Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Tell me I’m dreaming.”

Aziraphale sighed.

“For the last time, we’re not dreaming, Crowley.”

“’Kay, then remind me how we got into this mess again?”

Aziraphale stared up at the ceiling. Which – sure, magic ceiling, floating candles, kind of impressive. Also a little too on-the-nose, though. Crowley liked to think if he were to create a magic castle, it’d be a lot more exciting than this.

Then he remembered the Forbidden Forest, and the Chamber, and possibly the Dementors and the Tournament as well. Crowley grimaced. He hoped to G- Sa – someone, that the Antichrist’s imagination hadn’t extended quite that far.

He didn’t have a lot of faith in that hope.

“Possibly I shouldn’t have gifted him with all seven volumes of the Harry Potter books as a Christmas present,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Now you’re thinking of it?” Crowley hissed furiously, trying his best to tamp down the panic bubbling up his throat and not start shouting. It would break down the dream (provided this was a dream at all, the opposite of which was a possibility that Crowley was determinedly Not Entertaining right now) and deposit them somewhere even more horrific, or something. Crowley did not want to end up on the set of The Hunger Games.

“Great idea, just brilliant, give the Antichrist who has the power to rewrite reality with his bloody mind some crazy magic books, love and sorcery, manual on how to destroy the fucking world -”

“Language,” Aziraphale said mildly. “We’re among children now.”

“We are children now, angel!” Crowley screeched, in his new squeaky child’s voice.

“I’ll admit, the concept is novel to me, as well,” said the infuriating angel, now a child, staring somewhat puzzled at his smooth, small hands. “I haven’t got the faintest how to start acting like a child. Or a wizard.”

Aziraphale-the-kid was – exactly how he’d always been, just several decades younger. On the surface, at least. With the adorably round cheeks, golden hair and dark blue eyes, he could’ve passed for a cherub on any Advent calendar. No pun intended.

“Lucky for you,” said Crowley, disgruntled. “You look all nice and human. Me, on the other hand -”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re going to be just fine, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, as half the Great Hall gawked at Crowley and his adult-sized sunglasses.

“They’re going to tear me apart,” Crowley muttered. “And then you’ll see.”

“See what, dear?” said Aziraphale. He was watching the singing hat with a look of mild horror and morbid fascination.

“Nothing,” said Crowley, as an eerily spot-on McGonagall started to unroll the parchment of doom.

“So, you’ve read all the books, then?” Aziraphale turned back to him.

Crowley resisted the urge to fidget.

“Audiobooks. Listened to it while driving.”

Aziraphale beamed.

“Excellent. So you know all the challenges that we’re going to be presented with, all the – the plot, and the -  creatures?”

Crowley stared at the angel's expectant face.

“Hold on a second. You haven’t read it?”

Aziraphale squirmed – which looked rather ridiculous in his swishy, over-sized black robes - facial expression doing its usual acrobatics when the angel felt guilty, or cornered.

“You haven’t,” Crowley said, genuinely amazed. “There is a book that I’ve read but you haven’t.” [1]

“Well, it’s not exactly as if children’s books are a priority of mine,” Aziraphale huffed, fussing over his tie. “Never mind ones that came out so recently. There are a lot of books on the market that are dying to be read, you know. The annual number of published works in the UK alone -”

“Angel. They came out in 1997. That’s more than twenty years ago. You might have read one of them. Just one.”

“Regardless,” Aziraphale said, pointed. “We’re going to be fine. You know the books’ content. We’ll be fine. As soon as Adam realizes his mistake -”

“If he realizes -”

“He’ll let us out,” Aziraphale said, confident.

“In the meantime, we go to middle school,” Crowley sighed.

“Magic middle school,” Aziraphale said with relish, as only someone who’d never read the books could be when they find themselves in wizarding Scotland, 1991.

Crowley stared at him, open-mouthed, indignant.

“And if not magic, what do you suppose we’ve been doing for the past six thousand years, then?!”

“That’s different.”

“Different how? It’s literally the same – never mind. This is stupid. What house do you reckon you’ll be in?”

“Gryffindor, I expect,” said Aziraphale, eyeing the empty plates with longing.

“What, because it’s got a big pointy sword?”

“Because Gryffindor stands for goodness,” said Aziraphale, put-out. “Equality, and – and kindness, and -”

“Then I’ll be a Snake for sure,” said Crowley. “Looks like we’ll be on opposite sides again.”

Aziraphale smiled at him, soft. Crowley wanted to look away, but found it a little difficult to. All the candles in the hall picked out the gold in the angel’s hair, and his eyes seemed to gain a sparkle, more lively than they’ve ever seemed in that dusty bookshop of his.

“Wherever you are,” Aziraphale was saying. “Whatever side you’re on, you’ll always be dear to my -”

“Crowley, Anthony!”

Crowley cringed, and turned wide, desperate eyes on Aziraphale. Aziraphale, the bastard, only pushed him firmly with a hand, and Crowley went stumbling towards the podium on legs that refused to cooperate, what with the unfamiliar length and whole new center of gravity.

Well, well, well, said a voice in his ears as the hat was thrust down. Crowley nearly went tumbling backwards on the stool. No need to panic.

Right, no, I’m grand, just wonderful, thought Crowley wildly. I’m stuck in a fairytale and there’s a magic hat reading my mind.

Not the fastest broom in the shed, are you, said the hat with a distinct air of judgement. There’s cunning enough, I grant, but – oh, not a smidgen of ambition.

What?

The loyalty’s commendable, the hat said, barreling full steam ahead. Alas, a lamentable lack of hard work.

Hey, ‘s not my fault. Hard to really go at it when your job’s to spread evil -

What about bravery, let’s see, ah –

There was a pause.

Crowley’s heart jumped into his throat.

My, my, said the hat.

Its voice, its tone had changed, even though Crowley shouldn’t be able to tell. It was a bloody hat. What business did hats have, going around sounding like that?

You really will do anything for him, won’t you? No, not just for him, said the hat's voice, wondering.

The light in the Great Hall was blinding, even through his shades. Crowley felt dizzy.

Of course, how could I forget? The hat murmured, its voice like diffuse poison. Defying God, questioning Them to Their face – rebelling from even Hell - naturally, there has only ever been one answer –

“Gryffindor!”

“You’ve got to be joking,” said Crowley, dumbfounded, as McGonagall shooed him off to the side.

There were only Tracey Davis and Kevin Entwhistle between his name and Aziraphale’s, and he spent those few minutes trading identical looks of disbelief with Aziraphale across the hall, who was looking increasingly frantic at the head of the queue.

“Fell, Ezra!”

Aziraphale would be in Gryffindor, of course. Come to think of it, this wasn’t a bad arrangement. Having the same dorm would mean more time to plot their escape from this fantasy literature hell, even if Crowley had the sinking suspicion that there was nothing they could really do, but it would be nice to be able to play on the same team for once –

The rip of the hat opened.

“Slytherin!”

Crowley's head hit the table with a thunk.

*

“So how’s the big aquarium-dungeon-dormitory?” said Crowley the next morning, as they loitered on the edges of the Quidditch field, standing five feet apart, whispering from the sides of their mouths.

Aziraphale might not have read the books, but Crowley had, and he wasn’t an idiot; he knew what a Slytherin and a Gryffindor seen consorting together got you in these parts.

“Dreadful,” groused Aziraphale. “Everything is so wet. And dark. One can hardly read a book in there, not even by the firelight.” He was flipping through the first year Charms textbook with the same sort of look he was giving the hat last night. “Wingardium Leviosa? Is this a misprint?”

“It’s magic in a kid’s book, Aziraphale. They’re not big on realism. Or grammar. Speaking of, how did that hat put you in Slytherin?”

“Oh, said it was very cunning of me to have ‘passed for a good little angel all this time’,” Aziraphale replied with tell-tale lightness. “Also, apparently my conduct during the Apocalypse – or rather, the Notapocalypse – befitted an ‘exemplary Slytherin.’”

Crowley stiffened. “That wanker. I’m going to have its sorry hide -”

“It’s a hat, Crowley, it doesn’t exactly have any hide,” said Aziraphale, exasperated, but the smile he directed at Crowley made him calm a little.

“Still,” grumbled Crowley. “It’s got us backwards. Gryffindors are supposed to be the nice ones -”

“And I’ve always said that deep down, Crowley, you’re –“

“Angel, I swear -”

Aziraphale paused and beamed at him, but his meaning was clear. Crowley fought to contain his blush. It was a resounding failure.

“I’m fine, Crowley, really,” said Aziraphale softly. “Besides, they’ve got quite a nice emblem, don’t you think?” He poked at the little green snake on the front of his robes, with a slightly besotted smile.

“It’s – not bad, I s'pose,” said Crowley, choking a little.

They gazed at each other in the way that people who were in love with each other, but who hadn’t declared it to each other yet, often did.

“So,” Crowley said after he broke eye contact, clearing his throat, trying his best to adopt a business-like tone. “Any idea what we’ll have to do to get out?”

“I was hoping that you might have some.”

Crowley grimaced. “Right. I was thinking – if we’re stuck in a story -"

Aziraphale, bless him - no, damn him - picked up on his meaning immediately.

"How does a story usually end? When the villain is defeated.”

"Exactly."

Aziraphale's eyes lit up.

“In this case, the villain is -”

“Voldemort,” Crowley nodded firmly. “So, as soon as we get him out of the way -”

“We’ll be tip-top!”

Crowley decided to ignore Aziraphale’s choice of words this one time, and said,

“Fortunately for us, there is a grand opportunity right here in this castle...”

----------

[1] Aziraphale had not read the books. He had, however, seen one movie, the fourth one, with Crowley. It may or may not have contributed to his decision to not read any of the books. [2]

[2] Aziraphale thought the only saving grace of the movie was the actor for a certain Death Eater, who resembled Crowley greatly. He did not see the need to inform Crowley of this fact.

Chapter Text

“Surgo! Ascensio!”

Aziraphale waved his wand [1] about in an exact replica of Flitwick’s demonstration. The white, fluffy feather on his desk remained stubbornly unanimated.

“Aziraphale,” sighed Crowley.

“Resurgemus!” said Aziraphale, with still more enthusiasm, jabbing his wand. The feather turned into a frog. It let out a dry croak and made a bid for freedom.

Crowley waved a hand and restored the frog to a feather before Flitwick could come hurrying over. Aziraphale gave him a scandalized stare.

“We aren’t supposed to be miracling things about, Crowley!”

“As long as no one notices, we’ll be fine,” said Crowley, but picked up his wand at the look on Aziraphale's face. He lazily waved his wand [2] – or rather, the useless stick of firewood, was his opinion. With a burst of demonic power, his feather took flight. “Have you ever watched Inception? It’s like that, I reckon.”

They were huddled in the back of the classroom, with a desk between them. Not that it mattered much; Flitwick was flitting about the real [3] firsties like an overexcited mother hen, and there were much more bracing things happening there: explosions, and such.

It was all awfully twee and fantastical. Crowley vaguely wondered whether Rowling had ever received instructions from Heavenly agents. The whole thing seemed like Michael’s style.

“As you know very well, I have not,” said Aziraphale with emphasis. “You know I’m not that into – the moving pictures.”

“’The moving pictures’,” parroted Crowley. “Listen, we may have a problem.”

“Yes?” said Aziraphale. He was busy glaring at his feather. If it had any idea what was good for it, it would be six feet up in the air right now. Unfortunately, it was also bound by the magical laws of its universe, and could not simply suck up to the angel spinelessly, the way things in Aziraphale’s bookshop habitually and shamelessly did.

