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Chapter Text

Looking grim, he let the door swing shut behind him.

        Luca looked up from her book, instinctively putting a finger on the spine to bookmark it.

        A boy of about fifteen was standing on the threshold, the shop bell clanging sharply behind him.  He brushed his Converse off on the doormat, hands in his pockets, casting his gaze around the room.

        His eyes locked onto Luca. A smile climbed onto his face, like he was flipping a switch inside his brain, and she felt a thrill of unease run down her spine.

        “Hey.”

        “Welcome to Stick Stone and Bone.  Is there anything I can help you with today?”

        The boy moved towards the counter, closing the space between them in only a couple steps.  Luca sat back on her stool, trying to regain some of the distance.  The shop was closet-sized, truly not much wider than a biking lane, and completely overcrowded with shelves of books, baskets of crystals, precious gems and stones, racks of jewelry, pendants, pentagrams, charms, displays of tarot cards, and other assorted trinkets.  Luca hadn’t yet seen it at full capacity – but she doubted that the shop fit more than ten at any one time.

        The kid’s eyes had traveled down, and she followed their movement.  He was staring at the open page of her book.  Self-consciously, she placed a hand across it.  He threw a dubious look at her from under his bleach blonde bangs.  Luca forced a stony smile.

        “Not me. I’m just perusing.”

        Luca narrowed her eyes on him. Before she could form a question, the door to the shop swung open again, the bell ringing out with an almost panicked c-clang.

        Three more boys piled through the door, all roughly the same age, the sound of them filling up the shop as though a flood gate had been pulled down.

        “…mean, really, I think the Finches have as good a chance of winning as the Stormers next Cup.”

        “I don’t see why.  They haven’t had a new player in ages.”

        They piled in behind the blond-haired boy, slipping past him and into the shop, stopping to look at the shelves. They were all dressed similarly, in dark jeans and t-shirts.

        “Dad says they’re recruiting soon.”

        “How would your dad know?”

        “He heard it from some guy at MACUSA, he says.”

        “What does some guy at MACUSA know about quidditch recruitment?”

        Luca watched them move from shelf to shelf, bending down over the tables placed in between, where woven straw baskets of stones and runes lay, with prices labeled on the side.  They stuck their hands into the different baskets leisurely, picking stones up and putting them down. She felt her shoulders tense.

        Amos had warned her to look out for shoplifters. It was more difficult than she had initially expected.  So many people came in and out of the store – experienced buyers and curious tourists alike, having wandered a little further away from Greenwich Village’s main attractions. And a stone the size of a penny was such an easy thing to slip into your pocket.

        “What book is that?”

        Luca whipped her head around. It was the blonde boy. He was still standing there, still staring down at the counter, glancing up at her with curious, amber eyes. A sickly feeling settled in Luca’s gut, her eyes drifting back towards the gaggle of rowdy boys. It felt like he was trying to distract her.

        It was too early for this.

        “Les Misérables.”

        “Nice.”  His smile was quick and warm. “I’ve seen the musical. Can you hear the people sing?”

        He looked at her expectantly, a hand gestured towards her as though he expected her to answer in similar sing-song. Luca stared at him coldly.

        “No?” The boy shrugged. “What about the play? Have you seen it on Broadway?”

        “I haven’t been to Broadway.”

        Clink!

        “Shit!”

        Luca sat up straight in her seat, peering around the head of the blond.  The sound had been that of a pendant dropping from its rack and onto the glass tabletop it was placed on.  One of the kids, a curly-haired boy in a Led Zeppelin shirt and red flannel was scrambling to hook it back where it belonged.

        “Is there anything in particular that I can help you with?” Luca called over to them, fighting to keep her voice free of edge.

        They all looked up at her at once.

        “Uhm…”

        The curly-haired kid straightened out the pendant on its rack hurriedly, standing up.

        “Yeah. Just looking for some sticks and stones.”

        Luca felt her jaw clench. She cleared her throat.

        “And what do you need them for?”

        The boy smiled shyly as he spoke. “To break some bones.”

        Luca sighed, kicking herself mentally. She supposed the band tees and denim had been a little misleading, but she should have realized it sooner.

        They were wizards.

        Closing her book, Luca slid off her stool, throwing a look around the group.

        “All of you, yeah?”

        They nodded.

        Rolling her shoulders, Luca jerked her head towards the back of the shop. “This way.”

