, “It’s Abby.”

And I knew what it meant. Abby was on vacation. Abby was supposed to be at St. Mungo’s, Abby wasn’t supposed to be at Hogwarts. The one time before that that Abby had had to come back to school earlier that what she should’ve, it was because I had killed my mother and I was dying. I was dying, that was why she came back early. And yet she was there again. Early, too early.

There was something wrong.

I only had my underwear on, but I didn’t care. I put on my armbands on the way to the door and opened it so harshly it slammed on the wall behind it. Abby’s eyes were bloodshot, red-rimmed: she’d been crying.

“Who is it?” I asked, monotone.

“It’s Renée,” she said, “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

 

---

 

Everyone was already there, except for Allison. Dan was pacing back and forth outside of the big archway that led into the infirmary, biting on her nail, and Matt walked along trying to shush her, hush her, calm her down, which was evidently pointless. Nicky seemed to be in similar distress, but Aaron, apparently calm but with deep, dark, purple circles around his eyes that begged to differ, couldn’t do anything to help him, paralyzed by the situation like he seemed to be while leaning on the wall. Kevin was also there, tapping nervously with his foot on the pavement, a rhythm I didn’t recognize.

“Oh, God, you’re here,” Dan dashed towards Neil and hugged him tight, Matt followed closely like he was afraid she might’ve passed out, “She’s… it’s really bad. It’s so, so bad.”

I didn’t say much. I wasn’t in the mood to talk. Neil glanced at me over Dan’s shoulder, but I didn’t move, I didn’t speak up, I didn’t breathe. I pinched the skin on my wrist over and over again, and I didn’t care that it was starting to burn, that I was clearly doing damage, that it was basically self-harm in a duller form. I needed to see Renée. I couldn’t live until I saw Renée.

Nicky silently crossed the hallway to come near me. I shot a glare at him, and he seemed to understand there was no point in trying to communicate with me at that moment.

“She wanted to speak privately with each of us,” Matt explained, hand rubbing up and down on Dan’s back while tears streamed on her face quietly, “Like, saying her goodbyes. She’s with Allison now. We’ve all already been, Kevin too. You two are the last, she asked that you went in together.”

“Did she tell you why?” Neil asked, unraveling himself from Dan to come to me.

When he tried to take my hand I flinched, so his eyes snapped up towards me. Embarrassed, torn apart, broken, I couldn’t think of anything but looking away for a moment. Everyone watched as that scene took place in front of their eyes, and no one uttered a word until Aaron cleared his throat. 

“What have you two been doing?” he asked, rather casually.

“Shut the fuck up,” Neil and I replied in unison, Neil angrier than I was.

Aaron raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, then rolled his eyes. How he managed to be a piece of absolute shit even in the worst moments, I couldn’t say. But still he did.

We waited patiently for Allison to step out of the infirmary. Once she did, all red, blotchy and cried out, she scowled at Neil fiercely before running away in tears again, sobbing loudly through the hallways. She had always been a bit dramatic at that, but it didn’t matter. The rest of the group, with the obvious exception of Kevin, looked confused at Neil before running as well, after the heartbroken girl. Kevin stood still, but he took in a deep breath.

“Is it what I think it is?” Neil asked, carefully.

“Yeah,” Kevin replied, “Yeah, it is. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I should be the sorry one. I should apologize to Allison.”

No, you shouldn’t. It isn’t your fault either. Maybe I should’ve said it out loud, maybe I should’ve been doing more than just thinking and thinking and thinking and spiraling and anxiously still pinching and pinching and pinching-

“Andrew, Neil,” Abby called us from the archway entry, “You can come in. I’ll leave you three alone.”

She went straight to Kevin, ushering him away. The whole wing of the castle was empty, hollowed out like a pumpkin at Halloween, not even the ghost hanging around to witness, to gossip. It was solemn, in a way, the moment Neil and I took a mirrored steadying breath and walked in, only to find Renée lying in a bed, her own breath ragged and shaky.

Her body was covered with a blanket, but even that was wet with blood, which made it easy to understand the extent of the injury. Her face was scratched up, her hair had been pulled to the point of breaking and sticking up in all directions. She was a nice girl, always smiling, at least that is what I chose to remember; but here she was, lying in a hospital bed with her body torn to shreds, not a hint of joy on her whole shape.

“If it isn’t my favorite couple,” she managed to say, even though it was clearly hard for her to talk.

Stop it, I wanted to say, stop talking, stop hurting yourself, stop dying. God, stop dying. Instead, I spat out, “We aren’t a couple.”

Neil closed his eyes, slowly. I guessed that would’ve caused one hell of a fight in the future, but at the present it wasn’t my problem. The only problem was Renée.

Renée, whose arms were the only thing apart from her head that the blanket didn’t cover. Renée, whose arms were wounded deeply, her skin scorched, the edges of the cuts uneven and irreparable, unmendable. Renée, whose agape mouth made it clear that she was breathing manually, still living but only out of spite. Renée, my best friend in the whole world, the only one who could freely touch me, the first person I would’ve called when something went wrong, the girl who sat beside me day and night when I was the one dying – both times. Renée, who was my home. Not that godforsaken castle, not the father figures I had found, not the love I was cherishing, she was.

But wasn’t that my whole story, really? Just a foolish child who thought they could have a home even if it was constantly taken away from them? I had dared to hope, I had dared to let my guard down, to believe that maybe that school was home, it could be safe for me, it was a place to find a family made of widely different people, to find friendship, to find love.

And to think that moments prior to that, to that awful discovery that my best friend was dying, I was about to fess up everything, to bleed in front of the boy I had dared to love, I had foolishly fallen in love with. How could I ever do that? How could I have been happy while she was there, dying?

“We’ll talk about that later, when we’re alone,” she frowned at me, but promptly turned to Neil, who was being stoic, so much so that it seemed fake, “I have to talk to you first.”

“No private goodbyes for me?” he asked, rather cockily.

“Neil, I know what you are,” she just said, matter-of-factly. There wasn’t an ounce of emotion in her tone, “Your father did this to me, on the Moriyamas’s orders, on the full moon.”

“How would they even know you?” Neil didn’t seem to be shaken by that confession.

“She worked for them,” I said.

“What?” that ought to shock him. She was staring at me slack-jawed too.

“The knives you gave me, they are the same kind Riko uses. I noticed that on the third task,” I explained, “They’re manufactured by the Moriyamas, that was the only way you could’ve gotten them.”

“You smart-ass,” Renée chuckled, but it came out as cough, “Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”

“When you gave me the knives you told me you couldn’t bare the sight of them, that you were trying to get away from that part of your life. I assumed you weren’t proud of your work with and for them, so why would I hold it against you? I don’t hold it against Neil, nor Kevin.”

“Either way,” I couldn’t tell if what followed was a sigh or a useless attempt at catching her breath, “They’re after you. They’re close. They also think I died, but luckily I managed to get out and-”

“How did you get out?” Neil asked.

“Jean,” she swallowed harshly, “I… he’s my friend. We talked a lot last summer, and he’s an animagus and is forced to follow your father around on full moons. He took me here. He was also the one who called Abby.”

“Jean’s here?” he bit his lip, “I have to get Kevin and ask him to go check on him.”

“He’s going already, I told him to,” Renée tried to smile, but it didn’t look quite right, “Anyway, that was what I wanted to tell you, Neil. I don’t know what they have in mind but, killing me? That’s the first step. That’s a way to… to frighten you.”

“Why would this frighten me?” Neil seemed to think about it. Then, at the exact same moment, they turned together to look at me. I stared at them blankly.

“Right,” she said, “Do you mind, Neil? I want to say goodbye to my best friend.”

“Sure. It doesn't matter, but I am sorry you got caught in the crossfire. I never meant for this to happen to any of you,” Neil exhaled, then to me, “I’ll wait for you in our room.”

“Don’t bother,” I spat.

I didn’t look to see whether my answer had hurt him. I didn’t care who, precisely, got hurt in my process of grieving, because they would’ve never hurt as much as I was right then, watching the only girl who I’d ever loved wither away. There she was, small and frail, still breathing, still talking and chatting, ever so slowly dying, but it wasn’t slow enough.

As color drained from her face, I knew it was doing the same on mine. I was more connected to her, physically and mentally, than I was to my own brother. In a way, it served me right: that was what happened when I let myself get close to things that mattered. They died, they faded to blackness, they disappeared from the Earth as I knew it.

I stood there, watching her, just as carefully as she was watching me. She cleared her throat – whether to actually do it or just to catch my attention, I didn’t know – and started talking again.

“Don’t let this,” she weakly raised one arm to gesture at her whole body, “Don’t let this ruin what you have with Neil. It’s not his fault.”

“I know it isn’t,” I said, but my voice was groggy and I wished I could go back to not speaking at all.

“Don’t punish him to punish yourself,” Renée reached for my hand, her own a little shaky, “It’s not your fault either, you know?”

“He… This Nathan,” I snarled the name, disgusted by the fact that I was merely mentioning such a monster, “He did this to you to hurt me.”

“Then don’t let him hurt you. Prove him wrong,” she insisted.

“How?” I asked, angrier by the second, “How could I not let this hurt me, you stupid woman? You’re the only person that I care about. You’re the only one that I loved.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said, leaving no room for rebuttal, “and you know it. You should also say it.”

“No,” I shook my head, “Never. Not after this. I cannot, I cannot let Neil know that I love him.”

“But why?” she cried out, like I was the one digging in her insides, “Don’t shut yourself down, Andrew. God, don’t lock your feelings in. Neil loves you-”

“No he doesn’t,” I was quick to reply.

“Yes he does,” she squeezed my hand forcefully, “And you’re either too blind or too stupid if you don’t notice it. His big secret is out, for crying out loud. He's scared. You don’t want to do it for yourself? You want to die just like I’m doing?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well, don’t. Live. Do it for him,” she added when she noticed I was about to respond to that as well, “He’s going to have it rough already, don’t make him go through it without you.”

“What about me?” I cried, hitting my chest with my free hand, “What about me going through this without you?! What am I supposed to do?”

“Then do it for me, too,” a tear rolled down her cheek, “Live because I couldn’t. When I was little I liked to imagine myself old and knitting beside a crackling fire in a stone fireplace. I wanted to die far from the life I was birthed into, but I didn't get to. Since I met you, I prayed that you would be in that picture as well. And I want you to. I want you to be old and happy and loved, even if your teeth and hair fall out. Even - even if I'm not there.”

“I can’t do this without you. You’re the only one who cares enough about me to wish this,” I couldn’t stop the tears from falling copiously. My breath was hitching and I knew, deep down, that I was having a panic attack. I couldn't think straight. I wanted a fucking razor blade.

“I’m not,” she assured me, her voice cracking up while she talked through the long cry, “Neil cares. Aaron would fall apart if something happened to you, he’s just too stubborn to admit it. Nicky thinks the world of you. They all want you to live a perfect, long life. Don’t let them down.”

“I don’t know if I can,” I sobbed.

“Andrew,” she looked in my eyes, deep and watery, “please live. I know you hate that word because you think it doesn’t change anything. Then prove yourself wrong. Hear my plea. I’m begging you: don’t let my death be the reason of yours. I swear I will haunt your ass if you let yourself waste away for this.”

"I'm not worth it, Renée."

"You are. You are everything, Andrew. Start believing this: you matter more than what you think. You are worth more than all the precious things in the world. You are worth a lot to me," she hiccuped, "And you're worth a lot to him too. Do not let yourself die, or you'll see me sooner than you think as a ghost and you will not be happy to see me."

Despite myself, I chuckled. And, even if deeply irritated by the word she had said, I nodded.

“Promise me,” she urged.

“I can’t,” I said, “You’ll have to trust me on this, I guess.”

She seemed to ponder my words, then sighed again, “Allison hates me for this, but I said I wanted you to stay here for the night. Would you?”

“Of course,” I said, already searching for a chair to sit on with my eyes, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

 

---

 

That night, that miserable, long night, I slept with my fingers latched onto Renée’s, her arm as a pillow so I could place my ear on the unsteady rhythm of her pulse. That night, I dreamed of trees on fire, of monsters under the bed, of people dying even when you didn’t want them to; I dreamed of smoke and pain, I dreamed of kisses and love, I dreamed of wounds and anger.

When Renée’s fingers relaxed against mine, her hand limp against my palm, I jolted awake. I took a sweeping look on her face, but it didn’t take me long to know what happened. Still, I tried to wake her up. Just in case.

“Renée?” I said, shaking her arm a little. My voice sounded childish.

“Renée?” I urged, louder, taking my hand to her shoulder and rocking her more forcefully.

“Abby!” I finally screamed, when I refused to acknowledge why my best friend wasn’t waking up.

Despite Renée’s request, Allison had slept outside the infirmary, and she came rushing in with a dash to the bed when she heard my scream. She and Abby arrived at the same moment, and Allison thought it better for Abby to have the floor first, checking on the lifeless girl with her wand. I was still clutching Renée’s fingers in mine, holding on for dear life.

It didn’t help. No matter what I did, I couldn’t have helped.

Renée was dead.

When Drake raped me; when my birth mother abused me; when I cut myself. The only way I knew to handle pain was to avoid it, not to think of it, or to transform it in another, more unstable but more understandable emotion: anger. I didn’t know how to be angry about that, I didn’t know whom, precisely, I was angry at. So, I decided the former was the safest choice for me.

If one doesn’t want to experience pain, one also has to let go of the rest of emotions – no anger, no joy, no love – and of the things that cause them – no friends, no home, no lover. While Abby tried to calm Allison’s bellows of pure sorrow and grief, I watched my best friend’s peaceful, smooth face. She hadn’t suffered. She died thinking I would’ve been fine. I squeezed her cold hand and then let go of it.

I knew I had told her I would've tried, but I couldn't seem to care. What could she do, anyway? She wasn't there to reprimand me, she wasn't there to warn me that giving up on my emotions just so that I didn't feel the need to grieve her would only cause more problems in the future. She wasn't there, and I couldn't help but stepping out of myself, stepping out of my brain and heart, stepping out of that situation that threatened to ruin me in so many ways. I couldn't handle it. I looked at Renée's face and I knew I couldn't endure her lost. And even if I knew it wasn't what she would've wanted for me, I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't let myself feel that pain: I feared it would've killed me.

I looked back at the entryway and the group was there. Nicky was weeping already, so was the rest of the group but he was the loudest. Neil was there, stoic, immobile. He mouthed ‘I’m sorry’, which I didn’t understand, it wasn’t his fault.

I looked at Neil, his blue eyes dark and deep. Bloodshot. Scared. Angry, angrier than ever.

I turned to look at Renée again. Calm, tranquil. I sighed. And I let go of the rest of the feelings I had in my heart.

Shut off, shut down, I walked out of the infirmary and didn’t look back as my name was called several times by several voices.

None of those was Renée’s voice, though. And she was the only one who could’ve caught my attention, the only one who could've saved me from myself.

Pity she had died, then.

Notes:

well, um, that happened-

I'M SORRY OKAY? I'M SO SORRY. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY BUT THAT

Dumbledore is dying. Remus left. Renée is gone. Andrew is determined not to feel anymore, not even his love for Neil. Neil is being hunted down.

what a shitty situation, really

Hell is coming, I guess. Are you ready?

 

JUST TO CLARIFY! the Major Character Death tag was for Renée's death - since she has been Andrew's only companion beside Neil up until now I thought it was only right that I put a warning. Either way, I will say again that neither Neil nor Andrew will die in this fanfiction. I can't tell you anything about the other Foxes, though, I'm sorry

Chapter 37: You're on your own, kid

Summary:

TW!
- explicit wish of suicide, several times during the whole chapter even if brief mentions
- graphic depiction of injuries (brief)
- rape
- drug abuse

this seems little but this chapter is harsh, take care of yourself

Lights.

Somebody had pulled the curtains. I didn’t know if those around the bed or those at the window. I didn’t care. I laid still, looking at the ceiling. I could hear them rummaging around my room, talking, asking questions like I wasn’t even there.

“Should we try to shake him awake?”

“He’s awake. And don’t touch him.”

“What? Why?”

“Just don’t.”

“He’s right, Abby. Do not touch Andrew.”

“Alright, you two. Don’t gang up on me. Bee, have you tried talking to him?”

“He’s clearly non-responsive. I can’t do much if he isn’t willing to talk to me.”

“This is pointless. He’s not going to listen to us.”

“And what do you suggest, Neil? We leave him here, let him wither away? He hasn’t eaten in days. Has he drunk any water?”

“I fucking know that. That doesn’t change anything. He’s basically in a coma, the only difference is he can actually hear us, so stop talking about him like he’s not here.”

Thanks, my love, I thought.

That was what I started to call Neil, in my head. It was safe where he could not hear me, where my feelings were carefully stored and he was unaware of them. I could tell him everything, in my head: I told him that Drake had stolen my childhood and everything else from me, I told him that I was hanging by a loose and dangerously worn-out thread, I told him that I wished I could cry myself away until I passed from dehydration, which wasn’t far from what was happening, by the way. Only it wasn't that I was crying.

Abby was right, I hadn’t had a drop of water in days. My lips stuck together, unopened, chapped and unused. I hated the feeling of dry skin, but I knew I couldn’t do anything about it but drink something, which I couldn’t possibly do if I wanted my plan to work.

Apparently, they wouldn’t let it work. That was a pity. Why waste time and intelligence trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved? I wanted to be with Renée again. I wanted to hug her again. I hadn’t done it in a long time, before she died.

Renée died.

It hit my heart again with a pang. I flinched physically, like someone had punched me in the chest. I almost cried out, but my vocal cords were still. They had been for over a week now. Soon, we should’ve started school. But I just couldn’t, I couldn’t.

Was this what Aaron felt when our mother had died? Was this why he hated me, because I made him feel like this? No, it couldn’t be, I told myself. Because Renée had never almost killed me, Renée didn’t abuse me, Renée never laid a finger that was gentle and careful on me. Renée was the origin of all of my laughs, Renée was the reason why Neil could touch me in the first place, Renée was sweet and kind and everything that our mother wasn’t. Aaron couldn’t have mourned our mother like this. If he did, he was wrong.

I sighed, low and breathy, so no one could hear it. Bee, Neil and Abby were still talking about me.

“He’s safer here,” Neil said.

“Look at the state he’s in,” Abby countered, “He’s dying.”

“That’s what he wants,” Bee said.

“So, what? We’re going to let him?”

“Of course not,” Neil again, “But I don’t see what we can do about it.”

“Let me take him there,” Abby begged, “I won’t let him out of my eyesight.”

“But you’re needed here, you can’t go with him,” Bee.

“Yes, what about my full moons?” Neil, “I won’t be able to handle them without him and you to watch over me.”

“Neil, the next full moon is in two weeks,” Abby, “Don’t you think he’ll be better by then?”

“I know him,” Neil, “He needs time. I’m willing to give it to him, but you need to be here.”

“I can go with him, then,” Bee.

“Albus won’t allow it,” Abby, “Do you know someone you trust? Someone there we can entrust him to?”

A brief silence. I could hear Bee’s wheels in her brain turn and turn and turn. I was still on the bed, eyes on the ceiling, paralyzed by the pain in my brain and chest and body. I wanted to cry so fucking bad. But everything was so peaceful. Where were they going to take me? Would Renée come with me?

Oh. No. Renée’s dead.

Another punch to the chest, another hit on the heart. I sighed again. This time, Neil heard me, because I sensed his head turn towards me. His eyes were burning my skin.

I missed his hands in mine. He wouldn’t touch me while I was like this. I knew I would’ve hated him if he did, but somehow, I still wanted him to.

“At St. Mungo’s?” Bee finally spoke, “I may know someone. A man named Proust. He’s a fine psychiatrist, maybe he’d be able to help. I don’t exactly trust him, but he’s the best in his field.”

“Well, then,” Abby, “I’ll send an owl right away. Neil, would you break the news to our friend there?”

“He heard us,” Neil, “But I do want to be alone with him for a while.”

“We’ll head out, then,” Bee.

Sounds of feet shuffling away. Sound of the door snapping close. Sound of a pair of feet striking the pavement, coming closer and closer. The mattress shifted under newly added weight. I could sense his body next to mine, not touching but barely out of touch.

“You’re going away for a while, Andrew,” he announced, contradicting the fact that he knew I had heard them. Maybe he was telling that to himself, though, “You’ll choose when to come back. I have feeling I won’t see you for a while. What do you think?”

His question was met with silence on my part. I don’t know, my dear, I thought, I think I’ll never be the same again. Will you still love me when I come back and I’m still broken? Will you still try for me when you see that I can’t be the one you fell for?

“I guess you don’t want to talk right now,” he said after a beat, “I get it, you know? I didn’t want to talk as well, when my mum died. She was my only friend, kind of. So, maybe I understand what you’re going through. I don’t want to assume, but perhaps you’d be happier to know I understand your pain.”

I know you understand, my love, I thought. I closed my eyes, You and I, we’re the only ones who understand each other’s pain. Even if we don’t know the causes, we know. I know you know me. I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me for this, for the mean words I’ll spew when I'll snap out of this trance. I don't wish to hurt you, but I think somehow I will. I love you more than anything, you must know.

“You’re going to be fine, I believe,” he swallowed harshly, “I have to believe it for you, too, because I know you don’t think you’ll get better. I turned out fine, didn’t I? We always land on our feet, Andrew.”

You do, I said in my head, You’re so strong and you don’t even realize it. Every day I notice more and more that you don’t need me, that the wolf will be fine by itself, that you’re becoming even stronger. Dumbledore is wrong to think that you can’t face your father alone, Neil. You can, and you will land on your feet, and you’ll realize I was not needed the whole time.

“I’m sorry my dad did that to Renée,” his voice trembled, “I never wished for you to be involved in this. I didn’t know Dumbledore’s plan; I didn’t know he was using you as a weapon. My dad, he’s merciless. I don’t know what his next move will be.”

Are you scared? Don’t be. You’ll be fine. You and Kevin, you’ll be fine even without me.

“Kevin and I,” he said, like he was reading my mind – and for a moment I worried he knew everything I’d been thinking, even if that was impossible –, “Kevin and I will be fine. We’ll manage. I know you’re worried about that, and that you’ll fret about it at St. Mungo’s, but I’ll watch over him like a hawk. Riko won’t get near him, I promise.”

What about you? Don’t let him get you, Neil.

“We’ll be safe. You’ll get better. Everything will be okay.”

He turned on his side, looking at me and, absent-mindedly, I did too. I moved for the first time in a week. My spine and legs were sore, like they were bruised all over. Neil offered a little smile.

“Trust me.”

Why would I ever trust you? All you do is lie. I don’t even know your real name.

“I know Riko told you a bit about my past,” he sighed, then bit into his lip, “I know you know Neil isn’t my real name. I don’t like my real one, it’s too similar to my dad’s. I also needed a new identity if I was going to hide from him, hence the change in birth date too.”

Then how could you ask me to trust you?

“Abram,” he sentenced, like that was a full explanation. He went on, “Abram is true, though. It’s my real middle name. I never told anyone, it’s just you. If you don’t want to trust Neil, trust Abram. Alright?”

There was a beat of silence. We looked at each other, waiting and waiting and waiting.

“Alright,” I croaked.

“Thank you.”

I love you, I wanted to say next.

He loves you too, Renée, in my head, replied.

I shut her down. The last thing I needed was being haunted by her fucking ghost.

 

---

 

The room was lit by dim candlelight and didn’t have any windows. The nurse had said it was because they feared I would’ve jumped out of it, and they wouldn’t put me in a room with a window even when I assured them that I was afraid of heights and wouldn’t choose that way to kill myself. They said maybe I’d get desperate and try anything that worked, but I told them I was already desperate, and yet there I was.

Either way, I was locked inside it, waiting for the doctor to see me. Bee had taken me there, restless, had asked me to try and get better, had told me that she’d be waiting for me back at the castle. Wymack was there as well, he was the one who had the job of picking me up from my bed and depositing me on this new one instead. I hadn’t moved still, but I was talking.

Bee said that was an improvement. I didn’t think it was.

The room was also cold and scarcely provided with furniture. In fact, I just had a bed to sleep onto, and it wasn’t that comfortable. I didn’t even get a closet since they feared I would somehow hang myself in it. Go figure.

Bee had described that Proust man to me: she had said that he was taller than me – as I approached the seventeen years of age, I also realized that that was probably not a rare situation – with brown eyes and brown hair.

She was mostly right. When he entered my room, unlocking several locks that had been placed on it as a “precaution” – I was starting to doubt what Bee had told that hospital about me and my behavior at that point – he basically waltzed in, in such a joyous way that it almost seemed odd. Then again, he was a psychiatrist: somewhere deep in my brain I assumed you had to be weird to do a job like that.

He didn’t talk to me at first. He just looked at a thick file in his hands and hummed and nodded. He stole some glances of me, sitting on the bed quietly waiting for him to say something. Was I going crazy? Was there something wrong with me? When could I go back to Hogwarts?

He smiled all of the sudden, wicked and wild. There was nothing warm in the curve of his lips, nothing inviting in the white of his teeth. He looked psychotic himself, like he should’ve been the one locked inside one of those rooms instead of me. Maybe I wasn’t too far off with my first impression, too, since he also sounded deranged when he started to speak.

“Are you having fun around here?” he asked, casually, like we had met at a café of some sorts, “I hear the healers are nice. You know one of them, don’t you? The blonde one? What’s her name?”

“Do you mean Abigail?” I retorted, voice low as a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” he said, cupping his ear in a childish gesture to signal me I need to speak louder, “What was that?”

“I said that I know Abigail. Can we skip the pleasantries?”

The man – the doctor, I guessed – hummed again, still skimming through the pages of the file. I sighed and rolled my eyes, which was as much movement as I allowed myself to do.

“You’re a practical man. I like that,” he said, and for whatever reason I felt goosebumps rise on my skin, “We can cut to the chase, then.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“What, what? What do you want me to say?”

“I’m an authority, you know?” he left briefly to bring in a chair from the outside world – how long had it been since I was locked inside that bunker? Had it been a day, a week, a month? I couldn’t possibly know, but there seemed to be light outside – and then closed the door on his way in. He straddled the chair like a child would’ve, like Neil sometimes did.

I miss him I miss him I miss him.

“I know that you are an authority of some sorts,” I said, “And what about it?”

“You’re supposed to ask for permission, have some manners. What’s the polite way to ask someone to do something?”

I stopped, looking at him up and down and then pursed my lips when I realized the game he was playing. 

“Is there a particular word you want me to say?”

He opened the file in front of him and skipped to a page in particular. His eyes travelled quickly through it then settled into mine.

“It says here,” he announced, “Your therapist noted that you have a strangely hard time saying and hearing the word please. Does that ring any bells?”

“It is true,” I said, earnest, because why would I lie? It was obvious the quickest way out of there was to get better and to get better fast, and I couldn’t do that if I didn’t cooperate, “I don’t like that word.”

“Why’s that?” he snapped the folder close.

“Because it’s useless and it doesn’t get you anything but more troubles.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The times that I used it resulted in nothing of consequence. I was asked to say it once, for a specific purpose, and even that the word didn’t achieve. So, what? Am I supposed to use it just to be polite? I’m not a polite person, I can live without a word in my vocabulary.”

“You seem like an articulate boy,” he said, abruptly changing the subject, “Do you read a lot?”

“Just about the necessary,” I answered, “why?”

“You also seem like you know a lot. Do you know anything about psychiatry? It’s a muggle thing, really, and since I’m a muggleborn I could see that this kind of healing was severely lacking in the wizarding world. I took it upon myself to fix that.”

“That sounds noble,” I muttered, meaning it half-heartedly.

He took a notepad from the chest-pocket on his white coat and started scribbling on it with a pencil. I wondered what he had wrote, what he had understood about me by my simple and unfelt reply. Still, I was waiting for him to bring out the big guns, so I didn’t question it.

“You were raised by muggles, weren’t you?” he started again after a couple of minutes of reading intently his own writing.

“Yes.”

“Do you feel like you were robbed of a happier life, with your natural family?”

“No.”

“Did you have issues with your birthmother?”

“Why?”

“Answer the question.”

“Is this a psychiatry session or an interrogation by the police?”

“Why would you think that? I haven’t implied you had something to do with your mother’s death.”

“You haven’t,” I explained, running out of patience and will of being honest with that man, “But Bee has, and I know that file was given to you by her. If that’s everything she ever thought about my mental health in the last two years or so, she ought to have mentioned she thought I was the one who killed Tilda.”

He seemed surprised by my words, taken aback as he put the folder down on the floor and looked back up at me. He folded his arms on the back of the chair and leaned forwards, chin rested on his forearms while he looked at me with narrowed brown eyes. He was not that old, maybe in his late forties, and his hair was getting grayer at the roots.

“So, what else has Bee told you?” I asked.

“You have a lot of issues for someone your age.”

“How so?”

“Well, you have been to a dozen of foster homes, you have been in prison for a couple of years for arson, and since you enrolled in school at Hogwarts it seems that the castle is always involved in some kind of drama. Your mother’s death was sudden, and your twin brother thinks you did it.”

“Is that all you know?”

“Of course not. I also know you have a foul attitude, that you are often violent and impulsive to a fault. I know that you have a difficulty getting attached to people and places, and I know you’ve caused more trouble that you look accountable for. I know you don't like to be touched and react badly when someone does it abruptly and without asking permission. I know you have a scary past you won’t talk about.”

“What can I say,” my tone bordered on sarcasm, “I’m a special kid.”

He adjusted himself on the chair and looked at me up and down, up and down. I was sitting on the bed, back straight against the wall behind it and legs crossed in front of me. I felt self-conscious. I knew that feeling: it was the same way I felt when Drake looked at me across the table, tasting my body in anticipation during dinner while I talked idly with Cass and tried to ignore him, knowing that I couldn’t stop him from coming to my room later in the evening.

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Somehow, even under threat, I knew I couldn’t move. I was locked in place, paralyzed, and I couldn’t defend myself.

It looked like that was going to be a problem.

“Would you like to tell me why you are like this?”

Suddenly, I was very aware that I was sharing my whole life, the whole reason that I existed the way I did, the whole reason I felt pain on a daily basis when someone brushed their skin against mine not even on purpose, with a complete stranger. I was scared. Scared out of my mind.

Bee had told me that he was a good doctor, on the way here. I trusted her. I should’ve told him everything, every detail, so he could cure me and send me back to Hogwarts, back to Neil, back to Kevin, back even to those stupid kids that I struggled to admit to myself that I liked.

“I was abused,” I finally spat out, like I had been holding a wasp in my mouth until then, “From the age of seven until I went to juvenile prison. By different people, but rather continuously. That was why I changed houses and family so frequently. I never had the pleasure to land in a place where one of the people in the house didn’t find me attractive enough to not take no for an answer.”

“This seems like a good start. How did this affect you, in the daily?”

I scoffed, shook my head lightly. That was the first movement I had made in maybe weeks, since the moment I had turned on the bed to look at Neil. The memory of his sweet face close to mine made me ache in a whole new way.

“It’s the reason of my entire character, really. That’s why I can’t bother to be touched by anyone, that’s why I react violently to anyone who looks like they’re going to hurt me, that’s why I have massive protection instincts towards those I love. It ruined me, as things like these often do, don’t they? All I knew since the age of seven was pain, and violation, and absence of privacy and bodily autonomy. I’m on edge every second of every day and I can’t for the life of me let go of the ache in my chest because I feel like it’s the only thing keeping me from drowning in an ocean of apathy that will inevitably lead me to my death.”

I rambled on. I realized I had said too much for my standards, I realized I was going to regret the way that I had spoken to that man someday in my life, but maybe I would’ve killed myself before I would’ve got to ponder my mistakes in this instance.

He seemed interested in my answer. He looked at me for a long time, and it was the first time it dawned on me that I was alone with a man bigger than me in a locked room that was also probably soundproofed with next to no way to escape. I could go for the door, but he would’ve blocked me before I would’ve managed to disable every lock.

There was no point in looking for a way out. It was already too late. I could see it in his eyes, like the many times before, like every time it happened. No matter what I did and how much I fought, he would’ve had me. There was simply no way that anything would’ve happened instead of that.

“So,” he said, “Would you say that this is your biggest trauma? The one that left you… scarred?”

“For life,” I whispered, out of strength.

I was simply waiting for him to stand up and do it. Then it was back to the same routine again. Only now I didn’t have a razor blade to help me endure the torture.

He cleared his throat. His gaze dropped to the exposed piece of my skin where the collar of the sweater I had on was loose. I glanced at it, finding my sharp collarbone visible and white and oh so pretty, oh so candid. I swallowed.

“You said that was the reason you jumped from house to house, but you stayed in your last one for almost two years. Why?”

“The woman who took me in loved me. She was the sweetest person I’d ever met, she treated me like I was her own. She wanted to adopt me,” there was no point in lying now. Better to get everything off my chest at that point.

“Was someone there who abused you? Was that why you ended up in prison?”

“There was. I purposely went to prison to escape from him, but I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want the woman to find out and break her heart,” I swallowed again against a dry mouth and the lump in my throat.

There were tears in my eyes. I refused to let them fall, I refused to show more weakness than the one I was already admitting. My hands clenched in fists on my knees, clutching the fabric of the pants.

“Foster dad?” the doctor asked.

“Foster brother,” I answered, “His name is Drake.”

Well, that’s done. He knew everything now, which was more than enough to release me once he did what he evidently had to do. He wanted to rape me? That was fine. That was fantastic, for all I cared about. That was nothing I wasn’t used to, that was easy to handle. As long as he let me go after that, let me run away from him like I did most of the time from everything else. As long as he actually left me to heal on my own terms, so that I could mend the crack on my heart that he, who was supposed to cure all the others, made.

I couldn’t help but laugh a little when I remembered this was supposed to be about Renée’s death. Drake was taking away even that from me. That fucking bastard.

“Well, Andrew,” the doctor stood up and loosened his tie. It’s fine, I kept telling myself, it’s fine. You survived this before, “My way of treating patients with trauma is to eliminate the fear it instills in them by making them relive it until the chokehold it has on them is lost and meaningless. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I did. I refused to believe that was actually a thing done in psychiatry, at least not with traumas this physical and violent, but I’d known for a while what he wanted to do with me. What I didn’t understand was if this announcement was a way to justify, whether to himself or to me I didn’t know, what he was about to do. Still, it was wrong. I tried to make him see it, even if I knew it was pointless.

“Do you want to rape me, then?” I asked.

“I want you to understand,” he said as he sat on the edge of the bed, a little too far from me, visibly wary of my possible reaction, “This is a therapy itinerary. By being here, you’re consenting to my ways of healing you, so it’s not technically rape.”

“Is this your way of telling me there’s no way for me to get you locked up in a jail?” I cocked one of my eyebrows looking at him as he unbuttoned his shirt.

“Don’t fuss, Andrew. I don’t want to hurt you,” he cooed, almost sweetly.

I snorted, “Yeah, well, that’s what they all said. Especially Drake.”

“About that,” he said, taking his shirt off. He didn’t have a great body, but it was not bad either. The kind of torso you’d expect from a man who lives a sedentary life but mostly eats well and has a good metabolism, “I want you to imagine I’m him. He was the one who hurt you the most, so this therapy will have a greater impact that way.”

“I bet,” I managed to say before he got his hands on me. He pulled the sweater off my body.

That was the beginning of the fall.

 

---

 

Knees to my chest, arms wrapped around them, lying on my side as I bent over the bed to retch on the floor once again. I wiped my mouth with my already dirty sleeve. They didn’t give me a change of clothes. At some point I began to wonder whether the hospital knew I was even there.

The only people who saw me were Proust and his trusted nurse. She was the one who fed me – irregularly, so I couldn’t tell how many days had passed – and who brought me the drugs. I was full of them, so full, in fact, that I had begun to see people in my room that clearly weren’t there. I knew they weren’t because my most frequent hallucination was Renée.

Sometimes she was a reassuring presence, soothing me and caressing me in the way she only knew how, telling me it was all going to be fine. Sometimes she was a wretched demon, yelling at me that I was letting them ruin me, that I was doing all of that just because she died but I needed to live on, to move on, to escape. I didn’t know how, and I told her. I told her I told her I told her. She wouldn’t stop screaming though.

Sometimes I would see Neil. He would tell me he couldn’t possibly love someone this wrecked, someone this broken, someone who could only drag him down with them. He would tell me that everything he'd had with me was an experiment, indulging in my guilty feelings and passions, using me because I was the easiest to fool. I’d tell him he was right: I was a fool.

Sometimes I would see Aaron. He would tell me that I had killed the only person he could call family and that I would never be part of it. He would tell me that our mother had loved us in her own twisted way, and I was too blinded by the pain I had endured to see it, and I took it out on her because she was the closest one that day. He wondered whether I would’ve killed him, if he had been the closest. I’d tell him I didn’t know.

I hardly knew anything anymore.

The moments the drugs cleared from my organism were the best and the worst at the same time. I liked, on a general basis, not being bashed by people I loved, so there was that. I could also think about the situation more rationally.

But the drugs they gave me were severely addicting, so I would go through withdrawal every single time. That meant shivers, puking, fits of rage, extreme fatigue. I could handle that. I actually was starting to believe that I could handle anything, at that point.

I vomited once more on the floor and then, when I felt steadier, I stood up, careful to step past the pool of sick next to the bed. I began pacing and thinking, as I did often when I was left alone and sober in the dark room.

I had begun moving again after the first couple of times Proust had raped me, mostly to try and fight him off. The rest of the movements came naturally after that, while I worked on my grief for Renée alone and not helped by anyone but my own brain. I struggled through it alone, on my own terms, and maybe Proust had been a blessing after all: if my life wasn't in that immediate danger, I would've still been laying on a bed and wanting to die. At least, he had made me want to fight. 

They’d added a mirror to my furniture, to make me look at the state I was in every time Proust left the room. I was battered, with bruises and cuts and blacked eyes I couldn’t heal. I could’ve healed them, since I knew wandless magic, but I felt it was risky to make them notice. I also felt like the mirror was a trap of some sort: they either wanted me to break it and use it against myself or them, or I really didn’t know, but I wasn’t planning on taking a misstep.

I had begun to think Proust had something to do with Neil’s father or the Moriyamas, possibly both. I couldn’t understand how, since Abby was the one who had suggested to take me here, and I couldn’t believe she was on their side. It simply wasn’t possible. They’d probably just taken advantage of an unplanned situation that turned out to be in their favor.

Little did they know that Proust's therapy was somehow working, only not in the way they might’ve hoped: it wasn’t making me weaker, it was making me angrier, stronger, more vengeful. Most nights, I dreamed about ripping Riko’s windpipe out of his throat, slashing it with a knife and gauging the blade deeper and deeper in his eyeballs. And that, to my surprise, made me almost happy. It wasn't like he deserved my pity anyway.

I had also become more and more desensitized to life and human emotions in general. I had noticed that my face had assumed a neutral, somewhat bored expression that seemed to indicate I didn’t care about much at all. I couldn’t seem to smile, not even when I was drugged up and I saw Renée doing just that while singing gentle songs to me. I couldn’t seem to laugh, to smirk, to cry, to raise my eyebrows in disbelief, to look worried.

Part of me thought it was because I had been locked up in a room for longer that I could’ve imagined and I had forgotten about the human way of feeling, not having been around humans at all – Proust and the nurse barely counted as such. Part of me knew that it was a new me, more impassible, more laid back, more shut down, that I couldn’t come back from.

Part of me thought it was because of what was going on at the hospital. Part of me knew I had been like this since Renée had died and what Proust was doing was only enhancing it.

Part of me liked it. Part of me feared how Neil would’ve felt about it. If I ever saw Neil again.

I stopped in front of the mirror to look at the new bruise on my neck, a faint print of a hand choking me too hard. I swallowed and watched as my Adam’s apple bobbed against the purple, yellow and black shape.

The locks began to turn, and my head snapped in that direction, curious and confused. It was too soon: the visits by Proust were the only regular thing, even though he seemed to change the pattern every now and then so I couldn’t make a timeline off of them. Either way, it was too soon for him to come again. I braced myself for what was going to come in from the opening door.

Wymack busted in, his foot landing on the floor in a way that indicated that he had kicked the door in. I couldn’t find it in myself to start and be startled by the entrance. I just stared at him as he looked around the room, his eyes landing on the untidy bed, the pool of vomit on the floor, the absence of any light and, finally, me.

He watched me for a long time, seconds seemed to expand into minutes and hours and days and years. He took in a shaky, wary breath.

“Poor child,” he said, after a while, grimacing, “What have they done to you?”

“The usual,” I shrugged.

Proust appeared behind him, complaining about something I couldn’t catch the drift of. At some point of his rant, I realized he was telling Wymack he couldn’t let me leave.

“The patient is still critical. I can’t, in good conscience, let him go,” he protested.

“Look into you bad conscience, then,” Wymack replied, then walked towards me, “I’m taking you out of here.”

“Fine by me,” I said and began following him out of the room.

The light of the sun hit me like a nuclear bomb, I thought it almost made me blind. Still, I didn’t wince and I kept walking next to Wymack, ignoring the yells of the doctor that was following us in the hallways, drawing attention from the fellows healers and patients that were standing around.

He said that I wasn’t ready, that he needed to keep me locked up for a specific reason he couldn’t disclose, that everything was medically necessary, that it was a muggle practice the Coach couldn’t possibly know about. I cleared my throat and turned to Wymack. He stopped and glanced at me.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?” I asked.

“Sure,” Wymack’s eyebrows knotted at the center of his forehead.

He spun around to watch me walk away, retracing my steps back to the doctor that had stopped talking when he saw I was headed for him.

“Have you changed you mind?” Proust asked, hopeful.

I tilted my head to the side, watching him carefully. Decided what place would’ve hurt more, I raised my fist and punched him straight on the cheek, hard, sending him flying and falling on the floor. At that point, with my combat boots, I stepped on his crotch with all my weight, and pressed pressed pressed and pushed pushed pushed until I felt a little pop. He was hollering, in pain, while my face remained neutral, impassive.

“Thank you for your care, doctor,” I said.

Wymack's jaw was slack with shock, but he didn't question my action. I actually thought I'd heard him whisper "looked like he deserved it". He and I walked straight out of the hospital after that.

And just like that, I seemed to breathe a little easier again.

Notes:

AYOOOOO

so um well, our Andrew isn't in the best of shapes :D we are all suffering with them.

The little chat with Neil. I can't T.T they're too precious. The way Andrew calls Neil petnames in their head because they feels dafe doing it when Neil can't hear it T.T BUT Neil seems to know a little too well what Andrew's thinking. Mhm. Wonder what that's about.

Well. Proust. Did we know it was coming? Because I didn't, it was a spark of genius as per last week lmao. I knew there had to be a point when we switched to "canonic" Andrew, the one who doesn't show emotions on his face, who doesn't easily laugh and smile even when they're with people they loves.
So I was choosing which was the plot point strong enough to make them change so drastically and while I'd chosen Renée's death, I also remembered that the first time we see this Andrew in canon is after he comes back from the mental hospital and from Doctor Proust's care. That warranted this whole chapter and... yea, i'm sorry

this was heartbreaking but the end just makes me laugh idk LMAO like Andrew punching the shit out of Proust and making his testicles EXPLODE??? and Wymack being like "alright guess he deserved it i don't care" I LOVE THEM i wish I could put more of Wymack in this T.T

that's all about the fic but I wanted to tell you that I've published the first of the one shots I'd told you about!!! It's my new work "All for the Game (Andrew's Version)" (i've been listening to a lot of Taylor you have to forgive me, i'll probably change the title when I come up with a better one) and the first one shot is a rewriting of the chapter where Neil and Andrew kiss for the first time!!!

Go read it if you'd like! show it some love pls

well, that's all! To the next chapter (which won't be better than this, unfortunately)
bye loveeeeees

Chapter 38: Daylight

Summary:

TW!
- minor mention of death
- minor description of injuries (mostly bruises)
- explicit wish of self-harm

I believed the first things I saw were banners, bright and shiny but at the same time dark and gloomy. It was an odd change of pace, an exaggeration in display I couldn’t quite explain, and it was, in all honesty, a punch in the eye. It was so damn ugly. Like, really fucking ugly.

I sighed, loud and obnoxious enough for Wymack to turn his head towards me, one of his eyebrows raised in surprise.

“That’s the first sound you’ve made since we left St. Mungo’s,” he sentenced.

Like I cared.

“Good to be home,” I said in return, not bothering to feign happiness or excitement.

Gryffindor banners. They were everywhere, they could be seen from the shore of the immense lake, from the pathway that led to the entrance of the castle, the Gryffindor tower itself was lit up like a firework. The hallway was scattered with them, but other than those they were utterly empty. There wasn’t a soul to witness, not even the ghosts were around.

Kevin approached me quickly.

“We got to go, fast,” he whispered, before giving me a proper once-over. Once he did, he shot a glance to Wymack, a pained one, and grimaced, “What happened to him?”

“Hell if I know,” Wymack shrugged, “He just beat the shit out of some sort of healer when I got him out.”

“What?” Kevin’s eyes shot to meet mine again, but then he just shook his head, “You’ll explain in the dorms. It’s not safe to be here.”

“What happened?” I deadpanned, “It’s so grim, it looks like someone died. Oh, wait. Last time I’ve been here someone did die.”

“You’re psychotic,” Kevin sighed, “Let’s get out of the hallways.”

“Why?” I simply asked, but from the way Kevin simply spun on his heels and headed for the Ravenclaw tower I gathered that he wouldn’t answer me then and there.

I looked up at Wymack, a giant, tan man with tribal tattoos all over his exposed arms who stood beside me, gentle and protective, and he, sensing my eyes on him, turned to look down at me. There was something in his bright green eyes that reminded me of something else, but I couldn’t understand what precisely.

“Follow Day,” he suggested, “He’s right. This hallway is no place to be right now.”

“Did you know him?” I asked, out of the blue, “Kevin. Did you know him before he enrolled here?”

He seemed surprised by the question, startled a bit by the sudden curiosity. He bit his bottom lip, then licked the top one, nervous and nerve-wrecking.

“In a way,” he replied, once he seemed to find his voice again, “I watched him grow up from afar, under the care of that monster. Tetsuji… Professor Moriyama. He’s his adoptive father, did you know that?”

“So,” I said, “Riko’s his…?”

“Adoptive brother, you could say. It’s a fucked-up family.”

“That I gathered,” I clucked my tongue, “So how did you know him?”

“I was a friend of his mother’s. We went to school together and she taught me how to play. We were... really close.”

And then it clicked. The thing that I recognized but couldn’t pinpoint, the so familiar thing that I saw every time I looked at this big, strong man, the man who played Quidditch for a living, the man who seemed to hear something else in Kevin’s laugh and captain’s reprimands. The thing in Wymack’s eyes.

They were Kevin’s eyes.

The Coach was his father.

But did they know?

 

---

 

There were suspicious sounds coming from my room, but they were also clearly distinguishable to a ear like mine, not only enhanced, but also used to the voices behind the closed door.

I didn’t knock. It was my dorm after all, no matter who inhabited it while I had been away. Which, by the way, anybody was yet to tell me how long it had been.

Kevin was on the bed, watching Neil pace through every walkable spot of floor in the room, bathroom included, which he seemed to be getting in and out of. He was just exiting the doorframe of the above-mentioned bathroom when he saw me enter, and the world seemed to stop for a moment as our eyes met.

I hadn’t taken into account that something might’ve happened to Neil while I was gone. I should’ve thought about it, I should’ve known, because then I would’ve escaped sooner, I would’ve done something to prevent… whatever had happened to him.

There were several things wrong with his physical appearance, most of whom, somehow, I knew were only the beginning of it. There were some bruises on his face and arms, both plainly visible but mostly vanished. His shirt seemed fuller, and I remembered his body well enough to know that was a sign of a thick bandage underneath it. Most of all, though, there was some dried blood on the back of his bare ankle, which seemed to have trickled down from somewhere under his pants.

That wasn’t promising.

He also had a bandage of the cheekbone, the one opposite of his cherished scar. I had a feeling about what that was, but I wanted to hear it from him.

“You have five minutes to explain what happened to you,” I announced.

He seemed a little jarred, out of it. His big blue eyes kept traveling on my face and body, just like mine did on his, but he couldn’t seem to stop doing it.

“Neil,” I called him, “Tick-tock. One minute is almost gone.”

“It’s nothing,” he finally spoke up, “I could ask you the same.”

“Spit it out,” I snarled, “Who did this?”

“Who do you think?” Neil gritted through his teeth, “Riko and the others. It’s fine, Andrew.”

“It’s not,” I argued, “Why do you have to go around and start shit?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Then what happened?”

Neil glanced back at Kevin, who nodded consensually. Neil heaved a sigh, so deep that it looked like it served him to steady himself for the next segment of the conversation.

“Riko bribed one of your doctors,” he swallowed, “He told me that if I didn’t do what he said, he would’ve just sent an owl to St. Mungo’s and make him… I mean…”

“Riko did what?” I asked.

My hands were shaking, my mind was a haze of thoughts and prayers and figments of my imagination I didn’t understand. Memories of the drugged up stay at the hospital became suddenly lucid and agonizing, painstakingly clear. I took a step towards the bathroom, my mouth filling with bile and the need to throw up again.

Withdrawal was a pain in the ass. The looming feeling I had was that vengeance would’ve eased it a bit.

“Do you know the doctor’s name?” I asked, so low I was surprised either of the two heard me. Neil glanced at my hands and his eyes shot up to my face again, alarmed in a way I hadn’t ever seen him.

“Wait,” Kevin said, stirring on the bed to look at me better, “Wait. David said something about a healer, about you beating the shit out of them.”

“I will kill him,” I whispered to myself, averting my gaze from theirs, pointing it to the floor. I clenched my fists so my hands would stop trembling uncontrollably, and I spoke louder, “The name of the doctor. Do you know it?”

“Proust,” Neil announced.

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. I stole a look at the shelf in the bathroom behind Neil, where I had stashed my razor blades, yearning for them in silence.

“What did you do to him?” Kevin asked, careful.

“What did he do to you?” Neil rebutted, stepping closer to me as if he wanted to reach for me.

I held out my hand, stopping him. He looked surprised for a moment, then understood the response to his own question. His expression went as blank as mine, unimpressed.

“Did you make him pay for it?” he inquired, like it was the easiest thing for him to imagine, the fact that I would punish harshly someone for hurting me badly. He wasn’t wrong, but the way he said it made my skin crawl.

I remained impassible as I answered, “Punched him in the face and ruptured his testicles.”

Kevin grimaced and jumped, startled by the reply, but Neil only smiled wickedly like he found all of that amusing to a certain level.

“So, what happened to this place?” I asked in the end, casually.

Neil and Kevin shared a look once again, but Kevin was the one to sigh as he got to his feet and collected the quaffle that had been hiding behind him all this time, preparing to leave. As he walked past me, he bit his lip, likely wanting to say something about my latest trauma, but thought better of it. Instead, he twirled around to face Neil.

“I’ll wait for you in the room,” he sentenced, “Don’t get your testicles raptured in the process.”

Neil stifled a laugh, but when Kevin exited the room he noticed my tilted head and my unwavering gaze on him.

“Did they take your smile away?” he taunted, but we both knew there was a kernel of truth in the question by the way I was acting.

“You go through what I went through and then tell me how easy it comes to you to smile again,” I simply replied, shrugging half-heartedly.

“What exactly did he do to you?” Neil asked again, “Did he just beat you up? You look a mess.”

“You do too,” I said.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“He… drugged me. Gave me some meds I didn’t need. He also believed in the reenactment of a traumatic experience to exorcise it and make it less painful.”

“What…?” Neil began, eyebrows knotting at the center of his forehead, “Shit. Your boggart. Your foster brother.”

I nodded, settling into an uncomfortable silence as Neil processed the information in his head, then stalked my way to the bed and crashed there. I should’ve probably taken a shower before putting my dirty body in even dirtier clothes on my pristine bed, but the feeling of a soft mattress eased the pain in my mind. I wanted to lay there and sleep forever.

Unfortunately, I still had a small redhead jackass to deal with.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought that if let Riko torture me and did everything he asked, he would’ve left you alone. He left Kevin alone.”

“You’ve been idiotic,” I sighed, “You were here to check on Kevin, while nobody checked on me so he could’ve told you anything and you wouldn’t have had a way to know if he was telling the truth. But it doesn’t matter anyway. You shouldn’t have put yourself in this situation for me.”

“What?!” he screamed, suddenly angry, “Goodness gracious, sometimes I wonder if you’re masochistic or just stupid.”

“What do you mean?” I asked looking at the ceiling of my bed, unbothered by his temper.