The feather trembled in existential despair.

“Yeah,” said Crowley. “about our plan to stick Voldemort in a bottle -”

“Great work, Mr. Crowley!” Called Flitwick from the front, bouncing on his wobbly book-podium. “And Mr. Fell, remember: it’s a swish and a flick. Wingardium Leviosa!”

Crowley and Aziraphale beamed at the teacher as one. [4] As soon as the tiny wizard turned his back, they ducked their heads under the tables.

“What about it?” said Aziraphale.

“After the soulless bastard separates from his – well – host,” said Crowley, grimacing. “How do you propose we contain him?”

Aziraphale fretted.

“I thought you had that part under control! Heaven has never had to devise a method -”

“Because souls naturally float Up without their anchors, so those sentenced to Hell need to be dragged Down there, I know,” said Crowley in a rush. “The thing is – the thing is. I’ve never had to do it.”

“What?”

“It’s never been my department!” Crowley protested. “I’ve been in Earth Relations from the start, and the Coercion and Abductions Unit is not part of it!”

Aziraphale raised his perfectly plucked eyebrows.

“’Coercion and Abductions Unit’?”

Crowley waved a hand.

“That’s what it used to be called, anyway. Nowadays it’s Human Resources Acquisitions Task Force, something like that. I liked the old name better. Less of a mouthful. And - well. 'S more honest.”

“I have to agree with you there, my dear.”

Aziraphale appeared to think things over.

“Well, the solution rather presents itself, does it not? Since we can no longer rely on our old avenues,” Aziraphale elaborated, seeing Crowley’s blank look, “we must endeavour instead to employ our new ones.”

“You’re not proposing we learn magic, are you?”

“We don’t have to learn actual magic,” Aziraphale prodded forlornly at his inert feather with the tip of his wand. Unbeknownst to him, the feather was still writhing in spiritual limbo. “We just have to find -something. A spell, perhaps. Or an object. That would – do the job for us.”

“Great. Now we’re off to find something that’s not even mentioned in the books.”

“Remember, Crowley,” murmured Aziraphale. “We’re not actually in a book. What we are in, is an eleven-year-old’s idle daydreams. Having said that -”

Aziraphale straightened, rolled up his robe sleeves, and pointed his stick of wood at the poor feathery sod on the table. He cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Conscendo!”

The feather twitched. There was no way to tell whether the twitch had come from Aziraphale’s magic, or a gust of wind blown in from the window.

Crowley rolled his eyes heavenward.

“Hell’s sake, Aziraphale, just put the blessed thing out of its misery, would you.”

*

Crowley walked away from yet another one of McGonagall's telling-offs, and hurried down the stairs towards the direction of the Library. He would turn needles into matches in class, whatever, but Crowley drew the line at writing nonsense magical homework.

Three foot on the Pythagorean Principles of Inanimate Transfiguration? As if.

“What have you found?” Crowley whispered, slinking up Aziraphale's aisle in the Restricted Section, the permission slip having been taken care of with nothing more than one of Aziraphale’s bashful smiles and a quirk of Snape’s dark eyebrow. The perks of being a Slytherin.

Crowley stopped a few paces away and studied the shelf in front of him. In the quiet library, the distance was just within hearing range, but far enough away to grant plausible deniability, should someone stumble upon them.

“What a pleasant place this is, right in the middle of a secondary school,” Crowley eyed the books. “Listen to the title of this one: Human Elements in the Art of Potion-Making. ‘Human elements’?”

Aziraphale winced, nearly losing his armful of books.

“Is that what it sounds like?”

Crowley flipped through said book. “Yep.” He quickly replaced the tome on the shelf, just in case the cover was made of human skin, or something awful like that. G - someone, after the Fourteenth Century, he'd thought humans were done with attempts at accessing the occult. Why they persisted in employing gross bodily matters to appeal to the diabolic, Crowley would never know. It was probably all that bad PR from the Middle Ages. He'd told Dagon the whole thing would come back to bite them in the arse.

Aziraphale frowned minutely.

“What was it that you said Voldemort did, again?”

“Split himself into eight parts,” said Crowley, droll. Then he reconsidered his answer. “Seven parts, as of right now. He’ll do it again if we dawdle, though.”

They shared a miserable look.

“Not even my lot would accept him, in that state,” muttered Crowley. “The guy was completely mad. I wonder if we mightn’t’ shove him back together, kill him all at once. Saves him a lot of trouble.”

“It would be more humane,” opined Aziraphale. “But much more of a hassle, I would say. Oh, I think I’m onto something here,” he said, pulling out a book with peeling covers, and dropped it into the precariously high pile already in his arms.

They made their way to a table in the middle of the history section; no one was ever there, not even the dour librarian. It was probably the force field that all those history books together tended to generate, an overwhelming sense of Boredom that gripped the unwary whenever they stumble into range, which would turn them immediately away to greener pastures. Crowley thought they'd get on splendidly with Aziraphale's collection.

“How are you finding the classes, my dear?”

“What, you mean the fake magic classes? Wonderful. Piece of cake. The plants have got attitude, though. Sassy little bastards.”

Aziraphale sighed.

“Here we are, with a chance to perform actual magic -”

“It’s not really magic. What we used to do, proper miracles, now -”

“And you’re taking short-cuts left and right,” Aziraphale went on over him, accusingly. “I just don’t think it’s very sporting.”

"And it is sporting, writing first year homework?"

"It's - it's interesting," Aziraphale busied himself flipping open the books. Great columns of dust shot up into the air.

Crowley crossed his arms behind his head and smirked.

“How are your classes getting on, then? All O's, is it?”

The angel sniffed, unrolling a sheet of parchment primly.

“I’ll have you know, I'm doing just fine with spells that have correct Latin spellings. I refuse, however, to take ‘Wingardium Leviosa’ seriously. There are some things there’s simply no excuse for.”

Crowley snorted.

"There are some branches of magic there's simply no excuse for, you mean. Like party magic."

Aziraphale turned his nose up.

"I have no idea what you're insinuating."

“Whatever you say.”

Crowley kicked his feet up on the table and sank back into the armchair. It wasn't an armchair a moment ago, but no one was watching except the history books, and Aziraphale, and neither would tell.

The afternoon sun poured through the high windows, bathing everything in gold. Dust motes swirled in the air. Before he knew it, Crowley had dozed off to the sound of Aziraphale’s quill scratching on parchment, old books rustling in their shelves, and the familiar smell of pages on their long, endless road to deterioration.

He woke up briefly to see Azriaphale poking his scarf with a muttered "Engorgio."

Something soft and warm and large landed on him, tucking its corners around his cold-blooded body. Crowley closed his eyes and sank back into dreams.

*

The annoying thing about Potions class was -

The annoying thing about Potions class was. All of it. That was what.

Crowley stomped down the corridor, clutching his ruined bag in one hand and his cloak in the other. Aziraphale trailed after him, composed and apparently unbothered. Of course, why would he be? He was a Slytherin, and Snape was Snape. More importantly, though -

"Body parts," Crowley hissed, shaking a bit of frog liver off his right sleeve. "You'd think you would be done with body parts and frogs and worms once you were away from Hell, but no, here you are, back in a bloody dungeon underground with no light and boiling cauldrons and the screams of the damned ringing in your ear -"

"The screams of Neville Longbottom, you mean," said Aziraphale mildly. "Poor chap, I do hope he is going to be all right."

"He will be. For a week, until next Friday," muttered Crowley. "I'm going back to the dorm to wash up," He called to Aziraphale as he strode towards Gryffindor Tower. "You go on to lunch, don't wait for me."

When Crowley came out of the shower, however, there was a note lying on his pillow. Crowley picked it up.

Meet me at the sixth alternative rendezvous. I brought pies.

P.S. the sixth alternative rendezvous is the lake

It was written in Etruscan, but that made the postscript no less offensive.

“What’s the point of having rendezvouses if you’re just going to say the place?” Crowley hissed while he sidled up to Aziraphale’s side on the banks of the Great Lake, under the shade of a row of wisterias. “Besides, this is the fifth alternative rendezvous. The sixth is the Room of Requirement. We’ve discussed this.”

“Never mind that,” said Aziraphale, smiling, shaking out a tartan picnic blanket he’d acquired from somewhere. There was a wicker basket, bread rolls poking out on one side, and even a dusty bottle of something that looked suspiciously like alcohol. Crowley stood, staring. “I’ve brought pies, and grapes, and cheese. These delightful little creatures in the kitchen, they’ve even got kippers and truffles, can you believe it? The mushroom soup is kept under a warming charm, I’m told. Of course, if you’d rather have crackers, I’m afraid -”

“What’s this?” Crowley broke the seal on the bottle and took a sniff.

“Something called buttered beer,” Aziraphale said brightly. “The house-elves gave me a sip, to see if I liked it. I thought it quite marvelous.”

Crowley miracled two mugs and poured one, and immediately guzzled it down. He took his time with the next one. Aziraphale started in on the soup, making happy little noises.

It was a nice day, one of the nicest that Scotland was likely to experience before winter winds rolled in from the north sea. Sunlight glinted off the surface of the lake, brilliant as a million tiny crystals. The occasional tentacle from the giant squid broke the light like a shower of glass. The air smelled of water weeds and wisteria.

Crowley stared out across the lake, through the violet fringe of flowers, mystified.

“What are we doing, Aziraphale?”

“A picnic,” the angel glanced at him, puzzled. “Since we had the afternoon off, I thought -”

“No, I meant -” then Crowley stopped. He wasn’t sure what he meant, he realized. He fiddled with a stem of grapes, then put it down to swirl the butterbeer in his glass about, restless.

Aziraphale laid down his empty bowl with a contended sigh.

“We won’t be noticed here,” he said, picking out what was apparently a mince pie from the tiny mountain of pies in the basket.

"You never know," said Crowley.

“And besides,” Aziraphale gave him a look. “I won’t care if we get found out, you know. This isn't Heaven and Hell -”

"A bunch of over-powered eleven-year-olds, I don't honestly see the difference -"

"Crowley."

Crowley blew out a breath, frustrated.

“I know you mean well, angel, but we’re stuck in this limbo, and there’s no telling where we’ll end up if the bubble is disturbed. If we attract any undue attention at all -”

“Surely students from different Houses are allowed to mingle once in a while -”

“It’s Against The Rules, angel!” Crowley threw up his hands. The capital letters in his voice was, he hoped, perfectly audible. “A Gryffindor and a Slytherin first year, being friends? It’s preposterous. That means it’s Fundamentally Against The Rules of this Universe, and we’re supposed to be Keeping Our Heads Down.”

Well, Lily Potter and Snape had been friends. But look how that turned out.

“Don’t you think we’ve already done the improbable, back in our own world?" countered Aziraphale. It boggled his mind a little, how blasé the angel was now, when - well. "Crowley, we were supposed to be mortal enemies, but we were friends. We’ve always been.”

Crowley blinked at him – it was probably too much to hope for that his shades would conceal the startled pause – and reflexively looked down.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Oh.” He sounded terribly hurt and guilty, and Crowley felt immediately contrite for using capital letters on him.

“I’m sorry that I ever denied my friendship to you,” said Aziraphale softly.

Crowley felt his traitorous face flaming. Too bad they don’t make sunglasses the size of one’s head. Maybe he should just buy a motorcycle helmet one of these days and be done with it.

