Chapter Text
I stay the night in Remus’s room because once I’ve broken down, being alone for eight hours sounds like the worst thing I could possibly do to myself. He gets out a second blanket and sleeps on top of the covers with it so I can sleep in his bed normally. Usually I’d protest that it’s not fair to him, but I’m too exhausted to argue. And his bed is so nice. And he’s so caring, and I really just want to sleep in his arms.
Waking up next to Remus is nice. Even though the raw vulnerability of last night is gone, being near Remus still feels distinctly safe. And I do feel so much better- clean and bright- after my breakdown. Like I purged all of my bad emotions last night and now I can move forwards.
Even though I know it’s not that easy, it still feels good. I feel like I can breathe again.
Remus kisses my scaled temple. “Morning, Snakeface. How do you feel?”
I roll my eyes at the name. “Absolutely awful, I’d like to spend today committing arson.”
“Now that sounds like a good way to cheer up,” he says, sitting up and clapping his hands together excitedly. “But that sounded like sarcasm so I’m assuming we’re just gonna go eat pancakes instead.”
“Indeed.” I sit up as well, sliding out of bed. “I would like to check on Logan first, though. He’s forced me to sleep through a couple nights now, I think it may be due time for me to return the favour.”
Remus bounds up off the bed, beaming. “Ooh, wanna tie him down? You know he’ll never willingly leave the library otherwise.”
“No, I’ve got something far more devious in mind…”
——
Knock knock knock. “Logan, open this door or I will tell Patton you didn’t sleep last night.”
The door gets yanked open to reveal a clearly sleep-deprived Logan. “You wouldn’t.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Try me.”
He crosses his arms, smirking. “Well, given that I found the solution to all of our problems singlehandedly…”
“Technically, that’s only because you didn’t let anyone else help,” Remus correctly adds. But even so-
“What did you find?”
Logan’s eyes light up, and he grabs my arm to pull me inside.
——
It only takes a few days to get everything in place, and then we’re just waiting for Alaric to return. He does, with an unnecessary amount of swirling sparks in the middle of our outdoor Sunday lunch.
“Alaric,” I say politely, standing up from the table to put myself between him and the others. “Good afternoon.”
He’s already summoning magic, big colourful orbs appearing around his fists as he mutters spells under his breath. I roll my eyes.
“You can’t hurt me, Alaric.”
He doesn’t falter, but he does pause in his spell-casting to reply. “You assume I haven’t learned anything from last time. I know what your sorcery looks like, now, and I don’t see any yet. ”
“I don’t need to cast anything. Magical law prohibits you from killing me, as a practitioner of magic.”
He scoffs. “Really? That’s your defence? You need to be part of a coven to be a magical practitioner. And sorcerers aren’t magical practitioners anyways. They’re sorcerers. They do sorcery, not magic.”
I smile. “I can do both. And I am in a coven.”
He rolls his eyes. “You can’t just create a coven, there are rules-”
“How nice of you to care about educating me in magic now. I already know the rules of covens, Alaric. I had to, in order to found one.”
Alaric huffs. “That’s not possible. You need at least six people to found a coven and you’re only one- three if those twins joined you.” He gestures dismissively to the table behind me, where Remus and Roman are seated along with the others. “That’s not enough, even for a sorcerer with six arms. And the head of the coven must be at least nineteen and have lived on the coven’s land for at least six years. You haven’t even been here six months, and neither of the twins is old enough. So who did you get? Did you rope Lil into this? I hope you know that you’re forcing her to give up her law firm for something she retired from years ago.”
“I didn’t. Lil’s just advising us, and none of us are the leader,” I reply.
Logan stands up beside me. “I am.”
Alaric scoffs again. “You’re not even a warlock. Normal humans can’t join a coven, much less found it.”
“Falsehood,” Logan says calmly, crossing his arms. “A person of nineteen years of age or older who has lived in an area of land for six years is eligible to lead a coven if they are a person capable of performing magic or if they are descendants of a magical line. Given that my mother is magic, I am eligible to lead a coven.”
I can see Alaric paling as he realizes what this means. “Virgil-”
“It’s nice to have a family for once,” Virgil interrupts. “People who I know won’t just abandon me for whatever else comes along. People who actually care about me. It’s nice. Kinda ironic that I was able to become part of this family permanently by being yours.”
“You don’t understand what you’ve done, Virgil,” he says, sounding genuinely pained.
“Yes, I do,” he says quietly. “I’ve left you like you left me, over and over, for my entire life. That’s done now. This is my family.”
Alaric looks at him sadly for a moment, as though he can will him to undo decisions that he’s already made. “My son.”
Virgil doesn’t look away, even though I can see he wants to. “Goodbye, Dad.”
There’s a long moment of silence before Alaric looks away first, for the first time ever, and his gaze lands on me. I watch it happen- his eyes narrow, he focuses in on me, and he begins literally shaking with fury. His gaze sweeps over the others- Logan, Roman, Patton, and Remus- and any small bit of pity I may have had for him is gone. I’ve come to some kind of terms with him turning against me, believing me to be evil and dangerous and wanting to kill me, and I’m not going to let it happen, but to even think about hurting my coven, my family-
He growls something unintelligible and hurls a fireball at me, at them, and I let it smash through the forearm of my bottom arm. I hiss and curl in on myself, squeezing my eyes shut and gasping for air through gritted teeth. Even with my sorcery shielding me against most of the damage, it still hurts like hell.
But any pain is forgotten when I feel the curse activate against him- the coven magic we knit together nights ago sings through my veins and I lift my head just in time to see him get launched backwards with so much force it looks like he’s being actively pulled through the air away from us. With every meter, it feels like I can breathe again.
In less than a second, Remus is kneeling beside me. “Fucks sake, Jan, you couldn’t have shielded yourself a little better? Sano.”
“I’m alright,” I whisper. “He’s gone.”
“Curatio. Yeah, but even a scratch would’ve done that. Jan, look at your arm. Sana, confervo, auxilio, emaculo. You know, this is going to leave a lot of blood- can I keep it? For experimenting?”
I don’t look at my arm. I look at him. My eyes are already filled with tears from the pain of the attack and the relief of being free and the happiness at being safe but it’s impossible not to be overwhelmed at how he looks kneeling next to me in the grass, casting spell after spell over me even when he knows I could heal myself in an instant and asking if he can bottle my blood, of all things. I love him. “Remus.”
He looks up at me, and one of my other hands is already cupping his cheek so I can kiss him. He makes a soft noise against my lips, then hums and presses against me. “Janus,” he whispers back, and I can’t help but smile.
I’m free. And I finally have a family.