Chapter Text
Rule number one of living in New York, according to the Santiagos: Never, ever talk to the muggles next door.
The Peraltas have a son Amy’s age, which she only knows because her parents always reject the birthday invitations sent their way. It kills her inside, having to say no. Amy hides most of the invites in her room so her mom can’t throw them away, and dreams of candles alit on a birthday cake. This year was the double digits party, and, to no avail, she’d begged her parents to let her go.
Too risky, they always declare. Their neighbors can’t know about magic. The Santiagos perform cleaning spells with the curtains shut tightly, and their store of Floo powder is neatly hidden in a flowerpot in the living room. "It’s for our safety and for theirs, mi amor," Amy’s dad declares time after time. "People like the Peraltas don’t have any business knowing about our lives."
Rule number two, of Amy’s own creation: figure out how to use muggle currency before the ice-cream man gives you a funny look. Suffice to say, she’s breaking both guidelines at once, fumbling with the coins in her hands. She only has so many, picked up from stray sidewalks and empty hallways.
Why are men’s faces on each of them? And why are there flowers and buildings carved onto the metal? She looks up at Jake Peralta as she purses her lips and feels a slight blush fall over her face.
“Sorry, I, uh, lost my glasses,” she says, supplying her go-to excuse. Inside, she flinches; he must hate her for avoiding him all these years. “Can you help me?”
“No problem,” Jake offers, sorting through them. He frowns. “Why bring so many pennies?”
Amy freezes. Her parents would kill her for doing this, and the man running the ice-cream truck gives another sigh. Glancing quickly at her house, praying nobody can see her, she lies. “I … couldn’t get rid of ‘em. You know how it is.”
“I get it, we have way too many of them at our house too.” Jake smiles, picks out six of the biggest coins, and hands them to her. “Here, these quarters should get you anything you want.”
“Thanks,” she replies, then orders and tucks the remaining money into her pocket. Their ice cream comes quickly, and she hands Jake his cone before taking hers. Be cool, be cool, try to blend in… The sun beats down on Amy’s skin and she jingles the change in her pocket, trying to diffuse the awkwardness.
“You’re Amy Santiago, right? From next door? Why don’t we ever see each other?”
“I’m homeschooled,” she blurts, going with the cover story. A shiver runs through her. “And my parents don’t speak much English, ‘cause we’re Cuban, so they don’t really interact with the neighbors.”
Jake smiles. It’s hard to communicate “sorry for skipping your birthday party every year” in a single expression, but Amy tries her best to do so as she grins back. Now, if she could only master the “my parents don’t drive because they can apparate??” and “please ignore that time we threw a quaffle into your yard” looks, she’d be all set.
“It makes sense. Are you guys are just more sheltered?” he asks.
Amy nods. “My brothers and I don’t even watch TV or anything. Just lots of studying and helping out around the house, learning to fix the bathroom sink and stuff like that.”
Bless her brother Luis for taking Muggle Studies last year, and for blabbing on and on about it. Despite the fact that he told Mom the trolley on the Hogwarts Express was a waste of money and ruined it for everyone else, he’s officially her favorite. (Well, he could’ve taught her more about the currency system, but still. Amy takes what she can get.)
“Wow, sounds tough,” Jake replies. “Listen, your parents probably wouldn’t approve, but come knock on my window if you ever need someone to talk to. Just hop the fence and knock on my window, okay? First-floor, it’s the one covered in stickers. We have a treehouse. It’d be nice to talk to someone.”
Amy looks back to her house again, thinking how disappointed her mom and dad would be. One year ‘til Hogwarts, they always say. One year and you can see your brothers whenever you want, instead of missing them throughout the school year. But ever since they moved to Brooklyn, away from her cousins and her friend Rosa, it gets lonelier every day. The cold clambers up her spine so easily now.
“Sounds pretty good, Jake. Thanks.”
As he walks away, his shoes light up, electric blue against the dull pavement. Amy only stares, confused by the boy next door and by the magic he keeps to himself.
Running to Jake’s bedroom window is risky. Amy does it anyways, a little bit breathless. She misses having a friend to gossip with, dreams of hand gestures and inside jokes, pleads for skinned knees and laughing until her stomach hurts. Considering this, it’s not hard to wait for her parents to work late at the Ministry, and then she climbs the fence with ease. They need never know.
“Hi,” Amy whispers, sitting on the ground outside Jake’s room. A few crickets chirp around her and the tall grass tickles her skin; she doesn’t mind it one bit. “You want to come out here?”
“I was hoping you’d show,” Jake says back. He grins, surrounded by darkness overhead, and makes his way out the window and into the treehouse. Extending a hand, he pulls her up. The air feels clearer, she thinks, but it might be all in her head.