When he dared glance up, Aziraphale was studying him, thoughtful. Crowley squirmed, feeling momentarily like an tattered text under the angel’s magnifying glass.

“You’ve always been more daring than I am, Crowley,” said the angel, gentle. “What’s really bothering you?”

The banks of the lake was peaceful; far off in the distance, he could hear kids shouting on the Quidditch field, laughter, water lapping on marshy grounds. The winds came periodically, full of some strange, sweet scent.

As far as imaginary prisons went, this wasn’t bad. It was just – not real. Not who they were, and not where they were supposed to be.

Crowley tried to imagine the outside of the bubble, their glorified glass cage. Tried to imagine the world, rolling on.

All he could picture was blackness. Darkness, and – and fires, smoke going up from thousand-year-old pages, all his world burning down –

Crowley cleared his throat.

“How’s the spell coming along?”

As topic changes went, it was a poor attempt. Aziraphale was merciful, however, and allowed the change.

Crowley had no illusions that the conversation was over, though.

“I’ve figured out the spell,” said Aziraphale smugly, sipping on the beer. “The author was a quite the crafty fellow, do you know? He hid the incantation in different parts of the book, and the footnotes were clues that led one to them.” Aziraphale produced a sheet of parchment with a flourish. Crowley scanned it; the lines were illegible to him, but when it came to texts, he trusted Aziraphale’s interpretation above all else. “All that remains now is the bottle -”

“Don’t worry about the bottle,” said Crowley. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Really? When?”

“Christmas break,” said Crowley, draining half of his mug at once. The enchanted alcohol left his insides warm and slightly bubbly. He leaned back further onto his elbows. “We'll be able to go to Knockturn Alley then. If there's anywhere in this whole fake world that can get us a soul containment bottle, it's Knockturn Alley that'll do it.”

“Jolly good,” chirped Aziraphale. “Oh, you simply must try this bread roll, it’s nothing short of divine...”

Crowley tore off a chunk of the bread and swallowed, tasting nothing as usual. He broke another piece, and threw it into the lake. The giant squid caught it with a deft flick of its limb, then sunk into the water with a trail of bubbles.

Aziraphale cast a reproving glance his way.

----------

[1] White, of course.

[2] Dark, of course.

[3] That was, as far as things in dreams could be real. To quote Dumbledore, however: “Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

[4] Aziraphale’s smile was beatific. Crowley’s looked like he had a toothache, and was in need of immediate medical attention.

Chapter Text

“Psst. Here!”

Crowley got up from his seat in a dark corner of the Leaky Cauldron and bodily dragged the clueless angel down into the booth seat beside him.

It was freezing; the dingy pub was lively, teeming with people drinking and talking, tankards and plates zapping to and fro in the air, the tinkling of cutlery and coins like bells above the din of the crowd. Whole families squeezed in from either Diagon Alley or the streets of London, arms full of shopping bags, towing hordes of small, stumbling children with their floating toys. More than most of them knew the barman Tom, who was running ragged cleaning mugs and pouring pints, snatching precious moments to toss a smile or holler a greeting to his regulars.

Aziraphale coming out of the Floo, pink-cheeked, green-wrapped, craning his neck in search of Crowley, was as conspicuous as if Santa Claus himself had walked into the place with reindeer in tow. The picture screamed “helpless orphan” or “lost kid looking for parents,” and they definitely did not need any helpful neighbourhood witches to come around in concern.

“Didn’t I tell you to wear all black?” Crowley hissed.

“That wouldn’t be very festive,” replied Aziraphale, improbably serious. “Look,” he said, pulling open his cloak. Beneath the garish green scarf, his Christmas sweater was a woven bundle of green-and-red tartan monstrosity, holly and antlers and little silver bells that actually jingled, and the worst part was, Crowley could tell Aziraphale wasn’t even being ironic about wearing it. Not that the angel didn’t have a sense of irony, but that sense was never applied to his wardrobe, so far as Crowley knew.

“Two galleons! I got it from this nice lady by the bookstore, it was for charity efforts. Muggleborn rights!” The angel smiled and waved a fist in the air.

“Yes, alright, now hide it before you get us both called up to Wizarding Child Services," said Crowley. "Do they have Child Services? Come to think of it, probably not. I bet the purebloods shoot that bill down every year it comes up.”

A Nice Wizarding Gentleman in a silk shirt, silver cuff-links, and diamond brooch at the table next to them gave Crowley a Disapproving look. Crowley’s response was to grab Aziraphale’s hand, link their fingers, and stick his tongue out at the man. Said man flinched minutely and looked away.

“Really, my dear, was that strictly necessary?” Azirpahale murmured, but he didn’t retract his hand very soon.

“No, but it gave me immense satisfaction,” said Crowley flatly. “Don’t tell me it didn’t give you the same.”

Aziraphale huffed. Crowley untangled their fingers, tried to tamp down his blush, and turned to study the salt and pepper shakers while Aziraphale flagged Tom to order.

“Look at all these people,” muttered Crowley. “Celebrating the birth of Yeshua. They never even knew him. They really think he was the son of God, do they?”

“That is the general premise of their religion, yes,” said Aziraphale, non-committal. Then, to Tom: “Ah, sir! Could I trouble you for some house soup and kidney pie, please? Oh, and a strawberry fool. Thanks ever so much.”

When Tom returned with their (well, Aziraphale’s) lunch set, he was, inexplicably, also floating a bottle of Firewhiskey. Aziraphale looked at Crowley, and sighed.

“I’m about to face off the unsavoury elements of the infamous Knockturn Alley, all of eleven years old,” said Crowley, cracking open the seal. “I need some fortifications.”

*

“Ow,” said Crowley, three hours later.

A lick of flame escaped from his mouth, lighting the tip of his fringe on fire. Crowley blew another breath to extinguish it; smoke issued from his doused hair. Crowley giggled.

“See - see, so you see,” Aziraphale was slurring, gesturing at the carcass of his fourth kidney pie with his cutting knife. He’d slashed the pie into seven parts, unevenly; bits of carrot and meat spilled onto the plate. “This – this is Voldemort – right -“ Aziraphale pointed at a bit of crust with filling attached, the smallest portion.

Crowley hacked out a laugh, almost singeing Aziraphale’s lashes off in the process. He took another swig of the self-filling, marvelous, extraordinary drink. It was the most perfect drink Crowley had ever had. Go – Sa – Adam, he needed to bring this back into their reality somehow.

“How do I bring this back to our own univ – uni - er – world thingy,” said Crowley out loud.

“This is - the most recent piece of him,” Aziraphale went on, painstakingly, not having heard him. “He’s – he’s stuck -”

“To the back of Quirrell’s head,” mumbled Crowley, and then broke out in uproarious laughter.

“No – no, well, yes, but,” said Aziraphale, halting, drawing his knife across the plate with an infernal screech. Crowley winced and screwed his eyes shut for a moment. “What I mean is – what I mean is. Grgh. He’s stuck, between life and, and death, correct? And - and without Quirrel’s anchor, Crowley, you have to make sure -”

And then Aziraphale’s eyes glazed over with the confusion of the smashingly plastered. He absent-mindedly plunged his fork into the piece he’d designated “Voldemort” a moment ago, brought it to his mouth, and swallowed it. Crowley passed him the self-filling bottle of Firewhiskey in sympathy.

“I know, I remember,” said Crowley, staring at the old wooden ceiling of the pub. If he squinted, the holes and whorls in the wood work in the corner almost looked like Orion. “I wrote to the guy, my contact, we worked it out – We’re meeting at -”

There, he came to a freezing halt. Shit. 

“Angel, what time is it?”

“Hmm?” said Aziraphale vaguely, contemplating the plate of massacred pie, still trying to recall his point in vain.

“You,” snarled Crowley at a passing wizard – or tried to. What came out was more of a whimper, but he was certainly not admitting that. “Time?”

“Er,” said the man, squinting at a piece of complicated watch-face that looked more like a demonic communication circle than a normal clock. “Quarter past three? Wait,” tone turning stern. “Are you kids drinking Firewhiskey? Who gave you that? Where’s your -”

“Gotta go,” said Crowley, grabbing Aziraphale, tried to make a break for it, and almost ran headfirst into the nearest wall.

“Ugh,” he said, sobering himself with effort.

Or tried to.

“Angel,” said Crowley calmly. “Sober us up.”

The angel blinked. About one percent of their body alcohol content evaporated. No more.

Aziraphale blinked again. This time, absolutely nothing happened.

They caught each other’s horrified eyes.

“Fuck,” said Crowley, succinctly.

*

“Hey, you – yeah you. Are you M.F.? I said, are you M.F.?”

The red-headed witch gave Crowley a look that dripped with condescension even from across the dingy street, drew her hood up higher, and disappeared into the next close.

“M.F.?’ Magnetic Field? Mycosis Fungoides? Mini Flamingos? Surely not the expletive?” Aziraphale was muttering fuzzily next to Crowley as they stumbled down the twisty little back street, alleged belly of Wizarding London’s crime community, center of hag commerce, and general hub of unpleasantness.

The peeling gold letters on the shop to their right touted the apposite name Cobb & Webb’s, and from its smudged windows Crowley spied dark blobs suspended in a green liquid, which upon closer inspection bore great resemblance to dry, wrinkled human heads, of varying ages and stages of decomposition.

He tried to drag the angel further down the street, but it was too late; Aziraphale caught sight of the shapes from the corner of his eye, and went paler than Michelangelo’s David.

“Are those -?”

“Don’t look,” said Crowley heatedly, and bore Aziraphale’s unsteady weight further down the cobbled street. Aziraphale leaned onto him and dry-heaved a few times; fortunately, nothing came up. Angels and demons absorbed alcohol at ridiculous rates; they tended to metabolize it rather quickly, too, which was why Wizarding alcohol, in Crowley’s opinion, was a marvel. He felt completely drunk, and pleasantly not-sober. “’M.F.’ is a name, angel, it’s what they signs their letters with. Probably Marcus something. Maria. Mark. A perfectly reasonable name, Mark. If not for Marcus Antonius, that is.”

“Little Antony,” said Aziraphale with wistful sadness. “What a gifted child he had been. Tragic circumstances – just tragic.”

“What an absolute asshole he became though,” muttered Crowley, casting a drunk-hazy glance around the empty little square they'd arrived at. “Is this the place? Does that look like a pet shop to you, angel? Person said there should be a – a pet shop. Hell knows what kind of pets they sell in a place like this, though.”

“Krakens,” said Aziraphale dreamily. “Gargoyles. Dragons! Great, big, fire-breathing -”

“I wouldn’t exclude that possi – ssi - possibility.”

Took two tries to get that out without it turning into an ugly hiss. Huh.

The floor seemed a living, breathing thing, and it was out to get him. Crowley eyed the broken-down, moss-covered fountain behind them, in which the tiny stone eyes of a goblin glinted knowingly, and debated which was the lesser evil: taking a seat on the edge of the definitely cursed fountain, or risk crashing into the filthy ground and bringing Aziraphale down with him in a few short moments.

Fate smiled on them, however, as off in the shadows of one of the courts emerged a man – or a vaguely man-shaped being, anyway. One could never be quite certain in these parts.

The man – if it indeed was a man – was stout, whose long, tangled ginger hair spilled down robes that might have once been black, but now was only a dull, unpleasant grey-brown, fraying at the hems. Even from a distance, his eyes were blood-shot.

