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The air in Salem always felt heavier in October. Maybe it was the memory of too many Halloweens, or maybe it was just the way the wind carried whispers through the trees. Either way, Max had learned to live with it — with the silence, the shadows, and the lingering sense that magic hadn’t really gone anywhere.
The Sanderson sisters were gone, sure, but Thackery Binx wasn’t. Not entirely.
Sometimes, Max saw him sitting by the porch steps, barely a shimmer against the evening light. Not a ghost, not fully human, but something caught between. The first time it happened, Max nearly dropped his flashlight. Now, he just sighed, set down two mugs of cocoa — one hot, one for show — and sat beside him.
“You know,” Max said one night, eyes on the orange horizon, “most people would move on after three hundred years.”
Thackery smiled faintly, his voice softer than wind through leaves. “Most people didn’t have so much to atone for.. Most people didn’t fail to protect their sister for that long.”
“Most people didn’t save a whole town either,” Max countered, nudging his shoulder. “That’s got to count for something.”
That earned him a glance — warm, startled, grateful. It was the first time Thackery had really looked at him since the night the witches turned to dust. The corner of his mouth twitched in quiet amusement. “You talk as if I’m still a hero.”
“Maybe you are.”
The words hung there — fragile, unexpected — and for once, Thackery didn’t look away.
From then on, it became a habit. Max would finish his homework, then find Thackery outside under the oak tree. The ghost liked that spot, he said, because it felt alive — roots deep, leaves changing, time moving. Max liked it because it meant Thackery would be there.
Some nights they talked. About old Salem, about how stars used to look before streetlights, about how strange it was to exist in a world that had forgotten magic but still feared it. Sometimes they’d talk about modern things — microwaves, music, the internet (“So it’s like… letters? But everyone can read them?”). Other nights they just sat in silence, their breath visible in the cool air, the quiet between them growing soft and familiar.
Max found himself doing small things without thinking — leaving his old flannel draped over the porch rail, fixing a lantern so the light flickered like candle flame, keeping cocoa warm long after he’d stopped drinking his own. He told himself it was just out of habit. But sometimes, when Thackery appeared wrapped in that flannel, smiling like it meant something, Max’s chest did a strange, nervous flutter.
One particularly cold night, Max stepped outside and found Thackery standing barefoot in the frost-tipped grass. The moonlight washed him pale and silver, like he wasn’t made for this world.
“You cold?” Max asked, already pulling off his hoodie.
Thackery turned, smiling that quiet, impossible smile. “You still can’t help yourself, can you?”
“What, being nice?”
“Caring,” Thackery said gently.
The words hit somewhere deep in Max’s chest. He didn’t say anything for a minute. Shrugging, suddenly self-conscious, “Yeah, well… guess it’s kind of my curse,” Max said quietly. “Yours was nine lives. Mine’s… not being able to stop giving a damn.”
Thackery laughed, the sound small and whole. He leaned into Max, the way someone might lean into the warmth of a candle flame. “Then I’m glad you haven’t broken it.”
They stood there in silence for a while, the wind stirring the branches overhead. Max’s breath clouded the air; Thackery’s didn’t. But when Max offered the hoodie anyway, Thackery hesitated only a moment before slipping it on. It hung loose on him, sleeves swallowing his hands. Then he reached out, tugged Thackery’s sleeve until their shoulders brushed.
“Does it feel real?” Max asked quietly.
Thackery looked down at the fabric, then at Max. “It feels… warm.”
And Max, somehow, couldn’t look away.
After that, Thackery stayed longer each night. Sometimes he would hum — old songs from centuries ago, melodies that sounded like lost lullabies. Max would listen, eyes half-closed, letting the world fall away. There was peace in the sound, in the way Thackery existed — not quite alive, not quite gone, but gentle and enduring all the same.
“Do you ever wish you could still feel things?” Max asked one evening.
Thackery tilted his head. “I do feel. Just differently. Time softens it all — joy, pain, even love. It doesn’t disappear; it just… quiets.”
Max nodded slowly, fingers tapping against the mug in his hands. “Must be lonely.”
“Sometimes,” Thackery admitted. “But then there are moments like this.”
“Like this?” Max repeated, smiling.
Thackery’s gaze lingered on him, a faint warmth in those old, thoughtful eyes. “Yes. Sitting here, listening to the world change, and realizing it’s not all lost.”
Something twisted tenderly in Max’s chest. He looked down at his cocoa, then back up. “You make it sound poetic.”
“I’ve had centuries to practice,” Thackery said, and Max laughed softly — the sound echoing between them like a spark in the dark.
When the clock struck midnight, Thackery started to fade again, his outline dissolving in the moonlight. Max hated that part — watching him go. It always felt like losing something he hadn’t meant to find.
“See you tomorrow?” Max asked, voice small but sure.
Thackery’s fading form gave a soft nod, his voice like a whisper in the wind. “You always do.”
And when the night finally swallowed him, Max stayed sitting there, sleeves warm from where Thackery had leaned against him, the smell of burnt leaves and cocoa clinging to the air.
Somewhere in the distance, the old house creaked like it was sighing in relief. And under the pale, forgiving light of the moon, Thackery Binx — still caught between centuries — finally looked like he belonged somewhere again.
Right beside Max.
He didn’t know what to call what they had — friendship, haunting, something in between — but it made the cold easier to bear. Maybe, he thought, that was enough.
For now.