“So, you’re Amy, the mysterious neighbor with the strict parents. Tell me, doesn’t it get boring over there?”
“Kinda,” she shrugs, legs dangling from out of the treehouse. Absentmindedly, Amy plucks a few acorns and puts them in her pocket. It’s nice, exploring the outdoors rather than admiring it and passing through. “I have seven brothers, at least, and there’s always something going on. But they’re older than me, so it’s sometimes hard to get a word in.”
Jake groans. “I wish I had a brother! I’m an only child, and there’s never really anyone to talk to. Most of the people in this neighborhood don’t have kids our age.”
“I’ll be your friend,” Amy offers, looking over at him. The moonlight casts a shadow of the treehouse on the ground, and she carefully takes notice of how high they are in the air. Her dad won’t even take her flying in their Cleansweep Seven. It’s exciting, breaking one of his many rules.
“Thanks, Amy. That sounds really nice. I’ll be yours, too,” Jake smiles, pointing to a green light in the sky for a moment. “Check it out, a drone.”
She gulps. “Yeah, see it drone, on and on, continuously. Cool, cool, cool. I love when it … zooms? Zips?”
Jake turns, sitting cross-legged, and gives her a look. Aside from the green flickering, the night sky is empty. “You don’t know what a drone is, do you?”
“I’m sorry! We’re really sheltered! And my parents don’t speak a ton of English, I told you!” Amy protests. Does he know? Can he feel the strangeness, her magic, all around? Would any sane boy sit in a treehouse with a girl whose anxieties express themselves in sparks and flickers, fire and light?
Wind rustles through the oak leaves, and Amy stills for a second. Guilt is welling up in her throat, and she’s never wanted to stay with someone whose very presence is a risk, a cause for caution.
“Hey, stuff can be hard to understand sometimes. It’s not a big deal. Anything you have questions about, just ask me, okay?” Jake knocks his shoulder against hers, lightly, breezily reminding her of his every intention. Even the dark, Amy can see his freckles.
“Thank you, ” she says, gentle. “That means a lot.” Amy knows she’ll have to leave soon, and she’s never belonged there in the first place. Sitting in the treetops with a schoolgirl crush and her half-written apologies, nevertheless, she’d like to stay.
The moon glows, a harsh sliver of light above them. The night envelops them both, and they talk until what feels like morning.
Jake cocks his head. “Your middle name is Nina?”
“That’s right, I’m Amelia Nina. And, for you, it’s Sherlock?” She hugs her knees to her chest, her eyes a little bleary from staying up.
“My mom reads a lot,” he replies, shy at first. “And, anyways, let me explain what drones are...”
She giggles. “And then you’re going to have to tell me what Sherlock is.”
Amy likes to keep her hands behind her back and her emotions smoothed down, in case her magic reveals itself. The first time it did so, her mother’s incense had burnt out of control and she’s made it rain in midair, keeping the flames at bay. The sky had flashed blue for a split second, and Amy’d paled in comparison. Power comes at a cost, her parents warn. She could be killed (or worse, expelled) if the wrong people notice her gifts.
Stay quiet, muted, serene. Be nonchalant. Keep your secret to yourself. She grows talented in biding her time, counting down her days. At eleven, she can leave home. At seventeen, she can go wherever she wishes.
So, when Jake Peralta becomes her best friend, it’s all too difficult to keep him at arm’s length. Amy certainly doesn’t tell him about magic, but it hurts to lie to him. He deserves to know about cheering charms, or spells that change mice into teapots, or a potion that could double his age. He belongs in her world, she thinks. If only he were, her silent hopes beckon.
The lingering breadth of that statement drags on into the year; they’re so close, he’s on her like a shadow, a beloved memory 一and yet, Jake doesn’t know her completely. She lies every time they meet.
This thought in mind, Amy tells him as much about her as she can. Despite her reservation, she clings to numb determination. She loves him. How could she not? The rules she knows by heart begin to pile, unwanted, at her feet.
Amy adores Jake’s anecdotes, his birthmarks, his ephemeral glee. Their nights are spent in long conversation, their shoulders pressed together and voices hushed. Once, he sneaks her a cup of coffee from his house and laughs until his stomach hurts, seeing the way her face contorts. It isn’t until the day after that he brings the creamer and sugar.
Amy teaches him to fold a bishop hat out of a napkin (“when will I ever use this?!”) , and to whistle with a blade of grass. She speaks Spanish sometimes, and a dash of Latin, asJake tries to follow along.
Don’t let any spells slip, Amy tries to remind herself. They’re in Latin as well. Nothing fancy, not even an Alohomora. Just use ‘e pluribus unum’, or ‘et al’ or something. Easy phrases. The fact that she has to remember common muggle terms in a foreign language is proof she’s in over her head.