The stranger trundled up to them, rolling a joint in between his thick, calloused fingers, and stared at Crowley intently. Crowley stared back through his sunglasses.

“M.F.?”

“At your service. Asmodeus?”

Aziraphale shot Crowley a Look. Crowley blithely pretended not to notice.

“Guilty as charged. You’ve brought the wares?”

M.F. took a drag from his fag, still drilling holes into Crowley with his red-rimmed eyes. But Crowley was uncrackable. After hell, nothing short of drawn-out torture tended to register on one’s radar. The only trouble he had was trying to remain upright whilst maintaining eye contact.

A moment later, M.F. turned the same look on Aziraphale. The angel straightened under the attention, putting on his distinctive Snobbish Rare Books Dealer air. [1]

“Didn’t know I was gonna be doing business with a couple kids today. Who’s this?” M.F. nodded his chin at Aziraphale.

“An – associate of mine.”

“I’m his friend,” said Aziraphale, whose cherub smile mashed extremely badly with their current locale and choice of company.

“And I’m his nanny,” scoffed the ragged pile of robes, taking another deep drag of his joint, blowing out a cloud of green smoke. From the middle of the foul-smelling cloud, the muddy eyes cast a shrewd glance from one of them to the other and back. “Brought this one along for protection, did ya?” Then he snorted. “Right, how’re we gon’ do this?”

“I believe the price we agreed on was fifty galleons.”

M.F. extended a hand.

“No,” sneered Crowley. “You first.”

M.F. muttered a string of unintelligible curses that Crowley couldn’t make out except for the occasional “bloody kids”, and rummaged around in his dirty, lumpy overcoat. Things clinked and tinkled; M.F. threw out a metal snuffbox, an old fob watch, a pair of tarnished silver goblets, a taxidermy snake (“Oh no, poor dear,” exclaimed Aziraphale, hiccupping), three empty packets of chocolate frogs, and unaccountably, several live, croaking toads.

“Merlin’s bloody balls,” M.F. complained as the toads made their bids for freedom, quaking loudly. “It’s been two months and still toads, fucking toads everywhere.”

Aziraphale had crouched down, and was petting the gray, moldy little garden snake, making cooing noises and asking in a teary voice why it wasn’t moving, was it not feeling well?

Finally, M.F. reached into the last pocket and came out with a grimy, ordinary-looking brown bottle. From the half-torn label on the front Crowley could still make out the letters Ogden’s Olde.

“Is this -”

“Yes,” said M.F. solemnly.

M.F. handed it over with careful hands; Crowley took it with reverent ones.

He meant to, at any rate.

As he edged forward to reach for it, his legs tangled on themselves, and in the resulting fumble, Crowley watched in horror as the bottle, with all their hopes of ever getting out of this nightmare, fell from his hands and sailed irreversibly towards the ground.

“Fuck!”

BONK!

Crowley watched in dumb shock as the glass bottle rolled slowly to the side, apparently whole and unharmed. His eyes flew to Aziraphale’s, equally as round and stupefied. The angel still had one hand on the dead snake. This definitely wasn’t them.

No, neither of them were capable of even the smallest act of miracle right now.

“Oh thank fuck,” said M.F. as he bent down to retrieve the bottle; Crowley accepted it with shaking, but infinitely more careful hands, cradling it in his arms like a baby. “Bless Merlin, I had the foresight to put the Reinforcement Charm on it beforehand. I look after my wares, you know?” M.F. patted the bottle importantly. “This here is one of a kind, it is. Too important to be smashed about.”

"Right you are," said Aziraphale, having finished grieving the dead snake and moved on to examining the snuffbox.

“And it would do what you said it’d do?” asked Crowley slowly, straightening up, turning the bottle over in his hands. “It wouldn’t crack under the pressure of a soul piece? It wouldn’t let him out?”

“Never,” said M.F., puffing out his chest. With this movement, a general miasma of sweat, spirits, and tobacco wafted towards Crowley. “Wasn’t easy to acquire this, mind ya. Had to ask ‘round a bit. One of my mates in the darker circles -” here he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper – “Smuggled it in from Greece.”

Crowley exchanged a glance with Aziraphale. Horcruxes, from what they’d read so far, were invented in Ancient Greece.

“Alright,” said Crowley, taking out his money pouch – miracled beforehand, along with all the gold coins in it. “Here -”

But it was quite difficult to count while drunk. The coins kept doubling and blurring in his vision, he dropped more than a few to the ground, until M.F. snatched the bag from his hands with impatience, rifling through its contents.

“Fifty galleons, no more, no less,” said M.F. gruffly, stuffing the entire pouch into one of his many pockets. He kicked the dead snake off to the side, retrieved the watch, goblet, and snuffbox from the ground (Aziraphale having deemed it beneath his notice, and was staring at the rows of shops around). He spit the butt of his joint to the ground, and squashed it with a heel. “We’re done here.”

"Yeah, right," said Crowley, staving off a headache. 

And just as unexpectedly as he’d appeared, M.F. had moved far too swiftly into one of the little alleys spidering out from the empty square, and before Crowley had finished tucking the fifty-galleon bottle into his robe, was gone in a blink.

The smell of stale alcohol and smoke lingered; candy wrappers littered the ground beneath their feet.

Crowley stared at the dusty bottle in his hands. The whole thing seemed like a dream, more bizarre than anything he’d experienced in this dreamland before, even more so than the blasted Quidditch lesson that’d scored him a three-night stay in the hospital wing.

But the bottle was solid, and real. It was their ticket out of this hell – more accurately, this eleven-year-old boy’s playground.

“This is it,” murmured Crowley, half to Aziraphale, half to himself. “We’ve got it, angel.”

“My, is that a bookshop?” Aziraphale peered at a darkened shop squashed between an apothecary and what looked to be a shop for all your everyday vampiric needs: coffins, bats, and vials of blood. As opposed to every Halloween pop-up around the city come October’s end, Crowley had no doubt that all the above items were one-hundred-percent authentic and just as biohazardous as they look. A severed unicorn head hung in one of the nearby windows. “I know they probably don’t carry any worthwhile literature here, if any literature at all, but one can’t help but wonder -”

“For once in your life, Aziraphale,” implored Crowley with the hopeless hope of those on death row. “Please don’t go into that bookshop. Just this once.”

“But -”

“We can go to Flourish and Blott’s on the main street later, or that used little bookshop. We’ll stay however long you like. But not that one.”

Maybe She was watching over them after all, or maybe Crowley had finally sobered up a little, for miraculously, Aziraphale desisted in his curiosity with barely any persuasion at all, and followed Crowley out of the square.

*

Thirty minutes later -

“Crowley, are you quite sure this is the way we came from?”

Crowley clutched his useless wand in his right hand, Aziraphale’s cold hand in his other, stared at the ominous, empty, and increasingly tangled streets around them, and tried desperately not to throw up.

Of course, of course, just when things were looking up for once -

He should never have agreed to meet with his contact in the bowels of Knockturn Alley. He had learned this now, too late, for Knockturn Alley, as it turned out, was not a single street but, like Diagon Alley, was made up of a main road connecting several smaller ones, and those smaller ones connecting even more paths and short-cuts and squares and courts in between them, such that what was usually called Knockturn Alley for convenience’s sake was really a whole district of crime and sordidness, and Crowley and Aziraphale had become decidedly lost in it.

An old hag with warts the size of sprouts growing out her nose lurked under a worn stone archway. She leered at them, and then smiled, slowly, with her toothless mouth. Something metallic nearby groaned and moaned with a wave of ill wind.

What a perfect place to get murdered as two helpless eleven-year-olds, for that was exactly what they were at the moment. Crowley hastily yanked Aziraphale up a set of narrow stone stairs to their right; up in the passageway was only more dampness and mummified body parts in grimy windows, but at least the street was empty of child-eating hags. For now.

“Stupid,” muttered Crowley under his breath, walking as fast as he could without slipping on the rain-slick stones. “That total bellend. Why an empty square in the middle of Knockturn Alley? We could have met at the mouth to Diagon and it would’ve done the job just as well!”

“Perhaps he was wary of being recognized, considering his – choice of profession,” said Aziraphale delicately, making infuriating sense as always. How he managed to both make sense and sound delicate while high on Firewhiskey as well as fleeing from vaguely old-woman-shaped creatures, Crowley didn’t know, nor did he particularly want to.

“It was that blessed goblin statue,” said Crowley, ignoring Aziraphale’s perfectly made point. “I knew something wasn’t right with it, the blessed thing was cursed. If we see it around here again, smirking like some B-rated horror flick – oh fuck!”

From one of the fork-offs up ahead floated the same hag as before, whose creepy smile seemed to be permanently affixed on her face.

“Uh-oh,” said Aziraphale.

The hag extended a sharp-nailed claw towards them, snickering under her putrid breath.

Crowley swore loudly and uncreatively – both hell and Satan were involved – and scrambled backwards, dragging the angel back as well, casting wildly about for something, anything to hide behind or within.

There – a sooty little shop that was completely dark inside, but at least didn’t seem to have body parts hanging about in the window.

“There!”

Aziraphale took the lead, dragging him scrambling towards it.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Crowley chanted under his breath as he and Aziraphale burst through the door, slamming it shut behind them. Crowley grabbed the nearest tall thing next to him – three booms wrapped in a bundle – and wedged it between a table and the door, then scrambled for the back with the angel.

An eerie silence descended on them.

Despite the tiny entrance, the interior of the shop seemed to extend forever. In the gloom it was difficult to make out the items, but a hurried glance revealed nothing particularly sinister or gruesome. Crowley spied old furniture, closets full of moth-eaten linen, racks weighed down with heaps of mildew-smelling clothes, oddly-shaped lamps, and more than one vintage clock that were no less confusing than their modern counterparts, full of stars and moons flitting about instead of hands or pendulums. The only dead animal within the shop was a stuffed eagle, who was giving them the evil eye; however, in Crowley’s experience, stuffed animals often did that, so he wasn’t overly concerned.

They crouched behind a rack of clothes, waiting with bated breath for the front door to open. Minutes passed, and nothing happened. After what he considered a sufficient amount of time, Crowley breathed a sigh of relief, and turned to tell Aziraphale, only to realize the angel was already up and wandering deeper into the shop, where a dim source of light was coming through.

“Assss – Aziraphale!”

Crowley hissed in alarm, standing up in a rush. He had crouched there for too long, however, and his numb legs conspired with the residual alcohol in his bloodstream to topple him over and land him face-first on a soft surface, which he promptly fell through.

“Bloody heaven -”

The thing he’d fallen through turned out to be an old, broken mattress. The soft, clinging pieces were - feather stuffings, realized Crowley after his moment of disorientation. Extracting himself with effort, Crowley tried to shake the feathers off, but there appeared to be no helping it.

Must be the ducks' revenge after his repeated attempts to drown them.

Thankfully, the shop was too dark to put his disgrace on full display. He hastened after Aziraphale, stumbling through pile upon pile of odd knick-knacks that must have drawn the angel to investigate, little figurines and chess sets and sewing machines, until he finally caught up with the angel at the back of the shop.

As it turned out, that wasn't so much the back as it was the front entrance, evidenced by the large glass doors. Low voices filtered from the area of the windows, where sunlight streamed in through a crack in the clouds. Over here, the silence wasn't so much eerie as it was comforting; Crowley felt his heart rate slow down slightly.

“Look at all these portraits, Crowley,” Aziraphale said when Crowley stood pointedly next to him.

Forgetting his point, Crowley surveyed the portraits in question, which seemed to occupy every wall in this part of the shop.