“I wouldn’t have let you suffer and shrivel up in the care of a psychotic healer! Why would you ever think that what I did was idiotic if I thought it would’ve spared you some pain?”

I craned my neck so that I could look at him still standing in front of my bathroom’s door and watched him as he seethed and glowered at me in a way he never had. I couldn’t find it in me to be reassuring, I couldn’t find in me the love that I had felt for him for a year, not enough to acknowledge that I would’ve done the same for him.

“What day is it?” I said instead.

“It’s November 5^th,” he replied, careless, “Happy belated birthday, by the way.”

“I’ve been locked up in that hospital for almost three months?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“The full moon was three days ago,” I pondered, “How did you handle it?”

“It was fine,” he answered, but I could see through his lies, even though he kept forgetting. I just knew him. When would he have learned?

“Tell me what happened,” I pressured.

“Dumbledore died,” Neil spat out, so suddenly it rebounded off the walls for a few times before I grasped the concept of what he had said. I sat up, my face still expressionless but I looked at him pointedly so he would’ve kept going, “They needed a new Headmaster. They chose an outsider, on Professor Moriyama’s suggestion.”

“It’s your father,” I completed the thought for him. He simply nodded, so I found it in me to be sarcastic about it, “That’s an unexpected turn of events. How are you handling it?”

“Fucking fantastic, Andrew. What do you think?” he hissed.

“No need to take it out on me, pretty boy,” I put my hands up in surrender, “What did he do?”

“He kicked out some of the teachers or swapped their places. Moriyama is now Gryffindor’s Head of the House, while McGonagall was transferred to the Slytherins. No one is allowed so much as to glance at the Gryffindor’s Quidditch team, they’re virtually untouchable. He’s been making life harder for every single student, especially for me. He won’t let me see Abby after the full moons, won’t let me into the Forest during them.”

“What?” I asked, “Where did he put you?”

“In a cage so small not even my human form fit in it,” he let out a shaky breath, “But it’s fine. You’re here now, so it’s going to be just fine.”

“How so?”

“Kevin and I asked to be put closer to you once you came back, so we have our own dorm in the Ravenclaw tower,” he explained, “We’re just a few doors over, if you want to check on us. My father agreed to it because he took it as a challenge. He’ll want to meet you, at some point. Don’t let him scare.”

“Oh, Neil,” I tilted my head to the side, “Do you really think so little of me? It takes more than this to scare me.”

“What would it take?” he inquired, rather casually.

Heights. Being face to face with Drake again. You turning against me. You being hurt beyond repair.

I dropped on the mattress again, leaving Neil standing in my room unattended. After a few moments, silence settled between us and there was no more room for talking, even if the air felt charged of something great and inexplicable that we both wanted to say out loud but couldn’t. I stared blankly at the ceiling of the canopy bed, memorizing its already known cracks and crevices. Neil slowly but steadily reached the bed and sat next my sprawled-out body.

“What,” he began, wary, “What exactly did your foster brother do to you?”

“Really bad things,” I replied with my blank face still on. It seemed I couldn’t snap out of that, not even in front of the man I loved. I wondered if I could still feel love at all, “You really don’t want to hear it.”

“Don’t I?”

“You don’t,” I assured him, “You wouldn’t look at me the same if I ever told you.”

“I think you should let me decide that,” he insisted, but his voice was soft like the last time I had heard it, when that softness had meant the world to me. I wanted to be blessed again by the swelling of my own heart when I heard that voice, but my heart was stone and it stayed the same.

“I think you should leave me alone,” I declared, “It’s been a hard three months, apparently.”

Carefully, Neil reached for my face and whispered, “I won’t hurt you, love,” before hooking a stray lock of my hair that had fallen in front of my eyes when I’d crashed onto the bed.

Before I could’ve found the strength to respond to that in an appropriate way – what even was the appropriate way? Was I supposed to scream, to yell obscenities at him, to kiss him? – he got up and went for the door. He bid me farewell with a small ‘see you at dinner’ and I was left sitting up straight on my bed and looking at the door he closed behind his back.

Leaving again.

Leaving me alone, as I had asked him to.

Which made me remember one of the reasons why I loved him: he respected me in a way that no one ever had.

 

---

 

Despite the red and gold banners everywhere, they were almost washed out by the blur of people in their own House colors walking through the corridors, which was why, I believed, Headmaster Wesninski didn’t want anyone roaming around them outside of dinner and lesson hours.

The Great Hall looked pretty much the same, if it wasn’t for all the bright yellow splattered around the place like some careless painter had flicked their brush at the walls in some sort of artistic inspiration. As soon as I saw the usual group eating with lowered heads, my two shadows and I headed for the Hufflepuff’s table, where Matt, Nicky and Aaron were sitting.

I wasn’t used to not seeing the girls around. I almost felt like, at any given moment, Allison, Dan and Renée would’ve popped up and started chatting about their usual things. But while the first two couldn’t possibly appear in the school, the last one was gone forever. I just hadn’t had time to accept it fully.

Aaron’s head snapped up as he looked at me with a confused gleam in his eyes. He was under an influence of some sorts.

“You’re back,” he said, as if I wasn’t standing right in front of him.

I sat on the long bench and began gathering some food as I waited for Neil and Kevin to sit at each side of me. I passed Neil the potatoes, which I knew he liked, and he accepted them silently.

“When did you get back?” Nicky was next to talk.

“Neil?” I called.

“A couple of hours ago,” the redhead replied in my stead.

“What happened to you?” Matt spoke up.

“None of your business,” Kevin scowled at the black boy, who threw up his hands in surrender, “Let’s just eat in silence.”

And we did just that. Without Dan’s words of stern concern and Renée’s remarkable attempts at making us get along, it seemed there was no point in even trying to speak to each other. We just ate, asked to pass some of the food at times, but mostly kept to ourselves. Aaron and Nicky talked to each other in hushed whispers and Matt listened to them quietly, while Neil, Kevin and I didn’t utter a word for the most part of the dinner.

That was why we heard it loud and clear when someone coughed behind my back to get our attention. Matt was the first one to look up and he instantly went red with rage, while Nicky and Aaron went pale and white in fear. That was all it took for me to know who was standing behind us.

I turned around to look at Riko, who was smiling smugly with Jean and a couple of his other teammates on his tow. I looked at him unimpressed, raking him from head to toe with nothing in my eyes.

“Hello, pet,” he greeted me, “You came back.”

“So they say,” I replied, calmy, “I was just eating dinner. Can I get a raincheck on this wonderful conversation you’re about to start?”

Riko laughed so loudly it drew some attention to us. Neil, beside me, stole a glance at the Professor’s table where his father and Riko’s uncle were sitting. He swallowed down his fear and looked up at the Gryffindor boy.

“Leave us alone, will you? You got what you wanted,” Neil demanded.

“Did I?” Riko put a finger to his chin and tapped, feigning thinking about it, then made a bored face when he looked back down at us, “I don’t think so. I would’ve notice if I did.”

Kevin, on the other side, had gone completely still and unmoving. He looked like a deer in headlights, and it would’ve made me laugh in another situation. In this one, it was simply enraging how much an Asian midget could scare a fully formed, strong and athletic boy so much that it paralyzed him.

I cleared my throat and drew Riko’s eyes on me again.

“What do you want?” I deadpanned.

“Did you enjoy Doctor Proust’s company?” he asked, the same wild smile etched on his face like no one’s business.

“Don’t worry about that,” I forced a smile that looked just as intimidating as his, and Jean startled at the sight of it, “I will make sure to make you pay for it.”

“How would you do that, pet?” Riko taunted me, “You puppy is bound, he can’t do anything for you now. He’ll just let you suffer alone, because his survival his worth more to him than anything else. More even than the man he shags.”

That was what it took to rile me up. I was out of the bench and up and ready to swing in a moment, aiming for his face, ready to make it bloody, ready to make him regret his words.

“Andrew,” Neil called loudly before I could’ve hit the Gryffindor, “Leave it. It’s not worth it.”

“Yeah,” Aaron agreed from the other side of the table, which earned him a scowl on my part, “You’re just giving him what he wants.”

“Listen to your twin and your puppy, pet,” Riko nodded, mocking me, “Stand down.”

“Don’t think you’ll get away with it,” Neil stood up and got in Riko’s face, basically almost pushing their noses together and looking hard in his eyes, like he was speaking directly into Riko’s soul, “I do not know precisely what do you think you’re doing, Moriyama, but you’re not that high up in the food chain to be behaving like this. You can get me under your steel iron because my own father says I belong to you and that is fine. But the moment you go after any one of my people I will end you and I won’t think twice about it. You’re a mean, unpleasant, spiteful and downright horrendous man who thinks he can just up and torture people and, magically, get away with it. But you’re not that powerful, and some day you’ll face a wall and you’ll die there. I’ll be glad to be the one hearing your last breath leaving your rotten lungs, you infernal piece of shit. Even after we leave this school, if you’re still alive by then, I will hunt you down and take your life. Now get lost before that day comes before you expect, mh?”

Riko considered Neil for a moment, tipping his head to the side and showing white and sharp canines in a wicked smile as he looked at the redhead warewolf. I guessed that the freedom he was granted also made it easier for him to show what he really was, a wannabe vampire in human disguise. In the end, he just scoffed. 

"You bore me," he shrugged, "But you won't do it forever. See you soon, Number Four."

With saying that, he snatched Neil's bandage on his cheek. Just as I had imagined, it revealed a reddened "IV", four in roman numbers, which matched Kevin's two, Jean's three and Riko's one. I imagined this was one of Riko's ways of torturing Neil while I was away: compelling him to be part of his clique even when he really wasn't. 

After that final move, the Gryffindors went away and Neil sat back at the table, defeated and tired. He glanced at me while the other four stared at him in surprise and concern. 

Exhausted, he simply sighed and said, "Guess another one of my secrets is out."

Notes:

Hiyaaa
sorry for the short chapter but i'm not in my country lmao so it was hard to write while on vacation
hope you like it nonetheless
byeee

Chapter 39: Atlantis

Summary:

I feel like there's no trigger warnings??? it's just a sad chapter but alas

After a couple of weeks of coming back to school, I started to gather the fact that Nathan Wesninski was the kind of man who doesn’t show much of his face around. He was sort of a ghost presence – which, given the fact that by then I knew ghosts were real and also fairly visible, was a false analogy – that haunted the corridors of the school without ever really showing up.

The only man more powerful than him, and it wasn’t because of the school hierarchy but rather their own, was Professor Moriyama by a long shot, which made Riko the real prince of the school. He could’ve done, said and acted however he liked without ever incurring in any sort of trouble, which did nothing to placate the anger that I felt towards him.

I was mostly able to conceal it under a veil of indifference, but anger was the only emotion I seemed capable of showing, so sometimes it seeped through my armor and made its way to the people that I was supposed to love, which meant Neil in particular.

He had understood my new face, my new being, my new existence. He had understood it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t need time to adjust to it. That, paired with the fact that it was better for me – or so he said – and for my safety that I wasn’t around him much, meant that our relationship had ground to a halt and maybe even started backtracking a little.

It hadn’t been much of a relationship to begin with, but Renée’s death had made me especially uncomfortable with touch, the sweet kind. I couldn’t bear the feeling of a hand caressing my skin for the life of me, I couldn’t bear Neil’s docile kisses on my forehead, I couldn’t bear any of it because everything and everyone reminded me of my late best friend.

Maybe I hadn’t had the time to grieve her as I wanted to, perhaps it was my new way of being that compelled me to be estranged to any concept of relationship in general, but the thing was so painfully obvious that even Aaron and Nicky – as oblivious as they might’ve been to the situation – were starting to catch on with the inevitable tension that was settling between us.

It was an odd feeling. However helplessly in love I had been with Neil, however uncomfortable I had been sharing and having that feeling at all, however he had handled me – with feeble respect, with lit up friendship, with undying passion – we had always felt at ease with each other, safe and steady, like in the deep of our hearts we knew it was okay to be ourselves, unapologetically, around the other.

This time around, though, it seemed that the other was the very person we needed to hide from. He thought I was acting weird, and I thought I didn’t know how to love him well enough anymore. He thought he was protecting me from his father, keeping me out of his radar; I thought I was protecting him from myself, from the heartless being I had become.

Kevin was the only reason we stuck around the other enough time to actually call each other friends. He was Neil’s safety net - they shared some sort of past they didn't talk about much, but that made them bond as well as their passion for Quidditch -, and I was Kevin’s, which meant the three of us were often seen together. I didn’t go anywhere without checking on the both of them every step of the way, Neil and Kevin didn’t go anywhere without notifying me and asking me if I wanted to come along first.

Kevin had become a pleasant enough figure in my life, unwavering as he was. He was terrified of Riko – and who wasn’t, at this point? Who wouldn’t have been, enduring what he had endured from his supposed brother? I knew well enough how brothers could make themselves someone to fear and not to love – but he showed a bold face whenever he was around. That, initially, just bought him my respect, but everything is bound to grow, and he did grow on me.

It was the reason why he felt so unashamed when it came to ask me personal questions. He had asked me, tranquil and equilibrated, if I was going through withdrawal after the first two times he had seen me retch into my bathroom. He had asked me whether I wore the armbands for style and fashion or because I needed them without being scared of the answer. He asked me if he should be scared that I was a threat to myself, to which I had responded no. And it, somehow, for the first time in forever, felt like it was real. I really felt like I was a threat only to others.

It was one of those spur-of-the-moment questions that brought his attention to Neil again. The redhead wasn’t around, locked in his and Kevin’s bedroom to do homework while Kevin and I hung around in my room doing nothing.

“You two aren’t shagging anymore, are you?” he asked, out of the blue.

I blinked at the book – some thriller with a witch solving crimes I had found in the library – on my lap a couple of times before raising my gaze to lock it with Kevin’s, who was on my chair, spinning around while throwing a quaffle in the air and catching it with his right hand. His left one, still damaged, couldn’t bear the weight of the ball just yet.

“I beg your pardon?” I deadpanned.

“You and Neil,” he explained, “He’s more tense as of late.”

“Might be because his murderous father is running the school, Kevin. Use your fucking brain.”

“Might be,” he shrugged, like my suggestion was the work of my imagination and not the reality we were living in, “Or…”

“Or what?” I closed the book with a loud snap and Kevin cringed.

“Or he might need to… release some stress?”

“You’re disgusting,” I simply said, looking at him up and down.

Kevin sighed and leaned forward in the chair, hugging the ball to his chest and with a look of intent in his eyes. I hated when he did that, when he wanted to be all fluffy and sweet with me when he knew our relationship wasn’t even close to that concept.

“I went about it the wrong way,” he corrected himself, toying with his lip and nipping at it while he searched for better words, “What I meant was, that you never talked about it. How it ended between you two, I mean. We hang together all the time but you two barely exchange words and it’s a painful watch, really. Either get your shit together or talk about it, Minyard.”

“Do not get all sappy on me, Day,” I spared him another second of my bored look before opening the book again and started reading it from the line I had left at, “You’ll be disappointed by the outcome.”

“Which will be?” he inquired, curious.

“That I’ll only shut you out more,” I shrugged, raising just a shoulder, “Then who will save your sorry ass?”

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” he scoffed, leaning back on the chair again, “I just meant that you never talk about why you’re like… this,” he gestured widely to my whole body, generally indicating my rotten soul, “And you really should do it.”

“I talk about it,” I corrected him.

“Betsy Dobson doesn’t count. You should talk to a friend.”

“She does count,” I argued, glancing at him before returning to the book – even though I was reading the same line over and over again –, “And in what world are we friends?”

Kevin half laughed, half looked shocked at the answer. He swiftly pushed to his feet and threw the quaffle at my head. I blocked it with my left hand as I flipped the page of the book with the right one, then threw it back at him. He caught it but shook his head slowly as he watched me.

“I get why he doesn’t want to be with you anymore, at least. You’re so emotionally unavailable it aches to watch you live in this world, Andrew. You are incredibly smart, incredibly talented, and what? You’re happy to live a mediocre life? Have some ambition. Merlin, have some purpose.”

My gaze left the book slowly to reach Kevin’s and I simply stared at him.

I hadn’t smiled in months and I didn’t remember the sound of my own laugh. I remembered the sound of my pained screams, I remembered the sound of my joyless pleads, but I couldn’t remember the way I used to laugh.

I knew I had a lot to work through, but having it tossed in the face by a man who didn’t know who he was without his mobster adoptive brother was something I didn’t have the stomach for. I stared at him, hard and emotionless, until he opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, likely to say he was sorry. I intervened before that.

“Get out,” I said.

“But-”

“I said get out, Day, or I swear to God I will gauge your eyes out of the socket with a quill,” I held the quill up just to show him I wasn’t playing.

He shook his head again, this time in disbelief, but walked out as quickly as he could. Left alone, I whispered a spell to put out all the candles and, in the dark, I cried.

That was the moment I realized I felt like I was back in prison. Despite knowing I was there for a specific purpose, day after day I wondered if it had been worth it, if it was fair for me to have done what I had done, to do what I had to do, just to feel like shit anyway. I had no liberty and freedom whatsoever, I always had my guard up, I couldn’t let myself attached to anyone or anything, and people kept trying to get into my business when I didn’t want them to. I once again asked myself if it was worth it.

When I was in prison, I realized I was running. I saw Drake’s face when I closed my eyes and thought yes, it was worth it. Whatever it took to get free from that monster without breaking Cass’s heart was worth it, no matter how much I ached in the process.

In my desolate room, with no one by my side anymore, I realized I was a shield. I saw Neil’s face when I closed my eyes and thought yes, it was worth it. Whatever it took to protect that boy from his own past was worth it, no matter how much I ached in the process.

And that was it.

I cried until I fell asleep.

 

---

 

It was the third week of school for me, almost the fourth month for anyone else in that godforsaken castle. I was barely getting by, waking up and getting out of bed had become a chore and I spent my days following Kevin and Neil around to make sure they were safe enough around the school.

More than a couple of times in three weeks I’d had to intervene while some Gryffindor was trying to unleash some mean prank on them. Luckily, some of them were more scared than the real threat of my – I tried my best not to remind myself they were, in fact, Renée’s and not mine – knives than the phantom threat of Riko’s punishment.

Running myself down as I was, most nights I went back to my dorm from the owlery that I was just too tired to even undress and put on my pajamas. No matter how disgusting it was, sometimes I was too tired to change out of those same clothes even the morning after.

At some point of the week, Neil understood the spiel and forced me into the bathroom to take a shower, only to find me passed out on the floor half an hour later, completely naked and under the boiling hot jet of the shower.

He snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I thought I could see the shadows of them through my closed eyelids. I mumbled something incoherent even to my own brain and Neil sighed. He crouched down in front of me, knees in the pooled water at the bottom of the shower. His pants were going to get wet.

“Andrew,” he called me, forceful but low.

“I’m sleeping,” I muttered.

“I can see that,” he whispered, “Did you at least get to the part where you should’ve washed your body?”

“I don’t remember.”

He sighed again, then got to his feet and took a couple steps back into the bathroom. I don’t know what he did in the couple of minutes he went silent, but it was enough peace for me to start to drift off again, just to be woken up by his voice another time.

“Get up. You need to dress up and get to bed,” he announced.

“I don’t want to,” I whined.

“You sound like a baby,” Neil protested, sounding bored of my theatrical.

“I am a baby,” I mumbled again, “Take me to bed, big strong man?”

“Andrew, for Merlin’s sake, be serious.”

“I am,” I simply answered, eyes still closed as I curled up further on the floor, hair wet and body bare.

“I’m not touching you,” he stated, loud and clear, “You’re basically unconscious. I can’t- I won’t touch you, Andrew. Pull it together.”

I considered his words and opened one of my eyes to look up at him. He was hovering over me like a tall statue watching me from the heights of the sky, young and beautiful and stoic with perfect and shiny marble skin and deep and meaningful blue eyes. He looked like a pipe dream, a figment of my imagination created by my own mind to comfort me in times of need. Like this one.

A pipe dream, he had once said. Something so painfully beautiful, so extremely perfect, excruciatingly flawless that he knew it could never, ever be. It just won’t ever exist, he said. Yet there he was. Existing just before my eyes, and I couldn’t believe I’d had that. I had it, I fucking had it and they had found the way to take it away from me, nonetheless.

I pushed my body up with my hands flat on the tiled pavement and sat against the wall for a moment, still watching the redhead.

“Where is everyone else?” I asked.

“I think everyone’s in their rooms but Nicky. He’s with Erik, that guy from Germany who came here last year? I found out Nicky had already told us about him. Do you remember the night of the amortentia game? He’d told us he’d met Erik at conversion camp and that he was the love of his life or something,” Neil babbled, “Apparently Erik came here all the way from Germany to be with Nicky. Isn’t that moronic?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, “I was just thinking about that night.”

“What about?” he inquired, tilting his head to the side.

“Don’t worry about it,” I sighed, “So, what? Everyone is good?”

“Andrew,” Neil’s eyebrows knotted at the center of his forehead, the gleam in his eyes was pitying as he looked deeply into my eyes, “Everyone is safe. Get up and rest. You’re the only one who’s not fine.”

I wanted to protest, to say that I was, in fact, really good at the moment since I had gotten the first two minutes of sleep ever since the start of the week, but the concern in Neil’s eyes was something that told me that evening was a no-bullshit evening, so I couldn’t lie to save my life from his endless worrying. Instead, I told him a half-truth.

“Go,” I told him, “I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, carefully.

“Just go,” I insisted, “It’s already too much that you’ve seen me like this.”

Neil nodded slowly as he walked back to the bathroom doorway, then, when he was about to step out, he turned his torso towards me. He looked even more worried, if it was possible, chewing on his bottom lip like he had been starving and he fed on human meat.

“You know you can always come to me if you need to talk, don’t you?” he said.

If I’d had the strength to laugh again, to laugh loudly or even just to snort at the reminder, I would’ve. But that part of me had been drained from my brain and heart, leaving them dry and depleted. So, I just nodded.

“But you know I won’t ever do that, just like I know you won’t ever do that with me. Don’t you, Neil?”

Neil was the one to scoff, nodding still as he lowered his gaze and considered my point.

“I guess you’re right. See you around, Andrew.”

“Yeah,” I watched him go, “See you.”

 

---

 

Flitwick was quick to summon me to his office once he had noticed the way I was acting. I supposed it had been obvious that I wasn’t doing good, since every Professor that had once approved of me was instead eyeing me suspiciously in class while I did basically everything but follow the lesson.

My erratic behavior wasn’t what had startled them. I’d had a pretty messed-up schedule since I had enrolled in the school and it was only fair, they thought, for me to skip a few classes during the day or fall asleep during them. What had finally drawn a line for them was the fact that I wasn’t taking my assignments seriously anymore and I couldn’t compete with the rest of the students.

I’d gotten low scores after low scores, so much so that at one point McGonagall had slammed my paper on my desk to get me to wake up. When I had looked up at her, she didn’t say anything, but just shook her head in disappointment and waited for me to read my grade before walking away furiously.

I suspected it was that kind of things that had tipped Flitwick off on my fucked-up life.

I walked alone to his office – trusting that there were enough people in the corridors that Neil and Kevin wouldn’t have run in any kind of problem without me – during lunch break as he had suggested. I knocked sharply on the door and peered my head in.

The small office was as I remembered it from before the summer vacations: tiny, bare and essential. Since the previous year, though, Flitwick seemed to have had acquired a couple of new tasks, since his desk was the only untidy thing in the room, full of papers and documents and stuff I couldn’t possibly recognize.

He looked up when he heard my pace approaching and smiled tight-lipped at me, a small and fierce expression that meant he had very little time to spare me and wasn’t going to believe any of my lies and excuses.

“Mr. Minyard,” he began, “I’m glad we can have this chat. Take a seat, if you please.”

I would’ve winced to that word, thrown so carelessly into a conversation like it didn’t mean destruction and pain to me, like it was something normal to say – because sometimes, I did forget it was indeed normal to say it. But I stood my ground, shrugged and sat on the chair that stood in front of the Professor’s desk.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.

“Would you mind sparing me a second?” he retorted, eyes skimming rapidly through a piece of parchment he held steadily in his hand while he propped up his pince-nez with the other, “The new administration and your particular situation have brought some havoc into the school and I’m supposed to sort it out.”

“I wanted to go to lunch, Professor,” I simply replied, “You know, eat food and try not to die. That kind of thing.”

Flitwick sighed and put down his paper, looking at me from the down up with his little glasses slid down all the way to the tip of the nose.

“You won’t die if you skip one lunch, Mr. Minyard.”

“You know what? I haven’t been legally adopted, I’m not a Minyard. Call me Andrew,” I suggested, crossing my ankle to my knee and leaning forwards towards the Professor, “And maybe I won’t die of starvation, but I will surely resent you for making me wait. So, what’ll be?”

“I don’t like your tone, young man,” he jabbed his finger at me, “You used to behave so politely around Professors and now you look and talk like a heathen. When did you become so aggressive?”

“Maybe around the time my best friend died ad I’ve been sent to a mental hospital for approximately three months,” I tilted my head to the side, “Surely you remember that. Couldn’t have happened more than four months ago, I believe.”

“Stop using that condescending tone with me,” Flitwick threatened, “I know precisely what you’ve been through, and I know it must’ve been hard without a lead to follow during this time of need.”

“Do you really know that?” I asked in return, “Do you, now? Because if you knew I would’ve thought someone would at least attempt at helping me. I think, though, I’m being disregarded. Don’t you think so too, Professor Flitwick?”

“I think you’re behaving irrationally,” he answered, calm.

I wanted to laugh at his response, but I slid him one of my venomous looks instead. He jumped a little in his chair, fidgeting and squirming around under my stare.

“I think,” I hissed, “that you’d do better to watch your tongue.”

“You can’t keep acting like this. You used to smile, you used to read and be active in the school’s community, you used to live a little,” he protested, getting a little whiny and desperate.

“I still read,” was all I managed to say before he started attacking again.

“Then why are all your grades dropping so quickly, Andrew?” he slammed his palms on the desk. I didn’t flinch, “You’ve been back for almost four weeks now, and every single Professor that you’ve met – because some even say you refuse to meet them – had something to complain about when it came to you. How do you explain this?”

“I’ve been distracted,” I dismissed his whole speech with a wave of my hand.

“By what? What possibly could keep you more distracted than whatever had happened last year, with the Tournament and Mr. Josten’s problem?” he crossed his arms across his chest.

“Mr. Josten? Are we still calling him that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” I sighed, “Look, I’ve got things to do and people to see. Can I go?”

“No,” Flitwick shook his head vigorously, “You’re not leaving until you explain to me what’s going on. You’re my responsibility in this school, and I have to see you through the obstacles on your path before sending you into the world. So, tell me.”

I raked my eyes on the whole seeable body of the wizard in front of me, from his small glasses he kept pushing up his long nose, to the crinkles around his eyes from smiling too much, maybe too forcibly as well, to his thin lips pressed into an even thinner line.

“Look at my face, Professor,” I pointed at it, revealing a painted black nail to him, “Do you see it? Do you see the blank expression on it, the lack not only of joy and happiness, but of any possible emotion? Do you see what I have become in the small period of time you haven’t seen me?”

I waited for him to nod, a quick motion of the chin, up and down, and they I went on.

“Good,” I said, “because this is me now. I’m not doing it out of spite, I’m not doing it because it comes easier to a person to just give up emotions when they become too much to handle, I’m not doing this to enrage some Professors that couldn’t give two shits about my personal life and how I live it. I behave like this, I act like this, I am like this because the world shaped me into this. Into this numb, cold, detached human being that no longer knows how to act if not like a rabid animal.

“I used to care about my grades because I had been catapulted into this world without any notice, and being good at school was the only thing that came easy enough and that also made me understand the wizarding world a little better. I used to care because I was a kind, gentle, fucking good kid that wanted to care about grades, that wanted to be loved and liked and hugged. But life fucked me up one times too many, I suppose. Life simply couldn’t stop pounding on me like I was a punching bag, and I was doomed to snap at some point.

“So, here we are. I snapped. And I don’t care that nobody likes the way that I am now, I don’t care that everybody despises me for what I’ve become, but before coming for my throat about my grades take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you participated in fucking me up so badly. Then, we can talk about my bloody grades.”

“Andrew,” he began, fear growing in his pupils as they shrank and shrank and shrank. I could see that the way I had pronounced my words, calmy and without yelling, distant like I wasn’t even speaking about myself, had shaken him to the core. And I took some satisfaction in it, I soaked in every single ounce of happiness I could gather from his reaction.

“Look at me, Professor. Take a sweeping fucking good look at me, Filius, because what in the actual Hell makes you think I would ever share with you what is happening to me? Do you think I’d give away my secrets, my friends’ secrets so easily? To someone I don’t even trust? You must be either stupid or delusional.”

I stood up from the chair and leaned on the desk, propping me up with my hands flat on the surface. I looked deep in the irises of my Professor, enjoyed the way he was trembling with panic, and whispered to him.

“I’ve been nothing but accommodating since I’ve enrolled in this school, and even then you thought I was being difficult, that the boundaries I had set for myself were too much. Guess what, then? I will stop being accommodating. And don’t ever call me in this office to discuss my behavior with me again. Don’t make me hurt you, Professor, because I swear I will if you test me.”

I turned my back on Flitwick and didn’t look back as he called my name. Didn’t look back as I slammed the door behind me as I exited the small office. Didn’t look back as I headed to the Ravenclaw tower instead of the Great Hall, suddenly not interested anymore in having lunch.

 

---

 

In the mix of all of his accusations, Flitwick had gotten something right: there was a Professor in particular I refused to meet, I always tried to find a way or a reason to skip their class and I always found one that was logical enough for me to actually do it. That was how in almost three weeks and a half I had managed to avoid a Professor entirely.

I would’ve been a fool to tell me that I didn’t miss Remus, but ever since I had been back in the school, maybe even since Renée had died, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him, about how, perhaps, with him by my side and watching over me things would’ve gone a little more smoothly. Either way, maybe I was indeed a fool, because I tried to convince myself that Remus wasn’t the reason I was doing that.

I looked again at the schedule spreadsheet in my hand before taking a sharp turn in one of the corridors that led to the dungeons of the castle. For some reason, the only class that had been consistent in three years was the one I had with the Slytherins. Before, hoping to see Neil was a sliver of happiness I clung to, while now it made me dread the class even more.

The new DADA teacher was rumored to be a witch with a powerful grip on their students, someone who believed in a “hit first, ask questions later” approach when it came to the survival of a person, someone who taught children not only how to defend themselves with magic but also with physical violence.

All of that to say, she wasn’t really liked between the ranks of the students.

I followed the directions to the new classroom – apparently she had claimed that the one Remus had used was too “airy” – and found a door with her name on it. ‘Malcom L.’, it read. I pushed it open and found my brother already seated at the front desk, while Neil sat all the way in the back. Slowly, I made my way towards Aaron and sat beside him.

After a couple of minutes of low chatter and hushed laughs, the whole classroom fell into an eerie and terrified silence, so much so that the squeak my chair made as I turned to look at the door bounced from wall to wall a few times before stopping.

From the door, a woman dressed in all black, with a sharp blond bob that looked like it could cut skin, entered the room strutting towards the front of the class. She turned around in a swirl of black, voluptuous robes before setting her eyes on the class. She breathed in deeply, and I watched, horrified, as the whole class did the same, at the same time as her.

When she released her breath in a content sigh, she smiled. Her teeth were scarily white and sharp, especially the canines. Her eyes were emerald, green with a hint of dark blue at the center, around the pupil, and there was something ferocious in them.

It took a single sweeping look at her to know for certain, but I still half turned on my chair to look at Neil at the back of the room: his eyes were that icy blue that had always intrigued me. I counted quickly in my head, adding the days, and I realized it was the day before the full moon.

She was a werewolf. From the way Neil’s shoulders had tensed up at her arrival, I could also guess she was someone who worked closely with his dad, someone he trusted enough to keep an eye on Neil, sort of a right-hand-man. That must’ve meant she was dangerous, most probably deadly. I turned to look at her again and found myself impressed with the fact that Neil’s father had a woman as a second in command, but not too impressed since it was her. She looked like a downright demon.

“Looks like we have a new student,” she began, setting her shimmering eyes on me, “Welcome, Andrew. I hope you’ll find this lesson entertaining enough to come back a second time. My name is Professor Malcom, but you can call me Lola.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” I retorted.

She simply nodded, then flashed a quick grin to Neil and sighed again.

“Everyone, do you know what day it is?”

“It’s November 29^th,” Aaron replied from beside me. I merely glanced at him with the side of my eye before going back to the blonde woman in front of me.

“Precisely,” she nodded, “Does any of you track the cycle of the moon?”

Aaron held his hand up. This time I looked at him fully, interest in his own interest in something so random. I tilted my head to watch his face contort with pride as he answered the question again.

“It lasts twenty-eight days. The cycle alternates between a crescent and a waning moon, and after the two phases there’s a full moon. Tomorrow night there will be one,” he said.

Professor Malcom nodded once more, then began pacing around the classroom, inspecting each of the students at their respective desks. Once her gaze fell on Neil, she smiled slowly and wickedly. Neil visibly swallowed down as his Adam’s apple bobbed. He looked up at the teacher and began shaking his head.

“Aaron, do you also know what kind of Dark Creature is connected to the moon cycle?”

“A werewolf,” my twin replied dutifully. I elbowed him in the stomach to get him to shut up, dreading the turn the conversation had taken.

“Very good, Aaron. Fifteen points to Ravenclaw,” she announced, “Now, some of you might not know this, but werewolves are very dangerous creatures. They’re lethal and vicious, and not every time, once they’re in their animal form, they can recognize allegiances and relationship they hold in their human form. That’s what makes them horrendous to the eyes of the most: the fact that their animal mind is blind with rage and bloodlust.

“But that’s not the entire truth. I have no shame in admitting I’m a werewolf, and as such I will be turning into a wolf tomorrow night. But I know my pack, I can recognize whom to protect and whom to attack. I just have more freedom in attacking someone when I’m a wolf than when I’m human. Do you understand that, children?”

The class replied with a shy ‘yes’, to which she smiled, pleased. Neil said nothing.

“Are you afraid of me, now that I’ve told you the truth?”

The class stayed silent. She nodded idly, going back to the front of the class to have a better look at all of us.

“I understand you must be scared, and you should be. You should be scared of the fact that a werewolf can look just like you: apart from the night of the full moon, they look completely human, completely harmless. But they’re not. That’s why it’s important to know which one of us is a Dark Creature.”

She glanced at me and smiled wide.

“Some of you might not know this, but a werewolf bloodline is passed through bite. Once bitten, one turns in a werewolf themselves. Usually, a leader of a pack bites his own children young to create an heir. Some of you might not know this, but your new Headmaster, Professor Wesninski, is the leader of a pack of werewolf.”

“Lola,” Neil called from the back of the class. I turned to look at him to see that he was almost standing from his chair, ready to run out of the classroom, ready to bolt once his secret was out. What was worse, was that I couldn’t do anything to help. I felt so useless it burned a hole into my heart like a cigarette.

“And your Headmaster has a son enrolled in this school, a son he had personally bitten when the child was very young. Isn’t that right, Mr. Josten? Or should I say Mr. Wesninski?”

“No,” Neil whispered as he shook his head vigorously. I stood up to go to him, but Aaron caught my hand in his and yanked me down on my chair. When I turned towards my twin, his face was black, a reflection of mine but a scarier one: his eyes were empty, like he had been brainwashed into obedience. I looked back at Neil and called his name, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

“Class, if you have any questions about werewolves, feel free to ask your classmate Neil. He’s one of us, and he’s kept it secret from all of you.”

As predicted, Neil ran. The door swung on its hinges as he dashed past it, and the room was filled with loud complaints, louder accusations and even louder laughter from the teacher herself.

Aaron freed my hand but I didn’t move. I didn’t know what to do, I only knew the secret was out and by the end of the day everyone would’ve known who Neil really was. I thought of going after him, but I had been the one to remind the both of us that we couldn’t talk to each other anymore just the week before. What was left to do?

How could I have saved him when I didn’t even know how to save myself?

Notes:

helloooo
i'm back from vacation lmao i wrote this all chapter today so i hope you like it, even though i can already tell you i like it better than the last one

so this chapter is basically just andrew getting to know the situation in the school now that there has been a "change in administration" and how to behave

we see their friendship with Kevin is growing (we love to see that) but their relationship with Neil is basically nonexistent (we hate to see this)

we see them stand up from themselves!!!!! TELL THE PROFESSOR OFF!!! RIP HIS HEAD OFF!!!!!!! GO BABY i loved writing that monologue i swear
the fact that Andrew acknowledges they were a good and kind kid before they turned them into a monster? i'm in pieces

finally, we have Lola :D i hate her :DD i hate her even more after this chapter :DD

So, Andrew's in bad shape and Neil is in trouble. What do you think will happen next? let me know in the comments!

that's everything for today folks, see ya next week, buh-byeeeee

Chapter 40: Nobody's Hero

Summary:

TW!
graphic depiction of injuries, mention of rape

I didn’t know why the meeting had to be held in my room, but apparently Kevin hadn’t trusted Neil enough to behave in their own room and my dorm offered a ‘more neutral field’ for the rest of the group to gather and discuss the recent developments.

In a school of a few hundred students, all of whom were dumb and asinine teenagers, turned out that word travelled awfully fast. Neil didn’t even have the time to step into his next class before noticing the side-eyed glances and the careless thrown-around whispers when he walked in the corridors. It wasn’t long before someone started to throw accusations at his face, so Neil had to retreat as fast as he could to the Ravenclaw tower.

He had sent Kevin to get me, but I already knew the secret was out of the bag and everyone had found out about it by the fact that I was being hounded by my twin and my cousin, a bewildered Matt on their heels as their asked furious questions without managing to give me time to offer proper answers.

They had demanded to see Neil. Matt’s gaze had seemed distant, and I could already see the draft of a letter to Danielle forming in his underdeveloped mind. I was sure we’d hear from her and Allison soon enough, but I was wondering when they’d be able to put two and two together and find out that Neil and I were partially responsible for Renée’s death.

The last one was a sobering thought, making me slowly tune in again on the angry rumbles coming from every angle of the room. Renée’s death was something I wasn’t over yet – and I could I have been? – and admitting to myself I had somehow taken part in it, however unwillingly, reminded me of the greater evil that had taken control over the school.

Neil sat on my bed with a lowered head as the other boys in the room snarled at him and demanded explanations after explanations. He didn’t have the strength to put a word in, but something in the curve of his shoulders told me he had expected this kind of reaction, which made me hate the group a little bit more by the second.

Neil hadn’t been anything but friendly with them, he had offered everything Neil Josten could and anything Abram Wesninski couldn’t, he had tried to protect them from his past and his present, and that was how they repaid him.

“Why are you so angry about it?” I finally spoke up. Neil glanced in my general direction but didn’t dare to take a good look at me.

It was hypocritical for me to say such a thing, since when I had found out about Neil’s problem I had locked myself up in my room for weeks trying to determine whether I was angrier at Neil for keeping it from me or at myself for not having figured it out earlier. Neil didn’t call me out on it, so I waited for any of the others to answer my question.

“It’s easy for you to say,” Nicky pointed out, “You’ve known about it longer than us. You found out because he,” he jabbed a finger at Neil, “told you personally. We had to hear it from rumors around the school. We’ve been friends for years, Neil.”

That had been out in the conversation since the start: the fact that Neil was a werewolf hadn’t been a secret for either Kevin or me. While Kevin had known because he’d known Neil when they were children, Neil had admitted to telling me the truth two years prior. The others hadn’t taken the news well, but that was about the time I had started to zone out of the conversation.

“Yeah,” Aaron said, like he and Neil had ever been actually friends, “And, by the way, why did Andrew get to know while we were left in the dark?”

“Andrew knowing was a necessity, whereas you would’ve just reacted like,” Kevin flicked an unimpressed look to the scene unfolding before his eyes and then gestured to the room, “Well, like this.”

“That isn’t true,” Matt protested, “We’ve been at Neil’s side since before you were even considered as an acquaintance. We wouldn’t have reacted like this if he’d told us in the first place.”

“He knows each and every one of us has something to be ashamed of or something that broke us in the past,” Nicky argued, every word pained and gritted through his teeth, “He knew about all that ruckus with my parents, he knew about Matt’s family as well. Not to mention Dan’s.”

“We thrive on dysfunctional families,” Aaron confirmed, “This wouldn’t have scared us.”

“Pardon me,” I intervened again, “but I don’t think you’re seeing it as it is. This is not verbal scorn about Neil’s sexuality, this is not a parent trapping his child in drug abuse, this is not even about abandonment,” I said looking pointedly at each of them, “This is much, much worse. Much heavier. Neil had every right to think you wouldn’t take it well.”

“Of course you’re taking his side,” Aaron snorted, “Why wouldn’t you? You’re full of secrets yourself and you did hate your mother just enough to kill her, as I suspect Neil would if he had the chance.”

“It wasn’t my mother,” I said, but Aaron dismissed that thought entirely with a wave of his hand, so I got back on the main topic, “It’s not a matter of taking sides. I just don’t understand your frustration is all.”

“The frustration comes from the fact that we genuinely don’t care that Neil’s a werewolf,” Matt finally snapped.

That got through Neil, whose head snapped up at Matt’s angry voice and who eyed his friends for a couple of seconds, lips parted in awe and a slight gleam in his eyes that indicated he had been about to cry. I made a mental note to punch each of them at least once for hurting Neil that much, but the happy creases around his eyes eased my rage.

“You don’t?” the redhead asked, hopeful.

“Oh, Neil, no,” Nicky’s eyes were watering as well as he knelt in front of Neil and put his hands on Neil’s knees. If he noticed me tense up at the touch he didn’t show it, “We don’t care what you are or who your father is.”

“But he’s,” Neil started, but was quickly interrupted by Matt’s secure voice again.

“You are not to be held accountable for your father’s cruelty,” he said, “Being evil is not a gene. You’re not automatically bad just because he is.”

“We’re getting mad because you felt the need to hide this from us,” Nicky explained, a little calmer this time while he squeezed Neil’s knees in reassurance, “We would never hold who you are against you. And we accept you, even if you thought we wouldn’t.”

Aaron shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortably, and Kevin eyed him up and down, willing him to stay still with his cold stare. Aaron paralyzed almost instantly. I shot a careful look at Kevin, whose eyes had returned on the protagonist of the day. I realized then why Aaron had seemed so out of sorts just a moment before.

Neil was looking at me. Staring, rather, as I sat far from him on my bed, back against the headboard of the bed.

“Problem?” I asked, while the whole room went unnaturally quiet with tension.

“No,” Neil lied, his pulse betraying him even though nobody could hear it but me, “I just wondered what you thought about the situation.”

I raked the faces of the participants to the conversation, searching for any hint of disapproval of Neil’s identity. Matt seemed calm enough, almost happy things had worked out; Nicky looked torn between having been lied to constantly for the better part of three years and feeling the need to comfort a friend in time of need, but didn’t look like he was disgusted by the fact that Neil was a Dark Creature. Aaron was unreadable to me as he’d always been, so I just wrote him off as convinced, somehow, of Neil’s innocence.

“Do I need to spell things out for you?” I taunted him, treating him to a bored expression. When he nodded, even if faintly, I watched him through hooded eyes and said, “They’re fine. They’re worried about you, which is pointless, by the way. I’m here for a reason.”

“You?” Aaron asked, then scoffed again, “What are you going to do against the Headmaster?”

“Kill him, if it comes down to it,” I shrugged half-heartedly.

The room went silent again. I pretended I didn’t hear Nicky’s forced swallows or the way Matt’s foot started tapping arrhythmically on the pavement. Aaron just stared at me blankly and I gladly returned the same face.

“Whatever they did to you in that wretched hospital,” my twin finally said, “They made you even more of a sociopath than you already were.”

With that, he started for the door. Nicky glanced between me, who gave him an unsympathetic look for having to deal with Aaron, and the open door which was creaking while swinging lightly on the hinges. At length he just grunted and squeezed Neil’s knee again to bring the redhead’s eyes back on him.

“I have to go check on Aaron,” he announced, “but know that everything’s okay. We’re not angry anymore. Right, Matt?”

“Right,” Matt nodded convulsively, then grinned, but there was something sad in the curve of his lips, “There was nothing to forgive or to be angry about in the first place. Maybe we rushed this meeting and didn't think our anger through.”

I thought that was an understatement, but I let it slide as the two boys rambled on.

“We understand why you had to do it. We were just blinded by the concern we had for you now that everybody knows,” Nicky added, “And it really isn’t fun when you hear your closest friend’s deepest, darkest secret by some girls gossiping in the corridors.”

“I know,” Neil whispered, “I didn’t intend for you to find out like this.”

“Did you intend for us to find out at all?” Matt asked.

“Of course,” Neil said, and the accelerated pace of his heartbeat could indicate either a lie or a surge of strong emotion – pride, affection, sheer will to protect –, “When I would’ve been able to control it. I still can’t.”

“We understand,” Nicky repeated before getting to his feet, “I better get going. Matt, are you coming?”

“I’ll get out of your hair, too,” Kevin told me, “I want to see how Riko behaves now that the truth is out.”

“Be careful,” Nicky called before disappearing down the stairs of the tower with Matt in his tow.

“Neil, you want to come with me?” the Gryffindor asked.

“No, actually,” Neil coughed a little to clear his throat and sent a pointed look at the chaser, “I want to talk to Andrew about something.”

“Ah,” Kevin nodded, “Sure. See you in the room later?”

“Yeah,” Neil raised one hand in goodbye, “See you.”

When Kevin left, the air seemed to still for a moment, trapped in the deep breath Neil had to take as soon as the door snapped shut with a quiet click. I looked at him up and down, from the way his hair fell over his eyes with his head ducked down, to the way his shoulder seemed slouched but tensed at the same time, to the way he was kicking his feet nervously, dangling them from the bed.

“Neil,” I called for him, trying to get his attention back.

“Andrew,” he just said back.

“What is it?” I asked impatiently, “What did you want to talk about?”

“Us,” Neil replied without missing a beat. I was the one to trap all the air in my lungs then, hoping he wouldn't notice the ever so slight change in my expression.

“What us are we supposed to talk about?” I wanted to laugh, “There is no us.”

“Sure there isn't,” Neil was the one to laugh, ridiculing my attempt at denying the tension between us, “Just because you don't want to admit to yourself that we had something doesn't mean there wasn't anything there in the first place.”

“Even if there was an us, Neil,” I pointed out, “I think it's long gone, don't you?”

Neil drew in a shaky breath, clenching his hands in fists so I wouldn't notice the way his fingers trembled at my statement and clutching the fabric of his pants in the place where Nicky's hands were just moments before.

His frustration intrigued me, because I didn't think he would've been so bothered by my words. Whatever we had had, it had been solely out of my own volition, and I hadn't ever believed he had felt the way I had. He might've been attracted to me, he might have had wanted me, as the amortentia had suggested, but it should've been for a short period of time. It should've been unrequited love, burning my soul as he basked in it without returning it.

As I didn't have the time nor need to explore Neil's sexuality and the way he might have wanted me then and there, I let that topic of the conversation drop.

“So?” I asked, “I have homework to do. I'd appreciate it if you'd make this short.”

Neil scoffed, lines of exhaustion cracking his face in different places. His eyes had become even icier, and he looked at me like he wanted to bite my head off.

“You really don't care about anything anymore, do you?” he accused me, but I only shrugged again in response, “Fine. I wanted to discuss the fact that you won't be allowed to spend the full moon with me anymore and tell you that you can't overreact, because my father will have you punished if you do. But it doesn't look like my warning is needed.”

I perked up at his words. In reality, I didn't believe anything about my appearence changed: I still stayed sat with my legs bent in front of my body, arms hung loose on my knees, dead stare pointed at the redhead boy in front of me.

What I thought changed, though, so much so that Neil knew that whatever conclusion he had drawn about me was false, was the light in my eyes. Neil looked startled by it, like he didn't know where that stare had come from. I also believed that no one could've noticed the simple change in me but him.

“What do you mean I'm not allowed? Will you spend the night with your father's pack, Lola and all?”

The simple thought made my blood boil: he couldn't possibile have survived the night, a lone wolf in a pack set to kill him. It simply infuriated me that they would've chosen his most vulnerable state to exploit their strongest one.

Neil shook his head and sighed, somehow relaxed by the will to murder that he saw in my eyes.

“No,” he said, “It would be pointless, they wouldn't accomplish anything by bringing me with the pack. They can't kill me, now that everybody knows they're werewolves as well. People will put two and two together. My father thrives on the fact that the Ministry knows he's a werewolf but they can't pit anything against him.”

“Then where will you go?” I asked, low and lethal.

“They'll put me in a cage. The wolf - my wolf - doesn't seem to like it. Every time it worsens, every time I hurt myself a little bit more... Last time I almost clawed my chest open. I wanted to warn you because I think it'll be much worse this time around.”

“You can't be serious,” I pushed, “I'm coming with you.”

“You can't,” Neil insisted, “My father will see it as a plausible reason to expel you and what then?”

“There must be a way to protect you.”

“There isn't,” Neil sighed, “But it's fine, Andrew. Abby always finds a way to fix me afterwards. She will this time around, too.”

“I don't want her to fix you,” I gritted through my clenched teeth, “I want to avoid you ending up hurt at all.”

“It isn't possible.”

“Then why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don't want you to lose your mind in case,” he bit his lip to choke on his unsaid words.

“In case what?”

“I case I don't make it.”

Neil had said the last few words in a hushed tone, below a whisper, and at first I didn’t think I had heard him correctly. I straightened my back and tilted my head at him, questioning the sad downwards curve of the corners of his lips and the unwavering confidence in the shrunk pupils in his eyes.

“Don’t say that,” I urged him, but my tone was flat and unimpressed.

“It’s a possibility,” Neil swallowed down harshly, “I don’t want it to be, but we must accept it.”

“No,” I simply answered.

Neil jumped off the bed and stretched. He was a little more than twenty-four hours away from the full moon and I knew his muscles were starting to be sore all over from the alterations in structure his body was going to undergo. He exhaled, then watched me for a couple of seconds and bit the inside of his cheek before talking again.

“Promise me you’ll let me handle this.”

“Neil,” I began, but he raised one hand to stop me from talking.

“I will handle it,” he assured me, “Don’t go after my father if anything happens to me. Promise.”

I looked into his icy blue eyes, stared at them for a few moments, and considered his words carefully.

It pained me to acknowledge that he was, alas, right: if I tried to intervene before the moment was right, Nathan would only use it as an excuse to free himself of me and that would give him an all-clear to do with Neil what he wanted. If there was a way to patch Neil up before my help was really needed, we had to take that route. Otherwise, I could put Neil’s life in jeopardy more than the simple presence of his father in it could.

I lowered my gaze but nodded firmly. Neil didn’t say goodbye before leaving the room.

 

---

 

I wasn’t used to sleeping during a full moon and it was almost enraging to try and do it. I looked out the window and tried to draw some comfort in the fact that I wasn’t spending my night in the cold air of the Forest like I had had to for the previous year and a half, but when I was the panther the cold didn’t bother me, so the argument in my head fell flat.

I missed Neil, and a part of me – the animalistic part – missed the wolf as well. The intimacy we had reached during those focal nights was the ground we had built our human relationship, whether I wanted to admit to Neil that I viewed it as a relationship or not, upon and I couldn’t discard that whole ordeal like it had meant nothing. At least not to myself, not when I was alone, not when Neil's life was in danger.

During my lonely night, I frequently turned into the panther anyway and paced around the room, listening for every sign that Neil was struggling somewhere inside the castle – the sound of a cry, of someone putting up a fight, of a cage rattling. But I came up empty, and the Sun eventually came up before I even noticed.

An hour passed, maybe two. I could hear the castle stir awake, students preparing for a normal day of school. I stayed on my bed, waiting for Neil to come through the door and tell me he was fine, because he had to be. Because he promised he would be.

But Kevin was the one who came in, panting, eyes rummaging the room frantically for a couple seconds before he found me. He didn’t say a word while he still gasped for air, probably having rushed the stairs up to my room. I flicked him an impassible look as he found the words to break me the news but I beat him to it.

“He’s hurt, isn’t he?”

“Andrew,” Kevin simply managed before I pushed myself off the bed and started down the stairs. I pushed past him, bumping our shoulders, but he still called after me, “He’s in our room.”

I didn’t give him any sign that I had heard him but still slipped in the next room down, the two-bed dorm that had been given to Kevin and Neil so they could’ve been closer to me, so that I could’ve protected them. It seemed like it served no purpose in the end.