        She led them through the store, pulling aside the curtain that walled off the back room. It wasn’t more than a mudroom, windowless and stinking of mold. There was a narrow concrete staircase leading up to the second floor, and to her left, a white door. There was a sign on it, hand-painted, that read “employee restroom”.

        Luca was the only person currently employed at Stick Stone and Bone besides its owner, her uncle, Amos. And neither of them had ever used this bathroom.

Not to use the toilet, anyway.

        The boys piled up behind her, staring over her shoulder at the door. Luca tapped the door knob three times, before pushing it open. Inside, she looked upon the typical New York City bathroom.  Cramped, smelling faintly of mildew, and the sink and toilet both sporting their fair share of rust. She flipped on the light. The grey concrete walls absorbed most of the fluorescent glare.

        “Did you do it right?”

        It was a different voice, not the curly-haired or the blond.

        “Hakuna your tatas for a sec, Jake, jeez.”

        Luca grabbed the doorknob and closed it again, leaving the light on inside.  Then, after counting to three underneath her breath, she turned the knob counter-clockwise.

        The door opened, but not onto the bathroom.

        She could feel the boys peering around her into the room beyond.

        If the front of the shop was a walk-in closet, than the back of the shop was a small house by comparison.  A department store the size of a warehouse, tall shelves and tiered displays stretching farther than one could glimpse in a single look.

        Luca stood aside, holding the door ajar for them, ushering them in with an impatient look.  All of the boys streamed in single-file, stepping onto the fire escape just outside the door.

Luca always half-expected for people to stare around the warehouse in awe when she did this little magic trick, as she had when Amos had first shown her how to open the warehouse door. These boys were students, she understood. Amos had explained as much. Most of the business Stick Stone and Bone had gotten this summer was from students in the market for “school supplies”. But even the eleven-year olds didn’t so much as bat an eye.

Just a normal day in New York for their kind, Luca supposed.

        The blond boy was the last one to file in, staring at her as he slid past.  His friends were already jogging down the fire escape, heading into the web of magical oddities arrayed below.

        The front of Stick Stone and Bone was just that… a front. The witches and wizards who came in, all treated that part of the store with a similar sense of hilarity. It was all for the Muggles – the decks of tarot, the bunches of sage, the healing crystals. None of it had any value to the Wizarding community whatsoever.

        Behind the employee restroom was where the real business went down.  Amos Kokernak owned the largest, most well-stocked, wizarding equipment warehouse in all of New York City – and probably on the East Coast as well, or so he surmised.  It had been in his family for generations, and with each passing decade, more was added onto the shop.  In traditional American style, Stick Stone and Bone had evolved throughout the centuries from a piddling apothecary, where witches and wizards could locate just about anything that could be put into a potion, into a bookshop.  And then into robe shop.  And later, a store for writing supplies.  Much later, the Kokernaks began trading and selling second-hand items, from cauldrons to pet supplies, to sometimes even the pets themselves.

        It had all been thrown haphazardly into this hodgepodge of a Wizarding supermarket, until it really couldn’t be described as anything but an “equipment” store.

        Luca looked out over the rows of shelves, piled high with quills, tattered leather-covered books, brass telescopes, and other magical knick-knacks whose names she would never remember. She doubted that she would ever truly come to grips with this place’s existence.

        “Amos!”

        Luca waited a moment, listening to her voice carry around the wide, open room.  From down below, the boys stopped a moment in their ceaseless chattering to glance up at her.

        From across the way, she heard the sound of a rusty door screeching open.  There was another fire escape against the east wall, leading up to an office door, from which a twenty-something man in an ugly striped sweater and jeans stumbled out.  She could see his office beyond – piled, from floor to ceiling with loose parchment, manila folders, and leather binders overspilling with pay stubs, receipts, and post-it notes.

        Amos waved over at her lazily, his gaze taking into account the four teenagers making their way into the shop, before looking back at her.

        “I’ve got it,” he called over dryly.  He turned back into his office and slammed the door shut without another word.

        Sighing internally, Luca turned back into the bathroom.

        “Are you new to town?”

        She froze up, mouthing a swear. She whipped around, squeezing her arms tightly to her chest.

        It was the blond. Still.

        It was much, much too early for this twenty questions malarkey.

        “Yes,” she snapped.