“I don’t know much Latin,” Amy excuses herself, “but I’m better at Spanish. My whole family speaks it, of course, and I can try and teach you a little.”
Jake stumbles over the syllables and accents. Amy thinks it’s the most endearing thing, watching him practice 一 “did I get the verb ending right? Is it amos or ais?” Once in a while, she lies, just to bolster his confidence.
Their year is illuminated in gold, captured in everyday moments. Jake takes his dad’s camera out to the treehouse and snaps three full reels of blurry pictures. Amy sees dandelions and sidewalk chalk, lawn decorations and tangerine skies, taped to the walls or stored in the photo album Jake keeps outside. She wishes the images weren’t frozen, and she could relive the memories over and over, like in a wizard photograph (that time a firefly flew into Jake’s ear and wouldn’t go away? priceless.)
“Our life isn’t to be shared,” she can hear her mom and dad saying. “We’re purebloods. Better safe than sorry. We can’t go around spilling secrets for no reason.”
They start to wonder why she’s always so tired in the mornings, and why her gaze always lingers to the house next door. Her ears even perk up sometimes, when the ice cream truck drives by. Amy is their youngest, her picture not yet on the mantel, and they know she’s nearly eleven now.
One day, an owl lands on their windowsill, a school acceptance letter in its beak, and Amy realizes she has to walk out of Jake’s life. There are still a few acorns on her nightstand, from the first day they met, and the leaves look afire outside. It’s hard to describe how different autumn feels this time around.
The treehouse looks awfully empty the next time she sees it. It’s as if it knows, in some strange way, that it’s the end of an era.
Jake Peralta is ten years, eleven months old the day everything changes once again.
He should be used to it by now; his family used to move every year or so, and his parents divorced when he was nine. Dusty bedrooms and U-Haul trucks are all too familiar in his memory. And here he thought he’d stumbled upon something irreplaceable with Amy, practically his partner in crime 一 by now, he spends every night with the promise of her presence, lying hopelessly in wait for a knock at the window.
He’s never wanted to be back in the treehouse more.
Jake comes home from school one day and sees his father in the kitchen, a merciless look in his eyes. “What do you mean, you cashed the checks?!” Roger snaps.
His mom’s sitting at the table, hunched over a slip of paper covered in red marks. She stutters a response, voice caught and feeble. Jake never noticed it before, but he can see the vein in his dad’s forehead bulging.
The room is stuffy, unchanging, and it feels as if Jake’s a guest in his own home. His parents have noticed he’s there in a theoretical way, not acknowledging him but going out of their way to avoid eye contact. It’s like a brush with loneliness itself.
“When I ask a question, I expect an answer, Karen!”
Everything happens so strangely. His dad is gripping his mom’s shoulders, his grasp tight enough to bruise, and his voice is insistent, ripping away every last speck of decency he’d had before. He looks her in the eye, severe and unbridled, and the lights seem to flash of their own accord.
The noise is blinding, the view deafening, everything rampant and out of its depth. Jake didn’t know colors could turn so quickly, and he catches a glimpse of his dad’s hand, calloused and white, before everything reverts to itself. Jake’s eyes are shot, everything flickering ultraviolet. The world seems to have fallen off its axis.
His father releases a heavy sigh and stumbles for a corner of the kitchen table. For a second, Jake thinks he might be having a heart attack. His dad keels over the table, dead weight, his back and chest slumping against the wood. Even in rest, his hands are balled into fists, but his grip softens as he starts to snore.
“Do you know … what just happened?” Jake asks, forehead creased with worry. His dad’s sleeping, and at four in the afternoon, nonetheless, rays of light hitting their wallpaper harshly.
His mom exhales, eyes watery, and draws him into a hug. She winces and rubs at her left shoulder in the process, trying to hide the ache. “I’m not exactly sure, hon. The important thing is that we’re both okay, and we’ll figure everything out.”
For what it’s worth, his dad rests for a solid week 一 Jake and his mom eventually begin stacking dirty dishes on his back, saying he’s more useful when he’s unconscious anyways 一 and he wakes up a new man. First of all, he smiles constantly, which neither of them can get used to, and he also has no memory of ever fighting with Jake’s mom.
“You did the impossible!” Karen shrieks, kissing her son on the forehead. “You made him nice!”
Jake flushes. “No, no, he’s probably just cheerful because he slept so long.”
“That’s not human! You’re gifted from beyond this dimension!” She cups his face with both hands and nuzzles his nose, grateful past explanation.