Abby wasted only a second to glance in my direction when I opened the door but promptly went back to her job without uttering a word. Neil was on his bed – I assumed, since I had never been in that room – laying still as Abby worked on his body as quickly as she could.

I approached the end of the bed and leaned against the frame, watching, waiting for Abby to tell me what was going on. Even as my jaw worked and clenched, I didn’t think Abby had noticed the shift in my attitude from emotionless, to furious, to scared. I stared blankly at the bare body in front of me and assessed the damage, silently willing Abby to work faster.

It had been a long time since I had been able to see Neil’s torso without a shirt on, but I still remembered his scars by heart, even as he collected new ones like album figurines. I suppressed the urge to reach out and brush my fingers against them, following the many lines, like I had done idly so many times while he slept and I was left to watch him drift off, body tangled with his own.

I remembered the feeling of the many bumps on his skin, I could trace them on a sheet of paper like I could do it with my own scars. I remembered the one of his father’s bite the most, I remembered each line that crossed his hips.

But the new gashes on his body threatened to be the worse scars yet, so much so that Abby had a hard time closing them even with magic. I didn’t miss the fact that she had needle and thread with her, and I couldn’t think of a reason why stitching him up the muggle way would’ve been more effective than healing charms.

Neil’s abdomen was open in half, a straight, thick line drawn across his gut. I believed that if I looked hard enough I could’ve seen his organs peering out of the gash, but there was too much blood and I couldn’t see past the dense red layer. That was what Abby had been working on since I had entered the room.

His left shoulder was detached from his body, hanging by a loose thread of flesh and skin. The bone looked split carefully in half, like the wolf had clawed it willingly, maybe hoping it would’ve been easier for him to slip past the bars of the cage without a limb. Abby seemed to have tackled that one already, but she hadn’t finished the job, maybe more preoccupied by the wound on Neil’s stomach.

Dark red stains on the sheets beneath him indicated that there was at the very least one other wound on his back, but maybe that one had been dealt with already, because the blood there had dried up and there wasn’t new one coming from anywhere.

Those were the most gruesome wounds, but they weren’t the only ones. He had a cut on his throat, small but spilling copious blood; he had several lacerations on his chest and legs, the faint shadow of another bite on his ankle. I listened, in the quiet of the room, for the shallow beating of his heart and the muffled intake of air of his breathing. It was scant, but it was there and it was enough.

“You know the spells, Andrew,” Abby finally spoke up, “A little help on the minor injuries might be useful.”

I didn’t have my wand with me, but Abby was one of the few people who knew the extent of my abilities, so I didn’t try to fight her. I moved from the end to the side of the bed and leaned over the lifeless body, then I silently began healing the smaller slashes and slits. At some point, finished with that, I went back to his shoulder, fearing that he could’ve lost the limb if left untreated.

I left the cut on his neck for last. I placed my hand flat on the side of his throat and thought deeply of the healing spell I needed, the healing spell Abby had taught me, while I felt the slow rhythm of his pulse under my fingertips. When I lifted my hand, the gash was gone.

By then, Abby had finally and successfully closed Neil’s injury on his stomach. I swallowed harshly against a dry mouth at the sight of the paper-white scar formed, but it didn’t look like it was going to be bumpy and knotty like his other scars. I pushed my fists in the depth of my pants pockets so I wouldn’t reach out and touch him while he was unconscious. It was bad enough that I was looking at his bare body already without his consent.

Abby was sweating and panting. She looked up at me, raked me up and down, uncertain. Then sighed, half to exhale deeply, half out of exhaustion. I looked at her, blank face and all, and waited for whatever she was about to say.

“David had told me you were different,” she announced, “I assumed he’d meant you had some new visible scar or something. You look like someone has snatched your soul away. Would it hurt you to smile a little?”

“I’m tired of hearing this,” I dismissed her thought, “I wasn’t that expressive to begin with, what’s the big deal?”

“You used to smile when he was around,” she nudged her head in Neil’s direction, “He used to make you happy.”

“The thing is,” I shrugged, “I think I will look like this even when I’ll be happy again eventually. It’s not a matter of being sad. This is just my face now.”

Abby thought about my words for a moment, then simply sighed again and nodded. She went on to look at Neil again.

“Well, let’s talk about him, then,” she stated, “He’s in a suspended state of consciousness, like the one I had you under when Riko pushed you from the goal. His body needs rest, and the process of waking up and living for a whole day, even if forced into bed, would strain that.”

“So, he’s in a coma,” I paraphrased.

“Basically, yes,” Abby nodded again, “His injuries were too extensive. When I first saw him, I thought he did it on purpose. Like he was trying…” she stopped, stifling a sob as a tear rolled down her eye.

“Like he was trying to kill himself?” I finished her thought, “Perhaps. The wolf is not happy in a cage, maybe it thought best to get it over with.”

“Andrew, don’t say things like that,” she scolded me, “Don’t you care about him?”

Because that was the point, wasn't it? Didn't I care about him, didn't I care that he was injured, that just a moment before his internal organs had been visible, that he had lost so much blood he had to be put in a coma? Didn't I care that the boy I figured was the love of my life was suffering? 

I did care. I cared deeply, cared enough that it could've killed me. But I wasn't going to be that person anymore, I couldn't. I had come too close, too many times to let something, someone get so under my skin it could've killed me. The last time I had cared so much about someone, I had let their son rape me senseless for the better part of two years. I wasn't going to allow that anymore. I couldn't, if I wanted to survive. I couldn't, if I wanted to save Neil's life as well. So,

“I don’t care about anything,” I answered, “but now you’re going to go fetch Kevin and tell him we’re switching rooms. I won’t leave Neil’s side until he wakes up.”

“What?” Abby seemed bewildered, “What about classes? What about-”

“I don’t care about that,” I said, “I’m staying.”

“Andrew,” she whispered, careful, “He might not wake up.”

“I do not care, Abigail,” I rebutted, “Go.”

She silently obeyed, the only sound coming from her leaving was the click of the door as it was shut. I grabbed one of the chairs by the desks and dragged it to the side of the bed, then sat on it with my legs spread, elbows on knees and head propped against my joint hands. I looked at Neil’s body up and down again, then reached to cover it with some blankets. It was still December, and I didn’t want him to be cold.

I remembered when I was in his stead. I remembered the nightmares and the stolen snatches of consciousness in which I could recognize his voice and his kind words. In the emptiness of the room, I had to remind myself that there was no one around to judge me for my actions, so I searched for his hand and took it between mine. I kissed each of his fingers and lingered with my lips on his knuckles, looking at him.

“What am I going to do with you, Abram?” I asked, knowing he couldn’t have answered, “You promised you would handle it. Keep that promise. Find it in yourself to wake up. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you. I will stay here now. No one can hurt you now.”

 

---

 

Days passed. A week. Abby and Kevin came by, sometimes bringing Nicky with them, so they could give me leftovers from the big dinners in the Great Hall and avoid that I’d wither away as I stood watch over a senseless body. I didn’t even greet them when they stopped by, nor did I say goodbye when they eventually left. I let Abby stay the most, just so she could assess if there was any progress in Neil’s state, but she disappeared as well right after, without saying a word.

Neil didn’t give any signs of waking up, but he was alive. I knew, just by listening to his ragged heartbeat, that he was having nightmares just like I had when I was in his place years prior. When it was just the two of us, I tried talking to him. I knew he could listen, so I kept the conversation to safe topics, without giving away any of my secrets, but still trying to keep him company. Some part of me knew that he was grateful for the words I was wasting on him.

No one but Neil knew I had been talking, that was why, when I finally spoke up to Abby, she was startled by the sound of my low voice. She jumped and placed a hand on her chest, staring at me wide-eyed for a couple of seconds before talking.

“Jesus, Andrew,” she yelled, “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I just said your name,” I replied, unbothered by her reaction.

I stared at her through hooded eyes and an impassible look, which she spent some time to decipher but I knew she came up empty.

“Are you getting any sleep?” she asked, instead.

“Don’t bother me with stupid questions,” I waved a hand in dismissal, “Go and fetch your boyfriend, would you? I have to talk to him.”

“My boyfriend?” Abby’s cheeks became an odd shade of pink, “Do you mean-”

“I do not have the time for you shame, Abigail,” I deadpanned, “Get David and vanish.”

She hesitated, so much so that it forced me to tilt my head to the side, a silent invite to express her doubts while I still had the patience to deal with her. She swallowed visibly before opening her mouth, closing it and finally trying again.

“Would you want me to get me Betsy as well?” she said, uncertain.

“Go away,” I just replied.

“You ought to talk to someone, Andrew. This is going to kill you,” she insisted, waving her arms around to convey the importance of her words.

“You can’t kill what’s already dead. Get Wymack.”

My gaze landed on Neil’s face again, peaceful and lifeless. I couldn’t tell Abby how much it hurt me to see him like this, I couldn’t tell Bee that it was driving me insane to watch over him like a hawk when all I wanted was to crawl into bed beside him and hold him and cry and beg him to wake up.

I couldn’t tell any of them that it was indeed killing me, because that would’ve meant admitting that I did have some emotions left, some emotions that I didn’t even remember were there in the first place. I really had thought I didn’t feel anything, I really had thought I couldn’t love Neil anymore, yet there I was, heart thumping and skin crawling, nerves on edge as I hoped that Neil could wake up, as I wished I could die with him if he had to go.

Abby filed away without another complaint and I didn’t realize time had passed until Wymack showed up at the door. He looked at Neil’s body – I had taken it upon myself to change his sheets, to clothe him, to wash his body once in a while so he wouldn’t rot – and then to the chair where I was still sitting. He invited himself in and cleared his throat.

“You asked for me?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I want Neil on the Ravenclaw team. Make it happen.”

“Andrew,” Wymack sighed, “We already made an exception for Dan and Kevin. We can’t keep going on like this, there are rules-”

“Bend them,” I demanded, “I don’t care. I won’t let him out of my sight as soon as he wakes up. The only moments when he isn’t with me are during Quidditch practices and matches, so he’s going to be in my team or I’m going to drop out of it. You choose.”

“I have to ask McGonagall, the other Heads of the Houses and the Headmaster,” Wymack announced, “Do you think Professor Wesninski will allow it?”

“Professor Moriyama will,” I answered, “He wants glory more than anything else. The thought that his nephew might destroy all three of his enemies on a field at the same time will intrigue him.”

“Professor Moriyama is not above the Headmaster,” Wymack said, confused.

“He is,” I simply replied, “Go make this happen, David. I will wait for the results here.”

Wymack had a little left of a fight in him and he kept arguing until I kicked him out of the room. At that point I didn’t know whether he’d really make the request, I thought maybe he wouldn’t just to spite me, but eventually he came back, eyebrows furrowed and a deep line of concern between them. He looked at me up and down, then glanced at Neil.

“You were right,” he said, “Tetsuji was ecstatic about the suggestion and approved it without batting an eye. The only one sad about it seemed to be McGonagall.”

“She’ll get over it,” I returned, then waved him goodbye, “Dismissed.”

The coach opened his mouth to argue again, but thought better of it as he grunted, sighed and exited the room. Sure that I was yet again alone with Neil’s unconscious body, I brushed my fingers against his and sighed as well, feeling defeat setting into my bones.

Soon enough people would’ve gone home for Christmas holidays and we would both be left alone with Riko and Nathan and every bad person in that godforsaken castle. If I didn’t even have Neil to spur me into action, would I even be able to face them? How could I ever win?

I leaned over and kissed Neil on the forehead, tried not to think about the upcoming doom. I whispered against his hair, hoping he could hear me.

“Welcome to the Ravenclaw team,” I said, “I bet you’ll be the best seeker we’ve ever had.”

I crossed my arms on the bed and propped my forehead on them. I breathed deeply, in sync with Neil’s shallow breaths, and for the first time in a while I feel soundly asleep.

Notes:

hiyaaaaaa

yes they are all suffering, hate me all you want, i hate myself too lmao

THEY'RE FINE OK??? THEY LOVE EACH OTHER THEY'RE GOING TO BE FINE

EVENTUALLY ANDREW WILL STOP BEING A RIVER IN EGYPT AND ACCEPT THAT THEY'RE IN LOVE WITH NEIL but maybe they need to kill a couple of people first and then they can get to the love part

For those who need reassurance, Neil's going to be out for a while but he's coming back (eventually) stronger than ever.

Fair warning, next chapter is b a d so enjoy this lighter ones while you can :D

byeee

Chapter 41: Breaking the habit

Summary:

TW!
This chapter is very, very rough. Please, take care of yourself and do not read this if any of the followings can warrant a bad reaction on your part.
- explicit depiction of self-harm (including: cutting, not eating)
- explicit depiction of injuries
- depiction of rape
- explicit depiction of death and murder

If anyone wishes to skip this chapter, I'll add a summary in the end notes that includes spoilers so you can just go on to the next when I'll publish it.

Days started to blur together, and I couldn't tell how much time I had spent in that room. Neil wasn't waking up, and I was beginning to lose the minuscule slivers of hope I was holding onto. I kept talking to him, asking him to give me a sign that he was still there, but whenever Abby came by to check on him – to check on both of us – she just shook her head and went away.

No good news, on every front. Kevin had been around a couple of times to see if there was any progress and to tell me that, without Neil running his mouth, Riko had been left basically unchallenged to torture everything and everyone in his path. Between Nathan and Tetsuji, each one of his acts was left unpunished. At that, all I could do was stare at Kevin until he realized he wouldn't get any reaction from me and left.

I squeezed Neil's hand once more, maybe the third time in one hour, maybe the first time in days. I didn't have the strength to ask what day it was. All I knew was that the full moon was approaching and Neil would've turned again, even if he was unconscious. As much as I hadn't liked it, as much as I had fought Abby over it, the only solution was to strap Neil to the bed with strong enough bonds to hold him in case the wolf rebelled against his bed rest.

I hadn't realized the squeeze I gave was a little more forceful than what I had intended and I felt blood trickle down my arm, wetting the black sleeve of my sweatshirt. I got up from the chair, placed Neil's hand carefully beside him on the bed and stumbled towards the bathroom. I stripped off my clothes, leaving the thick armbands for last. Those I had to peel off, damp with blood as they were. I grimaced as I stared down at my torn forearms, unrecognizable between the deep slits and the dried blood. I sighed and got to work to clean and stitch them up again.

From time to time, I glanced back at Neil's unconscious body and had to refrain from thinking that my relapse had been his fault. I had to express my anger somehow, I had to express the sadness I felt: talking wasn't an option, my face and my brain apparently weren't able to express emotions anymore, I couldn't simply snap at the Headmaster and Professor Moriyama and Riko because that would've been stupid and also I had promised Neil not to.

But I felt it. I felt bone-deep, black fury. I felt sorrow, grief, pain. So much pain. I felt the tears choking me every time I tried to talk to Neil. I felt my eyes swelling up whenever I placed my fingers on Neil's neck, searching for his pulse and finding it slowed down for some cruel twist of Fate. I felt my hands tremble when I decided it was time to clean him, and had to pick him up and drag him toward the shower.

Kevin had said I seemed different. I hadn't bothered to respond to him appropriately and just threw one of Renée's daggers at his general direction. I had missed him - purposely - but he freaked out anyway, yelling at me, screaming that I must've been losing my mind. I didn't care what he believed, so long as he didn't point out I looked more vulnerable.

Kevin had been spending more time in the room, as had Abby. They were trying to coax me out of there, trying to make me live a little. Kevin had convinced Aaron and Nicky to start forging my homework and make them just good enough so I wouldn't flunk the year. They were succeeding, but he protested it wasn't fair for either of them.

I was also missing Quidditch practices, and that, somehow, pissed him off even more. He said maybe if I went back to Quidditch I could've found purpose. He said it could've been a new reason for living, it could've made me, if not happy, at least successful and fulfilled. Abby was a little more silent, speaking up with quiet remarks about how my life seemed miserable.

Whenever they stopped by, I looked at Neil and said nothing in return. I didn't care that they thought my life was going downhill, I didn't care that they thought I was wasting time, potential, talent, that they thought I was wasting my life standing guard. I didn't care about anything anymore. I didn't care about Riko and his power-angry attitude, I didn't care about Tetsuji and the spiteful rumors he was spreading about me, I didn't care about Nathan and the phantom menace he was. I cared about what they had taken away from me.

My heart was empty, but my mind was full.

My heart was emptied of joy and happiness and memories about how I was smitten with the redhead boy in front of me, about how I had laughed with him about nothing in particular, buried in a thick layer of sheets, about how I had kissed him lovingly, about how he had kissed me senseless. My heart was emptied of cares and worries, of memories of every petty argument and every snide, mean comment we both had made toward the other.

My head was full of plans and schemes, of everything I could've done but didn't do, of everything I wanted to do from that point forward. My head was full of strings and I carefully plucked them and pulled at them, trying to create a symphony that could ease my mind, placate it, make it rest from the chaos within. My head was screaming at me, was shouting that it was all my fault, that I could've prevented it, that it didn't matter that Nathan would've used my defiance as an excuse to persecute me even more, because then at least Neil would've been alive, then at least he would've been able to yell at me as well, as loud as my mind.

I tripped over my thoughts and leaned over the sink to steady myself. I looked up at the mirror in front of me and saw bloodshot eyes - when was the last time I'd had an hour of peaceful sleep? When was the last time I had put something in my stomach? - and dark bruises all over my face. I let out a shaky breath, holding onto every piece of sanity I could've found in my senseless head. In the end, I just reached over the shelf for my blade and put it on my wrist.

There wasn't a lot of space to operate, so I had to cross some already existing cuts and I ended up popping open some of the stitches I had just finished putting in. I knew I could've just healed myself with a spell, but I wanted to feel the pain the simple act of cutting myself brought. I wanted to experience it all, from the sting of the touch of the cold blade to the rush of heat given by pumping blood spilling out of my skin, to the gritting ache of the needle entering and exiting my flesh. It was torture, plain and simple, but torturing myself was easier than staying still and accepting the truth.

I hadn't wanted to fall that low. I hadn't meant for it to happen. I wanted to feel nothing, I wanted to match my actual emotions to the ones I could display on my face but I couldn't. I knew, deep inside my mind, etched into my heart, the truth that if Neil wouldn't have woken up, it would've killed me. I'd have ended up killing myself or letting life run its course until it consumed me.

Blood wet my dirty skin and dripped, dripped, dripped down on the pavement, making little splash sounds that steadied me as I worked. I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream in pain as I opened another gash on my wrist and watched as it swelled up with blood before patting it down and reaching for the needle to patch it up again.

After a while, I deemed I had punished myself enough for every single mistake of my life - I hadn't protected Neil, I'd accepted Drake at the Hemmick's house without batting an eye, I had committed arson to escape Drake and flee from the Spears' household without hurting Cass with the ugly truth about her son, I had let myself trust someone outside myself, I had let down my guard so many times and it always ended up like this again, like this, with me getting hurt hurt hurt and with me crying silently in pain, so much pain and sorrow and terrible terrible ache in my bones and flesh and organs and brain and I-

I panted, out of air, in a deep state of ache as I stumbled from the bathroom to the chair next to Neil's bed all over again. I crashed into the wooden chair and it rocked under my weight, so much so that for a moment I thought it was going to break. But I remembered I had lost so many pounds, what with not eating and not going to Quidditch practices and runs. I could wrap my fingers around my wrist with ease and centimeters to spare, but I couldn't worry about that. I couldn't worry about myself when the person I needed to worry about was laying half-dead in front of my eyes.

I reached to touch Neil's face but then thought best of it and retracted my hand a bit. It hovered over his cold skin - cold where it was previously hot and scolding - and it was some time before I decided it was fine for me to press my palm against his cheek, cupping his jaw and stroking it. I almost smiled, imagining he was peacefully sleeping and not eternally doomed, but then I started to cry, silent tears rolling down my cheeks, and leaned forward to place my forehead on his shoulder.

“Neil,” I called, hoping that if he couldn't hear me, he could've at least felt the brush of my breath against his skin, “Neil, wake up.”

It was long before I realized I was shaking and rattling Neil's face with my hand, forcefully. I stopped almost immediately, scared that I might've hurt him even more. I smoothed the hair on his forehead and gasped for air, panic edging on the verge of my sanity.

“I'm sorry,” I said. I didn't know who I was apologizing to: Neil for having shaken him so harshly, Neil for not having protected him, myself for all the pain I was putting myself through, “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”

I hadn’t intended for me to lose it so badly but there I was. I knew that was what happened when you let someone under your skin, when you care about someone so deeply that it’s impossible to think of them as gone, that you breathe at the same time as them and your hearts pump blood at the same exact rhythm.

I knew it was my fault that I was reduced to that, I knew I shouldn’t have let Neil come so close to me when he had so many secrets and so many ways to destroy me, I hadn’t cared and I had put my life and my beating heart in his hands without thinking of it twice because I was so fucking in love with him that I didn’t even let myself think about the possible bad outcomes of that situation.

I loved him. I loved him so much and I was starting to think he was gone forever, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t fucking stop crying and I was sobbing, shaking, muffling my screams of pain.

I got up and went towards the bathroom again. I didn’t care that I didn’t have any space left on my wrist, I’d find something, somewhere to cut. I picked up my blade and the blood on it wasn’t even fully dried. I lost my balance. I dropped on the floor, hitting my knees and I stayed there, hiccupping and gasping.

I glanced back at Neil’s body on the bed. He’d be furious to find me like that, to know it was partially because of him. I put the blade down on the floor but I stayed there as well. I locked the room’s door with a wandless spell and hoped nobody would be so stupid as to counter it. I sprawled out on the floor, hair dipping in the pool of blood I had left there.

And I started crying again.

 

---

 

“So, as I was telling you…”

My voice was interrupted by two knocks on the door and I looked up to the wooden barrier between myself and the rest of the world. I sighed and yelled.

“What?”

“It’s me,” Abby replied from the other side, voice shaking, “May I?”

I stood up and walked towards the door to open it myself, since I had locked it with a proper key from the inside. I twisted the key into the hole and opened it as little as I could while also being able to look outside. Abby was looking at me with a puppy-eyed expression etched on her face, like she'd done something bad she needed to be forgiven for. I stared at her blankly until she spoke up.

“Can we come in?”

“I don't see any freakishly tall boy or any angry blond midget that looks like me,” I deadpanned, “Who's we?”

She leaned to the side, revealing the smiling face of the school's therapist right behind her. Betsy's smile only grew as she watched me react - or, rather, not having any reaction - to her presence, like she was thrilled to have some sort of challenge for herself. I began to close the door, but Abby put her hand on the doorframe.

“I will break it,” I announced, inching the door closer to her knuckles.

“You wouldn't,” Abby rebutted.

“But he could,” Bee said from behind her, reaching for the healer's hand and slowly made her retreat, “I wouldn't risk it.”

“Bye,” I said, without any other warning before closing the door all the way. I hadn’t even turned my back on it before Abby started banging her fists against the wood, shaking it visibly. I sighed, “What now?”

“We need to talk, Andrew,” she shouted.

“Lower your voice,” I ordered, “And we don’t need to do anything. I don’t need your patience, or even worse, your compassion. Leave.”

“I’m not leaving, and neither is Bee,” Abby protested, even though I clearly heard some kind of complaint from Betsy’s part, “Come back here.”

I rolled my eyes but half-turned again towards the door, twisted the handle and this time I opened it wide, making them both see me completely. Abby’s eyes went wide, and I realized maybe I hadn’t seen her in a long time, maybe I hadn’t noticed how much time had passed since I had last seen her in the room.

I glanced down a fraction of a second to ascertain that I had my armbands on, just to be sure that I hadn’t disclosed my latest reason of shame to two healers ready to declare that I was officially mentally unstable. Abby was still looking at my face, shocked, while Betsy hung back and gave me a proper once-over. After a couple of beats, the first healer regained her composure and cleared her throat.

“You look like you haven’t eaten in days,” she declared, like it meant anything to me.

“I probably haven’t,” I conceded, “How is this relevant?”

“Betsy is your therapist,” Abby argued, gesturing to the second healer who waved at me faintly in response, “You should talk to her. You’re clearly spiraling, Andrew.”

“It’s none of your business, I believe,” I retorted, “And if I need my therapist, I will make sure to call her. Goodbye again.”

I tried to close the door again, and Abby repeated the same, previous move. I didn’t show any sign of slowing as I slammed the door close, so she just jumped back at the last possible moment and gasped loudly, like I had actually hurt her.

“Andrew!” she complained.

I opened the door again, staring unblinkingly at the bewildered expression on her face. Behind her, Bee hummed as she eyed me suspiciously.

“Don’t say that I didn’t warn you,” I said.

“You could’ve seriously injured me!” she kept yelling. I heard the sound of Kevin’s own door creaking open as well at the top of the stairs and I urged Abby to lower the volume with a subtle glare, “Have you completely lost your mind?”

“I don’t understand why you’re still here,” was the only thing I countered, “I told you to leave and slammed the door in your face twice already. Do I have to do it three times so your simple and demented brains can get it?”

“You’re being unreasonable,” Abby looked a minute away from starting to stomp her foot down like a toddler, “We’re here to ensure your wellbeing while the whole school is out to get you.”

“The whole school has not and cannot reach me inside this room,” I said, “Hence, I’m good. You can leave now.”

“Listen-”

“Abigail,” Betsy finally spoke up, “Leave it, will you? If he doesn’t want to speak to me, there’s no point in talking to him.”

“Thank you, Bee,” I tilted my head to the side to take a good look at her from where she was standing still behind Abby’s back, “That’s why you’re my favorite.”

“However,” Bee was quick to add, stepping forward so she could stand beside her colleague instead of behind her, “You once told me that you’re not safe as long as you’re alone with yourself, Andrew, and I cannot in good conscience leave without making sure that I know at the very least what state you’re in.”

It was a moment. Bee glanced at my wrapped-up arms, at the black fabric artificially covering my swollen, red, bloody wrists. This time, Abby didn’t miss the movement of eyes and gasped once more, hand clutching her chest like she was having a heart attack.

“Andrew,” she whispered, “No.”

“Are you safe?” Bee asked, idly and quietly, a subtle edge in her voice coming out of nowhere.

I felt my façade cave a little at the question, stumbling as the pavement seemed to slip from under my feet and making me unstable in my stance. I was sure neither of the women in front of me noticed the change in my behavior, but the simple fact that I knew that I was caving to their demands made me want to get rid of them even more.

I couldn’t open up. Not anymore, not about anything, not to anyone.

“I told you that it’s none of your business,” I simply retorted.

“I won’t leave until you answer me,” Betsy crossed her arms on her chest and stared me down. Abby, beside her, was shaking in shock.

“But you,” she stammered, “But you said that you hated it. The scars, the act itself… you said you hated it. Why would you do it again, Andrew?”

“Stop it,” I gritted through my teeth.

“You’ll make this easier if you cooperate,” Bee tried to intervene, “Even if you tell me that you’re not safe right now, I won’t ask other questions. I will simply walk away, but I do need an answer.”

“You were in such a state,” Abby kept rambling to me, to herself as she shook her head, “You were screaming, bent down on the floor! How could you do that to yourself all over again?”

“I told you to stop it,” I snarled, “Stop asking that stupid fucking question, Abigail.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Bee snapped her fingers in front of my eyes, “Listen to me. Have you done it again, Andrew? Are you safe to be left alone in this room?”

Silence stretched out between us for what felt like ages as I tossed and turned the question in my mind for a couple of beats. A part of me wanted to cave, wanted to kneel down again and cry in Bee’s arms until I felt safe, until she healed the scary portion of my brain that wanted to hurt me. But another part of me reminded me that letting people in was the very reason I was in that conundrum to begin with.

Still, Bee was the only one who could’ve stopped it, and I knew that I should have stopped doing it. I didn’t even know what day it was but I knew the precise number of stitches on each of my forearms, both those that were there in the present time and those who had been gone since the cut had healed.

That thought hit me like a train driving at full speed. Some of my cuts had healed. They were deep and I hadn’t used any magic, but they had healed. I was in too deep, in over my head, and I had lost track of what was important in the loop of self-destruction I had entered. I swallowed, hoping Bee wouldn’t notice my hesitation and the fear in my simple, single word.

“No,” I said. I waited for a moment after Abby’s quiet sob, “I’m not safe with myself, Betsy.”

“Alright,” the healer replied, “Abby can take Neil to the other room, to Kevin’s, to do a little check-up on him while you and I have a little chat in here. How does that sound?”

I didn’t reply, but I simply nodded and opened the door wide enough for them to step in. I pretended not to notice how they eyed warily the pile of dirty dishes and clothes scattered in different corners of the room, the rusted and bloody blades lying on the floor and the sink in the bathroom.

I pretended not to notice how their gaze softened the moment they realized the only pristine spot in the whole room was Neil’s bed, his body carefully tucked under the blankets and duvets I had the habit of changing myself since I didn’t let any elves in the dorm.

I pretended not to flinch when Abby uncovered Neil’s body and quickly looked at him, his half-naked body revealing all the significant injuries that had put him in that state in the first place. I pretended not to suck in and hold my breath as she covered him carelessly with a linen sheet and casted a levitating spell on him so she could take him out of the room to Kevin’s – mine, really – dorm.

Once the door closed behind Abby’s back, I let out a sharp exhale. I looked around to find Bee sitting in my usual chair, the one beside Neil’s bed, and watching me curiously. I strolled over the bed and, even if it felt utterly wrong to invade a space he wasn’t even occupying, sat on Neil’s bed, knees tucked against my chest and hugged by my butchered arms.

“Do you feel like you can show them to me?” Bee asked, quite abruptly, “Your arms. You don’t have to if you feel uncomfortable.”

“I don’t like looking at them before they scar over,” I answered, “I’ll keep the armbands on.”

“That’s fine,” Bee nodded, “I don’t need to see the extent of it to know that it’s bad. Because it is, isn’t it?”

I perched my face between my knees, leaning my cheek on the right one as I looked past her, out of the window, towards the big, endless meadow I knew was right there, outside the castle. I knew – I believed, anyway – it was December but it was incredibly sunny. I didn’t know when the last time I had stopped to look at the sunny sky had been.

“What if it is?” I asked instead of replying.

“Do you want to stop?”

The question bounced in my mind from wall to wall for a couple of seconds, then I sighed. I was fine with keeping up the unanswered-questions-game, so I went on with the next inquiry.

“Do you think I’m different?”

“Compared to what?”

“To what I was before going to St. Mungo’s,” I was quick to answer, “Everybody says I’m different. Do you think that as well?”

“I believe you’re just showing your true self,” she shrugged, “One doesn’t go what you have endured all your life and stays a happy, lighthearted individual. It is simply not possible, Andrew. Do you feel shame about this?”

“I don’t,” I said, “I actually feel a little freer. It was starting to be a burden, having to keep up with the outside world and its constant demand of emotions.”

“You look like the odd one out, though,” she pointed out.

“I already was,” I countered, “Maybe it’s best if I look the part too.”

“Don’t you care what the others, your friends, might think about you?”

“I never cared what people thought about me,” I answered earnestly, “There are very few people that are important enough to me that I care about what they think. Neil is one of them, for example. Aaron and Nicky, even less Matt and the others, I don’t care about.”

“Neil,” Bee saw the perfect opening and took it, “Do you miss him?”

“He’s with me every day,” I tried to shield myself from her next statement, but it hurt me anyway.

“He’s not really here,” Bee said, “So, do you miss him?”

I swallowed down harshly and lowered my gaze, “A lot. I can’t keep this up anymore, Betsy. I need him to wake up.”

“Andrew,” she said pointedly, and I looked up at her, finding her eyes fierce and unyielding, “Do you want to stop cutting yourself?”

“For good?” I asked.

“For good,” she answered, “Do you?”

“I think I have to.”

“That’s something I can work with,” she smiled and leaned back on her chair a bit, “Do you want some hot cocoa? It might take a while.”

“What day is it?”

“The 23^rd of December,” he smiled softened, “Almost Christmas.”

“Almost the full moon,” I reminded myself, “Shall we begin?”

 

---

 

After a couple of session with Betsy, I was able to start living normally again. I was still locked up in the room with Neil most of the time, but I accepted visitors more frequently and I started to get out and go to the Great Hall for meals. I didn’t talk to any of the people in my friend group – even though Matt, Nicky and Kevin sometimes put an effort in trying to get me to speak – but I was fine listening to their chatter and eating in silence.

It took me a moment to notice that the group hadn’t gone back to their homes for Christmas. While I could’ve understood Kevin and my brother, I had a harder time realizing that Nicky and Matt had stuck around to be with Neil. They had also taken on the habit of talking to him, even when I was around, and telling him about their day.

Dan and Allison were granted permission to access the Hogwarts’s grounds as ex-students and visitors, and it was nice to have them around again. Dan brought a spark that the group had missed now that she was gone, and generally there was a more relaxed environment now that they were back for the next couple of weeks.

As predicted, Neil’s coma didn’t prevent him from turning on the full moon of the 28^th. He was tied to the bed with metal chains and Abby and I spent the whole night with him, her right outside the door to intervene if anything had gone wrong and me as the panther, sat at the side of the bed to aid him in anyway he’d need.

In the end, it seemed that Neil’s suspended state of consciousness had extended to the wolf as well, since it laid on the bed sleeping all night long and didn’t look like he’d wake up even for this. I took my time to study his werewolf body, the way his countless scars were covered by light fur on his torso, the way his limbs seemed to grow longer as they grew thinner.

It occurred to me then that in almost two years of having known Neil was a werewolf I hadn’t had the opportunity to really look at him, to really see the werewolf for what it was. As the firsts hints of the rising sun painted the sky lilac, I turned back into human and toyed with the wolf’s claws, harmless then as they’d always been to me, even when he was awake.

Abby came in at dawn to check if there was any additional damage, but it took her a second to assess that nothing had gone wrong and she could make herself scarce for the rest of the day. I went to lay on my – Kevin’s – bed and slept for a couple of hours, hoping the rest of the group would abstain from visits until after lunch.

I was, dreadfully, wrong. Only two hours had passed before I heard a knock at the door and I begrudgingly went to check who was bothering me so early in the day. I felt my anger rise once I noticed that my cousin and my twin brother were waiting for me on the other side. Nicky looked like he had swollen a toad, while Aaron looked annoyed as he always did when he had to deal with me.

“Now that you know what day it is, you should also know not to pester me with your presence,” I stated, just as Nicky let out a high-pitched noise that sounded pained, “What is it?”

“You have a visitor,” Aaron simply said, “He’s waiting for you in your other room. Kevin wants to come here to Neil anyway.”

“A visitor?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“From out of campus,” Aaron explained, “He has a special permit from the Headmaster to be here.”

“What?”

“Andrew,” Nicky called me, and my gaze shifted from my twin to my cousin, who was oozing uneasiness from every pore.

And just like that I knew who it was. I cursed under my breath, clenching my fists at my side. Just when I was starting to be good again, just as I was improving, quitting my addiction to self-harm, just as I was starting to accept my altered brain chemistry. All of the sudden, I felt Proust’s hands on me, callous and hard.

I suppressed the shiver that threatened to go down my spine and exhaled faintly, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, I looked pointedly to each and every one of the people waiting for me outside the door. Kevin arrived at that moment as well, still looking up the stairs to the slightly visible door of the other dorm.

“That’s one big bloke,” he commented, before looking at me, “How do you know him?”

“It’s a long story,” I simply replied, “Stay here. All of you, alright? Don’t come looking for me.”

Nicky tried to protest, but I knew what he wanted to say. I could practically hear his voice in my head as I climbed up the stairs to my old room: ‘Andrew, I know what he’s capable of doing to you. If the Headmaster wants him here it can’t be good. How am I supposed to just wait here?’. But I ignored it and opened the door of the dorm just as I heard the click of Neil’s one closing.

Drake was standing next to one of my shelves, toying with the old stuffed animal I had perched there when I first moved into that lonely dorm. The smile on his lips was slow and cruel when I approached him and snatched the plush from his hands.

“Is this the one mum gave you?” he asked, casually, like we could entertain a normal conversation as normal brothers. When I nodded, just one jerk of my chin, “How sentimental. I thought you’d lose it in jail.”

“You’d be surprised as to how many things I’m able to hold onto,” I crossed my arms and looked up and down at him, “Grudges, mostly. What do you want?”

“That doesn’t seem like the proper way to greet your big brother, Drew,” he was still smiling, a small, terrible curve at the corners of his lips, “Didn’t you miss me?”

“Like a dog misses ticks,” I deadpanned, “I knew this would’ve happened eventually.”

“Good,” he scoffed, “At least you know you can’t run from me forever.”

“Don’t you have better things to do?” I asked, “A job? I know I’m growing to be really gorgeous but this obsession of yours has to stop at one point.”

“What happened to you?” he seemed amused by my attitude, “Where’s the scared little boy I used to know?”

“People change,” I shrugged, “Some do, at least. You look like your good old self.”

“I am,” he agreed, “But you have one thing wrong: I’m not obsessed with you, Andrew. I have other hobbies.”

“Like what?” I asked idly as he began pacing around the room, touching and brushing his fingers on everything I owned. I gulped down the lump I could feel forming in my throat.

He didn’t reply right away, and watching him lay his dirty, cruel hands on every object in the room, testing the flexibility of the mattress on the bed, twisting the linen sheets on it between in fingers almost made me forget the question I had asked in the first place. When he answered it, though, it chilled my blood, turned it into ice in my veins.

“Do you know mum is still in the foster system?” he wasn’t even looking at me as he said it, hand flat on the bed, “She’s taken in other kids once you were gone. They’re funny little creatures, you know? We have a lot of fun when I come back home for the holidays. One is waiting for me at home as we speak.”

It took a moment for his words to really sink in, and I stared at him shaken to the bone. I felt panic settling in my organs, my stomach turning over in my abdomen, my heart squeezing out all of my blood until I left lightheaded and sick.

“You wouldn’t,” I heard my voice crack and wanted to die then and there, “One of them could talk.”

“You didn’t, did you?” he laughed, “And they’re children, Andrew. How long did it take for you to realize what was being done to you was wrong? They’re long gone before it stars to make sense and by then I’m off to deployment and they don’t have any proof. What’s the harm?”

“You’re sick,” I spat, “You’re sick and incurable.”

“I suppose you were older,” he shrugged, “And they’d done that to you already, right? Your other foster families. You knew what was going on. What you didn’t know was that you liked it, didn’t you? You enjoyed it.”

“I never enjoyed it, Drake,” I was starting to shake, bile rising in my throat, “How could I? I didn’t want it. I didn’t want you.”

“Ah, is that how it is?” he scoffed again, sitting on the bed and patting down the pillow next to him, “So, I suppose I’m wrong in assuming you were still in our house when you realized you like boys?”

I swallowed harshly, stretching and clenching my hands to stop them from shaking, “How do you know that?”

“I know you, Drew,” he smiled, cold and vicious and brutal, “You’re my little brother. I loved you, just like you loved me. That was just how I expressed my love.”

“By hurting me?” I choked on my words, felt tears roll down my cheeks, “By ripping me apart?”

“Oh, hush now,” he dismissed my words, waving his hand around, “You liked it, and I know it. Why don’t we have another round? For the sake of the good old days.”

“You’ll have to force me again,” I announced, raising my chin high as he stood up and walked towards me. He leaned forwards, grabbing my jaw and tilting it so I would be face to face with him.

“You know I have no problem doing that,” he whispered against my lips before kissing me forcefully.

And it began again. It was as atrocious and as awful and terrible and horrendous as it had ever been. Whenever I tried to fight him, he slapped me, punched me, used objects that he blindly found with his hands to smack me. He hit me once and I felt blood trickle down my forehead and temple, he slapped me a second time and I tasted it in the back of my throat.

I let him. I let him push me onto the bed, I let him leave trails of harsh kisses down my body, I let him undress me and take off my armbands. He stared at the new scars for a couple of seconds before laughing.

“You’re still doing this?” he pointed at them, “Oh, baby. You’re so pathetic.”

“Perhaps I am,” I simply replied, and I let him get back to his work.

I endured. I managed. I let him touch me, squeeze my thighs, I let him pin me down with my face buried in the pillow and I let him have me. I let him, because I knew it would be the last time anyway. I let him, not because he deserved it, but because I needed his head in the clouds, I needed his thoughts muddled up by the pleasure.

And then I stopped him.

“Drake,” I gasped, feigning rapture, “Wait, wait.”

He looked dumbfounded by my voice. When he lifted the hand that was pinning my head down, I took advantage of his body retracting from mine to twist and face him. He looked at me as I laid down on my back and spread my legs apart.

“I want to see you,” I whispered, “Watch you.”

“Ah,” he scoffed again, his smile a little warmer but never losing its edge, “So I was right. You do enjoy this.”

“Come here and find out.”

He grinned widely and leaned forward to put all his bodyweight back on me. I let him. And I let him thrust inside me a couple of times before pulling out my switchblade hidden inside the pillow and swiftly stabbing him in the neck. I kept my hand on the handle as he pulled away from me just enough to look at me, eyes wide in shock and fear.

“You were wrong, I didn’t enjoy it,” I hissed, “but you were right about one thing. I cannot outrun you. I cannot escape. So, this chase ends now. And it ends with you dead, Drake Spear.”

He tried to speak, but his throat was filled with blood that splattered on my face as he coughed it up.

“I hate you,” I whispered again, looking deeply into his bloodshot eyes, “I hate that I let you do this to me even though I knew it was wrong. I hate that I let the fear of you interfere with my love for Cass. I hate that because of you I lost my only ever shot of having a real family. I hate that even if you’re dead, I’ll remember your hands on me for the rest of my life. You have ruined everything and will keep on doing so, because even the memory of you brings pain.”

His legs went limp between mine, his arms, hoisting him up, were beginning to shake and tremble under his weight. I smiled at him.

“You’re not the first person I’ve killed,” I said, “But you’re the one who brings the most satisfaction in doing it. And when I’ll meet you in Hell, I’ll make sure to remind you that no matter how many times you had me, no matter how pathetic I might be, you lost. I won and you lost.”

“Andrew,” he managed to choke up.

“Die,” I demanded, “Die so I can love again in peace, knowing my hate for love dies with you.”

I pulled the knife out of his throat and a gush of blood came spilling out of the wound. There wasn’t any time left to spit out the rest of my resentments towards him, there wasn’t any time left to grieve the loss of the man that had ruined my whole life. Because no matter how many people had done the same thing he did to me, he was the worst. He was the worst at everything.

His body crashed onto mine and crushed me in result. I wheezed under him, blood wetting my naked body where there was also blood of my own. Wetting my duvets, the linen sheets, the mattress under it.

Tilda was dead. Drake was dead.

Renée was dead.

Was I some kind of grim reaper? Was I some kind of entity whose presence determined who lived and who died? I thought of Neil in the other room, in a coma, fighting for his life. I thought of the centaur I had ruthlessly murdered, fighting for Neil's life. I twisted the knife in my hand and I let it drop to the floor with a loud rattle.

Drake was dead. Dead, dead, dead.

His dead body was on top of mine and I couldn’t get out from under it.

And it was so stupid, so utterly idiotic, so completely moronic.

And I began to laugh.

Laugh, laugh, laugh.

I laughed so loud and so hard, and I did until everything hurt. 

Until everything stopped hurting. 

Notes:

SUMMARY FOR THOSE WHO DON'T WANT TO READ THE CHAPTER:

Basically, Andrew spends a whole month locked up in Neil's room. They start cutting again, stop eating and ignores Kevin's and Abby's reprimands every time they come looking for Andrew. They spiral out of control, fighting with themself over their feelings for Neil and how the whole situation is fucked up. Andrew's injuries are very extensive.
At one point, Abby brings Bee along so she can talk to Andrew. Andrew refuses, even if the healers are evidently worried about Andrew's state (they have lost a lot of weight, look a minute from dying as well). Bee admits she knows that Andrew has resorted to self-harm again and finally that convinces them to open up and talk to Bee. Together, they start the process to get Andrew to stop cutting for good.
Being better, Andrew starts hanging out with the remaining Foxes again and lets them in the room more often. Dan and Allison are back at Hogwarts as visitors since the Foxes decide to spend the Christmas break at Hogwarts to be with Neil. On the day after the full moon - Neil's come had extended to his wolf state as well, so he doesn't wake up and stays relatively safe - Aaron and Nicky go pick Andrew up and tell them that there's a visitor for them in Kevin's room, which is Andrew's old one before Neil's coma happened.
It's Drake. They have a small conversation about how Drake keeps raping the new children that come to Cass's house. Andrew lets Drake have them again, but it's a ruse so that when Drake's distracted Andrew can kill him with a knife he has hidden inside his pillow. Drake dies and his lifeless body is crushing Andrew's, who, though, starts laughing about the whole situation.

For those who have read the chapter:

well... that was indeed a chapter :D

The first section with Andrew spiraling out of control? How they admit that they'd kill themself if Neil ended up not waking up? Hurt. So much pain. I KNOW I'M A BITCH FOR WRITING THIS BUT LISTEN!!! i don't know what to say in my defense, sorry, i'm just a bitch.

But then Bee comes by <3 we love Bee. Well, I mean, we have to love Bee, right? She's saving Andrew. That's a bit much, but at least she's reintroducing them in society?? it's good.

Not Andrew almost breaking Abby's hand and then being like "what can i say i warned you" they're hilarious bye

the last part. so.

I have always hated how Aaron's the one who kills Drake in canon. I know it's a pivotal point for the relationship between the twins, but - sorry not sorry - Aaron's a bitch about it. He doesn't listen to neither Neil nor Betsy when they try to explain to him what killing Drake meant, how he's supposed to forgive Andrew now, and frankly he didn't deserve that moment to shine. I said what I said.

So I changed it, because I think all of us victims of SA mostly agree that if we could take revenge against the one who did that to us, we gladly would. Andrew deserved to be the one to kill Drake. and they're completely unhinged about it lmao the fact that they just murdered a person and they're LAUGHING??? bye. crazy bitch. i love them.

I left the fact that what finally did it for Andrew wasn't the fact that Drake wanted to rape him again, but the fact that Drake was raping other kids too. I think one of the most important character traits for Andrew (I'm a Andrew kinnie at my core, forgive me) is the fact that he's willing to help everyone but himself, because he knows he's a lost cause but maybe he can prevent others from being hurt like he was.

WELL that was it. It was a lot, wasn't it? I'm sorry again but you have to suffer before it becomes good lmao I promise they'll be happy at one point.... in the future

see ya next week, byeeeee

Chapter 42: Cinnamon girl

Summary:

TW!
- mentions of death and murder
- depiction of a corpse burning

Of course, Nicky couldn’t avoid disobeying my only demand and actually coming to look for me. I believed the first thing I heard in what felt like years was the sound of his panicked scream, followed by a loud gasp of what sounded like Kevin’s voice.

“Andrew?” that was Aaron speaking.

I was still laughing. A silent, quiet roar that erupted from my lips without making any noise. I didn’t know how long I had been lying like that, crushed by Drake’s body, but my limbs felt numb while my chest shook violently from the laughter. I felt a little lightheaded, and a part of me wanted to reach for the wound in Drake’s neck and start pulling his insides out. Just ‘cause.

“Andrew, what the fuck?” Kevin asked.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” that was, regrettably, Matt. I couldn’t see any of them entering the room as I laid on the bed facing only my canopy, I couldn’t even crane my neck to look at their shock.

I wheezed harder, then cleared my throat and scoffed a few times before being able to speak again.

“Hey, Matt? Matt?” I called, “You’re a strong bloke, aren’t ya? Care to take this one off of me? I’m beginning to understand why they call it deadweight.”

“Andrew,” Dan’s voice reached my ears, “Did you kill this man?”

“Ah, yes,” Allison’s came right after, “Because the bloody knife next to him, the blood on him and the dude’s body crushing him aren’t enough hints for you to get it?”

Dan didn’t answer that, but I could only imagine she had her mouth agape searching for another possible explanation to the sight in front of them that she didn’t quite find. In the end, the room was so silent I started laughing again.

“Stop it,” Aaron said, “Andrew, stop laughing.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Nicky’s voice was quivering, like he was crying, “Andrew, are you hurt?”

“I can’t feel my legs,” I just replied, even if I knew it wasn’t what he was asking. Had Drake hurt me again? Did I have any injuries? Was I dying as well?

“Are you serious?” Allison scoffed, “He murdered someone and you’re worried about him?”

“Would you stop being such a condescending bitch and care about something else but your stupid appearance for once in your life?” that was Kevin again, screaming so loudly his voice rang in my numb ears for a couple of moments after he stopped speaking, “Use your fucking eyes, Reynolds. Andrew’s naked.”

Silence settled between them once more. I pursed my lips so I wouldn’t start bellowing with laughter again and waited for them to realize what had been happening. Since they were there, it was inevitable, right? I was doomed.

“Matt,” Nicky urged, and it dawned on me that he had understood the reason behind my alleged crime, “I’ll go cover my cousin with a blanket while you lift that corpse from his body. Kevin, help Matt.”

Even if he was called into action for second, Kevin was the first to move and he had to call Matt once more for the Hufflepuff to actually follow him. I vaguely saw their figures come into my field of view before feeling the heavy weight of Drake being replaced by a sheet hastily thrown at me. I sat up, careful not to show much of my arms, careful to cover every intimate bit of myself. 

The group of friends was staring at me, starting from Nicky, sat beside me on the mattress, to the two girls standing in the doorway, to my scared twin trembling next to them, to the two boys hovering over me from the side of the bed. They were silent, their pupils were shrunk and alert, and I could feel the tension in their veins.

“What was he doing to you?” Aaron was the first to ask. His voice was lower than a whisper but his words hit me like he was slapping me across the face.

“You told us he was your foster brother,” Kevin added, “Was that true?”

“Yes,” I was able to reply, “I lived with him and his mother for a couple of years, right before going to prison.”

“Does Neil know about this?” that was Allison. Of course, she’d be more interested in the gossip around the murder than the murder itself.

“Why are you all here?” I asked instead.

“We heard you laughing,” Matt answered sheepishly.

I turned to face Nicky, that flinched under my glare, “And what about it?”

“You never laugh,” Dan explained, “I don’t think I have ever heard you laugh since I’ve known you.”

“Even now,” Nicky went on, “Since they’ve taken that piece of shit off of you, you are back to that… thing on your face.”

“What thing on my face?” I cocked one of my eyebrows.

“You look like you’ve kissed a dementor, Andrew,” Allison went straight to the point - she might have been someone I couldn’t see eye to eye with, but I had always understood why Renée liked her: she was confident and brave and wasn’t ever scared to speak her mind. In a why that was the reason I liked her too, because finally someone was speaking freely and clearly about the very evident change in me, “Life has been sucked out of you. You used to smirk every once in a while, your eyes… two years ago, they were full of rage, but they were full of something, at least. Now, they’re empty. And so are you.”

“You murdered someone in cold blood,” Dan said, “No matter the reason, that wouldn’t have been my first reaction. You don’t even seem shaken by the fact that you’ve take somebody else’s life.”

“It was self-defense,” Nicky tried.

“It was,” Dan conceded, “It clearly was, but… I don’t know, Andrew seems calm.”

“Drake,” I pointed at the corpse that the two boys next to my bed had laid carefully on the ground at their feet, “deserved it. I’m not going to feel remorse for giving something to someone that was asking for it.”

“You never feel remorse,” Aaron argued, “That’s the second life you’ve taken, Andrew. You’re not a vigilante, you’re not above the law.”

“Third,” I smiled coldly, “And what law are you referring to? The wizarding one, that let you be abused by your mother since you were born? The muggle one, that allowed several families to apply to the foster system even if they were dangerous people? You know, Drake had just admitted to me that he’d had other foster brothers after me. Little children, Aaron, and no one of them was going to talk because I didn’t. And I know what it means. What was I supposed to do?”

“Wait,” Nicky interrupted, “So, you really did kill Aunt Tilda? And who’s the second victim?”

“Don’t three murders make you some sort of serial killer?” Matt asked instead.

“I’ve always told you all that this child was completely insane,” Allison shrugged, “But nobody ever listens to me.”

“Are we considered accomplices to the murders if he admitted to them in our presence?” Dan looked around the room for someone who could answer her question.

“I think we are,” Kevin did reply, “But I also think that’s the least of our problems.”

“Would you all shut up?” I screamed.

They all turned to look at me again. I shivered inside the blanket that was draped across my shoulders and that I was hugging on my chest, effectively covering my whole body but my pale legs. I could see the blond hair of my legs raising at the slight chill of the deep December evening. I sighed, closed my eyes and tilted my head to the side to crack some of the vertebrae of my neck.

“I need to get rid of the body,” I announced, “So, you either are going to help me or you are going to get out of my sight. Am I clear?”