        He brushed the bangs back from his face.  His hair was long and scraggly, and as he pushed it back, Luca took note of the plugs pierced in his ears.

        “Nice! Welcome to the Big Apple.”

        “Thank you,” Luca said tightly. She was standing on the other side of the threshold, just inside the mudroom, but he still had one foot inside, blocking her from being able to shut the door.  As she stared at him, he leaned forward, propping his body up against the door jamb.  She could feel her teeth grinding together.

        “How long have you been here?”

        “Three weeks.”

        “And you still haven’t been to Broadway yet? What about the Statue of Liberty?”

        “No.”

        “The Empire State Building?”

        “No.”

        “Well, come on, that’s just a bit of a walk from here! You really gotta catch up on your New York hist -”

        “Look, I have to close this door,” Luca interjected, giving him a stinging look.  “I can’t just leave it open for… whoever, to look into.”

        “Ah,” the boy said, standing up straight. “Sorry.”

        Before she could react, he had stepped back inside the mudroom, forcing her to stand back, and closed the door behind him.

        The sound of his friends bouncing from shelf to shelf was swallowed up by the snick of the door mechanism.

        Luca gaped at him, incredulous.

        “Where did you move from?” the boy asked, shoving his hands into his pockets, clearly unperturbed.

        She glared at him.

        “It’s the accent, right?” she quipped. “You wanna know ‘bout the accent.”

        The smirk that crept onto his face was almost bashful, but Luca knew he was anything but sorry.

        “Just thought I’d ask.”

        Luca nearly found a growl rising up at the back of her throat, but stopped herself short.

        “Linton,” she spat.  “I’m from Linton.  Not that you’d have ever heard of Linton.  But yes, because I know that’s what you’re really asking, I did just move from U.K. three weeks ago.”

        “Alright,” the kid breathed, taking a step back, as though only now did he feel the waves of hostility bridling off of her.  “Cool. I was just curious. I’ve been coming here since I was a kid, and I’ve never seen you before.”

        “Yeah?”

        Luca was completely and utterly uninterested.  What she wanted to do was tap on the door knob and go through the opening sequence again, so she could shove him through the door and return to the front counter and Les Misérables.  But he was standing directly in her way.

        “Are you a transfer?”

        Luca blinked at him.

        “What?”

        His brows wrinkled at her in confusion.

        “You know.” He shrugged. “From Hogwarts?”

        Luca just stared at him blankly, her mind going vacant.  He continued to watch her expectantly, as though once again she was supposed to understand his reference.  But this time, Luca had a feeling it wasn’t as commonplace an allusion as Les Mis.

        She scrabbled mentally, fishing for an answer, searching for the word in her memory.  Hogwarts.

        But for fuck’s sake, every single word that had been spewed at her from these people in the last couple months was one big jumble of nonsense.

        “Are you going to Ilvermorny this year?” the kid added.

        Luca gaped at him another moment, all froze up, before finally the connection was made.  Hogwarts was a school.  A Wizarding school.

        Torie’s school.

        “No,” Luca said quickly, shaking her head and licking her lips nervously.  “No.  No, I’m… homeschooled.”

        The kid cocked his head to one side.

        “Homeschooled?”

        Luca shrugged, suddenly very self-conscious.

        “Yeah.”

        “That’s pretty impressive.  What year are you, then?  Or do you know… do you not really follow years because of that?”

        Luca had no idea what to say.  She had been in Year 10 of secondary school back in Linton.  But somehow, she doubted that the British public education system translated that easily into the Wizarding world.

        After a moment, the boy shook his head nonchalantly.

        “Guess not.”  He stuck out his hand.  “I’m Sol.”

        Luca stared at the extended hand for a brief second before begrudgingly shaking it.

        “Luca.”

        He smiled.

        “It was nice to meet you, Luca.  Sorry if I rubbed you wrong.  I just thought, maybe you were new… it’s kind of a big deal.  I don’t remember the last time Ilvermorny’s had a transfer.”

        Luca felt the heat rise in her face, and exhaled roughly through her nose, throwing her eyes down at the ground.

        “No, you didn’t… you didn’t rub me the wrong way.”

        She felt guilty now, suddenly.  For Pete’s sake, he was probably just trying to be polite.  When she looked back up at him, his smile was sly.