They weren’t as vivacious or chaotic as the ones in Hogwarts tended to be. They didn’t talk, or fight, or visit each other; most of them sat or stood, almost like ordinary European portraits of the aristocratic kind (not that there tended to be any other kind), but no one could mistake them for anything but magical. The subjects possessed an almost living quality; they seemed almost to breathe, chests rising and falling, looking beyond their frames into the moving, changing world.

“What the heaven, these are creepy as heck,” muttered Crowley in front of one whose gaze seemed to follow him everywhere.

“Do you really think so?” wondered a dreamy voice to his left.

A pair of light, almost luminous eyes stared out at him from the gloom.

Crowley yelped and fell backwards, landing under an antique table. From that vantage point, he watched in mute horror as the dreaded creature of night stalked forward and into the light and revealed its wild mane of blonde hair and –

It was – a girl?

There, the strangest girl Crowley had ever laid eyes on crouched down, peering at him with large, slightly protruding eyes as if he was the strange creature here, and not her.

Which, hey, she had a point.

“Oh, you’re a demon,” the girl proceeded to say.

Crowley gaped at her, wondering if the entrance to Knockturn Alley was really Carroll’s rabbit hole. He just wasn’t sure who was Alice in this instance: he, Aziraphale, or the odd girl.

“How did you - ” Crowley reached up to his face to find his sunglasses gone. He hadn’t even noticed they were gone, probably because most of the shop had been so dark. “Oh.”

“Are you looking for something?” said the girl sympathetically. “I didn’t know there were not only Mellifluous Moths here, but Nargles too. I suppose I should have. They’re everywhere, after all. Crafty creatures, they are.”

There were so, so many questions to ask, and with every word that came out of the girl’s mouth, they were only increasing, not decreasing. Deciding to address their conversation first, rather than the turnip earrings or the beercork necklace, or the young girl’s very presence in child-eating Knockturn Alley, Crowley asked, tentatively:

“'Mellifluous Moths'?”

“They only eat old paintings, and can take up to three hundred years to hatch,” said the girl absently. "Did you cover yourself in feathers on purpose?"

"No," said Crowley, indignantly, who had a lot of feelings on the topic of fashion.

"It's an interesting look, I appreciate your bravery," said the girl. She took out a pencil stub from behind her ear and produced a notepad from apparently nowhere. “Do you mind if I sketch you? I like to keep track of all the creatures I encounter, so people will know they’re real. You're the first demon I've met.”

“Crowley,” called Aziraphale’s voice from somewhere above them, rescuing his attention from the spiraling blackhole of a girl. “Crowley, where have you – oh, hello, dear,” the angel’s shoes came into view, stopping beside the batty child who was already engrossed in her drawing. “What are you doing here? Do your parents live here?”

“Hm? Oh no. We only came here to look at the moths. And to buy clothes, if daddy manages to find some really ugly ones.”

The angel’s baffled silence perfectly mirrored Crowley’s own feelings.

“Oh, uh, jolly – jolly good?”

He crouched down to look over the girl’s shoulder at her drawing; and then, with a furrowed brow, looked up to where Crowley was hiding under the table, squinting. Crowley gestured frantically towards the general area of his eyes, and shrank a bit further under the table. Aziraphale’s mouth dropped open.

“Oh, um, dear, have you seen a pair of sunglasses about?” Aziraphale asked the girl.

“No,” said the girl without looking up from her drawing pad. “Daddy can probably help you with that, though. He’s really good at locating things the Nargles have taken.” She glanced up at Aziraphale with eyes lost in some faraway fairyland of her own. “Do you want me to tell him?” Without waiting for an answer, she craned her neck and said in a slightly raised voice, “Daddy, the Nargles are out and about.”

The faint voices towards the front ceased; another pair of footsteps approached.

There was no mistaking the man who appeared for anything but the girl’s father: the same candyfloss hair, the same slightly unhinged look about the eyes, the same horrible fashion sense. An odd symbol like a triangular eye hung around the man’s neck.

“Luna, my love, what have they taken this time?”

“A pair of sunglasses,” answered Luna, “but they’re not mine, though. This demon here lost his.”

She pointed the stub of pencil at Crowley, who was increasingly reluctant to get out from the safety of the shadows, feeling like the snake he really was in front of a pair of circling eagles. He shut his eyes before the man bent down and peered at him. 

“My,” said the man in a marveling voice, “I have never seen such an extraordinary infestation of Wrackspurts around a person before.”

Luna took off her beercork necklace and made to offer it to Crowley. “Would you like this? It helps me keep them away.”

Crowley suspected his tongue had secretly turned back into a snake’s tongue, because at the moment he could produce nothing but a series of hisses. Aziraphale answered for him,

“That’s quite alright, dear.” Then, to her father: “Sir, if you could be so kind as to -”

“Sunglasses, is it?” Sighed the man. “Very well. Diffugio Nargles!”

Nothing happened.

“I think a simple summoning will do, Daddy,” said Luna.

“Oh, well then. Accio sunglasses!”

Crowley’s glasses shot through the shop into the man’s hands. Aziraphale took it and passed it to Crowley, who jammed it onto his face so hard he nearly blinded himself. Feeling marginally less exposed than before, he gingerly crawled out from under the table, and tried not to look like he was slinking to hide behind a genially smiling Aziraphale, which was exactly what he was doing.

“Thank you, sir, how kind of you,” said Aziraphale. “There’s something else I was wondering if you could help us with, you see, my friend and I have gotten just slightly lost -”

*

By the time they’d followed Xenophilius and Luna out of Knockturn Alley, it was long past dark.

The father-daughter duo had lingered for hours within the shop, utterly oblivious to the owner’s discontented mutterings, trying on robe after robe, hat after hat, inspecting every little piece of useless junk and looking at the back of every dusty painting for the elusive Mellifluous Moth, whose existence Crowley doubted more with every passing minute.

Fearing the hag waiting for them outside, Crowley and Aziraphale had doubled down on the least moldy armchair of the establishment. They'd squeezed there in an undignified pile for warmth, the bottle an uncomfortable shape in Crowley's pocket. Aziraphale had managed to ferret out a stack of books from somewhere, and sitting in the armchair, read aloud a ludicrous Wizarding paperback about a teenaged witch accidentally traveling hundreds of years into the past and falling in love with Merlin.

“This doesn’t seem in line with your usual tastes,” said Crowley when they were halfway through the monstrosity (Aziraphale having tactfully skipped over the risqué bits of the narrative).

Aziraphale’s cheeks reddened under the accusation.

“It’s not like this place is in great supply of literary masterpieces,” he said shortly. “And I’ll have you know, romance is a perfectly legitimate expression of feminine desires and viewpoints, and as a genre it has inspired many other -”

They didn’t get around to what the young witch Belvina did after she’d defeated her rival, the mermaid Vivien, and pulled her love Merlin from the lake in the nick of time to save him.

Getting out of Knockturn probably hadn't taken very long, but it felt like it did: the rusted signs, waving cobwebs and rotting flagstones all blurred into one tableaux of unending horror, not to mention the guttering purple flames in blood-splattered windows, strange wails from a little abandoned chapel they'd passed by, or the faint singing coming up from the bottom of a tall, dry well.

"Thought you were a 'big spooky fan'," said Aziraphale mildly, when Crowley jumped violently back from the yowl of a black cat on the side of the road.

"Shut up," hissed Crowley, and tried not to trip over himself while staying as close to the angel as possible.

The warm lights of Diagon were a more than welcome sight, when it finally arrived: rings of holly hung from the lamp posts, glistening with crystalline frost, while candles of the normal kind wavered in shopfronts devoid of human skulls.

Most of the shops on the main road had closed, but more than a few had stayed open: Fortescue’s was one of them.

"Let's all get ice cream together," said Luna before Crowley could grab the angel and make a break for King's Cross.

Predictably, the angel lit up at the idea.

"Oh, alright," said Crowley, resigning himself to more Lovegood dottiness.

Xenophilius then proceeded to grill poor Florean for a solid five minutes on why there wasn’t a Gurdyroot flavour, before Luna managed to talk him down and got the eggnog one for both of them. Aziraphale chose an elaborate contraption of Stroopwafel, coffee jelly, and caramel, built with ice cream scoops in three flavours: apple crumble, treacle tart, and butterbeer, with heaps of whipped cream and chopped nuts on top. And a mug of spiked cocoa to accompany.

Crowley had been about to decline entirely, when his eyes landed on the Firewhiskey special. He ordered the largest size available, which, apparently, was very large.

They all huddled around a little rickety table while Crowley downed spoonfuls of ice cream like shots, Aziraphale polished off his monster of a dish with the air of dining at the Ritz, and Luna neglected her eggnog ice cream to pick at the bits of feathers still stuck to Crowley’s robe and putting them in her own hair, despite Crowley’s best attempts to evade her.

“You have such lovely feathers,” said Luna dreamily.

Crowley tried his damndest to convince himself she meant the feathers from the broken mattress, instead of the his actual feathers hidden away with his wings. Despite his efforts, he wasn’t entirely successful.

"So, he's a Slytherin, I see. What house are you?" Xenophilius fixed his unnerving eyes on Crowley when he was done with his little eggnog sundae.

"Daddy, it's not very polite to ask for people's houses," admonished Luna.

"Houses shouldn't matter. They are the Ministry's way of separating us, restricting social mobility, and inhibiting social progress," declared Xenophilius in a passionate voice. "You shouldn't let them put a label on you. You remember that too, sweetplum. These systems need to be abolished, we will rise above them, one day, leave our shackles behind, and wander out into the fields as one, and the Ministry will release their Heliopaths, but that shall not stop us -"

Crowley downed half of his melting ice cream in one go.

"He's a Gryffindor," said Aziraphale, breaking up the flow of words.

"Oh," said Xenophilius, pausing. "Very progressive of you two to be friends, then."

"It must have been very hard, to be on opposite sides and still remain friends," said Luna, consoling. 

"Harder than you could ever think," muttered Crowley, wishing he was thousands of miles away, anywhere but here.

He longed for the low, golden lights of Aziraphale's bookshop, for the smell of old scrolls and midnight glasses of wine and Schubert on the air, shivery strings weaving up into a wailing crescendo, over and over and over again.

At the end of the night, however, limbs languid and belly warm from the alcohol, Crowley stood outside the soft yellow lights of the ice cream parlour and watched the bluebell flames dance about in the street lamps. Aziraphale was debating animatedly with Xenophilius on social theories, back in the shop; Luna had been building paper cranes out of soft napkins that refused to stand straight.

Crowley breathed in the cold night air, the sleepy little street, and thought, maybe things weren't so bad, after all. Maybe -

“I thought that was a wonderful day,” Luna’s voice jolted him out of his reverie. Standing there she looked like an apparition, a lost, impoverished little orphan ghost from some Dickensian world, until Xenophilius stepped out of the shop and pulled a woolen hat over her head, fingers smoothing down her hair ever so gently.

“Merry Christmas, my love,” he said.

Luna smiled up at him, and despite all her flaws, despite her tangled hair and turnip earrings and strange, protuberant eyes, for a moment she seemed to Crowley an angel standing before the Throne, smiling, awash in Grace as She bestowed all Her glory upon her.

Crowley felt his throat lock up tight. He looked up into the night sky instead. Tiny, glittering pieces of ice crystals drifted gently from the sky; one landed on his lashes, and melted from a huff of his breath.