“You didn’t answer,” Aaron simply stated, “What was he doing to you?”

“They were both naked on a bed, one on top of the other. I think that’s rather self-explanatory,” Kevin commented with a cold tone, but Matt beside him winced at the words.

“I have eyes. I know what was happening,” Aaron snapped, fists clenched at his sides, “But I want to know why. You’re strong, Andrew. You’re stronger than me, than anyone in this room. Why would you let him do that to you?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” I easily replied, searching for my armbands with my eyes before finding them and leaning forward to snatch them from under Nicky’s body and sneakily putting them on, “It happened. It wasn’t the first time, but luckily it was the last. That should suffice.”

“Well, it doesn’t,” Aaron was still shaking.

“Aaron, go away,” I demanded, “I’m in no mood to deal with you.”

“Maybe we should go check on Neil,” Kevin suggested, looking pointedly at Nicky who nodded, stood up and began ushering the rest of the group out of the room.

I looked at them leave, all of them dodging my brother who stood a little ahead of the entryway, trembling with fury.

The Foxes. That was a quirky nickname they’d given themselves. It came from various remarks the Quidditch coach had made to each of them separately. Wymack had frequently said the people in that group had the characteristics of a fox: a complex creature that encompassed a lot of attributes, being astute, smart, cunning, sarcastic, lonely but also fierce and loyal, kind and caring. But, most importantly, resilient. That was what had made them friends in the first place: the fact that each of them understood that the others didn’t have an easy life.

Wymack had said also that if they were allowed to play on the same team, they’d win every match, in every way possible. Maybe they weren’t compatible on a daily basis, but they would be on the pitch. They’d work together, because there is no better collagen to unite people than pain.

I was beginning to understand that. And, even if I was a panther, I was beginning to feel like a Fox myself. I never had understood what Neil saw in that group of friends, but in the way the filed away stealing worried glances at me and my twin brother, I knew that he didn’t simply see them as friends. They were his family.

I was shocked to find out that they were mine as well, even if I hadn’t meant for them to become it.

Kevin closed the door behind him as he exited for last. Aaron was still there, a scowl etched to his face.

“Would you say it was self-defense for our mother as well?” he asked, out of the blue, “How many people will you kill claiming they hurt you? Who have you also killed out of pure spite?”

“I’m not waisting my time on you,” I announced, “You don’t understand my reasoning and that’s fine. But I won’t be bashed for the way I chose to protect myself and the people I care about.”

“Don’t put what you did to our mother on me,” he accused, jabbing his finger at my face while I got up and started trying to get dressed from under the blanket. I was carefully avoiding Drake’s lifeless body still on the floor, “I’m not to blame.”

“I wasn’t blaming you,” I rolled my eyes, “If there’s someone to blame, it was her.”

Aaron scoffed, “And not you? Don’t you think you’re a little to blame for killing her?”

“No,” I simply stated, “I did what I thought I had to.”

“You didn’t have to kill her,” Aaron yelled, “She wasn’t as bad as you make her out to be. She was kind and funny-”

“She was drugged out of her mind,” I interrupted.

“She expressed her affection towards us in any way she could,” he argued.

“She used to beat you senseless,” I crossed my arms on my chest and looked at him as he struggled visibly, teeth gritting together and jaw working.

“She never wanted to hurt you,” he snarled.

“Do you think I care what she wanted to do?”

“She loved us in a way you’ll never understand!”

“And don’t you think I love you too?” I finally crumbled, screamed, “You are willing to put aside everything she has ever done to you because you claimed she loved you and that’s fine because everybody deals with trauma in the way they deem fit. But you aren’t willing to understand that I killed her because I love you, because I want to protect you? Bloody hell, Aaron, do you think I care she was hurting me? She didn’t even know she was doing it, because I was hurting purely because of a spell she didn’t know the existence of. I cared that she was hurting you, that she was torturing you, that you were willing to withstand everything she put you through. I told you- no, I vowed that I would’ve protected you in any way I could, to whichever length I had to go, and I did.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, that I’m sorry? That I wouldn’t do that again if I could go back? I would. Because I don’t care that you hate me, I don’t care that you don’t let yourself look me in the eyes for more than a couple of minutes. I care that you are safe, I care that you are loved and taken care of. And I killed your mother, I killed Drake not because of what they were doing to me, but because I wanted to stop them from ever hurting anybody else.”

Aaron swayed a little, back and forth, trying to catch his balance. I watched him as he fought the air trapped in his lungs so he could breathe normally again, I watched him as the fog in his brain was lifted and he could think clearly again.

“You’re lying,” he simply said after a couple of beats.

“You can keep hating me if you so desire,” I hissed, “Hate me all you want, hate me until I’m dead for all I care. But know, deep inside your minuscule, dim-wit brain that I’m the reason you don’t suffer like a dog anymore. I would crash that car a thousand times again, just to know you’re safe.”

“Andrew, stop,” a tear rolled down my twin’s cheek and it was like seeing my reflection of a couple days before. I took a step forward, getting close to him.

“Drake would’ve hurt you too if I’d let him go unbridled around this castle. Your mother would’ve hurt you until she would’ve done irreparable damage. I did what I had to do. If it helps you sleep at night a little better, I never intended to get out of that car alive,” I concluded, “Now, get out of my room.”

Aaron didn’t give me any signs that he had understood my words. He kept staring at me as he backtracked his way towards the door, and only turned around at the last possible moment, snapping the door shut behind his back.

I sighed and looked at the corpse on the floor a few meters behind me. I realized I had more pressing matters to tend to than my psycho brother and left Aaron at that.

 

---

 

I hadn’t been to Hogsmeade in what felt like ages, and at night it looked vaguely familiar but as if I was watching it from a postcard rather than in real life. I looked around the busy street and checked to see if the big bag I was dragging with a rope was still fully covered by the invisibility charm. It had been a pain to haul down the stairs and through the secret passage that led to the Hogsmeade candy store, but I had managed without being seen. Still, there was a lot more to do before I could deem that problem solved.

I struggled to move Drake’s body, careful it wouldn’t trip people casually strolling through the alley, but I finally reached the tavern and, for lack of better things to do, knocked on its door. Someone was quick to answer the unusual call.

“What in Merlin’s name-”, the boy in front of me cut himself off as his eyes finally landed on mine, “Andrew? What are you doing here?”

“Where’s Aberforth?” I asked, in a rush, “I have to go back before they notice I’m gone.”

“Who notices? What are you even doing- why aren’t you at school? What is happening?” Roland’s eyes were wide in shock and bewilderment.

“Get Aberforth,” I gritted through my teeth, gripping even tighter the rope that I was pulling over my shoulder, “Now.”

Roland skimmed away and I was left at the front door to wait. The senior of the Dumbledore brothers made his appearance a few moments later, rushing towards the door at my sight.

“What is it, boy?” he urged.

“Did you brother,” I began, then stopped myself at the visible wince by the old wizard, “I’m sorry to bring him up, but did the Headmaster tell you about me?”

“A little,” Aberforth nodded absentmindedly, “He told me you’d be needed once he was gone.”

“I am,” I assured him, “I’m needed right now. There are many people in danger and your brother believed I am the only thing that could shield them from harm.”

“Alright,” Aberforth sighed, “So, why are you here?”

“I need to go back to the castle,” I explained, “but let’s just say I’ve done something that would prevent me from helping those who need me. Let’s say I need to get rid of the evidence before anyone notices something is wrong.”

The old wizard seemed to consider my words for a moment, while a drunkard moaned loudly in the back of the tavern and Roland kept nervously tapping his foot on the floor. I knew I was the one making him nervous. I hadn’t talked to him in a long time. I didn’t even have the courage to face him now, but I needed to get this done quickly.

So, I looked deeper into the oldest Dumbledore’s eyes and hoped he would understand the importance of the matter. In the end, he simply nodded again and swallowed down his doubts and fears.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“Some place where I can light the evidence on fire and watch it burn.”

 

---

 

I didn't know the Inn had a backyard. I didn't even care. I pondered whether I should inquire Roland about it, ask him if he spent much time in that garden, even if as desert and desolate as it was. There weren't any plants. There weren't any trees. Not many, anyway. I was far enough from each of them so they wouldn't catch fire.

I threw another stick on the pit and watched it as it carbonized and dissolved into thin air.

I had gotten Drake's body out of the sack before burning it. I couldn't have risked being caught doing magic outside of the school, even if I was seventeen and legal, so I went about it the old-fashioned way. A few branches, some dry leaves, a match. Fire.

Drake's flesh was sizzling, like butter burning on a hot skillet, a sick sound I knew I would've remembered for the rest of my days. How could I have forgotten it? Even as it burned and became progressively unrecognizable, I knew it was him. Someone I had wanted to call brother. Someone I once thought I could love. Someone I had deemed family.

How can a person mean so much in so many ways, both positive and negative? He had been so warm to me when we'd first met. He'd talked to me about his passions and dreams and the hopes he had for his future and he pushed me to share my own. I didn't have any, I never had. I was a child, but I hadn't had the privilege of dreams and hopes, I just knew pain. I had told him I hoped one day I could just be happy. He'd told me he'd make sure of that, because he was my brother and he would've loved me until the end of time.

I hadn't noticed, at first, when he had turned a little rougher on me. Some fights. Some pushes, some slaps. I hadn't noticed, at first, when he started to sneak into my bed at night and hug me tighter than he'd ever had. After a while, he snuck into my bed and started toying with the waistband of my underwear.

‘Drake, what are you doing?’ I had asked.

‘Shh, little brother,’ he'd just replied, ‘I promise it's nothing bad.’

But I knew what it was, and I knew it was bad. I knew it had happened to me before. I knew it was the reason they would make me change families so often. But I loved Cass, and I liked Drake well enough. So, I kept quiet that time. I let him do what he wanted to me, for the sake of coming back home from school and yelling ‘Mum, mum, look what I did today in class!’. For the sake of being hugged lovingly by someone and hear them whisper ‘I'm so proud of you, my baby. You'll be something special one day’.

Am I, Mum? Am I special now? I thought. Was I special for killing her only son? Should I have been feeling remorse this whole time? Drake was a bad man. Was I even worse for taking it upon myself to rid the world of him?

I had loved him with all my might. I had loved Cass with every atom of my entire being. But then the hypotesis of adoption came, Drake started to get rougher, it started to happen more, and more, and more, and I couldn't live. I couldn't think. Arson was a bad enough crime, wasn't it? Drake would've been deployed by the time I got out of prison. Maybe Cass would've fought for me, if she loved me as much as I had loved her. So, I’d started a fire and hoped it wouldn't get too bad.

Fire gave start to my constant fleeing and fire put an end to the chase. Was there some symbolism I couldn't quite grasp? Was there something I should've noticed, something in my life that hinted at the full circle I was experiencing? I had no response to that, nor I believed I wanted to have it.

I watched as his flesh melted and broke off in pieces. I watched as his bones burned quietly. I watched as the fire engulfed every cell of his body. I fished my cigarette pack from the front pocket of my jean-jacket and lit one stick on the burning bonfire. And I kept watching until every single tongue of flame went out.

I rose from my seat on the ground and watched the large, black spot in front of me. Ashes. The biggest heartache of my life was only ashes now.

It was over. Drake was dead. I was free.

Well, almost free.

I turned around, made sure to thank Aberforth for his help and made my way back to the castle.

To a Neil that wouldn't wake up. To a bed that would still smell like my foster brother. To a real brother that hated me. To a family that didn't see me as family of their own.

To my new cage.

Ashes to ashes.

 

---

 

Drake’s dead. Drake’s dead.

It was a mantra. Something I had to tell myself constantly because I couldn’t quite believe it, even if I had caused his death with my own hands, by myself. I hated that warm, sick feeling in my stomach every time I thought about his dead body, or about his face the last few moments he was alive, about his smirk and his low, terrible voice. I hated that I remembered every detail of a man I had killed.

I remembered Tilda, but I hadn’t been with her long enough to memorize her well, to know her every quirk, and she was hurting Aaron too much, too frequently. I still saw Maximus’ children in the corner of my eyes whenever I entered the Forest, but I didn’t know him, and he had threatened to kill Neil. Maybe it had been fine for me not to feel remorse for murdering them.

I wondered still if it was okay for me not to feel remorse for killing someone so close to me. Would I ever have killed Aaron? I didn’t know. Maybe if threatened Nicky. Surely if he threatened Neil. But would I feel remorse then? I couldn’t answer those questions. But they were gnawing at me nonetheless.

I stared helplessly ahead of me, sat at the Ravenclaw table with Kevin by my side during breakfast. I had a piece of toast in my hand but I wasn’t showing signs of wanting to eat it anytime soon. Kevin was looking at me like he was watching a scientific experiment going wrong, one of his eyebrows arched so high it could’ve touched his hairline.

“Are you…” he drawled, “Are you going to do anything with that?”

“What?” I asked, but I didn’t recognize the sound that had made my vocal cords vibrate.

“Andrew,” he urged, “Snap out of it.”

“What?” I asked again, still staring ahead. There was a window right in front of us. The sun was shining in a clear sky.

Sun. Stars. Fire.

Drake is dead.

“I thought you said the guy deserved it,” Kevin whispered to me, careful not to be heard by anyone around us, “Why are you feeling like this?”

“I’m not feeling anything, Kevin,” I finally found the words to say, “I think that’s the problem at the moment.”

And finally, it was his turn to ask, “What?”

I shook my head no in answer and snapped out of my trance, taking a bite out of the buttered toast in my hand and a swig out of the coffee mug I had absentmindedly picked up. I placed the mug down neatly beside my plate, keenly aware of the fact that Kevin was still staring at me. But I knew my face was blank again now, and he couldn’t read me anymore. After a while, he turned back to his own breakfast as well.

We were alone. The rest of the group was taking turns in getting ready for the day and keeping guard next to Neil’s bed, in case something changed. It was New Year’s Eve, and Dan thought something might happen. She gave me some sort of folkloristic explanation I didn’t really hear. I just hummed and went down to the Great Hall.

It was time to head back up for me and Kevin so Matt and Dan could have breakfast as well when Nicky came running towards us. Kevin looked suddenly alarmed again. I just lifted my gaze from the toast to my cousin.

“Neil’s awake,” he announced, without any pleasantries.

It was almost laughable when both Kevin and I, at that point, spat out an equally surprised, “What?”

“He’s asking for you, Andrew,” Nicky said pointedly, “I haven’t told him anything. It’s up to you.”

“Okay,” I said, but I stayed sat. Paralyzed.

I had killed Drake not even twenty-four hours before. It was all going too fast. My head was spinning.

Drake’s dead.

Drake’s dead.

Drake’s de-

Neil’s awake.

I felt like I basically teleported in front of the door to Neil’s room. I didn’t remember getting out of the chair in the Great Hall, I didn’t remember climbing the stairs up, and up, and up towards the Ravenclaw commons and then up the tower, I didn’t remember stopping right outside the wooden barrier between me and him.

I put my hand on the handle and pushed it down. I pushed the whole door open. I had a clear view of Neil’s bed, and I felt the air getting stuck in my throat and dying there.

Abby was prancing and preening over him like an overbearing mother whose child had just gotten out of a cold. Dan was sat at the foot of the bed, looking at Neil adoringly while Matt had said something funny and had made the redhead smile. Abby was pushing his hair around, trying to tidy it up after a month of laying down on a pillow. Allison was standing next to the bed, silent and frowning.

It took Neil a moment to notice the movement at the entrance and he didn’t try to resist the urge to turn his attention towards me.

Bright, indigo eyes. Pink, full lips. Smooth, scarred skin. Red, perfect curls. Sat on the bed, his back against the headboard. He smiled at me softly.

After a month, after all those fights, the first thing he did when noticing me was smile.

“Oh, hi,” he said, loud enough for everyone around him to stop their chatter and swivel their heads towards me.

A beat. Silence. The only thing I could hear was my heart and I wondered if the others could too. Neil could. I knew he could. For fuck’s sake, I thought, am I the one dying now?

“Out,” was everything that came out of my mouth.

“What?” Matt asked and blinked at me a couple of times.

“That seems to be the word of the day,” I rolled my eyes, then pointed at the door behind me with my thumb, “I said out.”

“Andrew, we were just-” Abby tried, but I didn’t let her finish.

“Abigail Winfield, if you don’t get out of this room this instant, I will fucking murder you,” I hissed, “Out.”

“Oh, he’s not joking,” Allison scoffed, “Let’s go. We can catch up later.”

“Thank you, Allison,” Neil cooed, “And again, I’m sorry. About everything.”

I didn’t know what he was referring to, but Allison just shrugged and went for the door. She was still clearly hung up on Neil’s words when she walked past me though.

“Alright,” Matt sighed, “Later, mate.”

“Bye,” Neil conceded, but he was still looking at me. He was grinning now. Pearly, white teeth. I didn’t even notice that the others were gone, but finally realized we were alone when the door clicked shut behind me and Neil opened his mouth to say yet again, “Hi.”

“Yes or no?” came out of my throat, raspy and desperate.

“Yes,” Neil sighed, “To anything, just yes.”

I rushed to the bed and basically jumped onto it, falling into Neil’s open arms. I snaked my arms around his torso while he wrapped his around my neck and I buried my face on his shoulder.

“It was so fucking stupid,” I whispered against his skin. Warm, hot, scalding again, “You’re so fucking stupid.”

“Oi,” he laughed a little, “I’m not that stupid.”

“You are,” I breathed in his clean, alive scent, “You so fucking are. You almost died, Neil, just because you’re a stubborn bastard.”

“Whatever,” he shrugged, and it felt strangely good to feel his body move against mine, “I feel like I’ve been ‘almost dying’ for ninety-one percent of the time I’ve been alive.”

“That’s impossible,” I said, “Because ninety-two percent of the time I’d kill you myself.”

“Shut up,” he laughed a little harder, a little louder, and I felt a little lighter.

“I’m not joking,” I finally pushed away from him, took his chin between my fingers and looked at him dead in the eyes, “The next time you have me worried like this, I’ll just finish the job.”

“Shiver me timbers,” he taunted me, a smile etched on his face.

“Ninety-three,” I announced, “It’s ninety-three now.”

Neil only hummed in response, but his face told me that he was finding this whole interaction amusing and downright funny. He took his time to study my blank face, and I wondered if he was searching for any signs of any emotions and, for once, I felt guilty that I knew he couldn’t have found anything. For a brief moment, I deeply wished I could show on my face how happy I was that he was alive.

“You have bruises,” he simply stated after a while, which took me by surprise and I startled a little.

“Do I?” I asked, “I haven’t noticed.”

“You do,” he nodded, then pursed his lips in a concerned way, “I did hear you, you know? I heard you talking to me. I heard you… I heard you telling me you were sorry.”

“I was just,” I stammered, “I was just worried.”

“I hardly believe that.”

“We’ll have time to talk about me, alright? I want to focus on you.”

“I’m fine, Andrew,” he whispered, tilting his head forward enough that his forehead could rest against mine, “I swear.”

“Such a liar,” I murmured, but closed my eyes, allowing me to feel the comfort of his touch – his arms draped loosely around my shoulders, his skin against mine, his steady body basically beneath mine – and I sighed, “Will you ever stop lying to me?”

“I will,” he smiled again, “When you’ll stop lying to me.”

“Ah,” I felt the corner of my mouth curl against my better will, “Don’t you think that a little overly ambitious?”

“Mhm,” Neil gushed, “Am I at ninety-four yet?”

“You’re already going for the hundred. Don’t underestimate your ability to piss me off, Abram,” I argued.

Neil laughed out loud, tipping his head back while hollering and then leaning against me again, his face buried in the bend of my neck. He kissed the column of my throat softly, gently, like only he was ever able to, and I sucked in a sharp breath.

“Neil,” I warned.

“What?” he said.

“You bloody moron,” I simply breathed out.

There was silence for a while after that. I listened to the sound of our shallow breaths as we breathed in sync, I listened to the thrum of our hearts as they beat as one. I listened to the quiet sound of his hair rustling against the fiber of my shirt. I basked in the realization that for now, the worst was over.

“You really stayed beside me all this time?” he finally asked after a while.

“I hate you so much,” I simply answered.

Neil let out a silent, noiseless laugh again, shaking against my body. I reached with my hands and twirled my fingers in his curls.

“You were in a coma for a month, I was worried,” I let myself confess and shrugged like what I had said wasn’t important.

“Ah,” Neil said, “So, you do care about something.”

“I don’t. I hate you.”

“We’ll have to talk about us, at some point.”

“I hate that even more,” I sighed, “All of this only because you’re utterly, completely, clinically insane.”

“What can I say,” Neil sighed and placed another kiss on my skin, making me shiver, “Takes one to know one, love.”

Notes:

LIKE IF YOU HOLD ME WITHOUT HURTING ME YOU’D BE THE FIRST WHO EVER DID!!!!

See? Everyone is FINE. Sort of.
Rip Drake ig.

I know the first part of this chapter is heart wrenching but honestly what did you expect, at least we have a small, cute moment at the end right? Right???

Soooo next chapter is an easier one but we’re still in the depth of it so don’t get too comfortable. We’ll explore the Twinyards’ relationship and Neil and Andrew will talk a little more…

That’s it! Let me know what you think ;)

Bye lovelies <3

Chapter 43: Iris

Summary:

TW!

- mentions of death, murder, rape (Neil and Andrew discuss their backstories, so do with that what you will)

‘And I’d give up forever to touch you,

‘cause I know that you feel me somehow

You’re the closest to Heaven that I’ll ever be,

And I don’t want to go home right now…’

 

“I hope you know that’s fucking depressing,” Kevin commented, unwarranted. I chucked the knife I’d been playing with at him and it landed a few centimeters from his head, stuck in the wall, so he raised his hands in surrender, “Okay, I won’t say it again.”

“If you think this song is depressing, you just have terrible taste in music,” I replied from the bed I’d been sitting on for the last couple of hours.

School had started again. Since I wasn’t locked up in Neil’s room, it meant I had the pleasure of being entertained by Riko’s attempts at making Neil uncomfortable and seeing the Gryffindor being utterly destroyed by the various rebuttals Neil could find to mock him and his team. Kevin was still terrified by Riko, but I could see him progressively relax with Neil back at his side and me back as his guard dog.

It wasn’t Riko, though, that had been taking a toll on Neil’s mental stability. I noticed how he shrunk every time someone whispered and pointed at him, how he lowered his head when people in the corridors avoided him like he had the plague, how he finished every meal in a hurry so he wouldn’t need to stand the glares Matt and the others threw at him from time to time.

I knew he couldn’t admit it to save his life, but I also knew that he hated the ever so slight shift in dynamic that had happened inside the friend group he considered his family. They loved him, that was sure as the sun rising every day, but they looked at him differently now that they knew his truth.

To assess the damage that the return of people strolling around the castle was doing to Neil’s health, Kevin, Neil and I had taken the habit to meet up in my room right after dinner and talk it out until curfew, which was when they’d go back to their own dorm a few steps from mine.

We were waiting for Neil when I got tired of the silence in the room and had pulled out a dusty vinyl from my luggage. It was Cass’s, and I had stolen it from her when I had to go to prison. With the plushie that she had gifted me, that was the only thing I could hold onto that had been hers, now that Drake was gone.

I had borrowed the record player from Aaron a couple of days before. He had conceded it fairly easily, which had startled me a bit. There hadn’t been a fight, there hadn’t been pointless accusations. He’d just helped me take it up the stairs to my room and that had been it. It was odd, but it was improvement.

“Even if it is good music,” Kevin rolled his eyes, “It’s been playing on loop for an hour. I’m sick of it.”

“Too bad it’s my room,” I shrugged, searching for another knife to play with in my nightstand, “If you don’t like it, leave.”

Kevin just sighed and went back to reading his Quidditch magazine, sat at the chair right in front of my desk. I laid down on the mattress and started tossing the new knife in the air and stopping it right before it landed with the blade in my eye. I did it once, twice…

The door creaked when opened. I sat up, knife in hand, and watched as the redhead dragged his feet across the pavement of the room to go and lay on the other side of the bed. Kevin had lifted his gaze from the magazine too, observing as Neil launched himself on the mattress and sighed.

“Bad day?” the Gryffindor asked.

“Worse than yesterday, probably better than tomorrow,” Neil grunted.

“Want to talk it out?” Kevin suggested.

Neil got up, sitting straight, and looked up and down at the black-haired boy before biting the inside of his cheek and wincing like he expected Kevin to flip out.

“Actually,” he began, “Do you mind if it’s just Andrew this time?”

“Mind?” Kevin scoffed, “You’re giving me a reason to stop listening to this godawful song,” he folded the magazine, stood up and stalked over to the door in a couple of seconds, tossing his goodbyes over his shoulder.

When the door clicked shut, I turned to look at Neil, who was already looking at me back. I swallowed harshly, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tension in my shoulders like I could hear his heart thumping faster and faster.

 

‘And all I can taste is this moment,

And all I can breathe is your life,

And sooner or later, it’s over.

I just don’t wanna miss you tonight…’

 

“I can turn it off,” I simply said, knowing he would know what I was talking about.

“Nah,” Neil smiled, a sad accent in the bend of his lips, “I like this song.”

The excitement of him being finally awake had fizzled by more quickly than what I would’ve liked. Sooner or later, the awkwardness between us had settled down again, and we hadn’t been able to speak about our relationship as we had initially intended. Every time we tried to bring up the way it felt strange if we held hands, or the way I still couldn’t smile and laugh at the funny things he said and did, we simply ended up stammering and ending the discussion before arriving to a conclusion.

I moved away from him across the mattress, just so I could turn my whole body towards him, sitting with one leg tucked against my chest and the other bent so that my ankles would cross. Neil watched me move, propped on his arms stretched behind his back and with his legs sprawled on the rest of the bed.

We looked at each other for a moment before I gathered the courage to speak up.

“Why did you want to talk alone?” I leaned my cheek on my knee.

“I don’t know,” Neil shrugged, “I feel like this talk might get a little more… personal.”

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to have it with, then,” I argued.

“You’re amazing,” Neil rebutted, casually, like he hadn’t said anything worth noticing, but my heart did skip a beat at the words, “You should stop downplaying yourself. Just because you don’t show emotions doesn’t mean you don’t have emotions.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“It doesn’t,” Neil looked at me pointedly, “I know you, Andrew. You’re not heartless. You’re just heartbroken.”

“That’s a funny way of saying it,” I mumbled, “So, what’s up? Someone said nasty things about you again?”

“Not about me,” Neil sighed, “About you.”

“Me?”

“Matt,” Neil admitted, “He said he doesn’t like that I’m spending time with you now that we know that you’re a murderer.”

“Ah,” I nodded, “I can see why that could disturb him.”

“Who was it?” Neil asked, “I know about Aaron’s mother, but he mentioned you killed three people.”

“Well,” I took in a sharp breath, “Do you remember when I came back to help you after the second task of the Tournament? In the Forest?”

“Yes?” Neil tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes.

“I killed the centaur that wanted to kill you,” I shrugged, “His family was there. His kids still follow me from time to time. His wife, I believe, predicted Renée’s death to me. She said that I would lose someone, that I’d be swallowed by grief.”

“All of this to save me?” Neil inquired, shocked.

“I’d do everything to save you, Neil,” I confessed, "That's my purpose here, isn't it?"

I waited for him to say something. I looked at his open mouth, lips parted in astonishment, eyes slightly widened and pupils enlarged. I waited for him to climb on top of me and kiss me, to ask permission to touch me, to go back to us. But nothing of the sort happened, because why would it? We were basically estranged. There was no point in hoping, no point in waiting.

“What about the third?” he asked instead, his Adam’s apple bobbling while he swallowed down.

“Drake, my foster brother,” I said, “Your father took him here and I killed him. The night before you woke up from your coma.”

“I’m guessing he deserved it,” Neil smirked.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “You don’t have to fight with your friends because of me. I really am a bad influence on you.”

“You’re not,” Neil said, his voice hard and determined, “I’m just way better than you at hiding what my past has done to my brain. You wear your trauma on your sleeve, on your face, and you’re not ashamed of who it has made you become. I pretend to be nice because I’m afraid they’d be scared of me if they saw the real me. That doesn’t make you worse than me, it only makes you braver. I will fight with them as long as it takes to make them understand that you’re not bad. Not for me, and not in general.”

“You can’t mean that,” I countered, “You’ve shown me most of the real you. It’s not that scary.”

Neil simply laughed and made his arms slide down so he could lay on the bed again. He sighed while looking up at the canopy and then swiveled his head so he could look at me from the down up. He offered me a little sad smile, a small curve of the corners of his lips before speaking again.

“That was the reason I was interested in you in the first place, you know?” he admitted, “You’ve never been scared of me, no matter what part of me I offered you. I could talk about murder, I could talk about inflicting pain on people and you wouldn't even bat an eye. I told you a little about my past and you reacted like you could shoulder all of it, if I ever asked you to.”

“I would,” I assured him, “I will, if your father comes for you.”

“He will make his move eventually,” Neil sighed again, “Ruining my school life is hardly revenge for what my mom and I did.”

I scooted closer to him, so that I could be right next to him and look down at his face. His eyes followed me as I moved, and his smile only grew wider the closer I got. I bit down on my lower lip, crossing my legs down in front of me.

“You never did tell me what exactly you and your mother did do to him,” I suggested.

Neil seemed amused by the request and rolled on his side, propping his head up with his hand and his elbow planted deep in the mattress. He considered my words carefully, a hint of a playful gleam in his blue eyes, and then put his chin on my thigh, looking up. I repressed the shiver that went down my spine at the sheer contact with any part of his body.

“Is this alright?” he asked, in a whisper. When I nodded, he went on, “Fine, then. A truth for a truth. I’ll tell you about my mother and you’ll tell me something about you in return. Deal?”

“Why not,” I felt the urge to smile tugging at my lips, “Deal.”

There was another brief silence before Neil started talking again. In that small moment of stillness, I swallowed down my pride and I let myself gawk at him like he was one of the seven marvels of the world old and new. Simply him, with his every imperfection, with every character flaw, with an attitude problem that could start wars and did start many fights.

There was no denying I was still in love with him. After everything we had gone through together, I was almost sure I could never stop loving him the way I did. It wasn’t a reverie, it wasn’t a stupid teenager thinking they could love their first love forever and ever just because they couldn’t imagine a world where break-ups existed. I truly thought that even if we parted our ways, even if we weren’t meant to be together, there was a part of me that was unmovable and that would’ve loved him until my soul died.

I realized that I was being stupid by denying him access to my heart. I knew it was idiotic to have this silly standpoint for which no one could ever be near me again. I knew I wasn’t doing anyone any favors by being this stubborn. But I couldn’t find a way to let Neil back in, and we had bigger problems to tend to. Our relationship simply didn’t fit in our world, and maybe that was fine.

Maybe we were better off not together.

I wished I could’ve believed that even for a second.

 

‘And I don’t want the world to see me,

‘cause I don’t think that they’d understand.’

 

One of my heartstrings was being pulled and pulled until it broke off. I closed my eyes and that was when Neil started speaking.

“When I was little, I thought my dad was the scariest person in the world,” he toyed with the hem of my pants by my ankle, “He was big and merciless, and I saw more blood as a toddler than what most people see in a lifetime. I thought he worked alone with his pack, terrorizing the wizards that lived in the east of Europe. That was his turf, sort of,” he explained.

“When I got bigger, I started to have a closer relationship with my mother. My father was always away with the pack, and when he was home he would simply beat me to a pulp. He hated everything about me, said I wasn’t strong enough to be his heir. My mother begged him to leave me alone, but he wouldn’t listen. He hated her just as much as he hated me.

“But at some point, he realized I was his only son and he needed to make something of me. I was eleven, not even a month into my first year at Durmstrang, when the first full moon happened. My father brought me with him, showed me how the pack hunted its preys: humans, Andrew. They were simply humans. Coincidentally, Riko and Kevin were there as well. I didn’t know why. I’d find out later.

“When my mother was informed about my father’s showdown, she took me, killed a lot of people in Father’s pack and ran. But it was too late. Before she noticed I was gone to hunt with my dad, he’d bitten me. I was officially a werewolf. I was officially his heir. The full moon on the run were the scariest nights of my life, but I was still a puppy, so I was manageable.

“We stayed on the down low, but we knew my father was hunting us, seeking revenge. My mum said that once in England, we’d be safe. And she almost made it. She was killed on the French shore of the English Channel, by some of my father’s men. I burned her body and went for Scotland instead of England. I was a child. I wanted to be raised, I wanted to go to school. I pleaded my case and Dumbledore took me in.

“There, I found Riko and Kevin. It took a while for them to recognize me, since they’d seen me only once in the depth of the woods in the middle of the night, but eventually they did. Kevin told me my father worked for the Moriyamas, a sort of hitman. That explained why they were there. Kevin and I have never been friends, just like Jean and I, but we know what it means to be Riko’s puppets. We might not like each other at times, but we do understand.”

“Was your mother a werewolf as well?” I asked, intrigued by the story, “Why wasn’t she with the pack the night all of this happened?”

“She wasn't, actually,” he scoffed, “But she came from a pack as well. She was the second born so she hadn’t been turned, her brother was bitten instead. He’s from England. That’s why my mother wanted us to come here. Funnily enough, she was a healer. Guess she couldn’t heal herself.”

“Maybe she was just tired,” I argued, absentmindedly, “Maybe she knew you could do it on your own.”

“Perhaps,” Neil sighed, “But most nights, I miss her like crazy. She was my only true friend.”

“But you have lots of friends now,” I brushed my fingers against his temple, to offer comfort, “You’re alright, Neil.”

“She wouldn’t like what I’ve done with my life,” he admitted, “She wanted to me on the run, to never settle down. This way my father wouldn’t have caught up with me.”

“But she didn’t know I’d be here,” I rebutted, “She’d be happy you’re safe.”

“I hope that I am.”

“Until I’m breathing, you will be.”

“Your turn,” Neil finally said, changing the topic. I guessed too much truth was meant to break his heart as well as mine.

“Alright,” I said, “Buckle up. It’s one hell of a ride.”

 

‘And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming,

Or the moment of truth in your lies.

When everything feels like the movies,

Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive.’

 

I told him everything. I started telling him about Drake, about how I thought that Cass’s house would be the last one I’d change. I told him how they’d treated me with the highest regards, and how Drake had taken advantage of my lowered guard to take advantage of me, too. I told him that not matter that I was only eleven, I knew it was bad enough. I told him I had tried to fight it, but to no avail. I told him I had escaped by setting fire to something and running to jail. I briefly told about how the Hemmicks had found me. I told him how Drake had caught up with me at Nicky’s house and how I had run away in the night via Floo network.

“That bastard,” Neil said, “He chased you?”

“Everyone is running from something,” I simply commented.

“Is he why you have something against the word please?” Neil asked sheepishly.

“No,” I gave him, “That was another one. My third foster father.”

“What?” Neil jolted upright, looking me in the eyes, his own wild and wide, “It wasn’t only Drake?”

“Why would it be?” I countered, “People are shitty.”

“What did he do?”

“He told me he would stop if I said it,” I said, truthfully, “He and his wife always used to say that, to teach me manners.”

“You believed him?” Neil asked, aghast.

“I was seven,” I swallowed harshly, “I believed him.”

“Seven? Andrew, that’s…”

“Horrible? Yes, but I dealt with it. It happened again and again, Neil. It only stopped when I finally came here,” I admitted.

“How are you able…” Neil looked like he might’ve had a panic attack, “How are you able to tolerate me?”

“Because, for once, I’m not tolerating. I want something and I’m having it.”

“Yes, but-”

“Neil, stop touching my ankle,” I ordered hastily, interrupting him.

Without saying a word, not even ‘sorry’, Neil lifted his hand form the skin of my shin and tucked it behind his back, like to punish himself for ever coming near me again. I took his chin between my fingers, tilting his head so he would have to look at me straight in the eyes. His were scared, a little confused, his pupils dancing around in his irises.

“That’s why I tolerate you,” I said, “You listen to me. You respect me. You never ask why, never pout, never complain. You simply listen to me. I was passed out in the shower a month ago and you wouldn’t even carry me to bed because I was naked and you wouldn’t touch me without my consent. Riko had just tortured me and you wouldn’t risk touching me to get me out of there. And you don’t even think about it, you don’t have to force yourself or restrain yourself. You accept my boundaries and you roll with them like they don’t matter.”

“Of course they don’t matter,” Neil said.

“To you,” I countered, “Most people don’t like them.”

“Most people are stupid, then,” Neil sentenced. I was about to reply even to that – that people are not stupid, that humans crave touch because we were created to do it, that I was broken and damaged and everything bad in the world just like his friends always warned him, that I could tolerate him but how could he possibly tolerate me? – but there was a knock at the door. Neil was quicker to answer, “Who is it?”

“Neil, come on,” Kevin replied from the other side, “The game’s about to start.”

A Quidditch game. The would watch them in their room on a computer Kevin had brought from home once he’d been called to attend Hogwarts. Even if he was legally adopted by the Moriyamas, when his mother was alive he used to have a normal family, with normal things. His mother was well adjusted to the muggle society and owned plenty of muggle items. That pc was one of them. It was old, but Kevin was deeply attached to it.

Neil didn’t answer instantly. He kept gazing at me for what felt like a millennium before he sighed and looked helplessly at the door, like he could see Kevin fidgeting even through it. Then his eyes turned back to me and he frowned. 

“I better go,” he whispered in the end.

“What if you stay?” I breathed out.

“Andrew-”

“I’ve slept next the mattress where your unconscious body laid for a month,” I said before he could argue with me, “Stay.”

Neil’s grin grew slowly on his face. His eyes stayed locked in place, fixated in my own, while he yelled at the door, “Never mind, Kev. I’ll watch the reruns.”

“Why would you do that?” Kevin shouted back, utterly appalled by Neil’s suggestion.

“Don’t wait up for me,” was Neil’s only reply.

Once it seemed like Kevin got the hint and left, Neil and I were deeply aware that we would be alone together for a whole night. It took only a moment, anyway, for the awkwardness to disappear completely. We laid back on the mattress together and, just like we’d done so many times in the past, simply talked, and talked, and talked. 

 

---

 

Since Nathan Wesninski had been accepted as the school Headmaster, he had made a few changes on the rules of the school. One of them was that all the animals that had been brought by the students had to be “stored” – as he had put it – in the owlery. That was the reason I hadn’t seen much of my cat King and also the reason why I went out on a stroll once a week to make sure he was alright.

On one of my strolls I had noticed a headstone under one of the big trees next to the lake. It had been new and my curiosity got the best of me. Upon discovering it was Renée’s grave – since I had returned from St. Mungo’s, I hadn’t asked about what had been done with her body, partly to spare myself the pain of acknowledging the soul-stirring reality that she was, indeed, dead – I had decided to take a small detour to her grave every time I went on my visits to King.

Bee quickly picked up on that. She knew that on certain days I’d spend hours talking to that headstone, and she knew that I felt guilty lying to Renée in her death, so she took advantage of that situation to gouge information and feelings out of me.

That was one of those days.

“Sleeping with him,” I was telling her, “It was like being us again. Like we were before we found out about Renée.”

“Why do you think you’re having a hard time reconnecting with him?” she asked.

“I know the reason,” I gazed at the marble headstone in front of me, “It’s just too messed up, isn’t it? I have strong feelings for him, but he’s too caught up in his own life to ever think about having feelings for me. And I was okay with that, I had learned to make my peace with that fact, that it was a temporary fling, that he’d forget about me soon enough.”

“What changed?”

“Renée died,” I reached out to touch the cold stone and closed my eyes, “She died, and I wasn’t there to protect her, too caught up in my own bliss. Then I was sent to St. Mungo’s and I came out worse than I was before and he doesn’t know how to juggle this new me and the fact that his father is closer than ever to finally get to him. It’s complicated.”

“So, who’s to blame?” Bee seemed intrigued by my answer, “Nathan? Renée?”

“Me, perhaps,” I sighed, “I don’t know. Maybe it is all my fault.”

“Why is that?”

“She asked me to confess my feelings to Neil. She demanded that I didn’t shrivel up and lock myself up in my own mind when she died. I did the exact opposite of her demands and look where it brought us,” I gestured widely to the situation, “She’s dead either way. I’m alone. Neil’s alone and scared. And I don’t know how to protect him, to comfort him.”

“Maybe you should do as she asked you. It's not too late,” Bee suggested, “Maybe you’ll find out Neil’s feelings are greater than what you imagine and you can face the evident adversities in your lives together.”

“Neil doesn’t have feelings for me,” I countered, “Renée believed he did, but I know he doesn’t.”

“You also 'knew' he didn’t like you, but that was wrong, wasn’t it?” she argued, then sighed and lowered her voice to a mellow whisper, “This is a war made for two, Andrew. You two can face it alone and lose or embrace the other and come out on the other side as winners. Just like you did on the Tournament.”

My gaze jumped from the small woman sitting cross-legged on the grass in front of me to the headstone for a couple of times before Bee resumed speaking.

“She would’ve wanted you to be loved by someone just like she loved you,” she stated, “Let him in.”

“The last time I let someone in, she died,” I rebutted, “The time before that, she gave up on me when I went to prison to escape her son. I’m not risking it a third time.”

“Neil isn’t one to shy away from a challenge,” Bee smiled fondly, “He sees the best in you, he enjoys the worst.”

“What if he breaks my heart just like the others?”

“Then it’s just another crack in your heart made of stone,” she shrugged, “What have you got to lose?”

 

---

 

Cages over cages covered the entire circular floor of the owlery and only their hutches protected the small animals in them from the owls’ droppings. There were frogs hopping around, cats meowing loudly, snakes hissing here and there. Fortunately, the owls were still free and still used for their intended purposes, but many were perched on the cages, not daring to fly in the dreary air that had settled on and around the castle.

I had started climbing the stairs before going to check on the cage I knew the position of by heart now. Whoever had decided to free and play with my cat, was supposed to be in for a lot of troubles. I didn’t like my things touched. I let Nicky handle King when I wasn’t around because I trusted him more than I did Aaron and it wasn’t like I could leave the cat alone. Still, though, no one should’ve touched King without my permission.

My intentions changed when I heard the voice coming from the ledge where I was by then used to rest upon when I was tired of dealing with people, the ledge where Renée had found me once upon a time, where she had talked to me and found out two of my biggest secrets. A pang to my heart reminded me how much I missed her, but I kept going upwards.

Neil wasn’t sitting anywhere near the edge, back to the wall as he tried and failed to steady the black cat on his legs. King pawed at him a couple of times, not meaning to harm him since he didn’t have his claws out, and Neil tried to catch his little legs with his fingers. They both missed.

“Would you just stay put?” he grunted in a hushed tone.

“He’s trying to caress you,” I spoke up. Neil, startled, turned his panicked gaze towards me and relaxed quickly when he realized who I was, “He does that to me, sometimes. When he feels that I’m sad.”

“You managed to buy the only sympathetic cat on the market?” Neil scoffed, still fighting with King’s pads, “That’s very out of character.”

“You’re one to talk,” I strolled over to the edge and sat down. I waited for the usual bolt of adrenaline and fear to spike up and down my spine with my eyes closed, then opened them back up and looked down at the bottom of the tower, “I didn’t think canines and felines got along.”

“What?” Neil asked from behind me, evidently confused.

“I didn’t think you liked cats,” I explained, “You never liked when King jumped on my bed when you were there.”

“That’s because he was being ill-mannered and he was interrupting,” he replied pointedly, and I gathered he was talking directly to the cat. That made me want to smile, but I didn’t turn back to look at him.

After a couple of beats and a few more pissed-off meows on the part of my stubborn cat, Neil’s voice reached me again.

“I thought you wouldn’t come today, that’s why I’m here,” he stated, as if he needed an excuse to be invading a public space, “I can go.”

“Betsy wanted to talk about… things, so I was late,” I admitted, “You can stay.”

“I don’t want to disturb you,” I heard his clothes rustle on the pavement as he got up, “I’ll just go put King back in the cage-”

“Do that,” I interrupted him, “Then, come back. And stay.”

Neil didn’t reply to my words, but I distinctly listened to King’s moans and hisses as he was picked up from the floor and then to Neil’s careful and slow steps down the winding staircase. Owls flew around me, some talked to each other, and I kept staring down at the floor while Neil put King back in his cage. He gave him a quick pet, he whispered something to the cat and then started climbing up again.

In a minute, he was at my side, legs dangling off the edge and looking down like me. I opened my mouth to speak but he beat me to it.

“I was the one who suggested to Renée you might be here, the year you arrived,” he told me, “I wasn’t sure you would’ve liked knowing I had guessed correctly something about you, so I sent Renée to check on you instead.”

“Funnily enough,” I noted, “I think that was the evening she became my best friend. Maybe it could’ve been you, if you only had dared.”

“I was your best friend,” he simply replied, like his words didn’t matter, like he wasn’t stating something that was piercing through my heart, “Alongside her, I reckon.”

“Even so,” I shrugged, “She’s gone now. Not much we can do about it.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, “I realized I never apologized to you for what happened to her. I figured I could just make up for it in some way but-”

“But I shut you out,” I finished for him, “And you didn’t know how to behave around me anymore.”

“Something like that,” Neil sighed, “Allison talks to me, but I know she’s mad. She was grateful I apologized, though.”

“Your father’s and the Moriyamas’ actions are not yours to apologize for,” I reminded him, “You’re not to blame.”

“It was intended to hurt me, to hurt you so that they could get to me. You lost your best friend,” he said.

“I lost two,” I countered.

There was silence after that. I could sense Neil’s blue eyes burning through my temple as he stared at me, I could see from the corner of my own eyes his face turned towards me, his mouth opened in shock. After a while, he just sighed again and looked back down at the floor.

“A truth for a truth,” I proposed then.

“Deal,” he replied.

“I want to know more about your story,” I asked, “Tell me anything.”

He didn’t wait around to start narrating. I felt one of my heartstrings being pulled and pulled again: I knew he still trusted me, even after all this time, but I couldn’t believe he was just willing to give up the rest of his secrets to me like they meant nothing. Like I, somehow, meant more to him than them.

“As I told you, my mum was my only friend for most of my early life. Even before we ran away, I was alone, the only child, clinging to my mother for dear life. When she died, I felt utterly alone. I didn’t really know how to raise myself alone and I feared I would’ve just gone down my father’s path by nature, being a werewolf like him. I thought I was meant to be cruel.

“When I got here, Kevin, Riko and Jean all had their tattoos. They said I was meant to get my own, to be a part of their group, to be a part of their family. Cruel as my own,” he reached up to his cheek, the one stained by the ‘IV’ inked on it, “and I thought that was it. Without my mum, I was meant to end up at the service of a vampire who wanted to use me for my animal instinct of destruction.

“Fortunately, Remus was here,” Neil smiled fondly, remembering the DADA Professor we both loved like a parent, “He taught me that werewolves aren’t supposed to be cruel, that that is not the only path we can take. He educated me in a way my dad never could, my mum never would. He saved me from myself. He’s the only reason I stayed here.”

“That raggedy man,” I whispered, more to myself than to Neil. Still, I knew by the way his smile curved up even more that he had heard me.

“Your turn,” Neil announced.

“I don’t think people fully realize the way my past has scarred me. I think, most of the time, even I don’t really know the full extent of the damage. It’s not just the touch thing,” I explained when I noticed Neil’s curious look, “It’s my… habits. The things I eat, for example: I carefully avoid the foods that people that hurt me used to deem ‘their favorites’.

“I hate the way my bed is in the middle of the room, because since Drake used to sneak up in my bed I like to sleep with my back to the wall, so that I know no one can come up behind me. Sometimes I’m afraid…” I took in a deep breath, ready to unload a truth that I wasn’t ready to even tell myself, “Sometimes I’m afraid what they did to me made me uncapable of living normally and I hate it. I want to be free of their burden, of their presence in my life but I just can’t get rid of the memories.”

“You have an eidetic memory,” Neil tried to comfort me, “It’s difficult for you to forget things, but that doesn't mean you can't get rid of them.”

“That’s why I tried to replace the memories. Create good ones to render the bad ones obsolete and forgettable. Like I tried to do with that petname, Drew. Like I wanted to do with the touch of people who loved me, and that was why I mostly allowed Renée to do anything to me. But I still hate it, even when I know the person touching me has no intention to harm me. It makes my skin crawl, most of the time. I hate being touched by anyone, anywhere. People do it so naturally and don't even realize it. Nicky and Aaron had a hard time getting adjusted to that.”

“How did they take that?”

“Before all three of us came here we didn’t really get a chance to get to know each other. Luther covered me in books and clothes and got me a cat and shipped me off to Hogwarts with my twin and cousin, who didn’t know the first thing about me. The first time Nicky tried to hug me, I almost broke his arm. It took Luther and Aaron to get me off of him. Now that I think about it, I believe you, Renée and Remus are the only ones I've allowed to hug me since I got out of Cass’s house.”

Neil scoffed, “I miss Remus,” he bit down his lip, “Another truth?”

“Hit me,” I nudged him.

“I miss you.”

I finally turned to look at him. He was looking at me with sheep’s eyes, his deep blue irises buried in the corner of his eyes and covered by the drapes of his red curls as his head hung low. He didn’t dare look up at me, his shoulders slouched forward, curved, scared.

“Neil,” I called, before taking matters into my own hands and reaching out to tilt his face towards mine. His pupils jumped around to scan my emotionless face and he swallowed down, “I can’t change myself. I fear I may be stuck with this face forever. You’ll never know whether I find you funny or silly, whether you make me smile, whether I am happy, unless I tell you. And I wouldn’t tell you because that’s just who I am. I bask in my own misery, I hate every inch of this stupid world and myself with it, I am perpetually angry and sad and this face is all you’ll ever get from me. Do you understand?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Neil whispered, “I don’t miss your smile or your laughter. I miss you. What you can display on your face hardly defines who you really are, Andrew.”

“I’ve killed three times,” I reminded him, “There are better people in the world you can aspire to be with.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Neil simply said, “You did what you’ve done for a reason. Very valid reasons at that. I won’t shame you.”

“I’ll never be right for you,” I rebutted.

“You let me decide what’s right for me.”

“That’s my truth, then. I’m a monster and I forever will be.”

“Last one. Truth for truth.”

“What else could you possibly give me?” I urged, his face still trapped in my hand, his cheeks squished between my fingers.

“In the Prefects bathroom, one blessed year ago, you told me you wanted me and I told you you could have me. Ever since, I’ve only given you half truths about myself, because I also told you that most of the time I automatically lie to save my life,” he explained, “But I do want you to have me. I want you to have all of me. No more half-truths, no more secrets.”

“Neil,” I began.

“No,” he replied, “My name is Nathaniel.”

I couldn’t help the small gasp that escaped my mouth. I loosened my grip on his face but even as I lowered my hand he stayed still, waiting for my reaction.

He’d told me he didn’t like his name because it was similar to his father’s. I hadn’t thought it was that similar. I hadn’t thought that was a piece of him he was willing to give up, not even to me. Not to anyone, because that single piece of information was what had kept him alive for a long time: a new identity, someone created out of the blue to protect him.

Neil, Nathaniel. He’d never been Neil in the first place, he had always known his true name, his roots and origin and family, but somehow that didn’t matter. I knew from the get-go that I was getting to know a boy who only gave the world what the world wanted to see: a good boy, a sweet boy who couldn’t have hurt a fly. Not a dangerous werewolf, not someone with a secret past filled with murder and escape plans.

He was waiting and waiting and waiting. I grasped the brim of the ledge, feeling lightheaded and not trusting myself not to fall over to my death. I wouldn’t dare to look down at the bottom of the tower anymore, so I locked my eyes into Neil’s and focused on breathing in and out for a couple of minutes.

“Well then,” Neil whispered after a while, “What’s your truth?”

“I have a crippling fear of heights,” I admitted, out of breath, “And I miss you too.”

“But what about-”

“I miss you. A name hardly defines who you really are, darling,” Neil’s grin grew slowly, but wider and wider, “Yes or no?”

“Yes. A hundred times yes.”

In one swift motion I snaked my arm around his waist and coaxed him into straddling my lap. I scooted a bit towards the wall, feeling jolts of panic running up and down my spine and giving my gooseflesh as the risk of falling down presented itself to me again. Either way, I tilted my head up just a bit and finally, after so long, Neil’s lips were on mine.

It was simple and slow at first, a mere peck, a crashing of lips that pretended not to know each other anymore. But it was easy to begin again, more passionately, more fondly, deeper and deeper. My hands reached for his back and clutched the fabric of his shirt. I hugged him tightly to my chest, feeling his heartbeat against my own ribcage and relishing in the heat of his body against mine.