Before Jake can protest, his mom starts singing to herself and lighting incense, now a daily habit in the Peralta household. Sun glints through the lace curtains and into the kitchen. As funny as it feels, it’s nice to see her so happy. Last night, she actually grilled hot dogs in the backyard (Jake wasn’t even sure they had a grill before??) and there were fireflies swarming around her head. They looked like stars.
Gone is every trace of his father and his touch. He’d ventured back to Jersey, promising to uphold the many ends of his many bargains. Trust is a little too good for the likes of him, but life is better anyhow.
Everything has shifted, one sun-bleached morning after another setting a clean break into motion. This might be the end of all the endings, Jake thinks, and he notices the ripped seams of his world are suturing themselves back into place.
And then an owl lands at his window, a sharp glint in its eyes, talons stained red with a letter’s wax. Jake feels a pang in his chest. Of course the miracle had been too good to be true.
That night, he climbs over the fence for the first time. Jake’s never seen Amy’s house up close, come to think of it. He brushes through the tall weeds, headfirst and nimble, breaths shortening as he thinks about Amy’s strict parents. She’s worth it, she’s worth it, Jake’s mantra replays, and he knocks at her ground-floor windowsill, kneeling on the grass, trying to keep each motion reserved.
Amy draws the screen upward with caution, cocking her head. Jake? she mouths, the crinkle between her eyes deepening.
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone,” Jake whispers, resting his elbow on the edge of the window, “and I miss you. Promise. It’s a lot to explain.”
She bites her lip. “Okay, talk later? Tomorrow night, your house?”
“Thanks for understanding, Ames.” Jake grins.
Amy leans out her bedroom window and kisses him on the cheek, swift and tender all at once. He touches the spot, as if to solidify the moment ever happened.
In this light, she could almost stay in his life forever. Amy’s eyes shine before she looks down, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Jake could forget about the acceptance letter sitting on his nightstand, about the school supplies his mother has to buy. That was a slumber spell, the headmaster had written. It’s the start of something new.
“Hey, listen, I’m leav-” Amy stutters, and the door creaks behind her. Her shoulders lock up. “You should go. Tell you later.”
Jake pecks her cheek, adrenaline guiding his every move, before he ambles over the fence once more. And Amy sits in the darkness, careful not to let the window squeak as it shuts, counting down the fragile days until autumn begins. She presses her fingers to the glass pane, wishing Jake were here. It’s hard to ponder moving away when she’s leaving her best friend behind.
“I’m leaving for school soon.” She finishes her sentence in her mind, regret flooding her system. “It’s called Hogwarts, a train ride away. My family’s not like yours, and they’d kill me for saying this, but I can’t be your friend anymore, not the way I was. That’s the rule. Plain and simple.”
Amy falls asleep staring at the ceiling. She’d lost track of the two-hundred-something sheep she’d been counting. How could she have wanted this with such determination? Besides, how could that hurt her, sidetracking more of her life than she’d realized?
Karen Peralta sips her herbal tea and looks out her window the next night, watching her son in the treehouse. She’s known Jake likes the girl next door for a while, seeing the way he’s gripping that letter. He hadn’t taken his eyes off of it throughout dinner. It showed up last week, carried however many miles clasped in a snow owl’s beak.
It was a funny thing, learning her son was capable of far greater than he’d ever known.
Karen smiles, murmurs an Incendio with the faintest flick of her wand, and the candles strewn about her coffee table come to life once more. She hopes the arrival of the letter isn’t too hard on her son. The first rule of living here, she’s always said, is that he shouldn’t talk to the muggles next door.
Jake and Amy climb up to the treehouse slowly, not wanting to let go of their time together. September first is only a week or so away, and the oak leaves are already turning a violent maroon and gold.
“I have to start a new school soon,” Amy begins, frowning ever so slightly. Her acceptance letter’s folded up in her pocket, with the uncreasable charm her brother Andrew put on it (“I need it nice and pretty when I frame it in my room, Mom! It’s a personal milestone!”)
Jake looks at the ground beneath his feet, watching fireflies dance around the tree. “Same here, come to think of it. I probably won’t see you much, unfortunately. It’s kinda far away.”
“Me, too. I have to take a train and everything.” Amy picks at a hangnail. “So, I guess this is goodbye for a while. Mine’s a boarding school.”
Outside, a breeze runs past them, past the neighborhood and on to the next. She watches a lonesome car coast through, headlights like cats’ eyes, never stopping for any signs.
Jake grins. “Hey, same! Funny coincidence, I guess. I have to go to King’s Crossing and everything, and my mom’s going to see me off.”
“That’s where I was going to go! My brothers board there every year to move in.”
Jake sighs and his shoulders drop as he gazes to his house. He looks to Amy’s, the windows equally dark. “Just wondering, Ames, what’s your school called?”