A warm hand found his; he looked to his left, where Aziraphale was watching the Lovegood family with the same longing, a smudge of cocoa still at the corner of his lips. Crowley wanted to kiss it away.

Later, he thought to himself. Later.

“Time to go, Crowley,” said Aziraphale. He waved at the Lovegoods.

“Goodnight, take care,” Xenophilius called. "Are you sure you don't need a Side-along?"

"No, no, we'll be perfectly fine," Aziraphale waved him off. "Our, uh, professor is waiting just outside the Leaky."

"Ciao," said Crowley, and turned to go.

“Good luck,” called Luna from behind him.

Crowley paused, turning back around.

“For what?”

“Going home, of course,” she smiled serenely, before waving one last time, and stepped off to where Xenophilius was waiting with a outstretched hand. 

*

“Ow,” said Crowley, later on the Knight Bus, hanging onto a bedpost, trying not to throw up all the Firewhiskey he’d consumed. “Ow.”

*

There were two things that Crowley and Aziraphale did not know at this point. Neither would harm them. Sometimes, perhaps, it was best to remain ignorant.

One:

As M.F., otherwise known as Mundungus Fletcher, or “Dung” to those who knew him well, wandered down Skull Court en route to the underground goblin gambling ring, where he would proceed to lose all of Crowley’s coins, he kept shaking his head at the air and muttering under his breath.

Things he had said included “fucking soul bits”, “bunch’a lunatics”, “can’t fucking believe it,” and more colourful expressions of incredulity, dismay, and glee over his sudden fortune, that we shall not detail here.

Two:

Unbeknownst to a certain angel and a certain demon, as they slowly sobered up throughout the rest of the afternoon, the originally perfectly ordinary, albeit slightly dirtied whiskey bottle they’d paid an exorbitant fortune for, had slowly transformed itself into an indestructible, inescapable prison, tailor-made for one Tom Marvolo Riddle. All seven pieces of him.

The universe worked in mysterious ways; eleven-year-old occult overlords worked even more mysteriously.

Somewhere in Tadfield, Oxfordshire, back in their own universe, Adam Young snickered in his sleep, turned over, and kept on dreaming.

----------

[1] Which, to be fair, wasn’t all that different from Aziraphale's normal airs, and was somewhat compromised presently by 1) the unsalvageable state of his inebriation and 2) his bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, all-of-five-foot-tall choirboy look.

Chapter Text

“I am never, ever getting on a bus again,” Crowley announced, slouching down at their table in the History section.

That they’d been here long enough to warrant the table being designated as theirs was disturbing on a level that Crowley wasn’t willing to examine, not while nursing one of the worst hangovers in his never-ending existence at three in the afternoon. His robes were creased, his hair unsalvageable; he’d been in no mood to comb it through after the disaster of yesterday. Crowley absent-mindedly ran a hand through it, tugging on the chaos of knots and curls. He’d been contemplating another do-over, anyway. Maybe a mohawk this time? Only, barbers are a bit sparse in magical secondary.

He caught Aziraphale’s eyes lingering on his fingers playing with the ends of his disastrous hair and stilled. The angel’s teal eyes flicked up to meet his, flitting away with inauthentic nonchalance.

Crowley’s spine tingled. It was a strange sensation –- not lust, he would know that. But he’d noticed Aziraphale eyeing him like that lately, after the failed Apocalypse. Furtive glances, lingering looks when he probably thought Crowley wouldn't notice. Like the angel couldn’t quite -- or wasn’t willing to -- drag his eyes away.

Crowley thought back to all the times before, when they met in strange places under stranger guises, when Aziraphale’d always kept his eyes stubbornly averted, staring at –- oh, the barren stage, or the algae-infested lake with its squabbling ducks, the church spire in the distance –- anything but the demon by his side.

Had he been wanting to look all this time? And all this while, Crowley had been trying and failing to dispel the image of the Three Monkeys he'd seen in a Japanese Garden that one time: hands up, covering their eyes, ears, and mouth.

See not. Hear not. Speak not.

Aziraphale cleared his throat.

“I did suggest staying at the Cauldron for one night.”

Crowley scrunched up his nose in response.

“I'm not staying a single night there if I have any say about it. I mean, just listen to the name: The Leaky Cauldron? Imagine the –- the mold, the muck. Piled up over centuries. Must not be very sanitary. Hellish, really.”

Aziraphale looked at him oddly.

“It’s far from the worst place you’ve ever stayed in, surely?”

Aziraphale was right, of course, as he often was on matters unrelated to celestial politics. Crowley had slept in barns and bogs and the shadows of sand dunes, and he knew his evasion is not particularly convincing when he had no problems getting absolutely sozzled in the pub the day earlier, or pilfering bites of Aziraphale’s food directly off his plate.

The real issue was – well. The real issue was fear, as it always has been. Ever since they’d gotten lost in Knockturn Alley, Crowley had begun to realize how truly out of depth they were in this…place. If his theory is correct, the center of this dreamland should be Hogwarts.

What would happen when they wander too far, stay away for too long? What would happen if they were well and truly lost?

No one from heaven or hell were coming to rescue them, that was for sure.

He had something of prior experience with breaking the rules when it came to world-creating deities. He did not personally recommend it.

Instead Crowley said,

“Fancy if anyone should recognized us?”

Aziraphale shuddered, busily putting the books scattered on the table into one pile, something he often did while he was back at the bookshop. It seemed that whenever there were books in the periphery, Aziraphale simply could not resist ordering them by his own standards.

“Ah, yes. We’d perhaps…over-imbibed a touch, yesterday.”

Crowley let out an undignified snort.

“That’s one way of putting it. Anyway, you said you had a surprise?”

Does sending anonymous notes via school owls to each other over the breakfast table count as undue paranoia? Far from it, if you ask Crowley.

“Right!” said Aziraphale brightly as he lifts the books to one side, standing up and ducking quickly behind a bookshelf to drag out –

“A whiteboard?”

Crowley took off his glasses to boggle a bit. The incredibly modern and incredibly muggle invention in the wooden forest of magical bookshelves stuck out like – like a tree in the middle of the ocean, or a coyote in the freezing arctic, or something.

Aziraphale’s grin was equal parts excitement and uncertainty.

“Well, you see, I bought a DVD player the other day, before all this happened --”

“You bought a DVD player? Wait, they still sell DVD players in this decade --”

“—off this very lovely old lady --”

“—alright, that makes more sense --”

“—and I was watching that detective show you used to be going on about,” Azirpahale huffed. “She gifted the set to me along with the machine. I thought these boards could come in useful useful in our case.”

"Angel, we're not the bloody Met."

"Yes, I know that, but wouldn't this be more fun?" said Aziraphale plaintively. "How they wrote Arthur's characters was a bit suspect, but it was really very diverting."

Crowley snickered when he realized which “detective show” Aziraphale was, surprisingly, referencing.

“Oh, right. I love that production. Delightfully sacrilegious. But that was ten years ago now, angel, and anyway the third season went to shit and pretty much ruined the whole thing. They’re probably making Artie watch that in hell, come to think of it…”

Aziraphale’s face fell.

“Oh. I – I didn’t realize.”

Crowley winced a little at having accidentally let that piece of information slip. It was old news to him, and he's pretty much grown to expect artists descending straight to hell as soon as they died, but Aziraphale didn't know that.

“Anyway -- looked up the spell to make this, did you?” Crowley put his glasses back on and grinned. “That’s quite advanced magic. I think.”

“Ah –- but you see –- I didn’t, ahem, didn’t magick that up. Just –- summoned it.”

“Summoned it? As in –- the summoning charm?”

“Not quite. There might have been -- a bit of divine power involved.”

Aziraphale fixed his gaze somewhere to the left of Crowley, steadfastly refusing to meet his eyes. Crowley paused for a second, then two, and then started to lose it. He only managed to tamp down the volume after the initial outburst when he remembered the fearsome and omniscient librarian, ever-ready to swoop in like a humanoid eagle.

“Finally gave up on the sodding wand, have you?” Crowley manages to get out amidst crowing laughter, while Aziraphale plopped himself down on the chair opposite, arms crossed mutinously. Crowley smirked to note that the chair had enlarged itself and added paddings as Aziraphale made himself comfortable. Old habits die hard.

“I’m quite sure something is fundamentally wrong with this world. Horrible design all around,” said Aziraphale, sniffing. Then the corners of his mouth twitched up slightly. “Or I might have been wrong.”

Crowley clutched a hand to his chest in fake shock.

“The Principalitee Aziraphale, Guardian of the Gate of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge – wrong? Never!”

They grinned at each other for a beat longer than perhaps was entirely necessary, but then, they did narrowly escape Death together yesterday, for the second time in however many days.

Was this how humans felt every time they did it? If so, this game of cat-and-mouse was oddly addicting.

Provided one didn’t lose.

“So,” Aziraphale said, sobering. “The bottle is Voldemort’s soul on the back of Quirrell’s head sorted.” He picks up a sharpie from the narrow rack at the bottom of the white board, and traced a bottle on the board, adding a capital V in the middle of it. [1]

Crowley snapped back to a memory of uni, several decades ago, doing a Civil Engineering degree for the –- well, for the hell of it. He never finished it, but what he did learn came in pretty handy for the redesign of the M25, so it wasn’t entirely the waste he expected.

“That still leaves…the horcruxes?” Aziraphale looked over to Crowley to confirm.

“In order, Diary, Ring, Locket, Cup, Diadem,” Crowley counted on four fingers as Aziraphale wrote them down on the board in flowery cursive, then he pulled a face. 

And the last one, which only now came back to him --

“And Harry.”

“Harry?” Aziraphale nearly shouted, whipping around. He looked rather like an indignant pigeon when he did that thing with the hitched-up shoulders.

“Oh, right, you wouldn’t know,” Crowley rushed to add. “Bit of a shoddy add-on plot, if you ask me. It’s only mentioned in the seventh book. And Harry only learns in like, the last five pages.”

Aziraphale was wild-eyed, eyes searching Crowley’s with incredulity.

“Do you mean we might have to kill another eleven-year-old, Crowley?”

Crowley stared for a second, caught off-guard. Then he cringed a bit.

He hadn’t, in fact, thought this far, and thus did not have a very good answer for Aziraphale.

“What is it with us and run-ins with possible pedicide recently?” Crowley cursed under his breath. Louder, he said, “I’m sure it wouldn’t come to that. We’ll just – try whatever we try on Quirrell. Now quit thinking about it. How do we get to the rest of the Horcruxes?”

*

After an intense bout of brainstorming (for them), it quickly became apparent that they’d have to wait until the summer holidays to collect the rest of the horcruxes.

Excepting, of course, the Diadem, which they determined to retrieve that night, when hopefully everyone else would be stuffed too full of Christmas pudding to do much but sleep it off.

What they failed to consider was they themselves falling into the very same trap.

While Aziraphale sampled the various wizarding dishes with enthusiasm unmatched by anyone else at the table, even including Harry Potter himself, Crowley tried surreptitiously to turn his cup of grape juice into wine via judicious use of miracle. The venture was halfway successful; he could just about detect a hint of alcoholic burn amid the desperately sour taste of vinegar.

He had a queasy feeling, too, that Dumbledore was onto him. However, the wizened wizard didn’t say anything, merely sipped his own glass of fine mulled wine with an air of – Crowley could almost swear – subtle smugness.

“Smug old bastard,” muttered Crowley, swallowing another mouthful of his awful vinegary creation, smacking his lips in disgust.