He had his own hands uncomfortably behind his back. He went for my hips once but it didn’t feel right in that position, so he changed his mind. When I bit onto his bottom lip, he moaned loudly but swiftly pulled away.

“Can I touch your face?” he panted.

“I don’t know,” I told him earnestly, “You can try but I can’t assure you anything.”

“I don’t want to overstep.”

“Try,” I urged.

“You just told me you hate to be touched by anyone, anywhere,” he argued.

“That’s why I said try,” I groaned, “Do try.”

He brushed his fingertips on each side of my jawline, starting slow. I swallowed down my fear and tried to enjoy his simple, careful touch. I closed my eyes while he progressively placed inches of his hands down on my face, eventually cupping both of my cheeks. I breathed in once, twice, three times. Aside from the first surge of panic, though, nothing seemed to be happening.

“Is this okay?” he whispered then.

“More than okay,” I assured him.

“Good,” Neil breathed out, “I don’t want to force you, though, so if at any time you want me to remove-”

“Shut up,” I cut him off before crashing into him again.

After giving some purpose to his hands, Neil began to get more playful. He caressed my skin from time to time, directed my face left and right and backward and forward as he wished, while I still held on tight to him as he moved on my lap. He smiled against my lips and moaned in my mouth and I had forgotten how his kisses drove me completely insane.

I found myself wanting more and more, I found him requesting more and more from me. I found hunger in myself, I found starvation in him. I didn’t know how much time we spent cooped up in that tower, kissing each other senseless, making up for months of useless fights and useless attempts to drive away and fend off the other. It all seemed nonsensical then, knowing all we really wanted was the other, and that the other was the only one we could’ve ever given ourselves to.

I wanted to kiss him until the world ended. I wanted him to never pull away, to never get back to the castle, to never face the inevitable. I wanted to be crystalized in the owlery, so that I’d never run into the risk of losing him to someone, something I couldn’t stop.

But he leaned backwards a little too much and I lost my balance. For a moment I thought we’d just fall to our inevitable death, but he leaned forward in time as I hugged him tighter with one hand and the other shot to grasp the brim of the ledge again. At the evident show of pure panic on my face, as much as I could display, he simply burst out laughing.

“Jesus, Neil!” I scolded him, out of air because of the shock or maybe just the kiss.

“Crippling fear of heights, you say,” he managed to say through the laughter, “So, what are we doing sitting at the edge of a ten meters fall?”

“I’m an adrenaline junkie,” I admitted, “Still, don’t ever scare me like that again.”

“Fine,” he was still giggling, but eventually stopped to look at me with a little lopsided smile, “You called me Neil.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “That’s your name, if you want it to be.”

“I do.”

“Then, that’s how I’ll call you.”

“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked, “Would you have done it even if I hadn’t told you all my secrets? Would you still have wanted me back?”

“I think so,” I simply answered.

“Why? What changed?” he leaned back a bit to look me better in the eyes.

“I’m trusting Renée, I’m talking a risk,” I bit down my lip, “I’m finally letting you in.”

“I guess there’s no time like the present,” Neil laughed lightly, “When my father comes for me, I’ll be happy to know there’s a person in the world who knows me in and out.”

“No more secrets, then?” I leaned my forehead against his.

“No more secrets, love,” he whispered back.

He kissed me again, slowly but deeply. My ears were ringing and all I could think about was Neil, the boy that I knew, the boy that I wanted to know, the boy who knew me. The boy whose touch didn’t burn, the boy whom I loved. I’d never have let him slip through my fingers again. It was him and me against the world, and for once, I was happy that my truths had been told to someone I could trust.

 

‘When everything’s made to be broken,

I just want you to know who I am.’

Notes:

MY BABIES ARE BACK AGAIN I COULD CRY!!!

do not make the mistake to trust me though, I enjoy make my characters suffer. this might only be a sweet parenthesis in a much larger picture of pure pain :D

i think the chapter is rather self-explanatory?? there's nothing really to comment on - besides Andrew's decision to finally reconnect with Neil after a long time. i know Andrew seems a lot less secretive than what he is in canon, but remember that this Andrew is first and foremost a teenager and also they have had the help of Renée and Neil growing through their problems. They've been with Neil for a year now and they know they can trust him with his feelings. still the big L word hasn't been said - apart from Neil giving Andrew that sweet petname - but we will address that later.

Int he end, i think Andrew realized that what Bee has said was true: there was no point in keeping Neil away if it only hurt more than letting him near again. So they chose to let him in.

Honorable mentions because they can't go unnoticed:
- Kevin "I have shitty music taste" Day being shocked that Neil would rather sleep with Andrew than watch a Quidditch game
- Bee knowing to catch Andrew in the moment they're the most vulnerable so they'll say something meaningful instead of chatting her ear off with nonsense
- Renée being a couple therapist even in her death, WE LOVE AND MISS HER
- King being like "neil, you're sad. let me comfort you" LMAO therapy kitten

That's ittttt i'm sorry for the small delay but this chapter was LONG
also updates may come with a bit of delay since it's exam season and I have a LOT to study for, sorry y'all :(

anyway, see ya next time, comment to let me know what you think!

bye lovelieeees <3

Chapter 44: Your needs, my needs

Summary:

TW!
- talks about rape and murder
- depiction of a beating and injuries created by it

Somewhen in January, Neil told me where the cage where he was held during his full moons was. It was almost laughable, seeing I went there almost every day: it was at the bottom of the owlery, a slightly larger cage than what one would've needed for a big dog. It was seemingly impossible to miss, but maybe I’d simply never noticed.

At first glance, it didn’t seem someone from the pack was being left behind to guard the cage, since it was so sturdy it should’ve been impossible for Neil to break out of. That meant that I had an open field to be with him even if I wasn’t supposed to.

It also meant that, even after Abby’s every warning and reprimand, I went there the first chance I got, when the moon was full and high in the blue sky.

Neil’s wolf was agitated and confused when I got there, crying and howling at the moon, fighting to break the bars of the cage with all its might without even bending them a little. It was pushing, pulling, biting it and clawing at it, but the bars wouldn’t budge, and so it stayed caged.

I wondered whether it would’ve been safer to turn into the panther, but something inside of me suggested me it wasn’t the case. I could’ve turned into it later, when Neil – the wolf – was calmer, tranquillized. Now, I just approached it carefully, reaching a distance safe enough that I knew its claws couldn’t scratch me.

“Hello,” I simply muttered at the creature.

It only growled in response, warning me away. I shrugged, tilting my head to the side.

“You know I’m not leaving,” I stated, “I’m here to help you. Remember me?”

The wolf, then, seemed scared at the implication I would’ve just stayed there with it the whole night and backtracked – as much as it could, which was not a lot since the cage was scarily small considering the wolf's sheer size – a little against the bars at the back. I considered it for a while before stepping closer to it. I sat down.

“You do remember me, don’t you?” I whispered, and the wolf only whined in return, “You’re afraid you’re going to hurt me again, because you did the last time that you saw me like this, aren’t you?”

The wolf whimpered and blubbered again, lowering its muzzle and slowly crouching on the ground like a sad dog. I scooted closer to the cage, slowly but steadily introducing one of my hands through the bars and waiting for the wolf to react. It just stared intently at my limb before turning its gaze on me again.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” I explained, “You know me. Your human-self knows me and…” I swallowed harshly, “Your human-self cares about me, doesn’t it? You know that. Somewhere, deep in your animal brain, you know that you don’t want to hurt me. So, you won’t.”

The wolf cried another time but swiftly turned its nose to my hand so it could sniff it. It tickled me so, beyond my every will, I giggled quietly. Once it stopped sniffing around, it turned to me again, its eyes now clear of the anger and the fear they were full of just a second before. I caressed the top of its head.

“There,” I whispered again, “You know me. You don’t have to be afraid, I’m here.”

The wolf seemed to relax under my hand and finally moved closer to the front bars of the cage, even if I could reach it perfectly even when it was backed-up all the way at the end of it. I exhaled slowly and so did it, imitating me. It then pawed the bars gently.

“Are you sick of being in a cage, wolfie?” I asked playfully. The wolf howled loudly, “I get it. You were in one of these when you were a puppy. It must be bad to be back in one again.”

But the wolf stayed quiet and tranquil for the rest of the night. When the sun started to rise, I got up and left before any of the members of the pack noticed I’d been there in the first place, hoping that the foul smell of owl droppings and dozens of animals packed in there would cover my strong scent.

I laid on the bed in my room waiting, but I got sick of it eventually and got back up to pace around. I prayed the pack wouldn’t have noticed. I prayed they wouldn’t have punished Neil. I prayed he would’ve been fine, because he had to be. Because I waited all night with him so he wouldn’t hurt himself, so I couldn’t bear the thought of him being hurt by anyone else.

At some point, the door swung open and Neil was standing in the doorframe, trembling from head to toe. I panicked in an instant, reaching him in a few long strides.

“What?” I demanded, “What happened? What’s going on? Where does it hurt?”

“I…” he muttered under his breath, “They made come up here alone… I…”, he gasped, sucking in a breath and holding it for a few seconds to keep the oxygen in before spluttering, “The stairs…”

“Alone? But-” I cut myself off once I noticed him swaying like he was drunk, “I’ll take you to the bed.”

I picked him up from the floor and quickly laid him down on the bed, fluffed the pillow under his head since I had previously flattened it with my own and covered him with a blanket and duvet in case he was cold. I had assumed, since his eyes were closed, he had passed out already, but instead I found him faintly calling my name.

“What is it, darling?” I whispered to him, crouching down so that I would’ve heard him better.

“Yes or no?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation, even if I didn’t know what he could’ve possibly wanted to do in that state, “Of course yes, what do you need?”

He started patting the bed down and I finally understood he was searching for my hand. I offered him the same one I had used to pat and caress the wolf and he smiled softly, taking it to his lips and kissing it ever so slightly.

“Thank you,” he breathed out again.

And once again, I found myself wanting to smile even if I knew I couldn’t.

 

---

 

Months went by and it was March again all of the sudden. The terrible memory of Riko torturing me a year prior to that was threatening to paralyze me at any given second, so I chose to focus on something happier and that was supposed to bring joy, whatever joy was supposed to feel like. So, I chose to focus on Neil’s birthday.

Since he had chosen to be Neil and not Nathaniel, we'd also decided to take his fake birthday for good instead of his real one and I had been thinking of a gift to give him with the money I had. Most of Tilda’s funds – as it should’ve been, really – had gone to Aaron, and I was one to do outrageous purchases just for the hell of it, which meant the few money she had left me were almost gone.

I was just pondering about that, sat at my desk, when someone knocked at the door and I had to sigh. It seemed nobody could leave me alone in the few moments I had to spare without Neil and Kevin perpetually hanging around me. I glanced at the window to check if it was indeed the middle of the night, and it was. I fished a dagger out of the drawer and spun around in my chair.

“Whoever you are, I hope you know that if you come in and I don’t want to see you, I'll throw a knife at you,” I yelled at whomever was behind the door.

“It’s me,” Aaron replied from the other side, “Please, don’t throw your knife.”

“Don’t use that word and I won’t,” I countered, rather confused.

Aaron stepped in quietly as always, wringing his hands in front of him like he was nervous to even share the same air as me.

Since he had found out about Drake, he’d been more open towards me. He hadn’t snapped unnecessarily at me in months, tried to be as pleasant as I could’ve in my presence and he tried his best to behave with everyone else as well. As much as I found it pleasing, I couldn't put my finger on whatever had changed his mind about me. It kept me up at night, really, the thought that I'd had to kill a brother to gain one. The thought that the only way I could've ever had Aaron was to commit something so outrageous and let him see with his own eyes that I hadn't done it out of spite. 

I chose to ignore the slight anger that rose in me every time I came into my field of view, giving him my flattest, blankest look instead.

“What are you doing out of bed at this hour?” I simply asked, “Don’t you have lessons in the morning?”

“We have Quidditch practices first,” he reminded me in a hushed tone.

“Ah, right,” I shrugged, not bothering to put down the knife and instead starting to play with it, which visibly stressed out Aaron even more, “So, what do you want, interrupting my thoughts at this ungodly hour, brother?”

Aaron scoffed, “Brother,” he repeated, pronouncing every syllable like each had a meaning of its own, “Is that what you called that man too?”

“Sometimes,” I replied, colder, “At first, when he behaved like one. Then I started calling him by his name.”

Aaron seemed to consider my words for quite a while, so I simply watched him as his shoulder slouched a little bit forward and his hair fell down and covered his eyes as he lowered his head. Eventually, he started talking again.

“I can’t sleep,” he admitted, “Neil said something and I… I can’t shake it out of my head.”

“Yeah, he does do you like that sometimes,” I shrugged, still watching him carefully, “What did he say?”

“Something about you being our guardian,” his bottom lip quivered when he talked, “Something about you doing the nasty stuff so you take the blame for it while freeing us, because you already believe you are unsalvageable, whilst we're the untouchable ones. We're the ones worth protecting, worth saving.”

“That dickhead,” I rolled my eyes, “Why did he tell you that for?”

“Because he wanted me to forgive you,” Aaron finally spat out, “For killing our mother.”

“Why would even care about that? And it was your mother, not mine.”

“Because he cares about you, perhaps,” my twin argued, but I just waved my hand in dismissal so it was his turn to roll his eyes, “Also, he said something about being better at Quidditch if we ever got along enough.”

“Ah, that sounds more reasonable,” I nodded, “So he wants us to make up so you won’t leave me hanging from a pole when Riko throws a bludger at me,” I gave him a pointed look and Aaron winced, “I get it. And what, precisely, are you here for?”

“Because I want to understand,” Aaron said, “I want to understand you. To understand why you did what you did, why to our mother. I can understand Drake, but her? What did she ever do to you?”

“Did you forget? I already told you,” I stood up to head to my bed but Aaron extended an arm in front of me to stop me, so I sighed, “I did what I did to protect you.”

“When I made that Vow, I didn’t want her to die,” Aaron argued.

“And I didn’t have in mind to kill her. It was something I came up with later, after enduring a ninth of what had been done to you since I had been around. It was my fault she was behaving like a bitch, so I stopped her.”

“So, you admit you did it only when it started to affect you,” Aaron countered.

“No, you dumbass,” I rolled my eyes yet again, wondering if I could get brain injury by doing it so many times, “I made that pact before she started hurting me, remember? I was only hurt because the Vow reflected the pain she inflicted upon you on me. But that wasn’t why I did it. The pain was unbearable, that’s true, but all I could think about was the fact that you had to endure that every single time, and it was amplified on you because you received the hexes directly. Even while I was in pain, I was thinking about you. What, precisely, in your stupid brain, can’t comprehend that?”

“You didn’t know me,” Aaron stated matter-of-factly, “You had known me for less than a year and you knew nothing about me.”

“What has that to do with anything?” I asked.

“Why would you do that for a stranger?” he inquired in return.

“You’re not a stranger, Aaron,” I countered, “You’ve never been. You have the same exact genetic material as me. You’re my twin. You’re my brother, my family. Even if I hadn’t known you, and I still don’t, I will still put my life on the line to protect you, because that’s what family does.”

“She wasn’t your family? She birthed you,” he questioned, and I guessed it was a fair point.

“She gave me up, Aaron,” I explained, “She didn’t even want to be my mother. She was your mother, she chose to be your mother – and she evidently sucked at that, too. But she didn’t want me. You, on the other hand, found me, in juvie. You wanted a brother. She made you regret ever searching for me and I will forever hate her for that, because wanting to have a brother is nothing to be ashamed about or punished for. I wanted a brother as well.”

“Then why did you reject me when I wrote to you?” he asked sheepishly.

I sighed and placed one hand on Aaron’s shoulder, which made him suddenly tense up even more.

“Drake was still around,” I confessed, “I didn’t want him to find you. I was… afraid of what he could’ve done to you. And I was behind bars, couldn’t protect you.”

“You could’ve protected yourself, before that,” he argued again, “Why did you let him get away with it for such a long time?”

“Because sometimes pain is greater than ethics, Aaron,” I answered, “Sometimes, you have to think about yourself rather than the greater good. If I'd pressed charges against him – and I would like to remind you that I was barely thirteen – Cass, his mother, would’ve been broken, would’ve lost two children in one move. Not to mention I would’ve had to face Drake in court, and I simply couldn’t. I just wanted to get out, fast and permanently.”

“Why are you suddenly telling me all of this? Why aren't you shouting at me and telling me to get out?”

“Because, even if I hate myself because of it and I hate him even more for making me do this,” I replied, “I trust Neil. If he says we have to work on this, we have to do it earnestly. I can’t lie to you. It physically hurts me to tell you these things, but you saw what Drake did to me. So there’s no point in hiding what that has caused in my relationship with you.”

“He was the only reason why you were an asshole from the get-go?” Aaron arched one of his eyebrows.

“No,” I challenged, “That’s just my shitty personality, brother.”

“Huh. Checks out,” Aaron said, “So, what else did Drake cause?”

“Some of it is only my business, Aaron. I won’t just tell you everything,” I warned him, “You’re my brother, yes, but we are not the kind of brothers that simply share everything. If you want to know more you have to earn it.”

“Earn it?” he scoffed, “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I don’t know anything about you, as you pointed out,” I tilted my head to the side, “So, why would I ever tell you anything about me? You already know too much.”

“At the very least, tell me the things that involve me,” he urged, starting to raise his voice.

And that, of course, was ought to raise some suspicion from the room next to mine. A knock at the door was barely audible before Neil’s head was sticking out of it, his expression firm and his eyes sharp.

“Is everything okay here?” he simply asked.

“Aaron was just about to go,” I replied, even if my twin was staring to complain about it, “I’ll call you when I’m done with him.”

“Alright,” Neil shrugged before starting down the stairs again and I turned towards Aaron.

“Listen,” I began, “Talking here won’t do any good. We’ll just start arguing again and nothing will come out of it.”

“I agree,” Aaron complied, “So, what do you suggest instead?”

“What if,” I sighed, “And I can’t believe I’m about to suggest it but I will do it before Neil will force us to, what if you attend some sessions with me and Bee? We’ll work it out that way, supervised by someone who does this for a living.”

“And she won’t tell anyone about what we talk about?” he inquired.

“She’s silent as a tomb,” I assured him, “At least, she is with me, so I trust her enough to do this.”

Aaron blinked a me a couple of times before shrugging my hand off his shoulder and giving me a look that was half a glare, half a frown. I pointed at the door with my thumb, inviting him out.

It wasn't that I wanted him out of sight, really. But sharing so many things about my life and feelings with him had made my soul feel raw, like exposed flesh under grated skin, and I needed time to patch up my own wounds before creating others just for the sake of a brother who didn't want to be in my life. I found myself asking why I was even doing that, but I didn't come up with any answers. And why would I have ever needed any? There wasn't a simple answer. It was Aaron, in the end.

My brother Aaron.

“Do you promise we’ll work it out?” he then simply asked.

“I promise I’ll try my hardest.”

 

---

 

Since Kevin and Neil had been added to the Ravenclaw Quidditch team as chaser – and captain – and seeker, the Ravenclaw team had taken up a long-lasting streak of won matches, much to the others teams’ dismay. Without Dan as their captain, the Hufflepuff team had gone down in their performances, and the Slytherin team had lost their star seeker.

As much as everyone in the Slytherin team despised me for the changes I had demanded from Wymack, I was glad to have Neil under my supervision at any given time and for the fact I didn’t have to worry about Riko abusing Kevin during practices. Besides, the role of captain was a natural fit for the Gryffindor and it had been almost stupid not to give it to him until he'd switched teams.

Even if, I guessed, he couldn’t have helped the situation he'd been in previously in any way.

As months passed and the Ravenclaw team stayed at the top of the ranks in the Tournament, I had noticed that Jean had been watching us – and especially me, Neil and Kevin – closely. Whether it was because he wished to be rescued from Riko as well or because he was spying on us I couldn’t tell, but I knew he was there, so he didn’t make any moves towards us whatsoever.

Inevitably, a match between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor had been scheduled at the end March, fortunately close enough to the full moon to give Neil that extra spark but not so close that he would’ve completely lost his shit on the pitch.

Still, I knew that the match coming up was stressing both him and Kevin out, even if they refused to show it during practices.

On the day of the match, Dan and Allison came back to Hogwarts to watch it and to cheer for us. They, along with Matt and Nicky, were also hanging out with us in the changing rooms while the whole team got ready in the bathroom when I noticed Neil sending a pointed look toward Aaron who was heading towards the bathroom as well.

When my twin had cleared the way, after I made sure no one was paying any mind to the both of us, I approached the redhead slowly and sat beside him, who was idly waiting for everyone to evacuate the room so he could change. I already had my uniform on, so I was waiting for everyone to get ready and had time for a simple conversation.

“You know,” I began, “You don’t have to pick my fights for me. I can handle my brother myself without your help.”

“Can you?” Neil challenged, not bothering to swivel his head to look at me, still staring out at the rest of the Foxes who were chatting on a bench far away from us.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I crossed my arms on my chest.

“I’m thinking Aaron told you about what I told him,” he explained, “And what I said hasn’t changed. You take care of everyone, but who takes care of you?”

“I take care of me,” I replied, “Have you skipped the part of the story where I murdered my abuser? That was rather bad-ass taking care of me.”

Neil huffed a laugh, then finally turned his eyes on me, looking intently in my own, “You take shit care of yourself, Andrew. And don’t,” he cut me off when I opened my mouth to speak, “Don’t even try to fight me on that. We both know you’d let yourself waste away; you are so self-destructive it’s hard to believe you can even help someone else beside you and you don’t help yourself at all.”

He had said that so seriously that I had to blink at him a couple of times while I processed his words with the utmost gravity. What he had just said was right: I didn’t have any interest in keeping myself alive, let alone alive and well. But I had never imagined I’d ever meet someone who cared about me enough to notice and take care of me like I took care of others.

Was that what letting people in meant? Was that how it was supposed to work? Was I supposed to accept the help of others, knowing damn well I wouldn't give that same treatment to myself I someone hadn't offered it to me?

When I finally found my ability to speak again, knowing he knew he had left me speechless even if I hadn’t shown any shock or bewilderment on my face, I cleared my throat.

“Still,” I argued, “It isn’t a really easy task to talk Aaron into something, and I don’t want you making a great effort like this for me.”

“You have to let me take care of you,” Neil simply replied, like he hadn’t heard a word I said.

“Like I said, I can handle my brother, Neil. Can’t you just leave it alone?”

“If it means losing you, then no,” he answered, firm and earnest, words that pierced through my heart irreparably.

I'd never imagined I'd feel a surge of appreciation for whomever had tried to take care of me. Some part in the depths of my brain was telling me to fight it, to lash out at him, to tell him to let me be the worst version of myself, the version that craved the feeling of pain just because it was used to it. Some part of my brain really liked to be self-destructive and hated him for taking it away from me. 

But, surprisingly, the most of me was grateful he was there to do it. I just wished I could've showed him.

I swallowed down harshly before speaking again, in a more hushed and meeker, more murmured tone.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Let’s say I want a good luck kiss for the game,” he grinned widely, playfully. So much so that it made me want to laugh.

I looked around, at the Foxes first then at the rest of the team emerging from the bathroom with their uniform on, Aaron with them. No one was anywhere near somewhere they could hear us, but I still whispered back to him.

“I promise I’ll give you a congrats kiss if we win the game. Is that okay with you, you twat?” Neil just nodded vigorously, so I stood up to reach the other people, “Then go change, so we can get this over with.”

 

---

 

Even without Kevin, the Gryffindor team hadn’t lost its edge and its overall brutality. Guarding the goals from afar, I couldn’t really face the consequences of their violent actions, but Riko and Jean still came at me with all their strength whenever they had a chance to score.

More than that, I hated the fact that I couldn’t intervene when they targeted Neil, Kevin and Aaron specifically to get a rise out of me – and I knew that because every time one of them got hurt or risked getting hurt, Riko turned to look at me with a villainous, murderous smirk that made my blood boil.

We were almost at the end of the match and neither of the seekers had found the snitch – even if it might have been because Riko seemed more focused on unsaddling Neil from his broom than actually seeking, while Neil had to try to stay in the air under Riko’s attacks.

The Gryffindor’s beaters seemed to direct every bludger either in Kevin’s or in Aaron’s direction, but it looked like Aaron had taken it personally, so much so that at one point he'd hit one of the bludgers directly towards the head of one of the beaters. He was rewarded with a blunt hit to the stomach when the ball had been returned to him.

Kevin didn’t let himself be bothered by those petty and violent actions and kept playing, even if I could see the tension in his shoulders and the maniacal grip he had on the handle of his broom. That meant that while the Gryffindors had been busy causing disturbances, we had accumulated enough points to win even without catching the snitch.

But Neil finally caught it either way. He held it high so everyone could see it and the crowd was so caught up cheering for him – their star, their prodigy, the strongest player, able to carry a whole team on his back – that they didn’t notice that the bludger hadn’t stopped twirling around the pitch, that Riko had taken one of the beaters’ bats, that he had thrown the bludger at Kevin while there was no one alert enough to shield him.

So, Kevin, without his helmet on – which he had taken off to celebrate when the Ravenclaw's win had been announced – and without any kind of protection, got harshly hit by the bludger coming directly at him. He fell from his broom but was close enough to ground that it was only a minor fall. I was too far away to see and I was gravely hung up on Neil’s bright smile, and still heard a loud shrill from behind me that I could only ascribe to Allison.

“Oh, Merlin! Kevin! Riko took down Kevin!” she yelled.

“What?” I heard Dan reply, because her eyes had been, like everyone else’s, on Neil until then, “Oh, bloody Hell! Kevin!”

That made me look to the ground. That made me find Kevin’s most likely unconscious body lying there, lifeless and limp, while Riko laughed wickedly still in the air, quickly descending towards the ground himself. And I, for lack of better judgement, went after him.

My body was hot with pure rage. I was burning up, scolding myself for getting distracted, for forgetting what was at stake, who I was dealing with. Kevin was now hurt, hurt all over again because of a boy who claimed to be his brother. I clenched my fists around the handle of the broom and leaned forward to speed up. 

As I flashed past Neil and the rest of the Ravenclaw team still celebrating, I caught the attention of the redhead who rapidly found where I was headed and found it in him to yell after me.

“Andrew!” he called, “Andrew, Merlin, slow down!”

But it was too late and I crashed onto Riko’s body with all my strength and weight. We went rolling down on the grass, bodies tangled. However, I was able to grab Riko’s arms with a hand and eventually pin him on the ground. I locked him against the dirt with my own body, straddling his torso as I snarled in his face caught up between my fingers.

“Why,” I asked in a low tone, “do you have to go and annoy me so much, you bloody imbecile?”

“Look at you,” Riko simply laughed at me, loud and obnoxious, “Are you angry, kitten? Are you sure you want to do this? All the school is watching.”

“Don’t worry,” I replied, “I’ll make sure to have no witnesses when I skin you alive and then take your organs out one by one. In the meantime, I have to remind you of something. And I’d like it to stick, this time.”

“And what would that be, Minyard?” Riko smirked.

I leaned down, coming with my face beside his own, lips to his ear so he would fucking listen.

“You can’t touch my things,” I whispered, and I smiled against the whole-body recoil I felt him having under my weight, “Remember this punishment the next time you have half a mind to even look at them wrong. Got it?”

“Wait,” he panted, suddenly panicking, just like I wanted, “What- what are you-”

“Andrew!” Wymack’s voice reached me from behind me, “Andrew, get off of Moriyama right now!”

“In a minute, Coach,” I hummed, slowly lifting my head so I could look down at Riko’s eyes, full of fear, never turning toward the crowd that was gathering behind my shoulders.

“Andrew,” Neil called me again, out of air probably from rushing there, “Don’t do anything you will regret.”

“Go check on Day,” I ordered instead.

I listened to their feet shuffle away in defeat, headed to the still – from what I could see with the corner of my eyes – unconscious Gryffindor, who was yet to receive any assistance. After a beat, I also saw Abby rushing towards him, and I slowly exhaled, focusing back on the boy locked beneath me.

“Minyard,” his voice was shaking, “Listen to your puppy, okay? Let me go. You don’t want to cause a fuss. You’ll be in trouble if you do this.”

“Someone has to take you down a notch, Moriyama,” I replied, “You can’t always go around acting like you’re the King of this school. You own nothing, Riko. You are nothing.”

“Minyard, plea-”

“Ah! Wrong password, moron,” I grinned viciously at him, “Now get what you deserve.”

One punch, two, three. My knuckles began hurting, started to graze, but I didn't care. I couldn't have cared less about my hands, because I only had eyes for the Gryffindor monster beneath me, whose mouth had finally shut up.

I couldn’t seem to stop, even when I heard Dan’s and Matt’s voices frantically calling my name, even when I felt Aaron’s and Nicky’s hands trying to pry me off Riko’s body. I stayed in place, throwing one punch after the other, enjoying the way Riko’s face flew as I hit him.

Enjoying the way his neck bent to my will.

Enjoying the way his nose and mouth started to bleed under the rush of my brute force.

Enjoying the way my fists were met by his skin wet with the salty tears he was shedding.

Enjoying seeing him hurt, hurt, hurt like he had been hurting Neil.

Enjoying seeing him in pain, pain, pain like he had been inflicting on Kevin for years.

He deserves this, a voice was screaming inside my head, don’t ever stop. He gave them Renée. He gave them Renée and he used her. He deserves this and even more.

He deserves to suffer.

He deserves to ache.

He deserves to die.

“You’re going to kill him!” Allison cried behind me, “Andrew, stop now!”

He deserves it.

“Andrew, get off of him!” Dan demanded, “You’re going to be in trouble already as it is!”

I don't care. I don't even care if the blood from my hands is starting to mix with his. I don't care that my hands are sore. I don't care about anything. 

“He doesn’t care about that, you idiots!” Nicky finally replied, his hands still on one of my biceps, trying to stop the blows from coming, and coming, and coming, trying pointlessly to hold me back, “Either you try to get him off of Riko yourselves and help me or he’s just going to keep at it until he snaps his neck!”

I heard pairs of feet rushing towards me. I felt another pair of hands on me, feminine ones – either Dan or Allison, I wouldn’t have known. But I didn’t feel Matt’s, and he was stronger than the girls, so why wouldn’t he be there? I could've sworn he was there, he’d been there just a moment before, so why wasn’t he there, why wasn’t he coming, why was he stalling, why-

“Wait,” his voice finally reached me, “Has anyone seen Neil?”

“What?” Aaron, who was putting a great effort into lifting me, was the first to reply, “He was with Wymack. Why do you ask?”

“He isn’t there anymore,” Matt replied, “Abby and Coach are still there, the whole team is there, but Neil is just… gone.”

And then I stopped. I looked up from Riko's face, finally, and pointed my gaze ahead of me but I saw nothing, I couldn't see nothing. I only saw red and blood. I only saw black and despair. I heard my blood pump in my ears, I felt my heart pop out of my chest.

While I got up, I felt every hand slide away from me, with the exception of one of Nicky’s still locked on my arm, like he was afraid I would’ve hurt someone else in my murderous rage.

“What did you just say?” I asked Matt, even if he was behind me and I hadn’t bothered to turn to look at him.

“That Neil…” his voice was hesitant, afraid. I could hear his own heart racing, his own blood pumping faster and faster, “Neil isn’t here.”

I swiveled around, hoping still I hadn’t heard him right. Because it wasn’t possible that I had let myself carry away like that for Kevin when I knew who the weaker link was, I knew who Riko wanted to hurt most, I knew who was at greater risk there. Kevin was hurt, yes, but Neil was risking his life. And I had let my guard down.

And Neil was gone.

And Riko was laughing again.

“You’re regretting this now, aren’t you, Minyard?” he panted, his grin so wide I could see his teeth covered in red and pink, his eyes wide open and staring into my soul even if they were beginning to blacken. His nose had an odd bend to it, “I told you you’d be in trouble.”

It was a decoy. A way to get me to lose focus, a way to let me take my eyes off of the boy I loved for a split second, the one thing I didn't ever do.

I was a goddamn fool. A stupid, moronic, idiotic fool that had let themselves be fooled even more by someone who shouldn’t have had any power over me. Riko kept laughing and I kept spiraling, kept gasping for air that wouldn’t come, kept searching for words I didn’t have, kept reaching for a boy that couldn’t be there. He simply wasn’t there.

I spun around, leaving Riko on the ground, leaving the Foxes behind. Aaron called my name, but I wouldn’t listen. I scanned the pitch but there was not a single strand of red hair in sight, nothing that would’ve indicated that Neil was there.

Because he wasn’t.

God, no, I thought, no, no, no. I just had him back. He just came back to me, don’t take him away.

I couldn’t hear a word the Foxes were telling me. I couldn’t hear anything but the voices in my head. Hundreds of them, screaming. It was everyone I ever knew. Renée, Cass, Wymack, Abby, Bee, even Drake, Tilda, Maximus.

What good did it do to kill Maximus if you’d end up losing your mate either way? Lucrezia was screaming louder than anyone else, It’s all your fault. It’s all your fault.

It’s all my fault, I thought.

I had to find him, didn’t I?

I needed to know where he was.

Where is he where is he where is he-

Notes:

HELLOOOOOO HAVE YOU MISSED MEEEEE? i'm on a Noah Kahan spiral so expect more titles with his songs

i think not considering what is happening in this lmao sorry about that

so, Neil is missing yet again :D but let's go in order

first of all Andrew is so gentle with Neil's wolf form and i'm such a sucker for that. the fact that Andrew gets ticklish when the wolf smelled their hand T.T i honestly got tears in my eyes while writing that, they're so cute

then, the talk with Aaron... so, some therapy is coming the twinyards way finally. Bee save us all, for the love of God
the way Andrew's just like "oh Neil said it? well guess we're doing it then" BYE THEY TRUST THAT REDHEAD WITH THEIR LIFE
but they're still like "why does Neil have to go and make me look like I have feelings??? ugh" lmao they were so annoyed by the fact they really had to talk to Aaron and not just snap at him and telling him to fuck off

lastly, KEVIN IS FINE, bro took a bludger to the chest but he's okay dw, like he's up and running in the next chapter

i have to admit i enjoyed writing Andrew beating Riko's ass a little to much, like you go bestie give that bitch what he deserves smash his face

but Neil's gone, it was all Riko's plan and Andrew's spiraling again
guess what bitches??? it's a Baltimore remake, they got our boy :DD

don't hate me pls i swear i mean well

unfortunately i hate to leave you on a cliffhanger but i have exams for the next month or so, so I will slow down with updates. i'll try to be as punctual as i can while getting my uni work done, please please please bear with me
i don't think the updates will be delayed more than a day or so (i'm fairly certain i can and will update next monday with the next chapter, for example, but if it's not monday it'll be on tuesday)

soooo, i'll see you soon i guess!!!

as always, leave a comment about what you think about the chapter and show some love if you've liked it (i really need validation lol)

byeeeee lovelies <3

Chapter 45: Eat your young

Summary:

TW!
- depiction of choking
- graphic depiction of torture
- graphic depiction of injuries

Deja-vu.

It was the only correct term for the situation I was living. Once again I found myself in a state of confusion and franticness, hopelessly searching for something, someone whom I knew wasn’t there, couldn’t be there.

Like the time before that, I hadn’t even noticed he was gone. Like the time before that, I didn’t know where he could’ve been. Like the time before that, I wasn’t even sure where I should’ve started the search, so I just ran like my life depended on it, because something in my gut told me that his life depended on it.

The first logical step was the place Neil had left right before coming to the Quidditch match, which was my room. We had slept together that night, his back against my chest and my face buried in the sweet violet and rose perfume of his hair. We hadn’t slept that much, lost in our usual late night conversations, but he hadn’t seemed tense.

Had I missed something? A warning? Anything that would’ve told me why he would disappear on me like a fucking ghost?

The only thing different from the last time was that this time I wasn’t acting on principle, I wasn’t running to save an unrequited love, I wasn’t running to save my best friend. This time around, I'd had him. He was mine to keep, mine to love, mine to protect.

Mine to lose.

The room was a tidy mess like always. The bed wasn’t done, the sheets smelled like him, like me, like us, and I could sense it even from the door. There were his shoes by his side of the bed – his normal ones, since he’d worn his sports shoes for the game. Traces of him everywhere, small ones, little details that rattled my restless mind.

Where was he where was he where was-

“Andrew!” a voice called me. I was so out of it that I didn’t recognize my twin brother at first, but then he was right beside me a few moments later, while I was still frozen, stuck under the doorframe, not daring to enter the small altar of Neil’s love and mine, “Where are you running? Can you explain what’s happening?”

“I-I,” I stammered, “I don’t know. I just have to find him-”

“Alright,” Aaron cut me off, “I get that. But how could you find him if you won’t stop for a moment and think about where he could be?”

“I’m trying!” I screamed at his face, “I’m trying to think but I’m coming up short. I-I don’t know where he could be, I don’t know why he would just… just… be gone.”

Aaron took a couple of steps back, careful, which made me look closely in his direction and notice the other Foxes coming up towards us from the stairs. Kevin, surprisingly, was with them, which suggested he was alright, even if he stumbled a bit on his feet and Matt had to catch him a couple of times.

Once they were all at the entrance of my room, I sighed and snapped my fingers so that it would become clean and presentable for the others to come inside. The wordless and wandless magic burned my hand a little, making it tingle: I hadn’t used it in a lot for such big charms and I wasn’t accustomed to it anymore.

I decided that what Aaron had said was, surprisingly, right: spiraling wouldn’t have done anyone any good and it would’ve just slowed me down in my search for Neil. I had to act calmly, naturally, proceed step by step. Once I had checked every item on my to-do list, I knew for a fact that the path to Neil would’ve been clear as day.

Which reminded me…

When I stepped in, ignoring the shocked looks on Dan’s and Allison’s face – I just then remembered that they hadn’t yet seen me use wandless magic, since Lupin had told me to hide it before they could’ve noticed – I wiggled my fingers at Kevin, gesturing him to come forward and near me.

He obeyed in an instant, under the bewildered gazes of all the Foxes who watched him sit on my bed at one movement of my fingers, and I went on to check on him, grasping his face in my hand and tilting his head in every which way so that I could assess the damage.

“Abby already did that,” Matt finally spoke up after a couple of beats.

“He needs to check himself,” Kevin replied, unbothered by my unwavering grip on his jaw.

“Is this helping you relax, Andrew?” Nicky asked instead, his voice shaking.

“His knuckles are a bloody mess,” Dan answered in my stead.

“Riko’s face was a bloody mess,” Allison scoffed, “That bastard finally got what was coming for him. When I said he could’ve died, I realized I actually didn’t care that much.”

“Yeah,” Nicky replied, “I wasn’t really putting that much effort in taking Andrew off him.”

“It was kind of funny,” Matt huffed a laugh, “Scary, but a good rush of adrenaline.”

“Did you hear him cry?” Dan laughed lightly as well.

“Andrew,” my brother finally found his voice again, “Are you alright?”

I suddenly stopped pushing Kevin’s face around, but didn’t turn my gaze on Aaron, focusing still on the Gryffindor boy sat in front of me. Sat on my very high bed, even if I was standing up, he was almost as tall as me. I dropped my hand and crossed my arms on my chest. His face was almost as neutral as mine, but I could see the slight fear gleaming in his grass-green irises, an involuntary feeling that came when one found himself under the emptiness of my own eyes.

“How are you feeling?” I asked him.

“Fine, I guess,” he shrugged.

“Don’t lie to me. Your heartbeat is a tattletale. I’ll ask again and answer better this time,” I tilted my head to the side, “How are you feeling, Day?”

“My head spins but it doesn’t hurt,” he finally gave up, “Abby was able to assess that I had some sort of concussion, but healed it instantly, so I don’t have a headache.”

“And the rest of your body?” I insisted, “You did fall from a broom.”

“At least I didn’t jump from a flying broom to crash into someone else’s body,” he snapped back at me.

“Fix your tone or I’ll cut your tongue,” I deadpanned, “How's the rest of your body?”

“I had a fractured wrist. Abby healed that too,” he answered, rolling his eyes.

“Are you telling me that if I take my wand and scan you for any injuries, I will find none? Not even I sprained ankle you forgot to point out, mister Smartass?”

“Not even that,” Kevin finally confirmed, “Can I get up now?”

I considered him for a moment, scanning his whole body up and down with my eyes, even if I knew he wasn’t lying: his heartbeat was clear and steady, it hadn’t hiccuped once, not even when he had found it in himself to tell me off and let his frustration get the best of him. I exhaled and closed my eyes, cracking a few vertebrae in my neck, bending it slowly.

When I opened them back, I glanced at the rest of the Foxes, a signal for Kevin that he could get up and go to them instead of sitting in front of me. He stood up slowly, barely brushing against me while he went to where they stood close to the entrance.

“Well, that was intense,” Matt breathed.

“That was also vaguely gay- ugh!” Nicky got the breath punched out of him as Kevin hit him in the stomach.

“So,” Aaron tried to get everyone back on track, as if my brain hadn’t been spiraling still to that very moment, as if I hadn’t been thinking about Neil at all while I checked on Kevin, “What’s the next step, Andrew?”

“Clues,” I answered, looking down at my hands.

I tried to bend my fingers one at a time, first my right and then my left ones, sensing the slight ache coming from my bruised knuckles. I flipped my hands over so I could see clearly what Dan had called a bloody mess – and it was.

My flesh was raw and exposed from the consecutive hits and I had rivulets of dried-up blood on the back, even if by the scent I could tell that not all of it was mine.

I reached over my right hand with my left one and completely covered my knuckles with my other palm, then closed my eyes, thinking intently at the healing spell for such blunt injuries. When I lifted my left hand, the right was all mended, so I repeated the process the other way around.

“Woah,” Dan breathed out.

“I have to admit that is starting to freak me out,” Allison whispered.

“I can hear you, you dumb witches,” I mumbled.

“Andrew,” Aaron finally insisted, or rather urged, “What clues?”

“I’m thinking,” I said, and I was.

There was something I was missing, right in front of my eyes. Neil’s shoes were there, by the side of my bed, neatly stored. Had he intended to come back to my room after the match? I didn’t think so, since he probably had something to do, homework or watching other games with Kevin on his pc.

And then it all caught up with me.

My room wasn’t the last place Neil had been in. His shoes were there, but they had tricked me, because the important thing was that his clothes from the day before were not on my bed where he used to leave them, careless, saying it wouldn't matter in which room the elves that did the laundry would've found them in. He had insisted he wanted to take them to his own room, he wanted to swing by to check on how Kevin was doing before the match with Gryffindor.

“Kevin,” I spoke up, “Was there something unusual in your room this morning?”

“Besides from Neil coming by before breakfast,” Matt, beside Kevin, snickered at his response, “No, nothing unusual.”

“Are you sure?” I asked again, then rolled my eyes, “Why am I even asking? I’m going to check by myself either way.”

I stalked towards the door and pushed past the wall the Foxes had created in front of it, then went down the stairs to the dorm Kevin and Neil were supposed to share. It had mostly Kevin’s stuff in it, since Neil’s things were divided between my room and theirs. I started to check and analyze each corner of it, calmly, or trying my best not to appear frantic anyway.

I didn’t have to search that far either way, because the clue was on his bed. On his pillow, to be exact. I leaned forward to pick it up and I stared blankly at it, blinked at it until it went out of focus in front of my eyes and slowly appeared again.

0.

That was all the small piece of parchment, neatly cut in a square, said. ‘0’. Zero. What was that supposed to mean? Zero of what? It was a clue, it couldn’t have been anything else, but what exactly was it?

And then the voices in my head spoke again.

Where was he where was he where was he-

“Ah,” Kevin said, coming up behind me, “Another one of those things?”

I froze, looking at Kevin coming inside the room with the corner of my eye, from over my shoulder. 

“Another?” I asked, coldly, “How many were there?”

“It started a month and a half ago, I believe,” Kevin replied, “Every day after breakfast, we’d come back here and there was one of these on his pillow. From what I’d noticed, it looked like a countdown. Neil always tossed them away and said it wasn’t a big deal, but he must’ve forgotten this one.”

It happened in a moment. Matt and Aaron, just coming in through the door, weren’t quick enough to stop me as I grabbed Kevin by his shirt and slammed him against the wall. He hit his head and cried out loudly, eyes wide and wild as I got in his face.

“There was a fucking countdown on Neil’s bed and you didn’t think of telling me?” I shouted.

“I thought he would tell you,” Kevin whimpered.

“You know how stupid that fucking redhead is. You can’t simply trust him to tell me the truth, Kevin, not when his father is most likely involved,” I pulled him towards me just to shove him against the wall again, then spoke softly again, whispering even, “Did you notice who is missing, Kevin?”

“Neil?” he replied, sheepishly. I slapped him across the face.

“Anyone else care to try?” I called for the other Foxes, but they were all too paralyzed to respond, “Did you notice I’m yet to get in trouble for beating Riko to a pulp? The Headmaster would use it in a heartbeat as an excuse to get rid of me, but he hasn’t done it. Why is that?”

“Oh, Merlin,” Nicky whispered, “Because he already has who he wants, and that isn’t you.”

“Ding ding ding!” I replied, “Ten points for my cousin. So, Kevin,” I hissed at him, my hands sliding from his shirt to his neck, “Lola Malcom and Nathan Wesninski are both missing, and they took Neil with them. You, now, are going to tell me where they are before I crush your windpipe and you’re not going to be able to tell anyone anything ever again.”

“You’re,” Kevin stammered, swallowed down harshly, “You’re supposed to protect me.”

“I’m supposed to protect Neil too,” I admitted, slowly but steadily pushing down on Kevin’s throat. I could feel the resistance his body put up, the stern column of his trachea beginning to bend under the pressure of my hands, his pulse weakening, “And if the only thing preventing me from doing it is you, I will not hesitate to take you out of the equation.”

“Wait,” Dan’s voice reached me, even if it was hushed and quivering, “Why is Kevin supposed to know where Professor Wes- I mean, Nathan has taken Neil?”

“Because we knew each other,” Kevin replied, and his strangled rasp revealed just how much strain I was putting on his throat, “Kind of, when we were little. I know his family.”

“Andrew,” Aaron warned, “Go easy on him.”

“Until Neil is here and okay again, I will do no such thing,” I spat back, “Speak, Day.”

“Alright,” Kevin wheezed, “But I won’t come with you. I can’t go back to that place.”

“Fine by me,” I replied, “I’d like to give Nathan a piece of my mind while we’re alone.”

 

---

 

The den of a werewolf is much more than a simple home to it. It’s a place where the whole pack is gathered on the daily. People seem to think that a pack is only functional and active during the full moons, but deeper research into the field shows that a pack of wolves doesn’t ever get scattered, but rather stays united through thick and thin, always relying on the others, even when they’re back to their human form.

Essentially, using a reliable and understandable metaphor, the situation that was taking shape depicted me as a simple pawn going to fight against a whole army of chess pieces, trying my best to defeat the king, knowing deep inside that I didn’t know if I even could.

Kevin had told me where the den was, trying to be as precise as he could, given that he hadn’t been there in almost six years. Apparently, the den had been given by the Moriyamas to the Wesninski pack once they had to move there to find Neil – or, rather, Nathaniel – but before that it was the headquarters for the Moriyama family themselves. Riko had lived there all his life before going to Hogwarts and Kevin had moved there once his mother had died and he had been adopted by Tetsuji.

Where those people had moved, since it all had happened after Kevin had decided not to go over there during the summer, the Gryffindor couldn’t tell. But wherever it was, it couldn’t have been far from the Forbidden Forest anyway.

The sun was still high in the sky, even if it had started its descent towards the horizon. The sky itself was blue and clear but once I entered the Forbidden Forest, as always, it was covered by the crowns of the trees, rendering the world around me a little darker, shadier, chillier.

I knew the Forest intimidated people, and for most of the population of Hogwarts I could understand where their fear came. But the dark, the subtle shade, the creatures, both Magical and not, roaming around and rustling through dead leaves and bushes, everything that made that Forest scary was what made it intriguing to me.

I felt at ease, walking towards the den. I felt like I was heading towards inevitable doom, but at the same time I felt peace. Doom was inevitable, right? So, there was no point in panicking. There was no point in running. If my slight delay given by my walk instead of my dash was the precise amount of time it would’ve taken to kill Neil, then I guessed they’d be too quick for me to do anything anyway.

Even if it felt like days had passed, it had been an hour, maybe even less. If I knew Neil, I knew he hadn’t put up that much of a fight: he knew as much as I did that this was a turning point that could not be avoided.

But he had left that note on purpose, and I was sure of it. Kevin had mentioned he’d thrown every other note, tried to ignore it, tried to live his life fully even in the face of certain Fate. He knew I’d notice his absence, he knew I’d go to his room, he knew I’d see the note. He wanted me to know he wasn’t running away willingly. He wanted me to know he wasn’t abandoning me.

It wasn’t because he wanted to be found. If I knew Neil – and I knew him –, he had almost certainly committed to the thought that this was his last day alive. He saw that ‘0’ on the note this morning, he saw his father’s men gathering around him while everyone was busy with the commotion of me beating up Riko and Kevin being knocked out, and he’d known that was it.

Time as Neil Josten had run out and he was Nathaniel Wesninski back again. He didn’t want to be, but he had to, because Neil didn’t have a murderous father, Neil didn’t know the pain of torture, Neil didn’t know what facing death was like. That was Nathaniel, and while Neil’s time was up, Nathaniel’s life was coming to an end as well.

Nathaniel’s identity as Neil was supposed to be it. It was not what had been planned – after talking about his mother, he’d shown me a binder in his room where he kept all the necessary contacts to create new ones, he even had a piece of parchment where he’d scribbled ideas for what he’d called ‘cool names’.

Even if it wasn’t what his mother had planned out for Nathaniel, Neil had grown to be not a simple identity, not a simple name on a passport or an ID, but a person. A person with a family, a person with feelings, a person with passions and dreams and relationship. He couldn’t simply abandon Neil like that.

When his father had caught up with him, even if I hadn’t been there when it had happened, I knew that Nathaniel had decided that Neil was the person he was supposed to be, and he wouldn’t just run from it, from the life he’d been able to build.

I knew that because he’d confessed it to me. I knew that because I knew both Neil and Nathaniel, and I knew that if he’d chosen Nathaniel over Neil, he wouldn’t have been at Hogwarts when I came back from St. Mungo’s.

A romantic like Renée would’ve told me he’d chosen to stay because he was in love with me and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without saying goodbye. But I didn’t believe bullshit like that, so I just decided to take the logic route and tell myself that he knew that at one point he’d have to stop running.

As I had once told him, everyone is running from something. And no matter how fast you run, no matter how many shortcuts you take to get farther away from the chaser, no matter how many paradoxes Zeno comes up with, that something is always going to catch up with you.

Nathaniel had stopped running and he got caught. He knew that would’ve happened, one day or the other. He knew his father was on his trail, he knew there was always a chance he’d never win this race. He knew that, at some point, Nathaniel had to die.

That didn’t mean Neil had to.

And judging by my presence in that godforsaken school, Dumbledore had known that.

I hadn’t known that man all too well. He was ancient and almost sacred inside the school, an untouchable being that meddled between peasants who idolized him like he was a saint. He’d never struck me as the good old man type, though. And I knew I was right about that.

He wasn’t a defenseless herald of peace. He’d fought wars. He’d won them using children that weren’t much older than I was, devoting them to a cause that could’ve been helpless, and he knew it. But he had to try. For the sake of the greater good, that man had always tried his hardest, even if he became the villain in the story of others in the process.

He was a schemer. He’d met Neil, worked with him for a year and then knew there was a war at his doorstep once more. He’d looked at his ranks, chosen his soldiers one more time. His choice landed on me. I never got to ask him how he knew I was as powerful as he had seemed to know, I never got the chance to ask him what gave it off.

I never got the chance to ask him if me falling in love with that dickhead redhead was all part of his plan, because I didn’t know if I would’ve been walking in a Forbidden Forest at sunset for anybody else.

What I knew was what was right in front of my eyes. An endless Forest. A chance to get the love of my life back. A chance to end his pain once and for all.

A chance at a happily ever after, like those in books and fairytales and cheap romcoms that Nicky had forced me to watch from time to time.

And I was determined to take it.

 

---

 

“I can’t give you proper directions. You know better than me that Forest is a maze,” Kevin stated.

“Whatever you can give me is fine,” I replied, “You only need to get me close enough to the den that I can lock onto Neil’s scent and follow it.”

“How come you can do that?” Matt pouted.

“The thing with being half panther and all. The perks of being an illegal animagus,” I waved a hand in dismissal at him, but his jaw-slacked expression told me I could not get away from that conversation that quickly.