        “Really?” he snorted, his eyes crinkling up at the sides.  “Because I think that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”

        Luca chuckled.  And then she caught herself.  The smirk slipped as quickly from her face as it had sneaked onto it. It was stupid, she felt, and yet she couldn’t keep at bay the gloom that flooded her. The smile had felt strange. Her laugh had sounded stale.

        Just then, the door to the employee restroom opened.  The curly-haired kid stuck his head out.

        “Sol?” His eyes travelled quickly from Sol to Luca, taking in the situation, and she hated the knowing smile that quirked across his lips.

        “C’mon man, we’ve still got all our school lists to go through.”

        “I told you, man, my parents wanna take me shopping.”

        The kid groaned dramatically, rolling back his eyes.

        “Are they gonna hold your hand, too?”

        Sol threw a fist towards the kid’s head playfully, and he disappeared around the door, cackling. Before it closed, Sol put a hand on the door, turning back to Luca. She was surprised to see that same grim expression from earlier fading slowly from his face, as though thawing as he took the sight of her in again.

        “Do you work here full-time?” he asked finally.

        “Well… uh. Yeah.”

        There was no point in sugarcoating it.  Luca didn’t have much of a life at present.  She spent all of her days working in Stick Stone and Bone, and all of her nights reading in her room, in the apartment above the shop which she shared with Amos.  She hadn’t even really been around Greenwich yet.

        “So, if I were to come by a couple days from now, you’d probably still be here, right?”

        Luca furrowed her brows at him.

        “Yeah?” she said.

        “Ok. Cool. Do you think you’d maybe want to… hang out?”

        Luca stared at him uncomfortably.  The blunt answer was, no. Luca didn’t want to hang out with Sol. She didn’t want to “hang out” with anyone. He was probably the first person in New York City she had talked to since moving there that was her age. And that was probably a good thing, she supposed.  Back home, she had always been pretty good at making new friends.  She was the usually the one striking up conversations, inviting new people to come along for outings, and talking up random people in the line at the theatre.

        But this wasn’t Linton. And she wasn’t that Luca anymore.

        And, most importantly, Luca wasn’t what Sol wanted her to be. She wasn’t a witch.

        Even if he were a Muggle, it just wouldn’t work.

        Luca sighed, pulling her flannel shirt close around her.

        “Maybe,” she said quietly.

        Her eyes were on his sneakers, but she could feel his look grazing over her, could feel the disappointment and the question in his eyes. Because the word that she really had conveyed, was “no.”

        The sound of the bell clanging as the shop door swung open roused them both. Luca threw an urgent look towards Sol. He nodded silently, opening the restroom door all the way.

        “See ya,” he whispered.

        Luca watched him close the door quickly behind him.

        “Bye.”

        It had already snapped shut.

        Exhaling sharply, Luca tugged at the wiry black hair that framed her face, squashing down a groan. She drew herself back to her full stature, turned on heel and greeted the Muggle that had come in with a paltry smile.

        “Welcome to Stick Stone and Bone.”

 

***

 

Luca watched from the doorstep as the last customer of the day walked down the quiet, gloomy Greenwich sidewalk, waiting until they had gone beyond her line of sight with their bag of healing crystals and meditation stones toted in hand, before turning off the lights and flipping the sign on the door to “CLOSED.”

        She locked the door and bolted it, a taste of irony filling her mouth, wondering if it even made a difference.  As far as Luca could tell, the locks were only really there for appearances, or perhaps because the store had come with them.  Amos’ family had several spells, or charms, or whatever, laid over the door to prevent break-ins and thefts. Just today, as Sol and his friends had been heading out the door, it had caught one of them at the threshold and thrown them back into the shop.  As Luca might have suspected, the curly-haired one had slipped a piece of lapis lazuli into his pocket.

        She turned and looked out over the darkened shop, taking in the displays of spiritualistic trinkets.  A touch of bitterness welled up inside her.  She would have never been caught dead in one of these shops.  Not before.  And neither, she had thought, would her former best friend, Torie.

        Though it turned out, Torie’s whole life had been one magic shop right after the other.