“Is something wrong with the juice, love?” asked Aziraphale around a forkful of chipolata, an expression of utter bliss on his face.

“Never mind,” said Crowley, watching the angel fondly.

Somewhere down the refectory, a cracker popped with a thunderous bang; caramel-scented smoke wafted up towards the transparent ceiling, while several white mice raced across the dessert-laden wooden top, freezing to a dead stop in front of Crowley.

The very snakish demon narrowed his eyes at the lot, willing them to Behave and Play Nice and not get into any spot of Trouble. Trembling, the mice got the message and scrambled off to parts unknown and -– if they knew what was good for them - await his summons. If any were needed, that was.

Aziraphale side-eyed him a little through the whole production, but Crowley pretended not to notice. He considered it his Demonic Duty to keep control of the rodent population in his vicinity, wherever he happened to be.

After the plates cleaned, the teachers trickled off, while the Hogwarts children poured into the courtyard, starting a snowball fight. Being children, the tactics were savage, the attacks vicious, and the targets indiscriminate.

Crowley's teeth chattered at the mere sight. He wrapped the red and gold scarf tighter around his throat and determinedly started off in the opposite direction.

Winter was miserable enough for him without adding snow-drenched clothes into the mix, thank you very much.

In the atrium beyond the Great Hall, Aziraphale’s voice interrupted his trek up to the Gryffindor Tower.

“Wait up, my dear.”

Crowley turned around to see the angel with a mug of marshmallow hot chocolate in each hand; magically – or miraculously, whichever case it happened to be – the marshmallows weren’t melting, even though Crowley could see thick white steam rising out of the cups.

“Mmhph?” Crowley grunted unintelligibly through his thick scarf.

“I thought,” Aziraphale handed one cup to him; Crowley wrapped cold fingers around the warm ceramic gratefully. “-- We could spend the afternoon in the Slytherin common room. The weather is clear, the view of the lake would be quite spectacular. Besides, it’s empty right now; I’m the only person who stayed behind out of the whole House.”

“Ngh,” said Crowley, trying to think through the thick fog of good food and low temperatures. He was sure, that some inherently demonic (animalistic) part of him was insisting that it was time to hibernate; he was just as determined to remain awake and aware (and human), but it was blessedly difficult at the moment.

Aziraphale studied him, gaze soft.

“It wouldn’t be the same as the bookshop, of course -”

Crowley snorted. From the descriptions he remembered, the Slytherin dungeon-aquarium was as far from the angel’s cozy nest as could possibly be.

“- But it can be charming, in its own way. Besides, I’ve got a few new books,” said Aziraphale, wheedling. “I can read to you, if you like.”

“Oh alright,” said Crowley, not really trying to resist  He couldn’t seem to remember any reason to. “When’d you get the time to go to a bookshop?”

Aziraphale coughed delicately. “I may have –- liberated –- a few from that second-hand shop yesterday. It wasn’t like anyone was reading them,” he continued defensively, even though Crowley had said nothing except to stare at him with delight.

The angel, shoplifting! It was excellent behavior, only Crowley knew Aziraphale would try to repent for it as soon as he said anything, so he didn’t.

“More adventures of Belvina and Merlin, then?”

They continued down a set of steep stairs. How deep was the dungeon, anyhow?

“Indeed. What’s more, there’s even one of Arthur and Merlin,” said Aziraphale slyly.

“What,” Crowley quacked with mild horror. “The wizard bloke is supposed to be way older than the made-up king, isn’t he?”

“Depends which version you read, really. Do you know, I think I met Myrddin once, and that was quite a few years after our knightly phase. Where were you back then, by the way?”

“On the continent,” Crowley waved a hand dismissively. Getting repeatedly discorporated, he didn’t say. If it wasn’t for the Boss’s orders, Crowley would have much preferred hiding out in some peaceful part of the world, preferably tropical, while the remains of the Roman Empire crumbled away on its own.

And wasn’t the thought of the Boss a welcoming one, while they descended deeper and deeper into the castle’s shadowed bowels on narrow, uneven stone stairs. It was – no pun intended – hell on his legs.

Finally, they entered a maze-like area that was quite unpleasantly reminiscent of hell’s labyrinthine, claustrophobic halls, only with sputtering torches instead of flickering electric lights. All the windows – even the fake ones – had disappeared as they traveled downwards, leaving the hallways grim and forebodingly bare.

It was rather like hell before all the remodeling efforts that improved nothing at all.

Crowley was deeply grateful now to not have ended up in Slytherin for the year.

“Here it is,” Aziraphale stopped in front of a seemingly random patch of stone wall. “Vae victis,” he intoned.

“Lovely motto.”

“Indeed,” replied Aziraphale, leading the way into the emerging entrance.

*

Aziraphale was right – again – in that the Slytherin common room was a vast improvement over the rest of the dungeons. The rare winter sun filtered through the lake, rippling blue-green patterns over the wide chamber, while all the green-themed furniture picked out the lovely brightness in Aziraphale’s normally teal eyes.

Not that Crowley would ever say the last bit out loud. Or anything about Aziraphale’s lovely eyes, ever. It was very un-demon-like.

The flickering fire in the hearth, while violently green, was supernaturally warm, and the flagstones underneath their feet had heating charms on them. In the dry warmth, Crowley stretched lazily on a settee, and listened to Aziraphale read out the star-crossed romance of one Merlin Sylvestris and Arthur Pendragon, by Belvina Burke. Something about the narrative of an orphaned half-blood wizard, stuck in a hostile muggle country that executed all magic users, was a little suspect, but it was hard to dwell on the thought amidst the warmth and the soothing tone of Aziraphale’s reading voice, with the occasional commentary interspersed. He didn’t notice when the lake grew dark, or when Aziraphale’s voice dropped off; in fact, he only woke when the light of a new dawn was beginning to pierce through the waters, and a house-elf appeared with a faint pop to inform them shrilly that breakfast was ready.

“Shit,” said Crowley, stifling a massive yawn.

“Let’s just sleep in,” grumbled Aziraphale, and they stumbled off to the first-year boys’ dorms together. [2]

*

That night, things went somewhat more smoothly. For a certain definition of smooth.

To start off with, they managed to stay up until curfew, with the help of a couple shots of house-elf-brewed espressos.

(“Technically students is not allowed, sirs!” squeaked the small creature, twisting her hands. “But since sirs is being asking so politely --”)

Thus fortified, once the clock struck ten, one angel and one demon crept out of the dungeons, ascending through the same series of stairs up to the seventh floor.

All the way out of the dungeon, Crowley had the bizarre thought that he was in some shoddy adaptation of the Orpheus myth, with himself starring, improbably, as Eurydice. The fact that Aziraphale didn’t look back at him once until they’ve reached the ground floor only intensified his suspicions.

He caught up to the angel a floor above that, on a floating staircase (what the fuck), and tried some silent interrogation via intense staring, but Aziraphale was stubbornly not cracking. The angel had a good poker face when he wanted to. He was also more dramatically-inclined than was good for him – or that he tended to let on. [3]

Crowley was forced to give up on this ill-fated venture when, on the fourth-floor landing, he heard the distinct sound of a cat meowing, and had to drag the angel into the nearest abandoned classroom and fratically barricade the door.

He was not letting this turn into another iteration of the Knockturn Alley Debacle.

“Why are we hiding this time?” Aziraphale only asked mildly.

“That was Ms. Norris. She’s never any good when she turns up in the books.”

"Ms. Norris?"

"The cat."

“Oh. What’s this room, then?”

Crowley straightened up from holding his ear to the door and took a look around. And immediately froze.

“No,” he breathed. “No, no, no -”

Aziraphale glanced at him, puzzled.

“It’s only some dusty furniture, as far as I can see, I don’t see what you’re so worked up about. Honestly, my dear - ” and then, inevitably, his eyes landed on the tall mirror towards the back, and (of course of bloody course) wandered towards it, mesmerized.

“Shit, fuck,” said Crowley, trying to hold him back, but the tables and chairs were like a maze, deep shadows in the dark that tripped his as-always uncooperative legs until he’d nearly sent a teetering pile crashing to the floor. By the time he’d steadied it and looked up, Aziraphale was already in front of the mirror, gazing rapturously at its glossy surface.

Crowley’s stomach did a funny flip.

What would Aziraphale see?

Heaven, before the First War, perhaps? Or, even better (worse) – God Herself? Crowley swallowed a wave of bitterness at the thought.

It was completely illogical and unseemly to be jealous of God, he knew. Loving Her first and foremost was literally in any angel’s job description, pretty much Angel Handbook One-Oh-One, Chapter One, Rule One.

He had no right to be jealous over Aziraphale’s very basis of existence.

(Not even when his own basis of existence was a charred mess of negation. Not even then. Especially not then.)

“Angel, wait up --”

Crowley made to rush to his side, and then he remembered –

The Mirror of Desire.

Swallowing nervously, Crowley danced a careful number by edging towards the mirror and Aziraphale without actually coming directly in front of the mirror, keeping his eyes firmly nailed to the ground.

(He’s not going to gaze into the damned thing, because it’s going to be –- it’s going to be -- )

Meanwhile, Aziraphale was nattering on excitedly.

“Look, Crowley, it’s my bookshop! I can see my writing desk from here, nothing looks disturbed, thank heavens –- do you reckon this is a portal to take us back?”

A portal -– What?

Startled, Crowley glanced up towards the dusty mirror in a moment of gross incaution.

In the split-second before his gaze connected with its silvery depths, Crowley steeled himself for –-

(For what, he didn’t quite know. Heaven, before the First War, maybe. God, Herself, in all Her shining glory.

All the things he’d lost.)

The image slowly resolved, and the picture that greeted him was –

Warm light. Crowded shelves. The tattered sofa that always felt so satisfying to sink into, complete with the ugly afgan on top.

“It’s your bookshop, angel,” said Crowley dumbly.

Aziraphale clucked his tongue.

“Didn’t I just say? This is most curious. Now, if we can just work out how to activate the thing -- ”

Aziraphale made short work of the inscription atop the metal frame, while Crowley quietly short-circuited behind him, forgetting to inform the angel of the nature of the mirror.

He was sure his Deepest Desire hadn’t always been...this. At some point in the past, he was sure, if he’d came across the mirror, he would’ve seen –-

Something of the afore-mentioned singing-choir and divine light. He was certain.

Reasonably certain.

Well, maybe not for a while now.

Crowley breathed out a long sigh of relief and said, “Angel, the Mirror is --” at the same moment that Aziraphale burst out, “I’ve got it! You have to read it backwards --”

They shut up simultaneously and looked at each other.

Aziraphale deflated.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

And then Aziraphale seemed to realize the implications of their joint vision. He went brighter than ever, to Crowley’s eyes almost physically glowing. It was a bit hard to look at, but Crowley couldn’t have looked away from him for anything.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, smiling.

*

The Room of Requirement was every bit as gloriously chaotic as the books had promised it would be.

Aziraphale seemed right in his element in the whirlwind chaos, already itching to inspect every old knickknack not three minutes into their search.

“Don’t touch anything,” warned Crowley.

Aziraphale pouted, backing off of a chipped copper lamp, which seemed older than even some of the things in Aziraphale’s shop. Two centuries older than his rotary phone, at least.

“Don’t you wish we could take some things back with us?” lamented Aziraphale. “Besides the alcohol, that is.”

“What, and introduce magical breeds into our world, which no one besides us will be able to deal with? No thanks,” said Crowley, thinking of the pixies and poltergeists, shuddering.