“Is there anything that you do that is legal?” Allison asked, cocking one of her eyebrows.

“I mind my business. You should try that sometimes,” I countered.

“Anyway,” Kevin interrupted, giving me and the blonde girl a pointed look, “How far off can I be without you completely losing yourself inside that Forest?”

“I trust my senses,” I shrugged, “Give me anything. I’ll find him.”

“Alright,” Kevin sighed, “So, the first thing you want to do is entering the Forest from a specific spot…”

 

---

 

The den was everything I expected it to be. It looked like nothing of consequence from the outside, a simple, small entrance of a completely normal, completely natural cave. Since the antrum was dark and lacking any intake of light whatsoever, no one could’ve noticed there was so much more to it than a simple cavern.

I stomped my foot on the ground and listened to the sound it made. It was forceful enough to confirm what I already knew. It was hollow beneath me, and I was standing on the ceiling of a much greater, much larger base than what it looked like from there.

Just as I had predicted, I had locked onto Neil’s scent and I had been able to follow it ever since I had taken a turn in the vague path Kevin had been able to describe to me. He was still rather sure the outside of the headquarters looked just the same as they’d ever been, so I had visual confirmation of reaching my target as well.

I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, closing my eyes. I took a hand to my neck and felt my pulse beating under my fingertips.

All that matters, I thought, all that matters is staying alive. You’re alive. Neil’s alive.

Well, there goes nothing.

I didn’t take my wand with me in fear of losing it, so I simply touched every piece of clothing on my body - my shirt, my gloves, my shoes, my pants - so that I would’ve rendered me completely invisible. I looked down at my hands and saw nothing. The last thing was hoping nobody would’ve noticed my scent as I walked inside the den.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the way the inside actually looked, but I couldn’t help it. I descended a long flight of stone stairs and found myself in front of a metal door. I opened it carefully, trying my best not to make it creak and not to open it wide enough for someone to see that something was entering the lair.

The walls were covered in metal, and it looked more like a bunker than a natural den. From what I could see, it extended beyond even what my enhanced vision could reach. On my right, there was a long and narrow corridor with a lot of doors on each side, which I assumed were the rooms for each member of the pack.

However, mostly, the den consisted in the space I was standing in, an open room whose ceiling was high enough to fit a two-story building. Far at the back of the room there was indeed a staircase that led onto a mezzanine, where I could see a door left ajar with a plaque on it. It read ‘alpha’. A gut feeling was telling me that Neil was in there.

The room was filled with werewolves. I could recognize someone I had seen walking around the corridors in school, people used by Nathan to scare the students away, to make them lock themselves up in their dorms. A reign of terror, in which not even people who had done nothing to the pack could have made it out unscathed.

I listened to their chatter, I tried to breathe quieter, I moved slowly so that my shoes wouldn’t have made any sound hitting the metal pavement. Suddenly, a scream of terror and pain busted my eardrums and I whipped my head towards the sound, hoping I wouldn’t see Neil standing there, bloody and hurt.

What I saw, though, was much, much worse.

“I told you all I know, please,” the young centaur was shouting, his animal half bleeding onto the floor while his human hands were tied and hung to the ceiling. Beside him, in the same position, dangling from the chains, there was his agonizing brother, and beside him, their dead mother, her horse-like abdomen slashed open with her insides spilling out of the wound.

I stifled a pained moan from the back of my throat and observed as the werewolf at the young centaur’s feet pushed a scorching rod against his exposed stomach once again and the creature emitted a nasty cry that made his brother flinch, “I haven’t seen him! In months! I haven’t seen him, I swear!”

“He killed our father,” the brother muttered, clearly in pain, a pain that was only growing through the burden of talking, “Why would we ever protect him?”

“You centaurs are odd creatures,” the wolf shrugged, “Your mother knew something about the wizard. She was a fool not to tell us what that was.”

“Our mother,” the first centaur gritted through his teeth, while the rod was pushed into his sizzling flesh once more, “Was gifted! We’re not, we never were. We can’t see the future like she did. Please, just let us go.”

“You may not have been gifted like your mother was,” the wolf explained, “But you followed the wizard for a year. You must know something about him, anything.”

“We already told you everything!” the second centaur found the strength to scream, “His name is Andrew Minyard and he is an animagus. He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts, he helps the redhead werewolf during the full moons, and he is a cold-blooded killer. We haven’t seen in months! We haven’t followed him in months!”

“Alright,” the wolf sighed, “If you don’t know anything else, I guess you’re useless. Just like your mother.”

He switched the rod with a knife. At that point, I stopped watching, feeling my eyes burn from the sting of the tears threatening to fall, and walked towards the staircase ahead of me. Still, I held my breath as I even so heard the cries of the centaurs that were dying because of me. I had spared their lives, but it had been all for nothing.

As I started to climb up the stairs, my guilt forced me to look towards the chains. And there they were, three hanging lifeless bodies, bloody and scorched and aching even in death. Three creatures, three lives I had refused to take. But it hadn’t mattered in the end: the simple obsession they’d contracted for their father’s murderer had taken them to their doom, and I couldn’t have done anything to help them.

Maximus had deserved to die. And I only killed those who deserved it. So, why were they dead either way?

I released a shaky breath and went up the stairs, reaching the little loft and the door. I tried to wipe the image of the centaurs from my mind and focus again. I reached for my pulse once more, hoping that paying mind to it would steady it. I took control over my breathing. And when I was certain I was calm again, I looked through the tiny sliver of the open door.

It looked like a picture. Everything was still, frozen, like a moment captured in time that wouldn’t move, budge. The room was tiny but large enough to house four people: Nathan, who, much to Neil’s dismay I imagined, looked like a bigger, larger version of the redhead boy; Lola, free of the Professor’s robe and wearing a thigh spandex suit from neck to toe, which only uncovered her long nails sharp like claws and her head; a big, giant man I didn’t know. And lastly, Neil.

Neil, whose hands were chained to the wall behind him.

Neil, who was on his knees.

Neil, who was breathing heavily.

Neil, who was looking at the ground.

Neil, whose clothes were all ripped into pieces.

Neil, who was bleeding all over from deep cuts on his upper body.

Neil, whose beautiful scar just under his cheekbone had been reopened and the wound enlarged. He had three big slashes there now.

Neil, whose tattoo on the cheek had been replaced by a nasty burn. And there were others of those on his body as well.

He was covered in injuries. My heart skipped a beat. He was alive, but he wasn’t alright. He was alive, but he was clearly in pain. He was alive, and I didn’t know how to help him. I looked back at the giant man who was chatting with Nathan: he had a knife in his hands. Lola, on the other hand, had a rod, just like the one they’d been using to scorch the centaurs. I felt my breathing pick up and hitch.

Tell me, Dumbledore, I thought, tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do now. I’m just one person in a den full of killers. I am a monster, I am a murderer, but I can’t save him. I can’t save us. What do you want me to do? What did you recruit me for?

I turned my eyes back to Neil. He wasn’t looking down at the floor anymore. No, he was looking directly at me. Could he see me? Was my panic affecting my magic, rendering it null, so that everyone could see me again? I looked down at my hands: they were still invisible. So, what the fuck was Neil looking at?

But he narrowed his eyes at the door ever so slightly, tilting his head just an inch to the side. For a moment, the corners of his lips looked like they wanted to curve up and make him smile, but he pursed his lips and glanced at his father on the other side of the room. I kept looking at him, wanting answers, not knowing how to get them, and then-

Andrew?, something in my head said.

No, I realized, not something. Someone.

It was Neil. It was his voice. His voice in my head. I took a step back, stumbling and catching myself before I could make any noise.

What the fuck? Did Neil just use bloody telepathy?

Notes:

HIYAAAAAAAAAAA PEOPLE HOW ARE WE FEELING? be nice like Kevin and don't lie

so we are in a bit of a pickle aren't we :D

first off, honorable mention to Nicky calling the tension between Kevin and Andrew because Kevin got injured "vaguely gay" THAT WAS SO REAL OF HIM EVEN IF HE GOT SUCKER PUNCHED FOR IT JAHDHK

the Foxes being like "nooo Andrew do not kill Riko... anyway" and then laughing about it because well they want Riko dead they're so funny

then, i couldn't not include the Kevin strangling scene. please do not interfere with Andrew and their hunting people, they WILL choke you to death, thank you :D

all that piece where Andrew reflects on how to save Neil and the differences between Neil and Nathaniel is just so... um. they know Neil so well, they know he wouldn't just take off.

i haven't explored the whole "wanting to run" part of Neil back story because it's less evident in this fic since he wasn't that long on the run with his mother and he settled at Hogwarts for a long time, but he still has those instincts, we just don't see them because this is from Andrew's POV.

trust me he's thought about it before but just like canon Neil he found his comfort in Andrew, then realized that Andrew couldn't possibly shield him from everything and that they would just get hurt in the process of saving him from Nathan so... yeah, we haven't seen that because it all happened in Neil's head BUT Andrew knows Neil so now they're catching up with Neil's thought process in that section and i think it's so wholesome the way Andrew just... gets Neil completely

bye i'm a simp for the two of them

SO the centaurs. Lucrezia and Maximus' sons... that was a bit harsh. there was a reason why i had them following Andrew around since that chapter of the second task, and i'm sorry because they did deserve better and i'm so sad. [btw the thing Lucrezia didn't want to tell the werewolf about and ultimately died for will happen in the next chapter lmao]

lastly, Neil is chained, battered and bruised AND CAN USE TELEPATHY???? yeah that will be explained when they're not surrounded by deadly werewolves with big knives but it will be explained lol trust me it's not really that deep

SOOOO THAT'S ALL sorry for the second cliffhanger back-to-back

i think i will be able to update next Monday but i have an exam that very same morning so if i fail i will be depressed and ultimately not be able to post :D i know i hate myself as well sorry

SEE YA NEXT WEEK (probably) BYEEEEEEEEE <3

Chapter 46: Work Song

Summary:

TW!
- depiction of gruesome murder
- depiction of injuries, bad ones
- depiction of torture
- it's a Baltimore retelling so... y'know, that happens, and also a little more than that lmao

It’s alright, he said in my head, I’ll explain everything.

Will you?, I thought back, and I stood there on the mezzanine wondering if I’d simply gone insane and was only talking to myself, You don’t look like you have much time to do it. What did they do to you?

A lot of things, he replied, My father didn’t like the tattoo Riko gave me. Lola took care of it for him. She’s been trying to shag him ever since my mum ran away.

That’s disgusting and deeply disturbing, I thought, So, are you alright?

Not really, he answered, and for once I was impressed he didn't simply lie and tell me that he was fine even if I could see that he wasn't, I’m hurting all over. I don’t even know where the pain is coming from.

I’ll get you out of here, I promised, determined to do just so, In a way or the other, we’ll find our way out.

Andrew, I could hear the way he was sighing in defeat, What are you doing here? This part of my life doesn’t belong with you.

Doesn’t it?, I countered, It’s the very reason I was brought here to begin with. I can’t walk away from it as much as you can’t.

Dumbledore was amazing, but he was an amazing bastard as well, he fought back, You don’t need to save me, Andrew. This was going to happen either way. You’re just a teenager, you can’t fight a whole den and I’m in no condition to help you. Besides, I’m only a teenager myself.

I won’t leave you at his mercy, I rebutted, I just won’t. Maybe you are right, maybe I can’t save you like Dumbledore wanted me to do, but I need to try.

I don’t want you to get hurt. I won’t fight with you on this. You need to get out before they notice you, even if I didn’t know one could do that with telepathy, Neil seemed to be screaming at me, yelling me to leave and turn my back on him.

I can’t do that, I pleaded, I know for certain I can’t do that. Don’t make me do that.

Andrew, Dumbledore never intended for you to die in the process of saving me and that’s precisely what will happen if you stay here. Your scent is getting stronger by the second and at one point my father is bound to pick up on it.

I don’t care, Neil. I don’t care what will happen to me. I need to get you out of here. That’s the only thing that matters.

And what then, huh?, he asked, forcefully, What if you die and I get out? I will be forced to run away again, and I’ll end up in an endless chase I can’t get out of. And I won’t even have you to save me, save me when it really matters, when you can really do it.

Don’t argue with me. I’m not doing it, I’m not leaving. I’m here, right? Why would I risk coming here if I knew I couldn’t do anything?

What can you do? I’m sorry, love, I don’t mean to underestimate your powers and abilities but these are fully grown werewolves. They’ll tear you to pieces and I can’t handle that. Don’t ask me to live through the pain of losing you.

I’m living through the pain of losing you, you dickhead, I clenched my fists at my sides, fighting within myself with an outer conscience, Don’t you think I’m suffering through that now? You would ask me to get out of the way and just accept that you’ll die here, even if I knew I could do something about it?

Wait, I could hear Neil panting in my head, out of breath like we’d really been screaming at each other out loud for this whole time, Wait, no, don’t say that.

What do you want me to say? It’s true. I’m already grieving you, Neil. A part of me knows this is fucking reckless and there’s no way we’ll get out of here alive. But I have to try. I have to try because dying here is better than living my whole life without you.

Andrew, I-

I know, I assured him, I know you can’t take seeing me getting hurt. I know because I can’t take you getting hurt either. But we have to do this.

There was a moment of silence on his part. I looked through the sliver of the door, only to see Neil watching his father as he tossed a cleaver with one hand and weighted an axe in his other one. Nathan told Lola that the axe felt especially good and, when Lola suggested to sharpen it, he refused, interrupting her quickly.

“Let it be dull,” Nathan sentenced, “It’ll take more time to skin him, that way. It’ll hurt more.”

“So?” the giant man, whose name I was yet to catch, asked to Nathan, “How will we proceed? We skin him, then kill him?”

Nathan seemed to ponder a moment. I held my breath as I watched them discuss the various ways they could’ve killed Nathaniel, each with a weapon of their own, while Neil gazed at them helplessly from his place against the wall.

“I like what Lola has done to him,” Nathan finally announced, “We’ll skin little pieces of him, cut them off, then burn the wound.”

“All of the hurting, none of the bleeding,” Lola snorted, “I love it.”

“He’ll die of exhaustion long before we can really give him the final blow,” the unknown man furrowed his brows, creating deep lines at the center of his forehead. He didn’t seem like a smart bloke, and that last sentence confirmed it.

For good measure, Lola swatted him from behind the head under Nathan’s cold stare.

“That doesn’t matter,” Nathan replied, low and vicious, threatening, “As long as he suffers, I don’t care how he dies.”

Lola’s grin grew bigger and bigger. The giant wore an understanding look on his face, hoping that maybe his alpha wouldn’t punish him for being so dense. Nathan simply tested the edge of the axe against one of his fingers, making it bleed. It smelled iron-y, rancid, moldy. I swallowed down harshly and looked back at Neil.

He was staring at the door again, somehow knowing he could’ve found me just there. His eyes were deep blue, like the sky in the starless nights of Scotland, like the sky I used to gaze at from my lonely cell in prison. His pink lips were bent downwards, and I hoped the werewolves couldn’t hear the way my heart broke.

Andrew, he began.

No, I cut him off, don’t. Tell me what to do. Tell me you have a plan.

Neil sighed. I wasn’t sure if I heard that with my own ears or if he was still speaking inside my head, like a fragment of my memory, like the worst part of my darkest imagination.

Alright, Neil finally conceded, I think maybe I can get out of these chains, but I can’t do it while they’re watching. Do something. Be a big enough threat and they’ll not think about it twice to leave me alone in this room for a couple of seconds. I don’t know what good it’ll be, but fighting them in two is better than one, right?

That’s a plan, I thought back, I’ll think of something. Will you be alright in here?

I think it’ll be a while before they start carving me, the way he said it, he almost seemed amused by it, So, you’re okay to go. If I scream, that’s your cue to hurry. Do you think you can handle that?

I’ll try, I simply replied before leaving the door and looking down at the room below me from the mezzanine.

What I had said to Neil was true. I had started grieving him the moment I realized he was gone along with Nathan, Lola and the other members of the pack he’d brought with him. I had started grieving him because that was how my brain dealt with complicated situations: it prepared me for inevitable pain, so that when the lightning really did strike me down, I accepted it more carelessly.

I had spent my life grieving something. Most of the time, even before I became what I had become, I grieved myself. I grieved the little, carefree child I had been; I grieved the person I could’ve become. I spent my life grieving someone I didn’t even know, I couldn’t have known.

Grieving constantly was what had made so emotionless. Grieving constantly was what allowed me to take a step back and not feel the pain every time something excruciating was happening to me. Grieving constantly was what allowed me to think rationally in situations where most people would’ve freaked out and gone feral.

Grieving constantly was what could’ve prevented me from beating Riko senseless the moment he'd touched Kevin. I knew better than to lose control like that, I knew better than to let my anger get to me in ways I couldn’t sense anything else but my soul burning for revenge and pain and suffering.

I knew better than that, but for a moment I believed there wouldn’t have been any problem with me losing my cool, because everything else was accounted for. Neil had been behind me just a moment before he’d been snatched away.

Because the fact that I had him back lead me to believe I could take comfort in that. It had lead me to believe that I had him and that was it. I was accustomed to the thought of grieving his absence, because ever since this thing between us had started I knew I would’ve lost him one day. Still, I never once grieved him in the more literal sense.

Renée’s loss had taken me by surprise and it almost ended me. It ended a part of me, to be sure. It ended the part of me that felt comfortable feeling all the positive emotions, that felt comfortable hugging someone or smiling baring all teeth.

The moment Neil was gone, it was so unexpected that it almost ended me then and there as well. I lost myself a bit more, I lost a piece of myself that was comfortable with loving someone with all your might and letting yourself be comfortable with them. And, even if I was determined to retrieve that part of me, I was also still grieving.

In my grief, I turned my eyes towards death.

I stepped out of myself, of my emotions and my panic. I stepped out of the part of me that was worried that Neil wouldn’t have made it out of this alive. I stepped out of the corner of my brain where I could still sense the fear in my thoughts.

I didn’t know how telepathy worked. I didn’t know if I only needed to project my thoughts towards him, or if he was the one to choose when and where to access my mind to read it and write it. I didn’t know if any of the things I wanted to do would’ve worked, and I didn’t want to screw up the basis.

Still, a little part of me thought long and hard about how I wished Neil knew I loved him.

And I wished that thought had reached him.

My gaze finally settled from the ground below me to the centaurs on the other side of the big room. I saw the wolf who had been torturing them laughing about something a girl in front of him had said. He was cleaning the rod and the knife, the rag drenched with blood. The same blood that was pooling on the floor, a few inches from his feet.

He didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to be affected by the fact that he had taken three lives in less than an hour, the same number of lives I had taken in my whole existence.

The thing was, I didn’t feel remorse for what I had done. I didn’t feel remorse for murdering the three people I took the lives of. But I questioned my methods, I questioned myself and my ethics. I didn’t feel remorse, but I let myself feel the slightest bit ashamed for the fact that I was a murderer.

Every time after I’d killed someone, I had needed a minute to assess my brain. I had needed a second to rewire my being, to make sure I was okay with what I had done. To make sure I still thought that was the only way to behave. And every time, I found I had been right. But still, I had needed that second. I hadn’t been out and about, chatting with people the moment I had finished to take the soul out of someone.

The way those people acted around pain. The way Tilda, Drake and Maximus had handled the ache of those in front of them, the way they had spat in the face of despair and had tried to ignore it in favor of themselves, the way they had caused pain in return, adding fire to fire. That was the way I determined whether someone deserved to die as well.

I pressed the palm of my hand on the hunting knife I had strapped on my thigh. I inhaled, exhaled, deeply and slowly, before taking the blade out of the sheath. Then, I went down the stairs, focusing on the way I breathed again. Slow, calm, steady. Ready.

I was ready.

If killing more people made someone more detached from the people they murdered, I guessed I had to find out whether I’d act like that wolf once I killed as many people as he’d killed. There was only one way to find that out.

I started with him. I approached him from behind, simply and sneakily, controlling my breath so he wouldn’t notice it even when I was so close to him. Then, in one swift motion, I slit his throat. His carotid started pumping the blood out of the gash, while his lifeless body slumped on the ground. His blood got mixed with the one of the centaurs’, pooling at my feet.

The girl who was in front of him and had been talking to him screamed in shock and pain and probably fear. She was my age, maybe a couple of years older. But someone who was so empty inside to be able to amiably converse right beside three corpses probably didn’t deserve to live either.

I stabbed her in the stomach, pushing the blade up so that it would slash open her abdomen. She screamed even louder, then suddenly stopped when I extracted the knife. Her eyes rolled at the back of her head and she fell to the ground with a thud, her guts spilling out of the slice, a muddle of blood and flesh.

I had noticed the rest of the den moving towards the spot of the accident, where the girl was previously standing. I kept breathing steadily, glancing at the door on the mezzanine to see whether it had opened, whether Nathan was witnessing the carnage I was about to make of his pack.

In the previous few months I had noticed another perk of spending more and more time as the panther – I turned into it every time I felt like pacing around my room, every time I went for a stroll around the grounds of the castle when it was dark out and everyone was waiting for the curfew in their own dorms – and it was that I was insanely fast, quicker than any other human.

I used my new speed to stab and slice and injure as many werewolves I could get to. I saw probably five bodies drop to the floor, echoing as they crashed against the metal, before someone noticed the bloody prints my boots were leaving on the pavement. With the element of surprise taken away, it was harder to kill more of them, but I still managed to escape their hands – ironically, they thought I was taller and aimed at nothing in particular while swinging for my face.

I kept stabbing and slicing and injuring. I cut one on the bend of his knee, and another one directly on across the side of her throat, and another one I stabbed in his arm before he collapsed from the pain and I crushed his windpipe under my shoes.

Every time a body dropped, I thought about everything Neil had ever told me about that pack.

They’d been hunting normal humans since Nathaniel was a baby.

One more body.

They were merciless with him, treating him with no respect because they figured he wasn’t enough to be the heir.

One more body.

They’d killed Nathaniel’s mother, leaving him to burn her body and fend for himself at eleven years old.

One more body, and one more, and one more.

One for every tear Nathaniel had ever shed for them. One for every scar on Neil’s body. One for every dent in the bite mark on his shoulder.

But I knew that I was dealing with the weakest part of the pack. Most of pack was locked inside their room, minding their business, coming out of there only when attracted by the inevitable cries of pain their friends emitted once they were hit. I knew I was dealing with the easy part of it. And Neil knew his father well enough to guess his precise reaction.

Before I knew it, Nathan, Lola and that giant man were standing on the mezzanine, watching as the members of the pack dropped like flies. I gave myself a moment to watch as his jaw clenched and his lips thinned out of anger before returning to my business.

What hadn’t occurred to them, seemed to hit Nathan almost immediately. With a flicker of his fingers, he lifted the spell on my clothes and on the knife. And suddenly I was there, dirty and bloody, with a clump of hair of a werewolf clutched in my hand while he was knelt in front of me.

For some reason, everyone from the pack stopped to look at me. I knew what they were thinking: is this the menace? Is this what are we supposed to fight? A simple child with a hunting knife? How is that even possible? But, beside the shock, they’d seen what I was able to do, so they stood still, waiting for orders.

I looked up at the mezzanine and tilted my own head to the side as I pressed the knife against the throat of the pleading wolf in front of me.

“Hello, Headmaster,” I called, because there was no use in running away, because I still preferred to die rather than to leave Neil alone in that mess. I slit the wolf’s throat forcefully and pushed him to the ground with the hand that was gripping his hair, “I gather I am summoned to your office?”

“DiMaccio,” Nathan sighed, “Go get that feral child.”

“Of course,” the giant man – DiMaccio, apparently – only nodded before starting to descend the stairs to get to me.

When he reached me, he wasted no time in getting rid of my knife, almost as if he knew that even if I had found the guts to use it against him it would’ve just turned against myself. He simply grabbed my arm and redirected me upstairs to the mezzanine and Nathan’s room.

Even if Neil was right about his father’s response to my ruckus, he hadn’t been right about the time it’d take for Nathan to take care of me. DiMaccio was too big for me to handle on my own and Nathan would’ve countered any magic I’d use against them without blinking an eye. So, we were back in the room when Neil had just managed to get his first hand out of the chains and has started working on the other.

“Going somewhere, puppy?” Lola taunted him.

Neil looked up at her, eyes wide in shock. His pupils jumped from Lola to his father’s wicked smile, which was so similar to Neil’s own, to DiMaccio’s hand around my arm. When he finally settled his gaze upon mine, his breath caught onto his lungs and I could see his eyes swell with tears.

“Andrew,” Neil whispered, “No.”

“It’s fine,” I shrugged, “The blood’s not mine. Took a page from your mother’s old book.”

“You- wait, what?” Neil blinked at me a few times before his attention was redirected to his father once more.

“Change of plans,” Nathan announced, with his low and threatening voice, a crazy grin still etched on his lips, “So, this is the powerful wizard Dumbledore was planning to line up against me. How disappointing.”

“I’m still in school, you know? Give me a couple more years and I bet I could take you down with a snap of my fingers,” I countered, but my answer was cut off by the sharp cry of pain I made after being kicked by DiMaccio on the bend of my knee. My body reacted naturally, and I found myself knelt on the ground.

“Andrew!” Neil cried out, maybe without meaning to. His father observed the reaction and smiled even wider, if that was possible.

“There it is,” he cooed, “Lola, give me the cleaver. We’ll have some fun with Andrew here before handling Nathaniel.”

“No,” Neil started pleading, “No, nonono. Father, you wanted to have me, right? You have me. I’m here.”

“Hush,” Nathan snapped at his son before turning his gaze back to me. Lola came back with the cleaver and he weighted it on his palm and tested the edge just like he’d done with the axe a few moments before, “Every time you speak, your little friend here takes a hit from one of us.”

“Father,” Neil began, but he shut up right after that when Nathan simply called his right-hand man.

“DiMaccio,” was all Nathan said, but it sounded as a complete order to the giant man behind me.

With few, strong and vicious moves, DiMaccio’s hand grasped my hair and started pulling them, dragging me across the floor as I tried to fight against his unnatural force. Like I weighed less than a feather, he picked me up by my hands and tied them to a chain that was dangling from the ceiling, similar to those the centaurs had been hanged from.

DiMaccio was a muscular man, hairy in all the visible parts of his body, arms, legs, the top of the chest and even his hands. He had a sharp smile, like he’d filed his teeth to look like fangs, but they were dirty and yellowed. His eyes were beady and black, and they smiled with him as he curved his lips in a wicked smirk before hitting me across the face with a vigorous punch.

“The more you fight,” he hissed at me, “The more fun I have. So, go on.”

I slowly raised my head from the angle it’d taken from the punch and I spat in his face, plain and simple.

“Have fun with that, will you?” I taunted him.

DiMaccio wiped his face with the back of his arm and then hit me again. It took a few moments for Nathan to approach me with the cleaver in hand, a few more for them to discuss where they should’ve started cutting me open. There was no plan, Nathan said.

“Do whatever feels good,” he ordered.

The tore my t-shirt apart and tossed it on the floor. The cut up my armbands and Neil’s breath hitched as he watched my arms being borne by his merciless father. All three of them took a moment to look at my forearms, at the several scars there, at the width of some of them, then, without a word, got to work.

I didn’t know what they expected from me, I didn’t know what the part they found enjoyable about hurting someone was, but I tried to give them nothing. I’d hissed through my teeth a couple of times as the edge of the blade hit my skin, but it was more because it was cold than because it hurt.

I felt the knives slash me open anywhere, everywhere. But I was used to the sting of a blade opening layers and layers of skin. I was used to the rush of blood coming out of it and wetting my body. I was used to the lightheadedness that came with all of that. So I didn’t utter a word, I didn’t let out a cry, I didn't make a move to try and free myself from their grip.

My vision was starting to blur, though. My head went from spinning to shutting down, my eyelids were struggling to stay open and my heart was steadily slowing down, down, down, till I couldn’t feel my heartbeat as clearly as I heard the ringing in my ears.

I moaned loudly, letting my head hang as I looked for Neil with the corners of my eyes. He was still there, knelt down. The bleeding of his own wounds had stopped, but he didn’t seem to care about that. He seemed focused, his expression completely blank as he stared at the scene in front of his eyes.

He wasn’t even looking back at me. He was glaring at the back of his father’s head, scowling at it as his lips twitched in pure rage. He kept staring and staring and staring as I started panting, gasping, wheezing.

Like he knew his father would just pay for the pain he was inflicting upon me.

 

---

 

Stuart Hatford was staring at the entrance of the den when he’d noticed the small blonde kid walking towards it. He’d been hiding in the bushes for hours now, waiting for the right moment to raid the den of the Wesninski pack and avenge his sister once and for all.

He’d never had confirmation from his nephew, but the mere fact that Mary hadn’t come to him upon arriving in England all those years ago was confirmation enough that Nathan had finally managed to take her out. He’d been keeping an eye on his rival’s pack ever since, still waiting and waiting and waiting for the right moment to take it down.

The moment had arrived, but he couldn’t explain the presence of that kid. The child intrigued and intimidated him, and he didn’t know what to do about him. He had a weird aura to him, like he was supposed to be something powerful, and he smelled like magic like no other wizard Stuart had ever encountered.

Stuart barely managed to stifle the gasp that wanted to escape his mouth when the little, small, apparently frail child began using wordless and wandless magic on himself and his clothes. What had looked like a delicate child was instead a powerful boy, packing muscle in his arms and body, packing strength in his soul.

Stuart only managed to glance at the knife strapped to the boy’s thigh before he completely disappeared under his own invisibility spell. Stuart then looked down at the leaves crunching under his veiled feet as the unknown boy entered the den.

He hadn’t known what his nephew had been up to. He hadn’t even known if Nathaniel had survived whatever had killed Mary. But he guessed that boy he’d just watched had something to do with him.

“Is it the time yet?” Isla asked in a hushed tone from behind Stuart.

The alpha just sighed, “Did you see that bloke?” he asked her back. When she nodded, he simply turned his gaze back at the entrance of the den, “Right. Let’s see what he brings to the table and then we go in.”

 

---

 

Punches after punches, slices after slashes, and at one point I couldn’t keep my blood pressure high enough anymore to see my surroundings. Neil was a pale spot in my vision with an odd red blotch at the top of his head, but I couldn’t manage to raise my head and look up at Nathan, Lola and DiMaccio anymore.

Neil was still staring at his father’s head. I didn’t know how much time I had spent hanging from that chain, but I knew from the icy blue of Neil’s eyes, from the swift snap of his head towards the door, that something was indeed coming.

Even if they’d been working on me, the trio hadn’t spared themselves from quick visits to Neil as well. He had a few more cuts now, but nothing was keeping him from resisting with his back straight and his eyes on his father.

When someone busted through the door, I barely heard the noise of the metal hitting the wall. There were noises and stomps and screams, but it all happened too quickly for my head to comprehend it. I only caught a few pieces of a conversation I knew, somehow, I wasn’t meant to hear.

Nathan was out of my field of sight, but I could hear his slow rasps, telling me he was alive but barely. He grunted and moaned, but no one came to his rescue: DiMaccio and Lola were probably dead, for whatever reason, and the rest of the pack had either fled or was dead as well.

“So, you are here indeed,” a stranger said, a man I couldn’t see, “Who’s that?”

“That’s Andrew,” Neil’s calm voice replied, “He’s my… um.”

“No need to explain,” the stranger dismissed that conversation, “You need to get out of here.”

There was a moment of silence. All I could hear was Nathan’s rasps merging with my gasps and wheezes.

“Uncle,” Neil voice was cold, dead like the bodies in the den, “May I?”

 

---

 

I managed not to pass out as I was escorted somewhere by someone I didn’t know. I tried not to cringe or recoil, wince away from the touch of the person that was carrying me, but I didn’t know whether it pissed me off more the fact that they were touching fresh cuts without a care in the world or that they were simply touching my bare skin.

At some point, I was put down on the grass. The ground was cold and wet from a rain I hadn’t witnessed. And to think that it’d only probably been less than two hours since I had left the castle to go and find Neil. Now there we were, on the grass of the Forbidden Forest, left there by unknown people that had rescued us from Nathan.

Neil was beside me in an instant, kneeling right next to me and smiling down kindly and gently like always. I wanted to reach out and touch his face, but my arms hurt at the mere thought. I moaned loudly and closed my eyes.

“I know, love, I know,” Neil whispered, “It’ll be over soon, I promise.”

“Liar,” I managed to croak.

Neil simply chuckled at my word. I knew he was in even worse shape than I was, but his injuries were older and most of the cuts on his body had healed even if partially. They would’ve needed some stitches to heal correctly, but at least he wasn’t actively bleeding like I was.

For some reason, I found that as a relief.

I never fainted because of my injuries, because I hated the thought of being unconscious, especially in a room full of people. I didn’t witness, though, what Neil’s uncle had let him do to his father. Still, from the ice in Neil’s voice while asking, I knew it hadn’t been fun for Nathan.

I didn’t have the physical strength to ask him, so I just laid there quietly, so much so that I probably fell asleep at some point. I wouldn’t dare to think of what was expecting me at Hogwarts, what changes had to be made now that Nathan and Lola were gone. But that was in the future, and the present ached too much to even contemplate that.

Time was escaping me. Neil was still watching me, even if his own eyes had started to close up a bit from the weariness. I focused on breathing in and out manually, adjusting my chest so it wouldn’t hurt when I did so. Then, faint stomps made the earth quake beneath me and Neil’s eyes shot up to see what was approaching. His jaw fell slack, his eyes panicked when he looked back at me.

“Andrew,” he panted, “There’s a giant. Well, I mean, he’s a little small to be a giant. Whatever it is, it’s big enough to squash us under its feet, and it’s coming this way.”

“A giant you say?” I rasped, “Ask him his name. If it’s Grop, then I might just know him.”

And it was true. As much as it was difficult to sneak out of the castle during Nathan’s reign of terror and even if I didn’t mention it to Neil nor Renée while she’d been alive, I’d kept my promise to Grop to be his friend. I visited him every once in a while, talked to him or just tried to play with him if he wanted me to. I’d visited him enough to find out he was Hagrid’s little brother, and that was why he lived in the Forest.

When I finally came into his field of view, I heard Grop’s gasp and two-stepped rush towards Neil and me. From what I could tell, since my sight was still a little blurred, he knelt down on the ground so he could look better at me.

“Hello,” Neil greeted him, trying to be friendly, which would’ve just made me laugh if I could’ve, “Is your name Grop by any chance?”

“Grop me,” the giant replied, “What happen to Andy?”

“Andy?” Neil seemed confused for a moment before he shot a glance in my direction and snorted, “You made him call you Andy?”

“He chose it,” I croaked, “I just allowed it.”

“You sensitive bastard,” Neil chuckled, “Say, Grop,” he called up to the giant, “Andy here is very very hurt, and I’m in too much pain to carry him. Would you be so kind to take us to the edge of the Forest so that someone from the castle can spot us?”

I moaned when I felt my body being picked up then placed onto the very big palm of the giant. He picked Neil next, clutching him in his other hand, then got me close to his face so I could reach out – even if it caused me a lot of pain, I made so he wouldn’t have noticed – and touch his forehead with my hand. He gave me a lopsided smile.

“Grop help Andy,” the giant nodded, “Andy friend of Grop.”

“Yes, big guy,” I replied, still a little groggy, “I’m your friend. Take us to the castle.”

Grop began walking, but by the time he left us on the ground and Neil thanked him I wasn’t really conscious anymore. I couldn’t say whether I was passing out, finally, or if I was just falling asleep because of exhaustion, now that I knew that we were safe enough for me to just tap out of the situation. Neil was still breathing heavily and I knew that he must’ve been in a lot of pain as well.

Still, he watched over me like a hawk, never even blinking so I wouldn’t be out of his sight.

“Hey,” he called every once in a while, snapping his fingers in front of my eyes, “Don’t faint, stay with me.”

I mumbled something in response every time, and he left it at that.

I couldn’t tell how much time later, a familiar voice found us.

“Neil, Andrew!” Wymack called us, “For fuck’s sake, what has happened to you?”

“Let me see, Neil. Let me see,” Abby knelt beside the redhead and began mending my most serious injuries.

After a while I gained my consciousness back and my pulse started to pick up again. I sat up slowly, raised a barely less sore arm and reached for my neck to check it. Finding it there, I reached in front of me to Neil with my other hand to check his. It was there.

We were alive.

Not well, but at least alive.

Wymack got us back to our feet and started for the castle. With Wymack marching in front of us and Abby casually stalking right behind us to keep an eye on both Neil and me, Neil asked if it was okay to lend me a hand with walking. I told him it was alright, and he made me put my arm around his shoulder as he snaked one around my back.

We limped our way back to the school. When the Hogwarts’ outline became finally visible, Neil seemed to breathe a little lighter. That was when I finally asked.

“Neil,” I called him. I was surprised it took him a moment to realize I was calling him, but then he turned his face towards me and offered a small smile, “Did you kill your father?”

“Well,” he sighed, “I guess my uncle did most of it. But yeah. Yeah, I did.”

Notes:

SURPRIIIIIIIIIISE

i'm writing more than i intend to and since the last one ended with a bad cliffhanger i thought i just might give you an early update

that's my excuse in case you're mad at me for what you've just read LMAO i'm so sorry

so... that was... not fun :D Andrew and Neil basically confessing their fear that the other would die before saying let's try and break out of this hell is just... i love them i cried while writing that

Andrew saying "took a page from your mother's old book" when they just finished slaying (both literally and metaphorically) I'M DEAD look Mary did a lot of things wrong but one of them wasn't taking down half of Nathan's pack when she ran away QUEEN BEHAVIOR

but then... Nathan torturing Andrew... TO BE CLEAR, what happens in Baltimore, all the shit that Lola and Nathan manage to do to Neil in the books, already happened before Andrew arrived, so Neil's not good at that point. It's insult added to injury that they do the very same, minus the burns, to Andrew as well while NEIL WATCHES i'm so cruel why did i ever write that

still, Uncle Stuart saves the day once more. The little pov from him was needed to explain wtf he was doing there in the first place, and the way he just looks at Andrew and thinks "that's a powerful ass wizard" IT SENT ME but yeah lol

so... what Neil does to Nathan........ i guess we'll never know, let's just say Neil had a FIELD TRIP with that one. Since I made Andrew kill Drake, it was fair for Neil to be the one who killed Nathan as well

but they couldn't have done that if Stuart hadn't stopped by. they'd be dead if it wasn't for him. remember that this was close to the full moon, so all the werewolves in the den are like super hyper strong and shit
Andrew is just that skilled™️ lmao

aaaaand Grop :) i love that dude lemme tell you. he's the sweetest. the way he calls Andrew "Andy" I'M UNDONE T.T

sooo this was the last bad chapter for a while. this fanfiction is coming to an end, sadly :( we'll just need to get through the last Hogwarts' year for Andrew and Neil and some "future" chapters, then we're done

but it may take a lot more, so stay tuned! i'll update as soon as I can, cross my heart

byeeeeee lovelies♥️

Chapter 47: Doing All Right

Summary:

TW!
- mentions of injuries (lightly described, nothing gory)

Surprisingly enough, Abby had to fight a lot for people to leave Neil and me alone with her enough so that she could check us out and heal us the best she could. Of course, since our injuries had been almost always made with muggle objects, they should’ve been erasable all together, but when we finally got to the infirmary, she had some issues with them.

When my head hit the pillow on the bed, that was when I finally gave myself permission to fully pass out. And I didn’t know how much time I’d been out until I was woken up by the faint light of the sun coming up and shining through the massive windows of the medical wing.

I blinked a few times. It had been almost night when Wymack had found us and now the Sun was at the horizon again, but I couldn’t really tell whether it was a sunset or a sunrise. I slowly sat up, surprised by how much my torso was still aching when I moved, and looked around to see if there was someone who could tell me how much time I had spent in that bed.

The first thing I saw was that I had a pair of armbands wrapped around my forearms. It made me sigh, realizing finally that Wymack and probably the whole group of Foxes had now seen me without them. The second thing I saw were faint scars all over my torso, pairing nicely with the three thick scars on my chest that Neil had given me more than a year before, now that the bedsheet had fallen off my naked body and uncovered just how much I had been hurt.

If I had to take a guess, I believed the cuts made with the unsharpened axe were the ones Abby had had more troubles with. A clean cut is easy to heal with magic, but a jagged one, in my experience, was more complicated. That was why I still had scars because of it, and it probably was also why it hurt so terribly.

On the bed right next to me, Neil was still sleeping. His body was covered by the sheets like mine had been just a moment before, but he had two big bandages on his face where I guessed the burn and the three new cuts were. I made a mental note to ask Abby why she didn’t heal Neil’s injuries with magic like she’d done with mine, but my train of thoughts was promptly interrupted by someone calling my name.

“Andrew!” I heard again, and I turned in the general direction of the voice before the face it belonged to came into focus, basically crashing onto my bed, “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, are you okay?”

“Remus?” I asked, blinking at his face a couple of times, “What are you doing here?”

“McGonagall called me,” he stated. Behind him, a very tired Sirius – he had purple and black bags under his eyes, and I had to restrain myself from asking if he’d been punched – walked towards Neil’s bed and sat next to it, clutching the redhead’s hand in his. I turned my attention back to Remus, “I’ve been here for the past two days, when they found you. Came through the Floo network. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up, I was with you the whole time, but they called me up in McGonagall office for some business and- Oh, it was so stupid, I should’ve said no and stayed here-”

“Remus,” I finally stopped him, pressing the palm of my hand against his chest, “Stop blabbering. I’m fine.”

“No, you aren’t!” he all but yelled at me, “Would you two knuckleheads stop with this ‘I’m fine’ nonsense? You two are never fine, especially when you’ve just been tortured by the largest and strongest pack of werewolves in the country.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I guess you’re right. I’m not… I mean…” I stammered, fighting the urge to suddenly break down and cry.

“Andrew,” Remus spoke softly, calling my name so I would look up at his eyes. They were brown like dark chocolate, sweet and kind. His scarred face, his ragged appearance had never posed an issue to me: he was just like that, a simple man with a simple problem. A kind man with a kind heart, “You’re safe, now. I’m here.”

It all caught up with me then. When Neil would’ve woken up, I could’ve put up the indestructible exterior again: I could’ve been his wall, I could’ve been his shoulder to cry on. His dad had died, he had murdered him, he had been kidnapped and tortured and everything bad that could’ve possibly happen, did. He had thought he was about to die and he’d buried Neil Abram Josten so deep he’d forgotten it was his name for a moment. He deserved a strong person, someone who could hold him up when he was feeling like throwing himself down. I could be that, when he woke up.

But all of that happened to me, too. And Neil was still sleeping. And I was so, so tired, and I didn’t have my best friend with me anymore, and I didn’t want to run and find the nearest razor blade and cut myself open again, and I didn’t want to hold my blank face up when I knew it wasn’t natural. It was natural most of the time, I really couldn’t shake that expressionless face off in any other case, but now…

“I was so fucking scared,” I cried, finally throwing my arms around Remus’s shoulder and sobbing against his sweater. It was warm and fluffy and I sank into it, “They cut me open, Remus. And I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of hurting me, so I didn’t cry, and I didn’t scream, I just took it and took it and took it and Neil was watching, they made him watch as they almost killed me and I… I…” I hiccupped and stopped talking, weeping and bawling my eyes out, gripping the fabric on the Professor’s back.

“I know, I know,” Remus pat me down, holding me tight. I felt him raise his head to shoot a glance in Sirius’s general direction and he sighed, “It must’ve been horrible.”

“And then,” I blubbered, after taking in a sharp breath, “And then when Neil was missing, I freaked the fuck out. I didn’t know what to do. My hands hurt – I had just beaten Riko up like, badly – and I didn’t know where he was and when I realized they’d taken him I choked Kevin, like I really strangled him-”

“I know,” Remus chuckled, “I saw the bruises. He refuses to get them healed until you see them too, just so you know.”

“But I couldn’t just sit idly by when Neil was being murdered!” I protested, screaming now, “I had to find him and I know that Kevin wouldn’t have just given up where the den was because he was afraid I could die. Well, I was afraid I could die but I had to… Neil was dying!”

“I know,” the man repeated for the third time, while I finally gave up talking, “I can’t say that you did the right thing, Andrew, but I do understand. Let it all out now, dearest. You’ll be fine.”

So, I violently sobbed in Remus’s arms for a whole hour, trying but utterly failing to explain my feelings, until he finally shushed me, urging me to breathe correctly, and I cried silently for a little more.

When I finally calmed down, my blank face was on again, and I despised it a little. But Remus was still by my side, and he smiled at me so fondly, I knew it didn’t matter that I didn’t know how and wasn’t able to express my emotions anymore.

I had someone in my life that was able to read me anyway.

 

---

 

I didn’t allow visitors, beside Remus, Sirius and Abby, until Neil woke up. Remus and Sirius switched places a couple of times, the black-haired man coming to my bed to chat with me while Remus watched over Neil and smoothed his red hair down with gentle caresses. With the sun coming down again after a whole day, Sirius urged me to get some rest and I, regrettably, complied, even if I asked him to wake me up in case Neil did.

But when Remus called me the next morning, Neil was still sound asleep. It took him a couple hours more to finally blink his eyes open and yawn loudly, only to jump up in Sirius’s arms when he finally realized who was hovering over him. Remus crossed the room to be by Neil’s side and I basked in the joy the redhead boy exuded with his arms wrapped around the necks of the two men.

Abby swung by a couple of minutes later, likely summoned by Remus, to explain to Neil why his injuries were healing differently from mine: the burns could only be cured with some special lotion of hers, but it would’ve taken some time to fully heal them and they would leave scars, nasty and noticeable ones; the cuts were easier to manage, but since most of them were already partially healed when she’d found us, they would leave scars as well.

She expected that all of the scarred tissue would disappear with proper usage of a lotion that she could prepare, but she couldn’t be sure of that and didn’t want to lead him on. However, if he wished, she could prepare the lotion and try it out with him. Neil gently declined the offer.

“I’m already full of scars,” he said, “I’m used to hiding my body, and you can’t keep taking care of my every injury till the day I drop six feet under.”

Abby laughed lightly at the implication, then glanced at Remus: it was evidently his time to explain what Neil and I had missed in the three days we’d been basically knocked out.

McGonagall had been chosen as the new school Headmaster and, given the year all of the students had experienced, had cut the school year short and cancel the end of the year exams. That prolonged holiday also meant that the students that regularly inhabited the school during the summer were expected to leave as well as the others, get themselves as far as they could from the toxic habitat the school had become for them.

Something told me that the last bit was particularly aimed at Neil and me.

The break would’ve started as soon as Neil recovered from the next full moon, that was just a couple of days from then, giving the time for everyone to decide what to do with the newly given free time and pack. Remus ordered me to stay out of sight during the next full moon: Neil was old enough now to recognize Remus scent and not attack him, so he’d take care of it instead of me. Sirius would stay nearby in his dog form, so that if anything went wrong, he would be able to stop it.

Neil and I listened carefully to every single detail, then gave the three of them permission to let the Foxes in to check on us if they wanted to. They spared no time in calling them in, and the whole group of friends rushed towards us with frantic eyes. They must’ve known, by then, what had happened, but still didn’t care. They didn’t care that I had even more murders on my conscience, they didn’t care that Neil took out his father.

That was the beauty of the Foxes: they acted all self-righteous and above it all, but really they didn’t give a fuck about who was a killer, who was a monster, who was a scary and dangerous werewolf. The only thing they cared about was that their friends had been in danger, risking their lives, and had barely gotten out of a lethal situation just to be on a hospital bed in front of them.

Dan started showering Abby with questions about what injuries Neil and I had on our bodies and what hurt. Matt was just behind her, arms crossed on his chest, a deep line in the middle of his eyebrows as he frowned like he was taking mental notes about every word spilling out of Abby’s mouth. Allison went to check on Neil’s injuries, even if the redhead boy was covered head to toe in gauze, and she reassured him that he was pretty regardless. Neil smiled fondly at her, even if I knew he didn’t care about being pretty or handsome. But Allison was right, he still was as gorgeous as ever.

Too caught up in the scene unfolding in front of my eyes, I didn’t notice the three boys sneaking up beside me until Kevin cleared his throat, making my head swivel in their direction. Remus had been right: Kevin’s neck was black and purple with a few hints of yellow, the faint outline of my hands noticeable on his fair skin. At each side of him, my brother and my cousin were wringing their hands, nervous even if I didn’t know why.

“You had to go and get yourself almost killed, didn’t you?” Kevin asked, cocking one of his eyebrows.

“You know me,” I deadpanned, “Death calls my name like a birdsong.”

Nicky whined at my response, his shoulders sinking forward even more, like he was drowning in himself. Aaron, on the other hand, sighed.

“You’re the only family I have left, since you took out the other half of it,” he stated, rather nonchalantly, which made Nicky whine again, “Try to stay alive long enough to be in my wedding at least.”

“And when would that be?” I asked in return, quite amused by his smart mouth.

“In a very, very distant future,” Aaron answered, only to step closer to my bed and sigh again, “How are you feeling?”

“Been better, I have to admit,” I shrugged, “Also, been much worse, so I can deal with it.”

“Oh Merlin, I’m so happy you’re alive,” Nicky finally caved, bursting into tears as he visibly and barely restrained himself from jumping into my arms like a madman.

Kevin put a hand on his shoulder for good measure, but Nicky only took that as an invitation to lean on the Gryffindor’s chest and weep on his shirt. Kevin’s eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t push the Hufflepuff off him, settling instead for uncomfortable pats on the top of his head. Aaron huffed a laugh at the scene, then returned to me.

“Have you heard about the early break?” he inquired.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “Are we going back to Luther’s house?”

“Actually,” Dan announced, her pointer finger raised like she was making some kind of intervention in class, her voice loud enough to disrupt every other conversation happening in the room. For good measure, Remus, Abby and Sirius stalked towards a farther corner and kept their own chat to a hum, so that we could hear what Dan was saying, “Matt and I had been thinking. What if we go on a trip together? As a group?”

“As a family,” Matt added, with a proud grin etched on his face.

“Such sentimentalism,” Aaron rolled his eyes, but I could see the way the corners of his mouth had twitched in a sort of a smile.

“So?” Dan urged, “What do you say? Allison has already agreed to it.”

“I don’t have much going on in my life,” the blonde girl shrugged.

“It’s fine by me,” Nicky, who was swiping his runny nose against the sleeve of his robe, chirped, “Erik is going back at his parents’ in Germany either way, so I wouldn’t have anywhere else to be.”

“If Nicky comes, I’ll tag along,” Aaron simply waved a hand in dismissal, his tone bored like he didn’t want to be there, but his heartbeat, which I could hear clearly, told me he was really excited about that whole thing.

Nobody bothered to look at Kevin: they knew he would follow me to the pits of Hell if I so decided to spend my spring break. So, they all expectantly turned to me instead. I, on the other hand, swiveled my head towards Neil.

“Do you feel like it?” I asked him, with a voice that could almost sound tender, unfazed by the wildered gazes the Foxes were sending me for openly interacting that way with Neil, in front of them.

“Look at Andrew,” Allison snickered, “Checking on his boyfrie- Sorry,” she quickly shut up under Neil’s venomous look.

The redhead boy finally turned to me as well, watching me intently in the eyes, so much so that I felt like he was reading my very soul. That was why I knew it was coming.

Would you be uncomfortable?, he asked in my head, Sharing a place with all of them? They’ll most likely put us both in a room together. They’ll try to figure this out and I don’t know if you’re ready for how nosey they can be.

It’s fine, I replied earnestly, It’s not like they don’t know that… this exists. They will vex me to no end and I will have to entertain a fun conversation with Aaron, but I can endure it if you want to go.

I want to, but I would never put you in a situation where you wouldn’t feel at ease. Especially after what just happened.

Neil, I’m fine, I urged, Let’s go on a trip with these idiots. You’ll have fun.

What about you? Will you have fun?

We’ll see about that.

“Um, hello?” Allison leaned forward and waved his arm between Neil’s eyes and my unwavering gaze, “Earth calls you both. Are you talking telepathically or something?”

“That’s stupid,” I commented, then turned to look at Dan, “Whatever, we’re in.”

“Yes!” Dan fist-bumped the air and made Matt chuckle, “Great, so we’re all in. We just have to decide where to go.”

“You can go-” Sirius began, then cut himself off the moment the whole group of friends turned to look at him with confused expressions on their faces. He blushed a little, to which Remus giggled, “Um, sorry, couldn’t help but overhear. I was just about to say that back in the day, my little brother and I bought a cottage in Cornwall to spend the summer with both of our friend groups. It’s big enough to host all of you, there’s plenty of space for couples…”

“I know that’s right,” Remus muttered, which only earned him an elbow planted directly in the side.