        Growling under her breath, Luca went back to the employee restroom, opening it up onto the warehouse. The bronzers had been lit, the internal sun that normally illuminated the lofted ceiling having gone grey.  There was no one remaining, wandering from shelf to shelf to browse.  Luca walked quickly down the fire escape. The shelves stood high above her, some of them crooked and almost seeming to lean over her. She strode quickly through them, arms folded uncomfortably. She didn’t go back here if she couldn’t help it. Even when the shop was closed, and all its customers gone, she could still hear things stirring from within the shelves – paintings that moved, breathed, and often talked amongst themselves, trinkets that paced impatiently on their displays, sealed cauldrons and boxes that rattled with irritation.

        Luca climbed the fire escape to Amos’ office two steps at a time. At the top, she paused, opening up her ears and listening. She could hear him very clearly inside, even through the thick mahogany door.  He was muttering to himself quietly, shuffling papers between his hands, sounding bothered. Luca sighed. She supposed now was as good a time as any to broach the subject.

        And she really couldn’t afford to put it off any longer.

        She knocked on the door firmly, waiting a few beats.

        “You can come in.”

        Luca turned the knob, leaning against the jamb as she slowly peeked inside.

        Amos was sitting at his desk, his shoulders hunched over piles of parchment.  On another table against the far wall, she could see more stacks, with various colors of quills levitating over them, scribbling idly, marking things off.  As she stepped inside, wary, Amos gestured lazily with one hand, and one of the pieces of parchment from behind him came floating his way, settling softly onto his desk.  He didn’t look up from his work.

        “You closed the shop?”

        “Yeah.”  She eyed the self-propelled quills suspiciously.

        Amos nodded, his eyes still on his desk.

        “Thank you,” he murmured.  Picking up his wand from beside him, he flicked it at another parchment, and it rolled up into a tube before flying into the other far corner, where all of the other catalogued receipts and merchandise logs were stored.

        Luca stood there awkwardly, watching the quills write by themselves, and the papers assort themselves quietly, finding herself leaning forward by instinct to try and glimpse what was being written down.

        “Uhm?”

        She snapped back to present. Amos was looking up at her languidly, tucking his wand behind his ear as he leaned back in his seat. His eyebrows shot up at her questioningly.

        “Was there something else you needed?”

        “Erm.”

        Luca shuffled her feet uneasily, faltering for words. Now that she was here, none of the rehearsed conversations that she had been having with Amos in her head seemed to make much sense to her. Stalling for time, she closed the door to the office slowly.

        Amos cocked his head at her, the patience in his expression falling short.

        “Yeah?”

        Luca sighed, biting down on the inside of her cheek.

        “Um.”

        Amos waved a hand, and a chair from the table across the room scooted around, dragging itself right up to Luca’s legs. The look on his face was anything but tolerant. She had a feeling he thought she was wasting his time.

        She took a seat, folding her hands into her lap.

        “What’s up?” he insisted, his small, dark eyes looking at her intently.

        For some reason, Luca felt her hands shaking.

        “This Saturday,” she said shortly.

        Amos frowned at her.

        “Yes?”

        She looked up at him pointedly.

        “It’s the full moon.”

        Amos gazed at her vacantly for a second, and then comprehension dawned across his face.

        “Ahh,” he said, his eyes casted towards the ceiling. “Yes.”

        A moment of silence fell, broken only by the sound of Amos popping his lips together thoughtfully. Luca stared at him expectantly.

        “Jeromy said… well, I mean, Mr. Crowle had said something about you… finding a room for… it.”

        “Hmm-mm,” Amos murmured, his hands cupped around his mouth, brows furrowed in consternation.

        “Because… you know.”  Luca shrugged helplessly.  “I don’t really think you want me to transform… here.”

        “No, no, no.”

        “In the store.”

        “Yes, yes, you’re right,” Amos said distractedly, shaking his head with dismay.  “You are absolutely right.”

        Luca exhaled a puff of air through her nose incredulously, biting her tongue. She didn’t want to give him any sass. But for fuck’s sake, it sounded as if he hadn’t put any thought into this at all. And he was supposed to be her guardian.

        “I’m working on it, Luca,” Amos went on, drumming his fingers against the side of his unkempt beard. “I’ll figure it all out.”

        She frowned at him, fists clenching at her sides.

        “By… this Saturday? Right? Sooner than that, I would hope.”

        “I will, Luca,” he snapped, picking up his wand and levitating another parchment over into the logged pile.

        “Because this isn’t really the sort of thing you put off for last minute.”

        “I said I will.”

        Luca’s jaw clenched. Amos held her gaze, hard and stony, and she felt a vein of cold run through her. She stared back at him stubbornly.