Privately, however, he was already resigned to the fact that Aziraphale was going to smuggle one or two magical books out of the realm no matter what, even if he had to hide them beneath his clothes to do so. Which, of course, he wouldn’t have to -- he was far more skilled than that. The angel hadn’t scurried away thousands of precious manuscripts and palimpsests throughout the centuries for nothing. Not even Crowley knew how he managed some of those.

They wandered through the teetering piles of junk, marveling at the fact that in the story, it took a full thousand years for this massive fire-hazard to burn predictably to the ground.

Amid moans about Alexandria, the Mayan, and the Qin, as well as a budding lecture on Fahrenheit 451, they bumped into the Diadem quite unexpectedly, sitting placidly near an ugly wizard's bust.

“How anticlimactic,” Aziraphale, who’d always been a little starved for adventures, complained.

Crowley, however, is more than satisfied.

“Finally,” he murmured, picking the Diadem carefully off the pile with the threadbare remains of an embroidered handkerchief, eyeing it with disgust. “This thing smells exactly like hell.”

“What smell?” asked Aziraphale.

“The smell of evil,” muttered Crowley. “Can’t you smell it? Aren’t you angels supposed to be good at that sort of thing?”

“Well,” went Aziraphale. “That is, Sandalphon and the others have always been good at it – or claim to be good at it – in any case. No, I can’t smell anything.”

“Maybe you’ve been around me for too long and become inured to it,” teased Crowley.

Aziraphale’s face went through a series of complicated transformations: at first he seemed ready to agree, and then hesitation and guilt took over, before his expression shifted, and a new kind of guilt emerged, which he tried quickly to squash.

“Crowley…” the angel ended up saying.

Crowley gulped and waved a hand, somewhat frantically.

“Forget it. Shouldn’t’ve said that. I don’t really believe in the evil bit anyway.” Well. Not entirely.

Things like that just kind of...make an impression on you, when you’d lived through all two thousand years of it.

He did, however, hate having to watch Aziraphale wage the same old internal debate and self-flagellate for his unruly thoughts all over again, because of one of Crowley’s off-hand, self-deprecating comments.

They really should dispense with these old habits. The problem with habits that are old, however, is that they are also slow to die.

“So, should we take this outside?” wondered Crowley out loud, spinning the tarnished silver Diadem on a finger through the safety of the cloth.

“It’s well past curfew,” said Aziraphale, thoughtful. “Besides, we might draw unwanted eyes out on the grounds.”

“In here, then,” said Crowley. “I really don’t want to imagine what’ll happen if I leave this in the Slytherin dormitory. Or the Gryffindor one.”

Teenagers were temperamental enough; adding the insidious influence of the Diadem was like fuel to fire. Who knows; maybe they’ll wake up to Percy Weasley finally murdering Oliver Wood in a fit of violent rage, over something like snoring too loudly or talking about Quidditch too much, or something.

“How are you planning to kill it?” said Aziraphale, uncharacteristically bald.

Crowley shuddered violently.

“Must you phrase it that way?”

“How else am I supposed to phrase it?” said Aizraphale, puzzled.

“I don’t know,” whined Crowley. “How about ‘vanquish’? Or ‘defeat’? Or – y’know, what people usually say when they mean they’re off to murder a villain. Makes it easier to, uh. Do the deed.”

Aziraphale gave him a severe and thorough side-eyeing.

“You weren’t this particular about words when you were asking me to kill Adam,” said the angel, with prejudice.

Crowley shrugged.

“I wasn’t going to kill him. This time, though,” he stared at the piece of soul with trepidation. “It’ll have to be me.”

“Well then, what are you waiting for?” said Aziraphale, backing to a safe distance, watching the scene with an air of watching spectator sport. Crowley detected a hint of schadenfreude, too. The bastard.

He dithered for a bit, fingers twitching, before losing resolve again. He glared accusingly at the angel.

“Your staring is making me nervous!”

“Performance anxiety?” said the angel lightly.

Crowley sputtered.

“Shut up,” he said, and snapped his fingers.

Hellfire sprung from the ground between them, swallowing the Diadem in a flash. A shrill, ear-piercing wail broke through the flames along with a wisp of black smoke, drifting up towards the ceiling and exuding an acrid, eye-watering stench. Aziraphale and Crowley simultaneously covered their eyes and ears, coughing and wincing.

They were so busy doing that, in fact, that neither noticed when the flash of fire caught on the loosened pages of a tattered book by Crowley’s feet. When the smell didn’t dissipate immediately, Crowley blinked open his watery eyes.

“Wha --”

His eyes widened.

“Aziraphale –- Water! Holy water! We need --”

Aziraphale opened his eyes, too, squeaked, and attempted a desperate water miracle.

Frogs fell from the ceiling, splashing noisely into the piled-up junk. Those that survived the fall leapt all over the place, squawking. A chorus of croaks filled the cavernous space, threatening to drown out Crowley and Aziraphale’s high-pitched conversation.

“Aziraphale, I said water!”

“But, my dear, if I used holy water --”

Crowley slapped his own forehead. He’d forgotten, for fuck’s sake –

“Ugh!” said Crowley, rushing through the hellfire, grabbing Aziraphale and dashing in a circutous route for the door.

Fire spread at an alarming rate behind them, while Aziraphale futilely summoned ash from the ceiling to put it out.

“Crowley, Crowley, what do humans use in fire extinguishers?”

“Do I look like I have a clue?” Crowley complained. “I took Civil Engineering, not Chemistry! Sand, try sand --”

But this was no normal fire. Fire imbued with the potent diabolic energy of a demon transformed in the bowels of hell was particularly vicious. As Azirpahale couldn’t very well bless sand, his various attempts failed to stall the progress of the spreading infernal.

By the time they reached the door, the temperature in the room was climbing dangerously high. The expression on Aziraphale’s sweaty, pale features was like he was watching his bookshop burning in live motion.

“The books, the antiques! There could be extinct copies in here --” he wailed.

“Forget it, it’s too late!” howled Crowley, jerking the door open with a gesture and shoving Aziraphale out before tumbling out himself, the door slamming shut behind him.

They stood there, coughing and catching their breath for a while. Soot and ash fell from their hair and their clothes, forming two small, dark puddles on the stone floor.

The hallway was blessedly – no, damnedly –- wait no, oh whatever -- cool and quiet compared to the pit of pandemonium they’d just escaped.

Crowley raised his head and met Aziraphale’s eyes.

“…Oops?” 

*

They’re one horcrux down, but the trek back to the Slytherin dormitories was utterly devoid of triumph.

Even Aziraphale, normally intrepid, was too dejected to harp on silver linings, leaving the two of them to trudge on in oppressive silence. It was just as well, because they really couldn’t afford to be caught at this juncture.

As soon as Crowley thought this, however, they turned a corner and had to freeze where they stood.

Really, thought Crowley despairingly. At this point, he shouldn't expect any better at all.

For who else was waiting silently at the end of the hallway, but very the headmaster of the school – Albus Dumbledore himself?

Or, well, the construct of Dumbledore. Whatever he was made of.

Crowley and Aziraphale simultaneously tried to scramble behind the other, resulting in their shoulders bumping violently together, nearly overbalancing them and sending them collapsing in one small, pathetic, soot-stained pile.

Dumbledore watched them, amusement twinkling behind half-moon glasses.

“Mr. Fell, Mr. Crowley, how fortuitous!” intoned Dumbledore. “I was just taking a midnight stroll, when I thought I felt the castle nudge me this way. If I may -- where are the both of you headed?”

“Back –- back to bed,” muttered Crowley. “-- Sir.”

“That is, ah –- back to our dormitories,” added Azirpahale, smile overly bright. “Our very separate –- ah –- dormitories –- yes.”

“Yep,” said Crowley, struggling to control his tongue, which was threatening to elongate and split off at the end in his nervousness.

Was Dumbledore going to ask them where they'd been?

What could they even say? That they were saving the world? Defeating Voldemort one horcrux at a time? That they’d just burnt down one of the ancient mysteries of Hogwarts containing thousands years of lost treasures (though admittedly a lot of rubbish as well)?

Dumbledore stroked his beard, eyes doing a frankly inhuman amount of twinkling. That had to be some kind of a magic trick.

Except magic wasn’t real, and this Dumbledore wasn’t real either, as solid and unmistakable as his twinkling eyes and violently purple, giraffe-themed pajamas may suggest. They mustn’t forget that.

“Good, good,” Dumbledore began, genially enough. Then, almost conversationally, he launched into a seemingly unrelated tangent. “You know, for years now, Hogwarts has been devoted to the task of improving the relationships between houses and promoting interhouse friendships, particularly those between the Slytherins and the Gryffindors.” He smiled, eyes curving into small moons above his glasses. “There hasn’t been much success thus far, and the costs of repairs for spell damage has been running higher each year. I’ve been personally informed by Mr. Filch that if the corridors are turned into swamps one more time, he will not be held accountable for…ah, but I mustn’t get off track!”

Dumbledore chuckled to himself, pulled out his wand and materialized a packet of muggle candy. He took one, and then offered the bag to Crowley and Aziraphale with a quirk of his eyebrows.

Crowley hastily shook his head, but Aziraphale accepted some, after a brief bout of dithering. Dumbledore smiled and stuffed the bag into one of his pockets, peeling off the plastic cover noisily and popping the bright yellow content into his mouth.

“I must say,” continued Dumbledore with surprisingly intelligibility, considering the candy he’s still sucking on. “In my day, if a Gryffindor and a Slytherin found themselves friends, then they must be extra careful in their conduct, indeed.” His blue eyes sharpened meaningfully. “I commend both of you for your bravery – and cunning.”

Crowley and Aziraphale held their breaths as one. There had to be a “but” coming.

They were not wrong.

“-- However,” Dumbledore went on, in a tone incongruously grave for his present attire. Were the giraffes on his trousers dancing? “This year, Hogwarts is facing a particularly dangerous threat. I trust you’ve both heard what happened to Professor Quirrell on Halloween?”

Crowley jerked his head in a nod, feeling Aziraphale do the same by his side.

“These are difficult times,” mused Dumbledore, seemingly in a non-sequitur. “The creatures in the forest, being most attuned to the tides of the world, feel it keenly. Many have come to me with warnings. The centaurs, with their star-readings; according to Hagrid, the unicorns in the forests have been restless…”

Unicorns? Crowley mouthed to Aziraphale with shock. He’d forgotten that unicorns were still a thing in this world.

“...Ah,” said Dumbledore, blinking out of his reverie. “But I have kept you here long enough! I trust the two of you will not wander the castle unsupervised again?”

Crowley and Aziraphale shook their heads vigorously.

“Very well then. Go on, off you go, no use standing here listening to a senile old man’s ramblings…Goodnight! Pip pip!”

And they fled.

-----

[1] The marker did not give out the customary obnoxious squeak that distinguished all sharpies from regular pens, largely because Aziraphale was unfamiliar with this hellish phenomenon, and thus did not expect it to squeak. It, therefore, didn’t dare to.

[2] Sleep came with the new eleven-year-old body. Aziraphale was not a fan, and was looking to correct the situation and catching up on his reading schedule – or rather, re-reading schedule, for he could recite most books to have existed in the history of mankind, backwards, on demand – as soon as things were set to rights.

[3] People, for whatever reason, often think Crowley is the dramatic one out of the two of them. They would be wrong on that count. Oh, how wrong they would be.