“As I was saying,” Sirius remained composed, “The only thing is, we haven’t used it a while. My brother and my friends passed during the first Great War, and Remus and I only went there when Harry, our son, was very little, so it might be a bit dusty.”

“But we can take you there and check out the place to see if there’s things that need adjusting,” Remus added, “Then we’ll leave it to you.”

“Wait, really?” Dan’s eyes gleamed with excitement as she started jumping up and down and running towards the two men to pull them into a fierce hug, “Thank you!”

“Well, so it’s settled,” Allison clapped her hands together, “We’re going to Cornwall, boys!”

 

---

 

The next few days were occupied by utter chaos. With people packing and preparing for our trip coming in and out of the medical wing, Abby finally gave up entirely and decided to discharge Neil and me, so she wouldn’t be bothered by loud teenagers anymore.

Neil’s moon went surprisingly well with Remus by his side, and nothing in the Forest seemed to have bothered them. When they finally came back, all tired and worn out from the night, they both crushed on their respective beds and left me and Sirius to deal with their luggage.

I, amiably, handed off the duty to Kevin instead, who absolved it rather diligently.

As my luggage had already been dealt with – by a very pissed-off Aaron and a slightly more compliant Nicky – I laid with my stomach down on Neil’s bed, my elbows propped on the mattress and my hands holding up my head while I watched Kevin fold Neil’s clothes and put them in the trunk.

“So,” I began at some point, quite bored with the situation and longing for some amusement, “Have you asked Daddy for permission for the trip?”

“What?” Kevin’s eyes shot in my direction, wide in shock, and the surprise in his voice told me that somehow he knew that I wasn’t just bluffing or teasing him for nothing, “W-what do you mean?”

“You know, maybe your father had plans for the both of you. Did you just blow him off or did you ask him permission to come with us?” I replied with a flat tone, ignoring his eyes and settling for checking my black-painted nails instead. The polish was chipped here and there, but I didn’t mind.

“You- wait, no- wait,” Kevin stammered, the shirt in his hands inevitably falling to the ground as his limbs went limp.

“Take your time,” I urged, “We have nowhere else to be. It’s not like we leave tomorrow.”

“How do you know who’s my father?” he finally found the strength to ask.

“You have the same eyes. It’s difficult to see, at first: he’s rugged and scruffy, and you’re so polished and refined. But if you look past the unkept stubble on his face, the tribal tattoos, and your very posh mannerism, it’s all there,” I explained, twirling my hand around as I did, “I gather you know who I’m talking about.”

“Yes. David- I mean, Coach Wymack,” he hastily corrected himself, “I don’t think he knows.”

“How did you find out?” I inquired.

Kevin simply sighed and bent over to pick up the shirt he’d dropped, just to begin folding clothes again as he narrated.

“A couple of years ago, Riko found a letter from my mother in Tetsuji’s office here,” his voice was lowered to a quiet hum, the corners of him lips tipped down in a small frown, “It was addressed to me, but it was opened and Riko knew for a fact that I never received it. Turned out, it was a letter she’d written a long time before, confessing me who my father was, which meant she knew even when she abandoned me to the Moriyamas in her will. Riko gave it to me, he watched as Jean and I skimmed through it and as my whole world came crumbling down at my feet. It was exhilarating to him. To me, not so much.

“From then on, I had to live with the burden of knowing my father was always a few steps away from me and not being able to ask for help. The abuse from Riko increased; Jean got the worst of it, but you know better than me how harsh he was with me too. And I couldn’t bring myself to let him know. He just sees me as what’s left of my mother, a woman he probably loved back when he was young, and I’m just a byproduct of a mistake they made.

“I don’t want to…” he finally sighed again, holding his breath for a couple of seconds before letting it out and closing his eyes, “The whole world tilted on its axis when I found out. I want him to live in peace. I don’t need a father and he doesn’t need a son, especially not one like me. Not one who’s so deeply fucked up.”

“I get that,” I nodded, “But I still think you should tell him,” when he opened his mouth to counter my statement, I raised a hand to stop him in his tracks, “You’re a human being, Kevin. Given, you’re as dumb as they make them and you’re as dull as they come, but you’re not just a chip off your mother’s block. You have her passion, you have her goals, you’ve been raised to be a star, but you’re not just that. You should know that.

“You have spent half of your life missing a woman who gave you the world and that the world has taken away from you. The other half of your life, you’ve spent enduring the endless abuse of your adoptive father and brother. And while I’m honored to have been given the purpose of defending you within an inch of my life, you deserve someone who looks after you because they love you. You may not need one, but you deserve a father.”

We simply stared at each other for a long time after that. I held Kevin’s gaze for as long as he wanted me to, for as long as it took him to comprehend what I’d just told him. In the end, he simply sighed for a third time, like that conversation had been straining him, pulling him in all the directions and threatening to shatter him.

“Fine,” he conceded, “I’ll tell him when we come back from our trip.”

“Atta boy,” I said sitting up, “Plus, it will be all the talk when we come back, so Neil won’t have to face all of the backlash of the news about his father going around, just about half of it. Speaking of whom, I’m going to check on him,” I kicked my legs off the bed and stood up, stretching out.

“Yeah, about that little red ball of chaos,” Kevin scoffed, “Grow a pair and tell him you’re a couple, will you? There’s no use denying it.”

“Out of my business, Day,” I jutted a warning finger at him, “I’m your guard dog, not your friend.”

“C’mon, after that whole speech you just made?” he raised one eyebrow, looking at me with a hint of sarcasm in his grass-green irises, “You may not admit it ever in your life, Andrew Minyard, but you like me. And that’s fine. Beyond every limit of my imagination, I actually like you too.”

“Is that so?” I tilted my head to the side, raking my eyes up and down his body, “Well, then. It looks like I’m growing a pair in the next few days.”

I left the room swiftly after that, Kevin’s loud laugh, a shrill sound I wasn’t used to hearing and that he probably didn’t let out much, ringing in my ears. I found myself biting back a small smile.

It felt good, gaining a friend.

 

---

 

Apparition had been taught in a course to those of us that were over seventeen years old, already of age and allowed to use that kind of magic out of school. Since Neil’s fake birthday was yet to come, that meant he was the only one of the Foxes who hadn’t learn how to do it.

Fortunately, Sirius had offered to apparate him at the cottage since they were going there as well, while Remus would’ve taken care of the group’s luggage and deliver it to the location. I didn’t know how they would do that, but I trusted them enough to leave it at that.

The cottage itself was in the middle of a vast rural area, and the isolated countryside, with its sporadic trees and its restless crickets singing out their loud song, was all I could see as far as my sight could reach. Somewhere far, though, I could hear the soothing sound of waves crashing on the shore, indicating that even if I couldn’t see it, the sea was close.

The cottage exterior was made of white bricks and a bright red door, almost too clean to be real, while the roof was made with some kind of black stone and had moss growing all over it. Vines grew all around the walls, with bloody red flowers sprouting here and there. Sirius, who had led us all there, ushered us inside swiftly.

He took us for a quick tour around. On the ground floor, right at the left of the entrance, there was a small kitchen, a square island at the center of it that served as a table as well. He showed us all the cupboards where we could find food and kitchen utensils, then moved on to the next room.

On the right of the front door there was the living room, with plenty of sofas and armchairs to house all of us, and a fireplace that connected us to the Floo network if we wanted, but was also a regular one. Far at the back of the room there was a big table, and Sirius explained that the room was so large that they’d used it as a dining room as well. Returning to the hallway, he showed a room hidden behind the stairs, on the hallway’s side of the kitchen, which also had a king-sized bed in it.

He then led us up the stairs, reaching the first floor and the hallway where the rest of the rooms were. He showed us them one by one as we picked and chose where everyone would sleep for the rest our stay. Neil and I, avoiding picking for ourselves, ended up with the room on the ground floor, which made Neil inevitably blush as the group snickered and Sirius sent us a knowing look.

At that point, Remus finally arrived with all of our luggage. We each split in our rooms, getting settled while Sirius and Remus checked the place for any bugs and bumps. A couple of hours later, we all gathered in the living room to say goodbye to the couple. They both left me and Neil for last. Sirius kindly asked to give me a hug, which I conceded, before going to check on Neil, asking him if any of his wounds – which were all still rather new and raw – hurt.

Remus then approached me and sighed.

“If you need any help, ask through the Floo network. Sirius and I have an apartment in London, but we’ll be here before you know it,” he announced, speaking all business-like, then he exhaled slowly, “I missed you deeply, Andrew.”

“Yeah,” I lowered my eyes, letting my head hang, “Yeah, I missed you too, Remus. Will King Fluffkins be fine?” I glanced at his black-haired husband.

“I’ll make sure Sirius doesn’t bite his head off when he turns into that big black dog,” Remus sighed, “He refuses to be trained.”

“I can imagine that.”

“You know,” he began, his voice lowered to a hushed tone, “Sirius and I have been thinking.”

“That sounds like something new,” I commented, which earned me a pissed-off look, “What is it?”

“We both know about Luther’s harsh manners and your past with him, with your foster brother and all,” Remus went on, “If you and Neil need a place to stay when this vacation is over, you can come stay with me and Sirius. I mean, even if you want to come alone… Once I told you that I see you like a son, and that didn’t change. What I mean is, Andrew, I-”

“I get it,” I interrupted him, offering him a tightlipped smile, the best one I could force out of myself, “I know what you mean. You… You and Sirius, you’re the first thing that felt like family after my ex foster mother. Neil has his family right here, and I have one too, but you…”

“Exactly,” Remus exhaled deeply, like a burden was finally lifted from his shoulder, “Exactly. So, you’ll take the offer into consideration?”

“I will,” I nodded, “I’ll stay in touch either way.”

“Right. Then, I’ll see you at school in September, in any case,” he smiled kindly, caressed the top of my head, tall as he was, and placed a soft kiss there, “Try your best to be alright, huh, kiddo? I’ll be there if you need me.”

“Mhm,” I hummed, biting the inside of my bottom lip, “Bye, Moony.”

Remus’s body shook with soft laughter, “Bye, dear.”

When we finally separated, he and Sirius started for the door. Followed by a plethora of goodbyes and see-you-laters, they waved at us on their way out. Ramus stuck his pointer finger out and gave us a warning look, suddenly back to his Professor’s manners.

“You lot behave, mh? Am I understood?” he inquired.

To my surprise, the rest of the group replied in unison with a submissive, “Yes, Professor.”

“Right,” he laughed loudly, a hint of dimples on his scarred cheeks as he walked out of the house.

All of us went to the big window in the living room that looked outside to the front yard of the cottage to watch as the two men snickered like a couple of teenagers and held hands while the apparated away. At that point, we all sighed and relaxed.

Neil was the first to approach me. I realized only then we hadn’t had a moment to ourselves since we’d come back from the den, and I was deeply saddened by it, my body longing his and yelling at me to jump at him and just kiss him then and there, it didn’t matter that we were in front of everyone. But I thought better of it: as much as I yearned for him, it probably was best for the both of us if we approached the whole touching thing a little slower than usual.

I leaned against the windowsill, the small of my back perched against it, and I crossed my arms on my chest as I watched him position himself right next to me, looking in at the Foxes scattering around the living room and chatting amongst themselves, his arms behind his back as his hands held onto the edge of the windowsill.

“What was that all about?” he asked, quietly, “With Remus.”

“Oh, yeah,” I nodded, “He offered me a place to stay when all of this ends. The vacation, I mean. He said you can come too.”

“That’s nice,” Neil nodded, “You kind of stole him from me, you know?”

“What can I say? I’m a charming bastard.”

“That you are,” he laughed lightly, just a scoff, before turning to look at me, “Are he and Sirius like… your parents now? Officially?”

“I don’t think he would ever offer to adopt me like they did with Harry,” I clarified, “Besides, I’m of age. I don’t need a legal guardian anymore. Still, it’s nice to know I have a home.”

“But would you say yes?” Neil insisted, “If they asked?”

“I don’t think so, no,” I shook my head, “I have Aaron and Nicky to think about. I can’t just leave them with Luther and Maria while I go and live my happy life with my happy little family, you know? They need me. They’re blood, a real family. I can’t abandon them.”

“I forget about the part where you three are actually related,” Neil scoffed again.

“Aaron and I are identical, Neil,” I remind him.

“You’re as different as you could be.”

“If you say so,” I shrugged.

“Still,” he went on, “Are you happy? To have fathers?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am,” I exhaled slowly, then, after a beat, I cleared my throat, “So, about tonight…”

“What about tonight, love?” Neil turned to me, eyes glinting with a playful gleam. I swallowed down harshly at the sight of it and the words died in my throat, rendering me speechless.

Fortunately, I was saved by Dan’s loud clap of hands, her way to gather the attention of every person in the room. We all fell silent and swiveled our head toward her, who was standing at the center of the living room with her fists on her hips in some kind of superhero pose. She was grinning widely, and Matt was looking at her like she was fresh water and he hadn’t drank in days.

“Foxes,” she announced, falling in her natural state of captain, “Let’s have fun, shall we?”

Notes:

HIYAAAAAAA

okay so after the damage i did the last time i thought i owed you a couple of touchy-feely chapters lmao the next one is even softer i promise

so let's dive into it

Andrew having a small breakdown :') my baby is fine, i swear, they just need a little time. we have to remember that Andrew has been tortured before - when he was in Proust's care - and that last time they didn't show any sign of a mental breakdown, just of anger. so that's why this time they're probably hurt even more, feeling safe enough to let themself unravel in front of someone

Remus and Sirius as the DADDIES we all love and adore

there have been a few changes around the school, but we'll see them in detail once the Foxes go back to it after this so called "Spring break" which will take all summer too but who cares lmao they needed it

the foxes group vacation!!! Yay!!! remember that it means trouble on Riko's side of things (just not yet, as I said the next few chapters are fluffy and warm and comforting - and a little spicy)

speaking of ZADDIES, LADIES AND GENS, Kevin is going to talk to Wymack... is he tho???? we'll see how that plays out for him, also soft Kandrew moment for everyone buhbye (they'll never speak of it they hate themselves for even letting it happen we all know that)

lastly, the house in Cornwall and another cute moment between Daddy Remus and baby Andrew. The way he calls them "dear" BYE i have daddy issues these things wreck me

oh and the end of the convo with Neil and Andrew... did i tell you that a few chapters are spicy, yeah....? ehehe

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, SEE YA NEXT WEEK
leave some love if you liked the chapter!!

bye loveliesssss

Chapter 48: Would that I

Summary:

TW!

- depiction of a really minor injury (mention of blood)

Nicky offered to cook dinner and he was able to get Aaron and Matt to cooperate enough to help him with what needed to be done. After we ate, quietly chatting at the big table in the living/dining room – I sat next to Neil, stuck between him and Kevin, and silently listened to every conversation he was partaking, enjoying the way his smile came easily and his laugh was a light and comforting sound – those of us who hadn’t cooked offered to clean up.

“Not you, Andrew,” Dan stopped me on her way to the kitchen, “We need you for something else.”

Confused – but rather glad I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of dirty dishes with chunks of food stuck to them –, I sat on the sofa and closed my eyes, leaning my head back so it could rest on the soft cushions, and I waited to be called in the kitchen for whatever they needed me to do. 

It was Allison that, eventually, came to get me. I opened just one of my eyes to look at her through heavy eyelids.

“So,” she began, a smirk pulling at the corner of her lips as she raked me up and down, “You fucked that bartender at the Inn, didn’t you?”

Somewhere near the entrance of the living room, Neil stopped right in his tracks to look at Allison with murder in his eyes. I spared him half a glance, the other half meant to take in Nicky’s and Kevin’s jaw-slacked faces and Aaron’s deeply disgusted one, before opening my other eye to look better at the blonde girl in front of me.

“You mean Roland?” I asked, tone flat.

“Yeah, the one Neil had to save in the second task of the Triwizard,” she smiled more widely now, still wicked, “He was kind of cute, I have to give you that.”

“Thank you,” I responded, “He’s quite fun as well. Why are you getting in my business all of the sudden, may I ask?”

“Did you learn one trick or two from him?” Allison finally inquired, to which I shrugged.

“I never asked him to teach me, but I watched him mix some drinks while I waited for his shift to end,” I conceded, “I didn’t linger on the labels but if we’ve got some of the same bottles, I could probably mix something up.”

“Aren’t you a good boy?” the blonde girl grinned, “Nicky stuffed some alcohol in your luggage, so he’ll get that in the kitchen and you can work something out.”

“I don’t take orders from you, Reynolds,” I simply stated, bored, as I sunk more into the sofa’s cushion.

“Oh, come on,” her smile was mean and vicious, “It’s just a drink. Last I checked, your boyfriend got my girlfriend killed, so I think you do owe me a favor.”

The air shifted when I heard Neil’s quiet gasp. I didn’t think anyone else, even if they were close to him, had heard him, but it was enough that I did. And I wouldn’t tolerate him being hurt by a sassy, petty, dumb blonde bitch who was left alone and bitter by my best friend’s demise. I silently asked Renée to forgive me for what was about to happen.

I stood up, quickly and light on my feet, so much so that being taller than me didn’t matter as I pushed her to her knees and twirled her around, blocking her on the ground with her head tipped back, the blade of the Swiss-army knife hidden in my armbands pushed against the column of her throat. She whimpered at the touch of the cold metal, but other than that she remained fairly calm. I looked down at her with my blank stare and tilted my head to the side.

“Say that again. I dare you,” I taunted, “Say that again and see what happens.”

She sealed her lips tight, but as much as I could be fast the commotion started soon after. From Matt screaming ‘oi, mate, leave her alone!’, to Nicky’s face paling by the minute, to Aaron’s widened eyes and hesitant steps in my way, to Dan’s furious rage flaming in her black irises. Neil was the last one to get near me, his face not showing any signs of worry or fear.

“Go on,” he sighed, “Let her go.”

“I don’t think I will,” I replied calmy, not bothering to look down as I pressed the blade down a little more. Allison flinched against my leg, but nothing else.

“You know,” Neil crossed his arms on his chest, “Renée wouldn’t be happy about this.”

“She’s dead. She can be unhappy in the afterlife,” I simply stated, “Maybe she’d be happy to see her girlfriend again.”

“I really doubt that,” Neil scoffed, “She didn’t want her to die. She loved her.”

“Never really understood why,” I countered.

“But she did anyway,” Neil added softly, “Let Allison go, Andrew.”

“Or what?”

Neil didn’t answer that. He simply gave me a pointed look, a knowing expression on his face that only hinted at the fact that I’d be in trouble. Didn’t know what kind of trouble, but I didn’t wish to find out either. So, I let Allison’s neck go and I pushed her forward from her shoulder, so that she stumbled and had to catch herself before falling face-first on the floor.

“Thank you,” Neil said, but I was already pushing past him, headed towards the kitchen. I didn’t turn back as I heard him again, saying, “Just let him go,” snatching a squared bottle with a brown-ish looking liquor from the kitchen island before sneaking into my room.

There, finally alone after days spent around that godforsaken group of intolerable people, which I only hung out with to make sure Neil was around them enough to be happy, I jumped onto my bed. Rather absent-mindedly, I fell on the side of the bed I was used to occupy when Neil and I slept together at Hogwarts too. I looked at the empty pillow at my side and sighed.

“Well, night one is ruined, then,” I spoke to myself, then promptly rolled my eyes, “Great, now I’m also going mad.”

I screwed off the bottle’s cap and took a long and rushed swig. I felt the liquor, whatever it was, burn down my throat and form a pile of burning ashes all the way down into my unwilling stomach, which only accepted its fate. I didn’t flinch as the liquid stung my tongue and the inside of my mouth, nor didn’t I exhale sourly as I detached my lips from the bottle.

Strangely, I’d liked that feeling. The scalding sensation, the feeble hurting that came with it. I stripped off my armbands and leaned over the nightstand to choose where to put the knives I didn’t go anywhere without. Most of them went into the bottom drawer, but I left one out, planning to put it under my pillow once I was off to sleep.

In the meantime, I started playing with it, flipping it in the air and catching it by the blade. And I waited.

 

---

 

Neil came by, finally, two hours later.

The bottle was two-thirds gone by then, and my head was spinning a little. Nicky’s tapas and Spanish tortilla had done nothing to ease up the inevitable hungover I was doomed to face in the morning, but at least they did make me feel a bit less drunk. With the drugs Proust had forced into my body, my tolerance of alcohol had gone up a notch and I didn’t really feel tipsy at that moment. My attention was still sharp and I was still tossing up the knife. I hadn’t gotten any cuts up until then.

Neil suspiciously eyed the bottle, his back pressed against the door he’d just closed, before looking up at me. He glanced at the empty space next to me and faintly smiled, probably enjoying how I had chosen to sleep on my predetermined side of the bed. Eventually, he sighed.

“That was not a good start of the vacation,” he muttered.

“Did you have fun afterwards?” I asked.

“Well, kind of. Allison was still shaken, and Aaron kept wanting to come in here to talk to you, but Dan whipped out some boardgames and they forgot about it,” he explained as he walked slowly towards the bed.

“Then don’t vex me about it,” I all but snapped at him.

He stopped, giving me an unimpressed, bored, utterly unfazed look. I held his gaze, for as much as he wanted me to, but eventually I closed my eyes and sighed.

“Would you like to explain to me what happened back there?” Neil prompted, finally crawling into bed and positioning himself so that he would face me, his legs bent in front of him.

“She put Renée’s murder on you. I couldn’t just do nothing.”

“I can defend myself,” Neil replied.

“Well, I did it instead,” I countered.

“I’m not sure that’s all of it.”

“Ugh, what do you want me to say?” I narrowed my eyes, looking at him through half-lidded hues and going back to flip the knife in my hand. I felt Neil’s eyes burning my skin as he stared intently at my face, waiting for answers to his unspoken questions, “I don’t like when she uses Renée’s death like that. It’s like she’s saying I didn’t really love Renée because I didn’t give you a hard time for it. Like I shouldn’t… like this,” I moved a finger between me and him, “shouldn’t exist because somehow you were involved in her death.”

“Maybe she has a point,” Neil whispered.

“She doesn’t, Neil,” I answered, hard and decisive. Neil placed his hand on the mattress and slid it in my direction. I took the silent invitation, lacing my free fingers with his, “I’m to blame as much as you are. They killed her to hurt me, because I was the one supposed to protect you. If they wanted to hurt you directly, they would’ve probably killed Matt off.”

“That’s true,” Neil nodded, “But still-”

“We already talked about this. She’s dead. No matter how much you apologize, no matter how much I don’t talk and eat and move, no matter how much Allison cries, Renée’s not going to fucking resuscitate,” I announced, looking down at our intertwined fingers and squeezing them a bit, “She was mauled, Neil. She was lucky enough to ever get to the castle and say her goodbyes.”

“Andrew…”

“She was all I had,” I swallowed down a lump forming in my throat, “You and I, we had our ups and downs. Mostly downs until then. But she was consistent, from the day I met her on the train. And I’m sick of being reminded that I’ve lost her. I’m sick of hearing Allison’s complaints, because she wasn’t the only one that grieved. I had to grieve while I was fucking drugged up and assaulted but I don’t bitch about it like she does.”

“Oi, love,” Neil reached out with his free hand, his palm hovering over my cheek in a gesture of cupping it, but without touching me. He always waited for me to be the one who initiated contact. So, I was the one to slowly ease into it, melting against him, “we don’t have to talk about it. You just have to promise me you’ll talk to her eventually. I don’t want you to apologize, I just want you to talk to her. Can you do that?”

“I don’t take orders from you, either,” I muttered, mumbling under my breath.

“I’m asking, not demanding,” Neil offered me a small smile as he caressed my cheek.

“Fine,” I sighed, “I’ll talk to her.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, winking at me knowingly before detaching every of his limbs from my body. He kicked his legs out of the bed and stood up, headed for his trunk, “Now, let’s get ready for bed, shall we?”

I nodded, placing the knife under the pillow and stalking towards my own luggage and opening it up to fish out some jogger shorts and a very old, very dirty t-shirt. I stripped off my shirt first, placing it on the edge of the trunk, thinking that I’d just fold it the next morning.

As I straightened back up to put my t-shirt on, I found Neil staring at me, at my bare torso, with his mouth slightly agape. His eyes swept over my body, fixating on the three big scars on my chest and the countless new and fainter ones.

“What?” I asked, crumpling my shirt so it’d be easier to find the neck hole.

“You- I mean, um,” he licked his lips that were probably starting to dry, “The scars. On your… abs.”

“I don’t think they’re that noticeable,” I commented, looking down on my stomach. There were thin stripes everywhere, some crossing each other even, but they were just ever so slightly whiter than the rest of my skin, “Are they upsetting you? Should I change somewhere were you don’t see them?”

“No! I… I mean, no… I mean,” Neil shook his head vehemently, squeezing his eyes shut, “Fuck, this is hard. What I was about to say is that… One time, you said that my scars made me prettier. Yours do too.”

“I’m pretty, eh?” I gave him a condescending look, smirking slightly, “Did you get mad before? When Allison mentioned Roland?”

It looked like my question caught him off-guard, since his eyes snapped from my bare chest to my face, narrowing down to little slits who were watching me like they could skin me alive.

“He thought I was pretty too,” I shrugged, “Would you blame him?”

“Stop teasing me,” Neil demanded. I tilted my head to the side, “It’s just- I don’t-”

“You what, darling?” I stepped close to Neil, my shirt long forgotten and slung on my shoulder as one my hand unbuckled the belt at my hips.

Neil’s face grew redder by the second, looking down at my jeans, but it put my knuckle under his chin and pushed his face up. As close as we were, my lips brushed against his as I talked, “Don’t get all shy on me now.”

“Andrew,” he whispered, his voice quivering and his neck hot under my touch as my hand slid there from his chin, “Y-You’re drunk.”

“I might be, yes,” I replied, purposely pushing my mouth against his a little more. Neil seemed to tense a little, so I let go and stepped back, “I better go drink some water. To sober up.”

“What?” Neil all but screamed, “Wait. What?”

I slid my armbands on, slid my belt off, and walked backwards towards the door. The house had been quiet for a long time, no one should’ve been up and roaming around, so I didn’t bother putting on a shirt or worrying that my pants were hanging low, but I still was cautious about my arms.

I was right to do it.

 

---

 

There was a dim blue light in the kitchen, the halo of someone’s wand being lit up to see in the utter darkness the cottage had fallen into now that everyone was headed for a good night’s sleep. When I entered it, I saw Allison on her toes trying to reach a glass in one tall cabinet. She struggled, her wand placed on the counter as she stretched a hand upwards, her cheeks tear stained.

“Need any help?” I prompted.

She startled, swore loudly, and the glass she was trying to reach fell to the ground, shattering in a lot of pieces. She looked down at the mess she’d made and then glared at me.

“Would you walk louder, you monster?” she hissed, eyes bloodshot with past tears and new rage.

“I really don’t think that’s a me problem,” I shrugged, circumnavigating the millions of shards of glass and her as well to get to the fridge right behind her. I opened it and inspected it for a bottle of water.

“Of course you don’t,” she scoffed, crouching down to pick up the pieces and presumably throw them away.

As I closed the fridge door, I heard her swear again behind my back, this time quietly, under her breath, like she didn’t want me to hear. I twirled around and looked down at her, our position scarily similar to the one I was holding her into a few hours before, just to see blood coming out of her hand.

“You really are a dumb blonde, aren’t you?” I commented and placed the bottle of water on the counter next to her wand, just to circle around her again and kneeling down in front of her, offering her my hand, “Let me see.”

“What are you doing?” she clutched her hurt hand in her other one, holding it close to her chest.

“I know healing spells, remember?” I rolled my eyes, “I said, let me see.”

“You’re not going to turn my hand into a tentacle?” she replied, hesitantly putting her hand on my palm, her own palm facing me.

“Well,” I muttered, inspecting her wound, carefully maneuvering her hand in mine, “Don’t give me ideas now, will you?”

There was a big shard of glass coming out of her palm, piercing her skin, stained with her blood. But it didn’t come out on the other side, so it wasn’t that deep. I sighed, gripping the piece with my fingers and wiggling it slightly to see if there was any give, but it stayed mostly still as she gritted her teeth and hissed again.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, “This is going to hurt. Bite something.”

She put the soft flesh between her thumb and pointer finger between her teeth and waited for me to do something, her eyes swelling up with tears already. Trying not to cause more harm than good, I pulled out the shard from her skin in one swift motion and set it down on the floor again, before hastily covering her palm with my free hand and healing it with a spell. When I felt it was done, I looked down to see if there was a scar left, but her palm was clear. I looked back up at her face again.

“There, all fixed,” I announced, before snapping my fingers so that the broken pieces on the floor could be merged into the glass again. Allison watched me wordlessly as I picked it up, stood up and set it on the counter, “Nobody needs to know what happened. Did you want some water?”

“Whatever,” she just muttered, still knelt on the ground and staring ahead at nothing in particular, “You’re still a freak.”

“That’s the understatement of the year,” I simply replied, twirling my finger to make another glass levitate down from the cabinet to the counter so that I could have, at least, the glass of water I was there for in the first place, “Were you crying because of me?”

“Sort of,” she admitted, then finally pushed to her feet again. She bit down her lip as she hoisted herself up to sit on the counter, picking up her own glass and holding it in front of me expectantly. I poured us both some water, then she spoke again after a bit, “You really scared me before.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I know I can be rather scary. It’s not your fault I’m wired this way, but I can’t help it. Still, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.”

There was a moment of silence as I watched her from the down up, over the glass I was pushing against my lips, while she just stared at the wall in front of her. She kept nibbling at her bottom lip, tugging at the dry skin there with her teeth.

“I’m sorry about what I said,” she spoke again after some time, “Neil apologized already for what happened to Renée, but he shouldn’t have done it in the first place. His father was to blame, and it’s not like he liked him anyway. It’s not fair of me to hold this against the both of you.”

“I’m glad you know that,” I simply replied.

“I just really miss her,” her breath hitched as she looked down at the glass in her lap, tracing the rim with her fingertip, “I don’t… I don’t understand why she had to be taken away from me. I loved her. I’ve never loved someone like I’ve loved her. Seth was different. He broke my heart. I loved him, yes, but R-Renée…”

I followed the motion of her hand around the glass with my eyes, then lifted my gaze upon her face. She was frowning.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, “Why me, out of all people?”

“Because,” she drew in a sharp breath, then exhaled it slowly, tears falling down on her cheeks again, “I know you miss her too. When she died you basically shut down. I thought… I thought maybe you could understand how I’m feeling.”

I considered her for a minute longer before moving, pouring myself another cup of water and then opening the fridge to put the bottle back in it. I swallowed down the liquid quickly, feeling my tipsy brain steadying itself already, then walked toward the sink and set the glass down in there. I then sighed, gripping the edge of the counter and fixing my gaze on the glimmering silver shade of the sink., the moonlight coming from the window reflecting on it.  

“You know,” I said, “She really… She used to talk to me about you, when you started seeing each other. It was so childish, the way she blushed and giggled and kicked her feet on my bed talking about how pretty you were and how you held her hand for half a minute, which to her meant that you were deeply and helplessly in love with her.”

I finally looked up at Allison again, found that she was already staring at me, her lips slightly parted and her eyes glinting, the tears pooled on her lashes shining from the light coming from her wand. She was watching me expectantly, wanting me to keep talking, wanting me to tell her more. So, I went on.

“Renée… she was the same as me and my complete opposite,” I breathed, “She was energetic and she felt all her emotions deeply, she let everything get to her core, she was sweet and kind and everything I’ll never be. And she loved you. I know you think that she was cruel for not letting you spend her last night with her, I know you resent me for being the one she allowed at her bedside while you were pushed away.”

Allison hiccupped and startled, not expecting me to read that much into her, not expecting me to know anything about her mind and soul, not expecting me to be right about something.

“But trust me, it was for the best,” I simply whispered, “She was scared of dying, she didn’t want to be alone: that was why she needed me to be there. It would’ve been you, really, in any other case. It’s not that she loved me more than she did you. But she died in pain, Allison, it was torture to witness. And it pained her even more to look you in the eyes and know you’d never think about her in any way other than her lying there, torn to pieces, on that hospital bed.

“She wanted you to remember her as you do now: she wanted you to remember the happy Renée, the one that laughed with all her the air in her lungs, the one that was chatty and bubbly, the one that kissed all the knuckles of your hand when you felt insecure, the one that comforted you, not the one that needed to be comforted.

“I’m sorry to have stolen her last moments from you. She never meant for you to feel forgotten or put aside, she never meant,” I exhaled shakily, gripping the edge of the counter tighter and tighter, my knuckles growing whiter, “She never meant for you to feel left out. She just wanted you to remember all the good times, and her dying in front of your very eyes would’ve erased them completely.”

“Andrew…” she murmured, her hand hesitantly reaching out for mine. I slid it further from her, biting down my lips.

“I have an eidetic memory. Did she ever tell you that?” I asked, forcefully, emotions washing over me like a waterfall and drowning me in the process. I was sober, all of the sudden, sober and angry, and sad, and in mourning again, “I remember everything. I remember spending the night stroking her white hair. I remember the ragged breaths that came out of her torn lungs. I remember every single detail. But she knew, because she knew my fucked up mind more than anyone else on this Earth, that seeing her like that wouldn’t make me forget the good times. I wouldn’t forget, because I can’t. I physiologically can’t forget anything about her. That’s why she chose me.”

“I get it,” she nodded slightly.

“Of course I miss her,” I conceded, “I think about her every waking moment of my life. Now, I think about the fact that I got to make it out of this stupid fight against Neil’s father and she didn’t. I will be crushed by survivor’s guilt before I stop missing her.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“Because after almost killing you for saying half a bad thing about Neil, I think I owe you that much,” I shrugged, exhaling and letting go of my emotions once more, returning to my blank face, “The thing is, Renée loved us both equally. And Neil was right, she’d never want us to fight for her. So, truce?” I asked, holding out my hand for her to take.

“If you promise to never attempt at my life again,” Allison chuckled, shaking it firmly before letting go.

“I better go back to my room, Neil must think I died or something,” I backtracked a few steps, “Bye, then.”

“Oi,” she called once I had my back turned to her and was heading out of the kitchen, a playful, small smile curling her lips, “Are you treating him right, like I asked?”

“I’m trying,” I answered.

“Good. Sleep well, Andrew.”

“Goodnight, Alls.”

 

---

 

When I reached my room, Neil was already tucked up in bed, laying on his side, back to my own side of the bed. Thinking he was already asleep, I quietly shimmied out of my jeans and armbands and finally put on my shorts and t-shirt, then snuck into the bed, sitting with my back against the headpost. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back to lean it against the wall, then began breathing in and out, slowly, to calm myself down.

“I heard Allison’s voice,” Neil said, abruptly, which made me open the eye closest to him and watch at how he’d turned to face me. He was looking at me from the down up, only his icy hues visible as his face was buried in the sheets, “Everything alright?”

“M-mh,” I hummed, “We talked. Like you asked.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he cooed back at me, “Are you alright?”

“Why don’t you read my mind and find out?” I taunted him, closing my eye again.

“It doesn’t really… work like that,” Neil sighed, “Talk to me, love.”

I slid down on the mattress, laying on my own side so I could be turned in his direction, tucking my arm under the pillow and I simply stopped there, eyeing him, whatever was visible of him from the sheets.

“Tell me how,” I replied, “How that telepathy thing works.”

“It’s not that deep,” he sighed again, but ultimately pushed the sheets away so I could see his whole face. He lowered his gaze on his hands, fidgeting with his fingers, “It’s an ability werewolves develop when they’re really close to someone. I can’t just do it with anyone. Usually, it only works for people who are in the same pack. Remus can do it with Sirius, he says. My father can do it. I… I discovered I could last year when you and Remus were talking about your wandless magic. You thought that you couldn’t handle that conversation anymore, or something like that, that you were scared, and I just… heard it.”

“So,” I nodded, “that’s why you stormed in there like you owned the place and demanded I’d leave.”

“You sounded pained,” he countered, earnestly, “I couldn’t just leave you in pain, could I?”

“I guess I understand that,” I bit the inside of my cheek, “So, you can access my mind at any given moment?”

“I can, but I don’t really do it,” he answered, “I believe in privacy. It’s usually you that send your thoughts to me, however unconsciously. I can’t… not hear them, if you send them my way.”

I considered his words and really thought about it, tossing and turning them in my mind. I reminded myself about all the time I just thought out loud, projecting my reflections onto the universe, willing the people around me to understand even if I wasn’t uttering a word.

The time Neil had busted into Remus’s office, that had been the first time Neil had seemed like he was reading my mind. A couple of times after that, I’d noticed how he simply showed up when I thought I needed him, or when I yearned for something, even when I didn’t express my needs in words. He seemed to just know. And now, I knew I was subconsciously letting him know, while he simply just heard me every time.

I decided I needed more control over that, so I needed to try it out, wanting to know how it worked so that I wouldn’t just project my every meditation into Neil’s head. That would’ve probably just killed him, my thoughts were too much even for me to handle.

I closed my eyes, slowly, and thought hard, Like this?

Neil just chuckled in response, and when I opened my eyes back up he smiled fondly and nodded, “Like that.”

“I think I got the hang of it,” I sighed, “I’m sorry if you ever got to hear my self-deprecating or raging ruminations.”

“It’s fine,” Neil gave me a tightlipped smile, “I just… wish you didn’t think about yourself that way.”

I bit down my lip and turned to lay on my back, my head still bent to the side so I could look at him. I motioned to my chest and extended my arm towards him.

“Come here,” I urged him.

“Are you sure?” he looked up at me with big, blue, sweet eyes.

“I’m sure. Come,” I invited him with another wave of my hand. Sure enough, he scooted closer to me and placed his head in the crook of my shoulder, his face on my chest, exhaling slowly as I snaked my arm around his body, “You know, I think that if I’d met you and Renée later in life, I would’ve been worse than this.”

“How do you mean?” Neil furrowed his brows.

“I mean, even if I’m like this, expressionless and emotionless, sometimes I can still muster a smile, or even giggle a bit when you tickle me, for example. I can handle small amounts of physical contact, when they’re not meant to harm or in a sexual way and when I’m the first to touch. I can… see the good side of things, sometimes, and I’m not just a void of black feelings and fury and sadness. And I think that’s because I had you and Renée to help me heal every time something bad happened. If I didn’t have you, I think I’d be just… worse. More helpless. More cruel and heartless.”

“You’re not cruel, love,” Neil whispered.

“I might’ve been,” I shrugged my free shoulder, “Think about it. All I’ve endured my whole life, with my family and the abuse. I just… I think if I met you when I was a full adult, I wouldn’t be able to speak about my feelings this freely. I’d be totally shut down, because that’s just how I’d grow to be, alone as I’d feel. But I have you, and I had Renée, so maybe you two made things a bit easier.”

“Maybe so,” Neil conceded, “I would’ve liked you either way.”

“Would you?” I scoffed, “Maybe I’d be the kind of guy to repeatedly tell you I hate you instead of talking to you like this, because I’d just hate the thought of getting attached to someone. Well, I still hate it, and that’s why I avoided you for months at times, but I gave up fairly easily to that, haven’t? I don’t think it would be that easy, if we hadn’t met when we were basically kids.”

“I would understand you,” Neil protested.

“What if there’s a universe where we met in our twenties and I’m just an asshole that doesn’t trust you? A mean, bitter, cruel asshole that wants everyone to think they’re a psychopath because it’s easier than to admit I’m hurt and I need help?”

“I think I’d hate you for a while, maybe not trust you in return, but I can read people easily,” Neil pursed his lips, really putting thought into it, “I think I’d get you at some point. And once that’s past us, I’d just… Well, we’d just fall into this.”

“You think that would happen either way?” I looked down at him, the back of my pointer finger brushing over the burn on his cheek.

“I think it would happen in every universe,” Neil replied.

“Huh,” I cupped his face with my palm, “That’s an interesting point of view. An unrealistic one at that, but interesting nonetheless.”

Neil chuckled, “You are heartless, you idiot.”

“It’s late,” I prompted, “Let’s sleep. You can turn around if you want.”

“Nah,” Neil smiled, beaming up at me, “I’m fine like this. Are you?”

“Sleep, dickhead.”

I closed my eyes, adjusting my head on the pillow, turning it so that my face would be buried in Neil’s hair. I took in a deep breath, inhaling that so familiar violet and rose smell, melting into it and sinking into a more comfortable state of mind, hoping that it’d help me fall asleep in an unfamiliar house, in an unfamiliar bed.

It was to no use. I was brought back up to consciousness less than a minute later.

“Andrew,” Neil called me, just a whisper.

“I said sleep, Josten,” I mumbled against the top of his head.

“I’m in love with you.”

I believed, for a second, I’d stopped breathing entirely. My chest was still, my lungs were frozen, my eyes wide open in utter shock. I thought about Kevin, about how he’d told me to simply grow a pair and talk to Neil about my feelings. I was planning to do it, I was, and now it was happening when I wasn’t prepared. Was spiraling the right response? I never expected for Neil to feel the same way about me as I did him. I never expected him to love me, not when I was like that, not when I’d just threatened one of his friends with a knife, not when-

“Andrew?” Neil’s feeble voice, trembling, reached me again. I pulled away ever so slightly, enough so that I could look at his face again, where deep, blue, sad eyes were waiting for me.

“Why would you say that, darling?” I asked, under my breath, as my hand flew to his face again, caressing it tenderly.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Neil protested, fidgeting, picking at his nails, but he lowered his voice even more as he went on, “You’ve said it plenty of times.”

I stopped breathing once more, then I started hyperventilating. Spiraling, in my head, was now allowed. I fully, without meaning to be cruel about it, pushed Neil away, so that I could analyze his face. He looked as scared as me, maybe because that wasn’t the response he’d thought I’d have to his words. He was biting the inside of his cheek tight enough I knew I’d taste blood if I kissed him.

“You can read my mind,” I simply stated, “When I think about sending my thoughts to you, you hear them.”

“I do,” Neil whispered, “You… When Renée died, you told me- you thought to tell me that you loved me more than anything. You told me that I should’ve known that. And when my father… when you went after the pack, to distract him, you wished that I knew.”

“Neil,” I sighed, “I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” he asked forcefully, propping himself up on an elbow so he could look down on me, “I’m not sorry. I love you too. I love you more than anything too. Why would you be sorry about that?”

“Love, Neil,” I reminded him, “Love is a dangerous word for us, remember? We talked about it, about love in our lives. You said you didn’t want more, that when your mother died-”

“I know what I said,” Neil countered, his blue hues now looking determined, his jaw working as he found his words again, “And listen, maybe in that universe where you’re an asshole and I didn’t know you since I was thirteen, maybe in that universe I wouldn’t be able to tell you that I love you, because it hurts me to do so. Maybe in that universe we have a mutual understanding that we love each other but we don’t need to say it out loud because that word is dangerous.

“But in this universe, I’m not like that. We’re not like that. We’ve known each other for almost four years. You held my hands when I was losing my mind, you saved my life multiple times, you just admitted that you’d be worse off without me. In this universe, love is a dangerous word but I’m not afraid to use it. We grew up together, we healed each other, we were meant for each other. We went through everything together. And I’m sick and tired of you thinking that I don’t love you, because I hear that too, so much that it makes me ache, so I will say it out loud if it helps you understand. I’m in love with you. I’ve been for a long time now, and I won’t just hide it anymore.”

“Neil, I-”

“I know you have a more complicated relationship with it than I do,” he cut me off, “I know that, and you don’t have to say it if you don’t want to. I don’t want you to force yourself. I… I know you love me. It’s fine.”

“Thank you,” I exhaled softly, biting back the tears that were threatening to escape my eyelids, “But I do. I do, really. You sure you know that?”
“You were willing to die at the hands of my father for me,” Neil giggled, “I think I’m pretty sure you love me.”

“God,” I scoffed, “You’re such a dork.”

“Oi!” Neil placed a hand on his chest, feigning offence, “Who are you calling a dork, you moron?”

“Shut up,” I urged, my hand sliding from his face to the nape of his neck, “Yes or no?”

“Stupid question,” he muttered, letting himself be led down by the pressure of my hand, “It’s always yes with you,” he whispered, just before his lips touched mine, tickling me with his breath.

I kissed him slowly, softly, without hurry. For the first time in our whole relationship, I was finally sure we had all the time in the world. There was no need to rush things, there was no need to be forceful and to kiss him like it was the last time I’d get to do it. I kissed him gently, my mouth lingering on his as I pulled away just to crash into him over and over again.

I still couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, because there was too much to consider, because I didn’t do anything without thinking it through, and I wasn’t properly thinking at that moment. But I knew he could read my mind, I knew he could hear what I was thinking, I knew he could’ve understood.

So, I love you, I thought.

I love you too, I earned back from him.

And we kept on going, a simple conversation, just three words. Words no one could hear but us. Words that perhaps were too dangerous, but that still made us feel alive. It was true that I had a complicated relationship with love, it was true that, for the most part, I hated how that word was used. But could I really hate it when I was feeling it? Could I really hate it, when I knew Neil’s words were true?

His heart was going fast, but he wasn’t lying. He loved me. Neil Abram Josten really did love me. And my head felt light and dizzy with excitement and love, love, love, so much love exploding from every pore. So, I thought the three words again, knowing that he could hear me, knowing that he’d say it back.

Just three words, back and forth.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Notes:

as Hozier once said, "Fell in love with the fire long ago" <3

so, big chapter for big discussions

first there's Andrew's relationship with the Foxes, specifically with Allison. they are the ones who grieved Renée the most, so something like this was bound to happen at some point... they really went all out

Allison uses words just as Andrew uses knives: she can cut with them, she can hurt people and she knows she's good at it. That's why she went after Andrew in the cruelest way she knew how. She still held some grudges against them but now they've cleared the air about Renée, so expect some friendly iconic action between them <3

The convo with Neil is the most important tho

I've told you at the beginning of the fic that Andrew might've been a little OOC from the canon Andrew we know from the original trilogy. This is the moment I took to explain the changes. While Andrew in canon was utterly alone, even when he was found by Aaron and Nicky he never felt at home or loved, Andrew in this fic has been surrounded by the Foxes since they were 14 and they always had Renée's support (even when it wasn't explicitly showed, she was there to comfort them every time they needed, i.e. when the Roland thing happened).

That means that in this fic, Andrew was able to heal some part of themself that in the canon hadn't healed properly. That also means that they can experience things that they wouldn't be able to experience if they hadn't had support from his greatest friends from such a young age (like shown in the chapter).

Being OOC wasn't something I let happen by mistake or by pushing it. Andrew is still the Andrew we know, but with some modifications given by the fact that they didn't fully experience the solitude and hardship that are in canon and, even when they did experience them, they were able to pull ahead with the comfort of Neil, Renée and Remus.

and without further ado.... NEIL SAID IT!!!!! HE SAID IT, IT'S OUT THERE IN THE OPEN, THEY LOVE EACH OTHER, YOUR HONOR.

they're so cute together, god when is it my turn

soooo that's all. next chapter in a week!

see ya, bye lovelieeees <3

Chapter 49: Slow Down

Summary:

TW!
- the first section depicts sex somewhat explicitly

Something told me that there would be little to no sleep that night.

He moved us slowly, flipping us over so I would be the one on top of him. I straddled his waist, one knee on each side of him, enjoying the way he was smiling against my lips, the way his breath hitched as I brushed my thumb on the column of his throat, slightly pressing at the sides of it.

When I finally pulled away from his lips to kiss his neck, down to his collarbone, playing with the hem of his shirt with my free hand as the other one tilted his head to the side to grant me more access to his skin, he moaned my name in a hushed tone, just a hiss, a whisper, and I bit into his skin, making him gasp.

“Andrew,” he managed again, but his voice was strained, “The scars, on my… on my…”

“Shh,” I urged him, “You’re fine. It’s fine.”

“But didn’t you say…” he drew a breath through his teeth as I attached my lips to his skin and began sucking slightly, “Fuck. Didn’t you say… a-about consent… Merlin, Andrew, you’re intoxicated.”

“I’m sober as a judge,” I mumbled against his neck, “Was half-way through the process of sobering up when I talked to Allison, became as sober as I can get when you told me you love me. I’m thinking straight. This is happening, I know it’s happening, I want it to happen.”

“Wait, wait,” he put a hand against my chest and pushed a bit, prompting me to pull away. I did as soon as I felt the pressure of his touch, looking down at his eyes. He narrowed them as he raked them over my face, “Wait. Are you one hundred percent sure?”

“Neil,” I said, “I’ve fucked people with more alcohol in my body and with less reasons to do it.”

“I know that. Thank you for reminding me, by the way,” he rolled his eyes, “But I don’t want to be one of those people. I won’t allow you to reduce us to that. I don’t want to be something you regret the morning after, or a couple of days later. You… I… I don’t want us to shag, just to get it over with.”

“Oi, sweetheart, no,” my own eyes softened, reaching out again to caress his cheekbone, those darling scars on his cheek, “Why would you think that? It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it?” he sighed, “Look, you’ve had plenty to drink. I don’t even want to know what’s in that bottle, but it smells foul, and I… I want you to want me, I want you to enjoy this.”

“I am enjoying this,” I assured him, “Neil, I swear that I’m sober. I’m not just doing this to get you off my case, because I know you want it and I am willing to give up just to make you happy. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I don’t want to fuck you just to get this over with, just to rip off the band-aid.”

“I really don’t want to push your boundaries,” he pouted a little, and I stared, star-struck, at the little fold of his reddened lips while I thought his words over.

Finally, I simply sighed. With a bit of effort, I picked him up and I turned us around again, so he was the one straddling my lap while I sat, my legs dangling from the side of the bed and my arms loosely wrapped around his hips. I put my chin on his collarbone and gazed up at him.

“I want you,” I whispered, “I’ve always wanted you. I told you I wanted to go slow because I didn’t want this to destroy me, I wanted to ease into it so I could be in it completely, so that I could fully enjoy it and not worry about the consequences. Neil, darling, I…” I closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of his skin, “I’ve never wanted anything more than this. Cross my heart, you have my full, informed, conscious consent.”

He looked down at me, his blue eyes helpless and shining with a glint of pure happiness. His smile grew slowly and soon enough he was grinning, beaming, his white teeth gleaming in the faint light of the candle on my nightstand.

“Are you going to be okay? Are you sure?” I could tell by the creases at the corner of his eyes that he was convinced, but it was nice that he checked once more before diving head-first into it.

“I’m sure,” I nodded, “I just want to- well, maybe at first I won’t but, do you mind if I get a little, y’know, rough?”

“Rough?” Neil giggled, “How so?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, embarrassed, and I could feel my face getting warmer because of the evident blush that was beginning to appear there, “People have said that I get a little intense.”

“People like who?” he cocked one of his eyebrows, but there wasn’t a hint of jealousy there: he was just making fun of me, “Maybe they just don’t know you. I kind of expected you to be rough.”

“Oh? Is that how you want to play?” I felt the smirk tugging at one corner of my mouth, “Fine by me, Josten.”

I moved his legs so that they’d be wrapped around my torso and placed my hands on his waist again, pinching it slightly. He yelped, then pursed his lips, his eyes growing wider, his pupils dilated. I smiled up at him, small and cunning, as my hands slid down to his hips and then up again, under his shirt, feeling his warm skin against my palms.

I kept our eye contact stable as his shirt rose and uncovered his torn flesh, his abdomen tensed up and peppered with scars. I shot a glance downwards, but he was quick to make me look back up at his eyes again, placing his fingers under my chin. I bit my lip and scoffed. I guessed he was done playing.

I stripped his shirt off and tossed on the floor, right before I reached back to the collar of my own and taking it off as well with one pull. When I remerged from the fabric, my shirt still wrapped around my forearm, I caught Neil staring at the three scars on my chest. He grazed them lightly with the tips of his fingers.

He seemed caught up in his own thoughts, so I promptly tossed the shirt and put my hands on him again, pushing the small of his back forward so that he would be pressed against my own body. He startled, a hiccupped breath escaping his throat.

“Don’t leave me just yet, will you?” I murmured, my mouth inching closer to his collarbone once again, “I’m starting to have fun.”

“Yeah,” Neil gasped, his own hands reaching for the back of my head, getting tangled in my hair, tugging at it, “Sorry.”

“Zip it,” I whispered against his skin and felt his flesh peppered with goosebumps, “You’re only allowed to thing about this now. You can only think about what I’m doing to you,” he stayed silent, melting under my lips and hands, so I bit forcefully into the soft skin of his neck, “Got it, Josten?”

“G-Got it,” he stammered, then whimpered loudly when I bit him again. I snapped my fingers and he seemed to get distracted once more, “What was that?”

“A silencing spell,” I answered, moving my lips up to the tender point on the neck right behind his ear, then whispered, “In case my pretty boy can’t keep his mouth shut.”

He shuddered all over, murmuring, “Merlin.”

I smirked, kissed him where my lips were, then began my descent towards his own. I lingered there, brushing my mouth against his but never really touching it, pulling away slightly when he tried to kiss me instead.

“Stop toying with me,” he pleaded.

“Alright,” I snickered, “You asked for it.”

I flipped us around once more, his legs tightly wrapped around my hips as his back hit the mattress and I put myself on top of him, one hand on the mattress to hoist me up. I played with the elastic of his shorts and underwear, fingers brushing against his groin, and he whined again. I unlatched his legs from me just so that I could take his clothes off completely. Launching those to the side as well, I leaned down over him, getting closer to face to finally kiss him, hungry, violent, heavy.

I pulled away and straightened up, basically kneeling on the mattress, looking down at him, my head tilted. There were a few splotches of red on his neck, little bruises that would’ve become purple and dark by the morning. He was flustered, panting and gasping, little moans still escaping his lips. I reached down to trap his bottom lip under my finger, pushing my thumb against it.

“Look at you,” I whispered, “So pretty, sprawled on the bed with your legs open. Just for me to witness,” I smiled wickedly, the heat of the room suffocating me and making me feel alive at the same time. Neil’s breath was brushing against my thumb, and I thought I was losing my mind, “All mine.”

He made sure not to avert his eyes, when, out of breath, he spoke softly, “All yours.”

“That’s it,” I announced, pulling down my shorts as the tension was becoming unbearable, my underwear coming down with them.

I stood up from the bed to fish out some condoms from my trunk – ones I had made sure to pack once my cousin was done filling my luggage with booze –, ripping one open and tossing the others on the nightstand in case we’d need more. I put it on and climbed on the bed again, leaning down on Neil who was watching my every move. I kissed him sweetly before whispering.

“It’s going to hurt a bit in the beginning, alright?” he reached up, fingers buried in my hair again, “Stop me if it’s too much.”

“Right,” he nodded slightly.

I kissed him again, my tongue slipping in his mouth and tangling with his, his legs snaking around my waist once more and keeping me pressed against him, my hands on his neck and face as his own tugged at my hair and propelled me to go on. I maneuvered us a bit, trying to ease it in, then Neil and I gasped at the same moment, and I stopped. My brain was completely fogged up now, while Neil’s pupils were so wide it was impossible to see the blue of his irises. I stood still for a moment.

“Andrew,” Neil moaned, cried, begged, “Andrew.”

I took it a deep breath and started moving. My breath was hitching, my lungs weren’t filling up completely before I let the air out. All I could see was Neil squirming under me, meeting my every thrust with his hips, lips parted while he whimpered and panted. I believed my mind short-circuited. That had never felt so, so good.

Oh, fuck.

 

---

 

Once I’d opened the door to the possibility of sex, it seemed something inside Neil had snapped. He wanted more, more, more, begging me for it so much I ended up caving each time, even if I was exhausted, because I wanted it just as much as him. I wanted him, I yearned for him in a way that made me forget that my body was sore and I was aching all over.

He let me toy with his body the way I wanted, touching him with my hands, using my mouth if I wanted to, peppering his already tortured skin with bite marks and hickeys everywhere. He was putty under me, giving himself to me completely, offering every inch of his body and soul as he allowed me to do him whatever I pleased.

In the end, after the fourth or fifth time – between the sex and the foreplay, I’d managed to lose count – I dropped down on the bed next to him, panting, completely worn out, a hand to my chest to check and control my speeding heart. I looked over at Neil, laying down next to me, the sleepy smile he had on his face a hint of how much he’d enjoyed himself.

“You were indeed a little rough,” he chuckled.

“Don’t act like I didn’t warn you,” I shrugged playfully.

“What time is it?” he asked, the weariness of his body finally catching up to his dazed mind, as he turned to lay on his side and face me. I did the same.

“I think the sun is about to come up,” I said, but there wasn’t a window in the room so I couldn’t be sure. It was a guess based on the time we’d started fooling around and the time we’d spent doing everything else, “We could sleep in.”

“Then the others will know for sure what we’ve been up too,” he blushed a little at the thought.

“If you could see your neck, you’d know they’ll guess either way,” I glanced at his throat, hickeys scattered there and down on his whole body, on the inside of his thighs even, “I can heal them if you want. So they won’t notice.”

“No,” he shook his head, “I’m pretty sure I’d like them, if I could see them.”

“Fine by me,” I sat up, looking around at the room. It wasn’t that hot out for Spring, but the room had become a furnace. The used condoms were on my nightstand, each in its wrapper for good measure. I looked at them intently, whispering ‘Evanesco’ to make them vanish. When I laid back down, Neil looked at me puzzled, “You can walk around with hickeys, but I’m not throwing condoms in the trash in front of them.”

Neil chuckled, “Guess that’s fair,” he turned serious all of the sudden, biting the inside of his bottom lip, “That was… I mean…”

“Oh, come on, Josten,” I smirked, putting my hand on his waist so I could pull him against my body again, my other arm under our pillows. Our skin was sticky with sweat, but it didn’t bother me, “I know I’m everything you’ve ever dreamed of, you don’t need to say it.”

“Andrew,” he rolled his eyes, “I wanted to say something meaningful.”

“Alright then,” I whispered, feeling all giddy with adrenaline and adoring the way his eyes were lit up with something I couldn’t name, “Go ahead.”

“It’s just,” he took a deep breath, his own hands framing my face, “I’ve never liked anyone that way. When I said I didn’t swing I was serious, and you know that. So, I never really… I mean, I had a vague idea about sex and stuff like that, but… I didn’t really know what to dream of, as you put it.”

“I know,” I answered, eyebrows knitting at the center of my forehead, confused as what point he was trying to make.

“I never could’ve imagined this. I never felt this…” he blushed profusely again, “I’ve never felt this goddamn good. The way you touch me, it’s the only thing that makes me feel like this. It makes my skin feel all tingly, like I’m charged with proper electricity. It was fantastic. Thank you.”

I looked at him truly at that moment, thinking I couldn’t possibly bear the way my heart was swelling inside my chest. I looked at him, because his pink cheeks and his red lips and his deep blue eyes, because everything that made him him was really the most marvelous fixture to gaze upon. And he’d said he was mine, all mine, and how could I ever handle all of that? Would I ever be able to feel like I was enough for him, the only boy who’d ever make me feel this goddamn good too?

I wanted to scream that I loved him for that. I wanted to climb to the top of a building and shout it for the whole world to hear, because maybe then the love I felt would be in a big enough container to keep inside of.

I wanted to be his, forever. I felt like I could eat the world raw. I felt like I could conquer nations and win wars at his side. He made me feel like my heart beating in my chest had a purpose in doing so.

“What are you thanking me for, dickhead?” I placed a kiss on the tip of his nose, “It’s not like I didn’t enjoy it. It goes for you too. If it weren’t you, I wouldn’t be able to do it. You make me feel good too, Neil.”

“You were amazing,” he whispered against my lips.

“Alright, now,” I tucked him against me even more, “Sleep. You need to rest.”

He nodded and kissed me slightly on the lips, just a lingering peck, “I love you.”

“I know, darling,” I said.

I love you too, I thought.

 

---

 

“Woah,” Matt gasped, “Are those hickeys?”

I waltzed into the kitchen right after Neil, sweeping the whole room with a venomous glance before going to check the fridge for milk. Neil, on the other hand, froze at the entrance, the eyes of the whole room on his neck. I guessed he was regretting last night’s choices right about then, but he exhaled slowly as the attention shifted towards me instead.

“You gave Neil hickeys?” Dan asked me, bewildered.

I opened the cabinet above her head with a snap of my fingers and levitated a bowl down to the island in the middle of the room. I poured the milk into it, ignoring the appalled gazes of the Foxes that jumped from Neil’s neck to my own mouth.

“Andrew!” Nicky called my name, and it sounded a little too much like his father for my liking. I just sighed.

“What?” I replied, “He asked for them.”

“I did,” Neil admitted sheepishly, to which the whole room snapped their heads in his direction. He flinched, “It was the heat of the moment…?”

“Heat, you say?” Allison whistled, then turned to me and raised a hand to high-five me, “Nice going, friend.”

I slapped my hand against hers, expression still blank, “Thank you, madam.”

“Okay,” Dan waved her arms around like a windmill, her dark skin becoming paler and paler with shock, like she’d just seen a ghost, “When did that happen? Weren’t you trying to kill each other just yesterday?”

“A lot can happen in a night,” Allison shrugged.

“Did you shag her as well?” Kevin muttered on my side, “She seems way more relaxed.”

“I didn’t,” I answered, pouring coffee in my milk and swirling my finger above the bowl to mix it with magic, then deadpanned towards Kevin, “I’m gay, remember?”

“Well, you never really… said it,” Matt countered, “We just knew you and Neil had something going on.”

“I’m not gay, though,” Neil protested, finally advancing in the kitchen to prepare his own breakfast as well.

“Then why are you with Andrew?” Nicky tilted his head to the side, perplexed.

“You all should mind your business,” Allison stated.

“I do not like that you’re on his side now,” Dan commented.

“I’m not on his side, I’m not on any side, because there shouldn’t be sides,” the blonde girl chuckled, “Look, we’re supposed to be friends, right? It’s not like we hang around each other because we play on the same Quidditch team or because we’re forced to be together. We chose each other’s company. We don’t need to treat the others like they’re wild animals and we’re trying to tame them. You didn’t find Matt amusing when he first came into the group and look at you two now,” Allison gestured to the couple, the boy gently embracing the girl from behind, but she froze at the statement and Matt looked down in confusion.

“You what now?” he asked with one eyebrow raised.

“It’s nothing, baby,” she assured him, “It was just that I thought you were a little childish is all.”

“Yeah, maybe because I’m younger than you,” Matt rolled his eyes.

“Whatever!” Allison yelped, “That is not the point. The point is that you two love each other, and that is because you didn’t let the first impression you had of Matt stop you.”

“Because I ended up liking how childish he could be,” Dan shrugged.

“Precisely,” Allison nodded, “That’s what I’m saying. Andrew may seem rough and hard on the exterior, but that doesn’t mean he’s some kind of monster.”

“You called me a freak just a few hours ago, Reynolds,” I pointed out, amused by her speech.

“Hush, you,” she chuckled, “You’re ruining my credibility. The point is, we are friends. We enjoy each other’s company, and even if Andrew can be a little harsh, we love him for who he is. Don’t we?”

“Yeah,” Nicky smiled widely, “Of course.”

“I think I get it,” Matt grinned that stupid grin of his, “Andrew is not out enemy. And he’s not that bad just because he’s a little sharp around the edges. He cares about people. Look at what he did for Kevin, and he didn’t even know him.”

“I love being an example,” Kevin rolled his eyes, but he was smiling nonetheless.

“Alright, now that’s all cleared out, can I have my breakfast in peace?” I said, pointing at the bowl of milk and coffee where I was yet to pour cereal into. Neil found a place next to me with his cup of tea and a toast with marmalade on it.

“Oh, no, no, mister,” Allison waved her finger around, “You are our friend now. So, you’ve got to tell us all the filthy details.”

“Absolutely not,” I paused my hand mid-air as I was about to pour the cereal, looking at her appalled. Neil was blushing again.

“Oh, come on,” Nicky got on her side, “You can’t waltz in here with him covered in hickeys like you were trying to suck the soul out of him and refuse to tell us the details.”

“I wasn’t trying to suck the soul out if him,” I protested, starting to eat my cereal and trying to ignore the provocations.

“Did you suck something else?” Dan scoffed. Neil nearly choked on his toast.

“I think I’m about to throw up the omelet I ate,” Aaron finally spoke up.

“This is making me uncomfortable,” Neil announced. After that, everyone was quick to stand down with the question, even though they were still snickering about Neil’s neck. He sighed, “I should’ve let you heal them.”

“Not my fault you’re dense, Josten,” I shrugged and drank up the rest of the milk and coffee in the bowl, “I’m going to put some clothes on and brush my teeth. See you in a bit?”

The redhead smiled softly and nodded, “Be right there, just let me finish.”

“Alright,” I placed a kiss on his shoulder – as high as I could reach without standing on my toes – and pushed past him towards the entryway of the kitchen. Soon after that, everyone started cooing.

“They give each other kisses,” Matt hummed, “How sweet!”

“I’m going to murder each and every one of you by the end of this thing,” I sentenced before finally exiting the room. Even after that, the voices of the Foxes joking around and pestering Neil with question he wouldn’t answer still reached me.

It got me thinking about how much those people had changed me. Just as I had told Neil, there was a part of me that was irreparably broken, that was so incredibly fucked up that it couldn’t function properly ever again. Even with that, it could’ve been worse: with my attitude, with my problems with touch and physical contact, with my anger issues, with my psychotic meltdowns.

I knew, deep inside of me, that if I didn’t have them as a family since such an early age, if they’d managed to get their hands on me once I was already twenty years old, that damage would’ve been much worse, I would’ve been intolerable. I would’ve been the worst version of me, one that couldn’t bear a single finger laid upon themself, because it would make them snap.

I chose to forgive that version of me, if there even was one, because I understood it: with what I had been through, a version of me who didn’t have Renée’s and Neil’s growing up, who didn’t have Nicky’s smile to always rely on in their formative years, who didn’t have the Foxes as a steady group of friends, had all the rights to be intolerable, to be the asshole I’d probably would’ve become without them.

Because I was still that asshole, even with them. I was still bad, even if they’d accepted me for who I was. I was still violent, I still hated being touched, I still hated most people in the world, I still was a murderer. But I had friends to call family, a brother and a cousin, two men who treated me like their own child, and a boy that loved me, and I’d had that since I was fourteen.

I was still an asshole. But I was a better asshole than what I could’ve been.

 

---

 

I spat the toothpaste in the sink in the little bathroom that was inside my and Neil’s room. I opened the faucet and let the water run so I could rinse my mouth off and then I stood straight, looking in the mirror in front of me. There was Neil reflected on it too, just behind my shoulder, his own leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom.

“You’re awfully quiet when you want to sneak up on people,” I began.

“It’s a trait you develop when you spend years trying to make yourself invisible,” he shrugged, “What were you thinking about?”

“Are they done with their questions?” I asked instead of replying, and I could tell by the way a small smile appeared on his face that he knew I wouldn’t have answered his inquiry.

He allowed it, for once. I turned around and leaned with the small of my back against the sink, crossing my arms on my chest. Neil was still in his pajamas, but his shirt had been switched with my own during the night. Which, of course, had meant that I had walked inside that kitchen shirtless, with only my loose shorts and my armbands to cover my body.

Thankfully, I had thought about the questions they could’ve asked and decided it was best to heal the several scratches and scuff marks Neil’s nails had left on my back.

I couldn’t help but noticing how, even if he was taller than me, my shirt was really baggy on Neil. We were both muscular – we had to be, given how much we exercised on the daily – but we had two different builds. Where I was larger on my shoulders and arms, Neil was leaner, his body made for speed and swift movements, to cut the air more than to put force into a toss.

He thought my question over and shrugged once more.

“Can’t blame them for being curious,” he sighed, “We aren’t open about most stuff. They knew that we had something going on but they didn’t know the extent of it.”

“As long as they don’t ruin last night for you,” I trailed off.

“They could never. It was too wonderful to ever be ruined by anything,” he smiled fondly, walking towards me. I stepped aside to let him brush his teeth and I watched him intently as he did just so. When he stood up straight again, he glanced at me warily, “They asked something. For the first time, I… uh, I didn’t really know how to reply.”

“Hm? And what might that be?” I cocked one of my eyebrows.

“They asked if you’re my… I mean, if we’re a couple. You’re always the one to answer that,” he started fidgeting with the hem of my shirt – it arrived halfway to his knees, on his thighs, “You always say no.”

“What do you think I would’ve said if I was back there with you now?” I pushed.

“I think… I don’t know what to think. That’s why I didn’t say anything,” he bit his bottom lip and let his head hang, his eyes covered by a curtain of auburn curls.

I could tell he’d been pained by the fact that I had been denying him the simple pleasure of having the certainty that the word ‘couple’ could give to some people. I could tell he was suffering because of me saying no to everyone who’d ever dared to imply we were more than friends. I could tell by the way he seemed stricken by the way I responded every time, like if each time he’d expected a different answer, a yes.

I could tell by the way he was clearly aching right then and there in front of me, just because he hadn’t been able to tell his dearest friends that he had a partner, that he was indeed my boyfriend. He wanted to say it, but he couldn’t. He simply wouldn’t overstep my boundaries like that. He cared too much about me.

He loved me.

“Oi, darling. Look at me,” I called, pushing his chin up with my fingers. His blue eyes were watery, “Before I answer I want to know. Why is this so important to you?”

“Because,” he seemed almost upset, angry at my question, “you’re the only one for me. Don’t you get it by now, Andrew? I don’t like other people, not the way that I like you. For all I know, you’re the only person I will ever have feelings for. Before you, I wasn’t ever interested in anyone, in any way. I was only able to make friends when everyone had crushes and went around kissing each other and getting into relationships. I didn’t have that. I didn’t want to have that. If there ever is an after you, it will be the same.

“But you came along. You make me want things, you kiss me and I actually like it, I’m fucking in love with you. Andrew, you’re it for me. I know I’m just barely sixteen and I know nothing about anything, but you’re the only one for me. So, it hurts me when you decline the idea of us being an item so drastically. I told you I’m all yours. But are you? Are you all mine? Because, unlike me, you have options, you can go fuck other people, you can do whatever you want with whomever you want. That’s why it matters to me. That’s why I want to know.”

I gazed up at him, tightlipped, my hand sliding from his chin to his cheek. I caressed the usual scars, felt the way they were knobby and pushing against my fingertips, and fixated my gaze upon his perfect skin. I knew my face was blank and unreadable, I knew he couldn’t tell what I thought about his heartfelt confession of pain. I knew he could hear my heart beating steadily inside my chest.

My thumb brushed against his bottom lip and he sighed, trembling slightly. He had gooseflesh on his arms, his tortured arms full of beautiful scars. I placed my other hand on his left cheek and caressed the burn scar there as well. He kept staring at me, waiting.

I wanted to give him everything. I wanted to see him smile again. I wanted to carve my heart out of my chest and offer it to him on a silver platter, because that was what I felt for him.

I would’ve died for him.

I would’ve killed for him – I had.

I would’ve lived for him.

Couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he see that I was stuck with him just like he was stuck with me? Couldn’t he guess that I had changed my mind about my ever so adamant nos?

“Yes or no?” I whispered.

“Andrew,” he all but cried, hurting as I was yet to give him an answer.

“I’m in love with you too, Neil,” I said, and he seemed a little startled by it – but wasn’t he the one that started this whole saying ‘I love you’ out loud thing? – but I went on, “I’m in love with everything that is you. I love the person you were before you became Neil, the person on the run who had to burn his mother’s body, I love the person you pretended to be when you were starting at Hogwarts, I love the person I’ve gotten to know since I landed there as well. I’m in love with you, so deeply that I think my heart and body are not enough to contain it all.

“And you better remember these next words, because it’s the last time I say them: you’re my one and only. You’re everything, everything to me. I can’t imagine to ever live without you. That’s why I went to your father’s den, remember? You say I have options, but who says I want options? I want you. I only ever want you, and you’re the only one who makes me feel good about wanting someone. I’m all yours.

“So yes, I had a bit of an issue with calling us a couple, and it was for lots of reasons, one of them being that the first person who asked me was Renée on her death bed and I couldn’t just taunt her with my happiness. But I love you, you love me, we made love to each other. I think it’s pretty set in stone that we are indeed an item, isn’t it? You can go around with a shirt that says you’re my boyfriend if it makes you feel better.”

“I’m… I’m your boyfriend?” he seemed star-struck, his eyes shining.

“Yes.”

“I can tell whomever I want?” Neil grinned wide.

“Well, don’t go tell the Aurors department. I hardly think they care. But yes, you can tell whomever you want,” I rolled my eyes, “Now, yes or no?”

“Y-yes,” he stammered, before crashing onto my mouth with his hungry lips, giddy and chuckling away like a child that had been given a shiny new toy. His happiness was infectious, though, and quickly rubbed off on me while I backed him up against the bathroom wall and kissed him softly.

Not long after that, there was a knock at the room’s door. It was distant, and barely audible, but Neil still managed to pull away enough to shout out.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Oi, lovebirds,” Kevin answered from far away, “If you’re done doing whatever it is you’re doing in there, we were thinking of going to the beach. You want to join us?”

“Sounds fun,” I answered, “We’ll be right there with you, just have to find our swimming suits.”

“Right then,” Kevin said, “We’ll wait for you at the front door.”

There was a moment of silence before Neil erupted in a silent but forceful laugh. I rose on my toes to kiss him on the forehead and finally detached myself from him, going into the main room and sitting on out bed. He followed me soon after, looking at me lovingly.

“So, boyfriend,” I teased him, to which he just giggled, “Can I borrow a suit or should I go swim in my underwear?”

Notes:

SHE SAID FUCK ME LIKE I'M FAMOUS, I SAID OK!

LISTEN it was my first time writing some sort of smut and I really tried to make it less cringey but idk if i succeeded in doing so lmao

anyway, our lovebirds fucked. the whole conversation about consent was really important to me and i know a lot of SA survivors, like me, who read this chapter will feel like Neil's concern was really comprehensible. it really hits different when someone cares about your mental health this much, yk?

btw they're so funny. not Andrew being like "i'm really intense" and Neil being like "how else would you be?" lmao my man was expecting to be choked and slapped and shackled to the bed

the conversation with the foxes <3 so, from now on the foxes are a united group. Just like in canon the spring vacation smoothed things over for most of them, it happened here as well. they're friends and they love each other. this will show when some of them have to go back to hogwarts in the future chapters

NEIL AND ANDREW FINALLY SAID THE B WORD Y'ALL!!! not andrew being like "listen up and listen well bc i'm NOT saying this again" lmao
ofc, since Andrew isn't a boy Neil can't call them his boyfriend, but they'll find something lol, for now let's say they're a couple

i think that's all? sorry for the slight delay but I had one HELL of a week, my depression is acting up again - i really hate summer

that said, i'll see you soon <3

bye lovelieeees <3

Chapter 50: Andante, andante

Summary:

TW!
- mentions of death
- mentions of rape and torture

Notes:

hey guys, sorry for the delay. not to be the stereotypical fanfic writer but please read the notes at the end of the chapter, I have some news. anyway, i hope you enjoy the chapter for now <3

The beach was a few miles away from the cottage and it extended from our left to our right way past what our eyesight could reach. If there were other people relaxing on that hot, white, sandy shore, we couldn’t have told.

I didn’t ditch the armbands, since I wasn’t planning on actually going into the water, but I didn’t mind my other scars – the ones that I hadn’t inflicted upon myself – being on display. Neil, on the other hand, tried his best to cover up, even if every single one of our friends had seen his worst scars by then.

He was wearing a fitted shirt, one made with the same material of his bathing suit, and the armbands as well. As we approached the shore, with Kevin by our side, I could see his wariness increasing by the second. Still, I thought better than to ask point-blank about what that was all about and kept eyeing him, wondering if he’d make a run for the house in the end.

I hadn’t really ever gone to the beach. As much as it sounds sad and depressing, I didn’t really mind that absence in my life, especially if going to swim in the sea meant having to be surrounded by screaming children of unruly families sharing a finite space on a beachfront, sun beds pressed one against the other so that the owner of the beach club could make a couple more quids.

I truly didn’t mind. But the sea was beautiful, in its way of being mysterious and sad and lonely, of being everywhere and nowhere at once. It was just as intriguing as space, to me. In a way, I was glad the Foxes had suggested to go to the beach. I would’ve never, ever told them that, though.

Kevin led us to the others who were already there, since they had thought better than to wait for me and Neil to finish getting ready. Matt and Nicky were, from the looks of it, racing in the water, seeing who could swim faster to a certain point. I gathered that point was where Aaron was floating, far from the shore, waiting for them. Dan and Allison were sunbathing, half-laying down on two towels, sunglasses on and sipping on some cold water  – or whatever looked like water - with straws from tall glasses.

Kevin had brought towels for Neil and me as well. He and I set them down and adjusted them, kicking some of the white, pearly sand off of them so we wouldn’t get dirty just by sitting on them, while Neil still gazed far ahead, mind lost in some of those cryptic thoughts of his.

Are you alright?, I dared to ask as I glanced at him. His mouth was agape as he watched the horizon, You look lost.

“I’m fine,” Neil mumbled out loud, like communicating with me by thought required too much concentration for him to ace it at that moment.

I let it go for the moment and sat down on my towel, hoping at one point the statue that had become my boyfriend would sit as well. Still, his little comment was loud enough to get Kevin’s attention, and his eyes jumped between Neil and me a couple of times. I shrugged, not wanting to give up the little secret that Neil and I shared, and Kevin seemed to be content with that response.

“Look who managed to show up,” Allison cooed after a while, raising her sunglasses and propping them on her head.

“What were you boys up to?” Dan giggled.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” I cocked one of my eyebrows.

“If you put it like that, I don’t think I do,” the black girl countered, her curly, tightly coiled hair bubbling around her head as she turned back to look at the sea. Matt was grinning widely and waving at us while Nicky was swimming back to the beach, “Looks like they’re done playing like children.”

“Were you expecting anything different from them?” Kevin chuckled, gazing at Aaron who was still in place, floating about, pretending to be a corpse in the water. There was something different in his green eyes. I chose to ignore it, even if I couldn't help but notice it.

Neil was still standing.

“What’s with him?” Allison leaned back towards me and asked. If Neil heard her, he didn’t show it.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out, Reynolds,” I whispered back to her.

“Why can she know and I can’t?” Kevin protested.

“Because I like her more than I like you, Day. Now, hush,” I patted him on the head. Since he was way taller than me, it actually looked like such a ridiculous action that Allison and Dan burst out laughing.

Matt and Nicky were just then jogging towards us, dripping salty water and panting from their silly race. They eyed Neil, who looked like he’d been completely paralyzed, then shot a wondering look at the rest of us.

“How long has he been like this?” Nicky asked.

“Since the sea became visible,” Kevin replied earnestly.

“Is he aquaphobic or something?” Matt waved his hand in front of the redhead’s eyes, hoping it would snap him out of his trance, but he had no luck.

“Not that I know of,” I answered, watching as each of the Foxes tried something on Neil to make him come back from whatever breakdown he was having. After a couple of beats, I had enough, “Stop touching him. Stop bothering him, all of you. Go back to whatever it was you were doing, alright? Neil’s not stupid. When he’s ready, he’ll come back.”

“And who are you to make them stop?” Aaron, who had just resurrected from his pretend watery grave, asked. His hair, normally a really pale blond, were almost brown, soaking wet as they were. For a couple of seconds, we really did look as different as we were on the inside.

“I’m his…” I stopped myself. Aaron smirked.

“Can’t say it, can you?” he teased.

“It’s not that,” I protested, “Neil and I are a couple. That’s a simple fact, you idiot. Did you really think we hadn’t had that conversation yet?”

“Well, until a few weeks ago you would’ve gone mad over someone calling Neil your boyfriend,” Allison shrugged, “It’s a fair assumption. And why wouldn’t you call yourself his boyfriend if you two are a couple?”

“It’s complicated,” I answered, “Would everyone just back off?”

“Sure thing,” Aaron chuckled. A muscle in Kevin’s cheek spasmed, like he had suppressed a small smile. I tried to ignore that as well. 

“It still doesn’t explain why Neil’s like this,” Matt brought us back to the previous argument, and for a moment I was grateful the conversation hadn’t gone ahead to my impromptu coming out to the whole group.

I had half a mind of telling the Foxes I was nonbinary, as Neil had said. Not a man, not a woman. Something lingering in between, something that sometimes wasn’t even there. Would they have understood where I was coming from? Would my brother be even more disappointed in me, knowing his twin was not only gay but also not a guy?

I looked up at the boy I loved, standing next to where I was sitting, as tall as a tower from where I was watching. He hadn’t batted an eye when I had come out to him. He hadn’t even flinched. He just stated that it was normal, that he understood, that he knew what label I could’ve given myself to feel like I belonged somewhere, to some people.

I had loved him a little more that day. I had loved his easy smile and his kind eyes. I had loved how accepting he was of me, of whomever I declared I wanted to be. How could I have been so blind as not to realize he loved me back?

“We ought to leave him be,” Kevin answered Matt’s worry in my stead.

“Day’s right, as much as I dread to admit it,” Nicky sighed, “It doesn’t look like there’s much we can do but wait him out. Let’s go on about our day and hope he’ll snap back to reality before we have to head back to the cottage.”

“Thank you, Nicky,” I muttered, still gazing up in awe at Neil.

“I think we’ve lost Andrew too,” Dan snickered.

“Talk about puppy love,” Aaron scoffed.

“Oh, shut up, all of you,” Allison snapped playfully, “You wish you had what these two have.”

“Right,” Kevin commented, appalled by the blonde girl’s remark, “Try to be in the middle of one of their fights and you’ll see they’re not as cute as they seem.”

“Is it safe to say that they fight like cat and dog?” Matt said, wiggling his eyebrows, but as he was sitting down next to Dan on her towel he received a smack right behind his head, “Ouch!”

“You and your stupid puns,” his girlfriend rolled her eyes, “Will you ever grow up?”

“Of course I will!” Matt countered, then proudly added, puffing his chest out like a boastful peacock, “I’ve gone from silly puns to dad jokes, baby. I thought you’d have noticed.”

“How can you be the same guy that beats people up without batting his eyes?” Allison chuckled.

“I’m a 1.93 meters tall bloke, Allison,” Matt replied, “It’s my duty to beat the shit out of people when they’re being assholes.”

“Andrew beats the shit out of people and he’s 1.50 at best,” Nicky pointed out, sitting on his own towel right next to a still dripping-wet Aaron.

“That’s because I fight people out of spite, not out of duty,” I explained, monotone, “If someone pisses me off, they had it coming.”

“But you get pissed off rather easily,” Dan said.

“That’s why everyone thinks he’s a menace,” Aaron added.

“Why are you all on my case today? Is it some kind of festivity I don’t know?” I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping they’d just disappeared if I didn’t look at them.

Sadly, they were all still there as they started chuckling and giggling. Somehow, they had cracked the code; somehow, with whatever magic they knew Neil was working on me, they also knew that I wouldn’t hurt them just because. It made me so mad I was starting to acutely acknowledge the knives in the hidden sheaths in my armbands.

“Stop being so prissy,” Allison smiled kindly at me, “It’s all good fun. We make fun of each other all the time. It’s part of being friends.”

“Yeah, mate,” Matt nodded along to Allison’s words, “And also-”

“Andrew,” he then said.

“Uh-oh,” Kevin muttered, “He’s alive.”

“Andrew,” Neil repeated. This time, he extended his hand backwards, towards me, offering it for me to catch, then I heard his voice in my head, Yes or no?

Yes, I replied accordingly, before taking his hand and using it to push myself up on my feet, What’s going on?

Just follow me, he replied, before announcing to the others, “We’ll be back.”

Without another word, he began walking. For the first few steps, I stumbled in his tow, tripping over my feet in the dry sand, but I soon fell in pace right beside him. His grip around my fingers was tight, like iron. It wasn’t comfort he was seeking, but steadiness, a pillar to lean on when he felt like falling down. I endured the taut pain in my hand and kept following him.

He walked a lot. When I glanced back, the rest of the Foxes were little spots in my field of view, I couldn’t even really tell them apart. At some point, he stopped and turned towards the sea. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, gazing at the blue and aquamarine blanket ahead of us. He stared at it while I stared at him.

“Do you remember…” he began, but promptly had to stop to release a shaky breath, “My mother. Did I tell you where she died?”

“On the French shore of the English canal,” I replied, without missing a beat.

“I did tell you, then,” he was still mumbling, his words never quite making it out of his lips.

“You did,” I analyzed his profile, the beautiful burn scar on his cheek, “Darling, we’re out of earshot. Talk to me.”

“There are things that remind me of her so painfully,” his voice cracked, blue eyes swelling up with tears and looking way too much like the waves in front of us, “She died by the ocean, she died hit by a knife, she… I burned her body.”

“I know all of that,” I nodded.

“The sea reminds me of her. It’s the English canal, this one, isn’t it? We’re on the opposite shore of the one where she died, Andrew.”

“Oh,” I bit my lip, “We can go home, Neil, if it’s too much.”

“I can’t keep living like this,” tears started rolling down on his face.

“Like what?”

“Afraid to live because I miss her, or rather because I feel like my life now would disappoint her. You know, the smoke… Your cigarettes, the smoke of your cigarettes, strangely gives me comfort because smoke was the last thing I had of her. But the sea…”

“I know. I get it, Neil. I’ll walk you to the cottage.”

“I want to go in.”

“Go in?” it took everything in me not to recoil from him, “Like, swim?”

He shook his head, “Just up to the shin is all. I need to get over this. It’s been years, my mother was avenged, my father is dead… I need to move on.”

“Alright,” I nodded, “If that’s the hill you’re willing to die on, be my guest.”

“Would you come with me?” his bottom lip quivered. Absentmindedly, I reached up to catch a tear that was falling from his lashes, stroking his cheek with my thumb. He exhaled a little bit, “I don’t think I can do it alone.”

“I hate you,” I whispered to him, “I hate you so much.”

He chuckled, but it came out wrong, choked and half-assed, “Are you still counting the percentage thing?”

“Oh, yes,” I proclaimed, “You’re up to about 128%.”

“What?” he looked appalled but amused, “How did I get up there from one hundred?”

“You just piss me off that much, I guess,” I shrugged, then looked down at our intertwined hands, “Whenever you’re ready we can go in.”

He exhaled a shaky breath and nodded, glancing briefly at me, sideways, while keeping his whole body turned to the sea. It took a while for him to start taking some hesitant steps. He kept burying his feet in the sand all the way down to his ankle, breathing in and out very slowly, his eyes still fixated on a determined point on the horizon.

I walked beside him. I didn’t rush him, didn’t move unless he did first, didn’t try to encourage him with words or comfort him in any way. Somehow I knew that, while he needed my presence to be able to go ahead with the whole ordeal, he didn’t actually need me to process the death of his mother and the grief that it entailed. He just needed me to be there, hold his hand, walk beside him. And I did just so.

I kept watching him. By the time our feet reached the part of the beach where the sand got wet and the waves tickled our toes, he had started mumbling something under his breath. Even my enhanced hearing couldn’t pick up on the words he was saying, or maybe I just subconsciously chose not to listen even if I could hear.

When his feet were finally in the water, he stopped. He’d picked up a swift pace by that point, so I recoiled a bit at the sudden halt, but I didn’t pressure him to continue. I didn’t tell him we could go back if he wasn’t ready yet. I didn’t tell him jack shit, because it wasn’t my place to. I just waited him out. And I waited, and I waited, and I watched him, and after a while he took another step forward.

At some point, one step after the other, the water level reached the hem of our swimsuits by our knees. That’s where he stopped for good. He turned to me and I was surprised to find I was ready for whatever he wanted to say to me, for whatever he wanted to do with me. I was ready for a mental breakdown or a nervous burst of laughter or even a fit of rage.

But he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he squeezed my hand.

“Thank you,” he whispered to me, “for shutting the fuck up.”

“I don’t have a lot to say on a good day, Josten.”

He laughed quietly, but the smile left behind lingered on his lips, “She would’ve hated you.”

“Is it a bad thing?” I tilted my head to the side, watching him carefully.

“Not really, no,” he bit the inside of his bottom lip, “She hated most magical people and creatures. She would’ve found you intriguing, though.”

“I’m not known for charming mothers,” I shrugged, “I killed Aaron’s and Nicky’s despises me. Maybe that’s why I chose to have two fathers instead.”

“Yeah, well,” he sighed, “She would’ve hated you. But I don’t, and I still hate the sea.”

“Do you now?”

“The water is cold.”

“Go figure.”

“I think a fish bit me at some point.”

“Lucky you, maybe you gain some superhero power.”

“You think you’re so funny, don’t you, Minyard?”

“I think you’re bordering the 129% line, darling.”

“Hey, you two!” Matt’s voice suddenly reached us, and we both turned to him to see that he was hastily waving in arms around to get our attention, “Allison said we should have a slumber party in the living room tonight, are you in or do you need to have more sex?”

I almost choked with the air I was breathing, enough that I had to cough to regain some sort of composure and that Neil all but laughed at me before nodding to Matt.

“We’re good, we’ll be there!” he smiled widely at the black boy, and Matt grinned back at him, then he started sprinting away to get to the others.

Neil looked back at me, a fondness in his eyes that resembled my own when I thought of him. He squeezed my hand once more.

“Want to get out of the water?” he asked, a hum.

“Thank God. Yes,” I shouted in return.

Neil laughed and kissed the top of my head, right at the hairline, soft and sweet, before tugging my hand and hurrying out of our first and probably last interaction with salty water.

 

---

 

“Where are you going?” I eyed my boyfriend, who was sneaking out of our room with somewhat of a guilty look on his face.

“I’m getting bored,” he replied, grimacing a bit, “Kevin brought the brooms. He wants to practice.”

“Bored? Of me?” I teased him, putting on my best pissed-off expression – which, from what I’d gathered from the people around me, was my usual expression – and lowering the book I was reading so I could look at him better.

He flinched, and I went so far as to close the book altogether, putting a finger in between pages to keep the count, and place it on my lap. Neil sighed.

“You’re reading! We’re on vacation,” Neil protested.

“Well? It’s not like it’s for school,” I countered.

“But we could do something fun, Andrew.”

“Chasing a ball around on a broom is hardly my idea of fun,” I pointed out, “But you go ahead, I’ll be in here, reading my apparently boring book.”

“Why, aren’t we sensitive?” Neil snorted, “Did I hit a sore spot?”

I groaned, deciding it was the right moment to pick up the book and start reading again, just so that I could hide my already blushing face with its hard cover and avoid any other further questions.

“Go on, spill it,” Neil, though, insisted, “What is it? Is it Kevin? Are you jealous of him or something?”

“Of that coward? Come on, I wouldn’t be jealous of him if he kissed you in front of my very own eyes. He’s too scared to admit to himself that he likes boys, let alone act on that fact.”

“Kevin likes boys?” Neil looked taken aback.

“That’s a conversation for another time,” I pinched the bridge of my nose with the tips of my fingers, closing my tired eyes for just a moment, “The problem is Quidditch. I can’t understand why the two of you are so obsessed with it.”

“I used to play it when I was little,” Neil shrugged, “I guess I’ve always loved it. It’s my passion, and if my life hadn’t been tainted by the fear my father installed in me of dying young of a gruesome death, I would’ve probably chosen to pursue it as a career.”

“So,” I cocked one of my brows, “Now that your father is gone, you want to be a professional player?”

“If I’m good enough,” Neil started fidgeting, nipping at his bottom lip with his little fangs of teeth, “If they pick me.”

“You’re good,” I nodded, “You’re very good. I have no doubt some people will scout you next year. You’re the winner of the Triwizard Tournament and the very reason why Slytherin and now Ravenclaw have won the Quidditch Tournament several times so, at least believe that you’re good.”

“You know,” he cleared his throat, and I couldn’t tell if it was in preparation of what he was about to say or if he was flattered by my words enough to make him askance, “You’re good too…”

“Don’t start with that nonsense,” I warned, jabbing a warning finger at him, “Wymack and Kevin have already tried. I do not like Quidditch enough to do it for the rest of my life. In fact, I do not like Quidditch at all.”

“Then why do you play it?” Neil tilted his head to the side, eyebrows furrowed, “You seem to have fun during games.”

“I just like winning,” I shrugged nonchalantly, “Granted, I don’t care about it enough to put in effort to win, but in the end we always do win, so I like it.”

“And when you lose?”

“I don’t care.”

“So you hate it?”

“I don’t care enough about it to hate it.”

“But you’ll keep playing?”

“Until school’s over,” I shrugged once more. Neil had stopped my reading mid-sentence and I was actually seething, wondering how it could’ve ended.

“And after that?” Neil smiled softly, “You’re like me, aren’t you? You never thought about the future, didn’t think you had one.”

“I hate this conversation.”

“So, you never actually put any thought into what you want to do when school’s over,” he kept rambling, a smirk growing more evident on his face, “You never even knew you were a wizard when you were a kid, I imagine you hardly ever focused on daydreaming about your future job in the wizarding world once you found out. You thought you would die sooner than having to make that decision, and plus, most places wouldn’t even hire you, seeing that you went to jail.”

“I might hate you even more than the conversation itself.”

“You don’t know,” Neil now was smiling, amused by the truth he was apparently discovering about me, “You don’t know what to do when school’s over, you’re at a loss.”

“What if I am?” I challenged, placing the book on the bed and crossing my arms on my chest.

“What, you expect me to be the breadwinner while you ride on my income? It’s fine by me, love, but it’d be nice if you asked first,” he scoffed.

I realized that implied he thought we’d be together long enough to rely on each other for the rest of our lives. That made me hate the conversation a lot more, and I decided it was time to cut it short before I started giggling and blushing because a redhead boy was flirting with me.

“Shut up,” I rolled my eyes, “Go play stick with your buddy and don’t bother me any further.”

“Ah, yes,” Neil laughed even more, “Nice way to avoid your problems, Minyard. Let me know we you decide to solve them, I want to be there to witness.”

With that, he opened the door, closed it behind him, and disappeared. I could hear Kevin’s faint reprimand for his tardiness, to which I could only imagine Neil’s whispered snarky remark. But the conversation we’d just had left me with a sour aftertaste in my mouth, and I couldn’t quite shake that feeling. The book laid abandoned on the bed, and I never picked it up again that day.

It seemed like a normal, juvenile question, really. It shouldn’t have been that hard to answer. I was about to be eighteen, I was ought to know the answer to it, wasn’t I? I was about to be out of school for good. And, even if Remus and Sirius were kind enough to offer me a home, that shouldn’t have meant I had to abuse it and stay under their roof until they dropped dead.

Neil, from the looks of it, likely would’ve wanted to move in together. If he didn’t, would we have lived closely by? Would I have been able to see each other every day, just like we did at that godforsaken castle? Would I have missed the comfort of sleeping with him, had I taken it for granted?

What was my life? What was my purpose? I’d never thought about that. To quote Dumbledore, I was talented and powerful, I could’ve become whatever I had set my mind to. But what even was that? What could I have wanted to become in the first place?

The simple question was, really, what did I want to do when I grew up?

Turns out I had a year to figure it out.

 

---

 

 

Right after dinner, Dan gathered us in the living room and sent us all scouring for blankets and pillows that we could throw on the floor so we all could have that godforsaken slumber party. I gladly sat that out – quite literally, since I plopped myself on the couch and didn’t leave it until all the blanket forts were up and running, just so I could plop myself down onto one of them.

Dan gave me the stink eye. I stuck my tongue out at her. We left it at that.

Right when I still had my eyes on her, who was scolding Matt about something else – she really did love scolding us like a proud but desperate mother – I felt my senses tingle and my head spin. I turned to find Neil, on all fours, right in front of me. I gulped.

“May I help you?” I asked.

His eyes gleamed, a light shining inside of them, the prettiest shade of blue I’d ever seen. My mouth went instantly dry and I deeply regretted agreeing to that fucking party right about then. Neil seemed to notice. Of course, nothing ever got past him.  

I hate you, I thought out.

You seem to say that a lot today, Neil thought back, Is something bothering you?

You. You are bothering me, I replied, then regretted it once more when Neil’s giggle made several heads swivel towards us. Aaron’s eyes were wide with shock, jumping from Neil all but crawling towards me – and that was playing tricks on my brain – to me.

Neil eyes glanced down to my legs, that were crossed in front of me while I sat. He bit his bottom lip and I could feel the raw heat create literal fog inside my head. I was about to either kiss him senseless in front of all our friends or pass out, no other choice.

Can I lay with my head on your lap? Neil asked me. Luckily, conversation between the rest of the Foxes had picked up the pace again, so no one could see the way Neil was eyeing my fucking groin.

I repressed the pained sound I felt coming out of my throat by clearing it, then put my palm flat on Neil’s face, Are you doing it on purpose?

Doing what on purpose, my love?, once I removed my hand, Neil batted his long, copper-colored lashes at me, framing his blue eyes so gorgeously that I felt like dying.

You are. You are doing it on purpose, I accused him, Stop right now.

Or else?, Neil challenged, a smirk growing on his face.

I’m going to fuck you to pieces in front of your friends and you’re going to regret ever pushing my buttons, Josten, I informed him.

Neil laughed, which again made us gain some weird looks from the others, finally sitting down with his butt on his talons and placing his hands on his knees.

“I really did want to lay with my head on your lap, though,” he smiled softly.

“If you promise to behave,” I mumbled, “You can go right ahead.”

“Let me think about it. That would mean it would be difficult to kiss you,” he teased me.

“Mhm,” I muttered, placing a firm hand on the nape of his neck and tugging him towards me, “Yes or no?”

“Yes,” he whispered back to me before attaching his lips to mine.

The jolt and rush of adrenaline cursing through my body at the sheer contact with his body, any part of him, was short-lived and cut off by the general gushing and fawning and cooing that started spreading throughout the room. I pulled away from Neil, just for him to lay down on the blankets and rest his head on my lap like he’d asked me. Meanwhile, I looked at the rest of the group, that was looking back at us with playful and cheerful eyes.

“You guys are so sweet,” Allison hummed. 

“Totally cute,” Dan agreed, nodding vehemently.

“You didn’t even like the thought of us two being together just this morning,” Neil scoffed, reaching with his hand to lightly caress my knee, an action he did absentmindedly, “Tone it down, ladies.”

“Sorry,” Matt replied, like the reprimand was directed at him and not his girlfriend, “It’s just weird seeing you two so open about it in front of us, but the good sort of weird, y’know?”

“It’s fine,” Kevin patted him on the shoulder, “You get used to it eventually.”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to the sight of my twin kissing boys,” Aaron flinched, “It’s not like I’m homophobic, it’s just like I’m looking into a very, very strange mirror.”

“You never thought about blokes that way?” Kevin asked sheepishly, which made me want to laugh. I made a mental note to ask him about his crush on my brother some day later.

“Nah,” Aaron shrugged, “I’m as straight as dry spaghetti.”

“Not even once?” Matt seemed appalled.

“What? You have?” Nicky scoffed, “Is Aaron the only straight guy in this group?”

“Ha!” I pointed at him, “Aaron’s the token straight.”

“Kevin's straight too,” my twin mumbled in response.

"Y-yeah, right," Day nodded along Aaron's accusation. 

“Is the token straight taken?” Allison taunted my brother, “Do you have a secret girlfriend?”

Aaron blushed violently. Suddenly, I was very aware of the conversation and what that flush on his face meant.

“What?” I asked, “Who is it?”

“Are you jealous?” Neil inquired from below me.

“No,” I scoffed, “I’d just like to know if my brother is dating someone.”

“Well, I didn’t know you were dating someone either,” Aaron argued, crossing his arms on his chest.

“That’s because I didn’t know I was dating someone! This,” I wiggled a finger between me and Neil, “is old news but pretty new official information to me.”

“How do you not know if you’re dating someone for over a year?” Dan asked, perplexed.

“It’s complicated,” Neil and I both replied, in unison.

“We should really sleep,” Matt yawned, “We’ll have plenty of time to gossip in the morning.”

“Right,” Nicky nodded, laying down on the pillow he’d brought from his room, “Even if it was getting really juicy.”

“Yeah,” Allison too started to lay down, “You guys are no fun.”

Still, after a loud chorus of goodnights and see you in the mornings, everyone started to doze off, sprawled on the living room floor like we were, each of us really close to someone else, like a pack that needed to stay close to live off of each other’s warmth.

Like usual, I snuggled up to Neil, spooning him from behind. In the dark, he smiled faintly and pushed his body closer to mine, like he didn’t want there to be a single atom of air between us. I hugged him tighter and watched him closely as he started to drift asleep as well.

For some reason, even if I was surrounded by bodies, I felt like it was easier for me to fall asleep too. Not long after I made sure Neil wasn’t awake, I started dreaming.

 

---

 

A faint blue light pierced my closed eyelids, getting to my pupils and ultimately waking me up before the already rising sun got a chance to do it. I opened my eyes, accompanied by numerous grunts and yawns by the people around me.

The subtle complaining stopped once we saw that the blue light wasn’t just any light: it was a translucent, fluorescent hare, hopping above our heads in the air of the cottage’s living room. Every one of us looked mesmerized at the charm, the little animal leaving a small trail of blue behind him as he moved.

I glanced down at Neil, who was still laying on the floor but was wide awake. His pupils had shrunk, and he was looking right at Kevin, who, in return, was staring at the hare, completely paralyzed by the sight of it. It took me a couple of beats to fully wake up and realize that something was wrong.

“Day,” I called him, and he shook his head vigorously before turning to me and Neil, “Snap out of it. What is it?”

“I- I-,” he stuttered, went back to look at the hare, his breathing hitched, “It’s Jean’s Patronus.”

“Jean?” Dan asked, rubbing her knuckle against her eye, “Why would he send it here?”

“Does this mean…” Neil began, still looking at Kevin in disbelief, but quickly trailed off.

“Yes,” Kevin nodded, “Kengo’s dead. I have to go.”

“Who’s Kengo?” Matt inquired, looking around the room, as confused as anyone else.

It seemed like Neil and Kevin were speaking a foreign language. They could’ve had indeed switched to French – they both knew it really well – but I guessed they were too tired to speak anything but English. Still, they didn’t bother explaining what it seemed they knew was happening, like it should’ve been common knowledge.

“He’s Riko’s father,” Allison muttered, in the complete silence of the room. Kevin turned to her, eyes wide with shock, an expression of terror etched on his face, but the blonde girl went on, “isn’t he? Renée worked for him. She mentioned him once.”

“He was, yes,” Neil took time to reply, since Kevin seemed too appalled by Allison’s words to say anything more, “And his death means the whole structure of Riko’s family is going to change. It also means Jean’s in danger.”

“Why?” Nicky asked, getting more nervous by the minute, “Isn’t Jean his friend?”

“The Moriyama family is complicated to explain on a whim,” I finally was able to put my two cents in, once my brain was finally caught up with everything that was happening, “Kevin, get dressed.”

“Yes,” the black-haired boy nodded and finally got up to sprint to his room. The room fell silent without him, and when he reappeared, he took a moment to eye all of us and then glance at the door. He finally settled his eyes on me, “Contact Remus. Find Abby. We’ll need help, I don’t know what Riko did to him, but I know it’s bad.”

“Sure,” I nodded, “I’ll activate the Floo network.”

“Thanks,” Kevin simply said before dashing out of the front door. If he knew where he was going, where Jean was held, he didn’t mention it: I could only hope he’d be safe by himself.

With that, the rest of us took some moments to take it all in, absorb everything that had happened in less than fifteen minutes. Slowly but steadily, we began to fully understand the gravity of the situation.

With some help and my calming caresses, Neil was able to explain Riko’s past and family and abuse towards him, Kevin and Jean. He explained that Jean got the worst of it, went into detail as to what Riko had been doing to him with the consensus of the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. From beatings to rapes, from small slaps to literal torture, Jean was the most mistreated of Riko’s subordinates.

With all that in mind, with heavy hearts and worried souls, we began preparing for taking in our vacation house the wounded body and mind of Jean Moreau.

Notes:

hi everyone

i just wanted to let you know that i might not be able to post regularly as i'd been for the past year. i have bipolar disorder and i've been in such a bad shape lately, it took me three actual weeks to write this chapter i don't even really like. depressive episodes are kicking my ass and i haven't been able to fully live for a while now, so, even if writing is the only thing that makes me feel like i have some sense of purpose, i may need to take a break.

that doesn't mean there won't be updates. it just means it might take me more than a week to write one, and so i might also post them late

i'm so sorry, i truly am. i really hate myself because of this but there isn't anything i can do about it, so we just all have to deal with it

i hope you enjoyed this chapter and i hope i'll se you soon with another one

love you all, bye lovelies <3

Notes:

Well, my friend, you've reached the end!I know I'm not the best writer, but I sincerely hope that was enjoyable.

I want to thank my best friend and partner in crime, who introduced me to the All for the Game trilogy and helped me with the wild ideas that lead to this story. She supported me through the whole process while still studying for Uni, that's a hard task.

Anyway, that's all, folks. Till we see each other again!