        “I said I would,” Amos said, stating each word with a solid emphasis. “And I will.”

        He bent back over his desk, his eyes roaming over the piece of parchment he held between his fingers. One of the quills drifted over and he took it in hand, scribbling down a few hasty notes.

        Luca watched him work, a taste of incredulity welling up inside of her. While it was true that they barely knew each other – having only met less than a month ago – and had barely any blood relation to be spoken of, she honestly hadn’t seen this level of incompetence coming from him. Some disinterest? Sure. He clearly had only agreed to adopting her because of the free assistance. He had told her as much himself when they were introduced. That was okay with her. She didn’t particularly care for him either.

        But this level of apathy?

        “You’re still here,” he noted dryly.

        Luca snorted.

        “Yeah.” She shook her head at him. “I’m still fucking here. What part ‘bout me being werewolf did you not understand?”

        “I understand every bit of it,” Amos responded lightly, throwing her a reproachful glance.  “Probably a fair bit more than you.”

        Luca felt her face go red from the roots of her hair all the way down her neck.

        Amos sat back in his seat, sighing, looking her up and down studiously. He almost looked guilty. After a couple of beats, he scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly.

        “I know you’ve been going through a tough time –”

        “You better fucking believe it.”

        “And I can’t possibly know how you’re feeling.”

        She stared at him quietly, her face still pink, her gaze traveling down to her shoes.

        He heaved another uncomfortable sigh.

        “I’ve never really been good at this kind of thing.”

        Luca didn’t say anything for moment. Then, the corner of her lips quirked up.

        “I don’t think… finding out you have a werewolf, non-magic niece is something that you exactly get good at.”

        She surprised a laugh out of him.

        “Neither is finding out you have a magical, second uncle. Five times removed.”

        For a second, they both smiled.

        “I am working on it, Luca,” he said, and this time his tone of voice was earnest. “I know you’re anxious. But I don’t exactly have an answer for you. It’s not as easy as you might think to procure a safe… isolated, easily locked-down room in New York City. That no one else knows about. Without raising a few red flags.”

        She drew in a deep breath, nodding.

        “Yeah,” she agreed.  “Yeah.”

        They stewed in silence for a minute, avoiding gazes. Luca pushed back her chair, getting ready to stand up.

        “Do you…”

        Luca looked up at him sharply. Amos wasn’t looking at her, but at his feet. He cleared his throat uneasily.

        “Do you want me… to be there with you?  When it happens?”

        Luca felt all of the blood drain from her face, as though a bucket of icy water had been dumped over her head, dripping down onto her feet.

        “No.” She said it so quickly that Amos looked taken aback. She cleared her throat, shaking her head for emphasis. “No. That’s okay. I’m… good.”

        Amos nodded slowly, though his gaze conveyed anything but understanding. She gave him a look that begged no more questions asked.

        “Alright.” He coughed, turning back to his desk. Luca stood up, pushing the chair back up against the wall. “Alright. Good.”

        “Thanks.‘Night,” Luca said, opening the door to his office.

        “Goodnight.”

        She shut the door tightly, falling back against it a moment to take a breath.

        She had been condemning Amos for not being prepared for this Saturday, but as she was tramping down the fire escape, she found herself lost for breath.

        It was going to be her second transformation, and the first since moving to New York City.

        Only now that it was so close did Luca really realize, she was not even the slightest bit prepared.

Chapter Text

“Good morning.”

        Luca looked up from her plate, her neck sore. She squinted as Amos came into the room, giving her a little wave.

        “Morning,” she croaked.

        As Amos went to the kitchen cabinets, pulling down a bowl for himself, he did a double take, looking her up and down over his shoulder.

        “You sound tired,” he commented, pulling a box of Cocoa Puffs down from one of the higher shelves over the sink. Their apartment had a tiny galley kitchen, cramped into one small corner of the living room.  Luca was sitting at the coffee table, cross-legged, a cup of coffee cradled in her lap, and a plate of scrambled eggs practically in front of her nose. She hadn’t even noticed how hunched over the table she was until Amos had come into the room. She was practically falling asleep sitting up.

        “Yeah, well…,” she said dryly, shrugging. She picked up her fork and pushed the eggs around on her plate. She had been sitting there, staring at them, completely zoned out, and now they had gone cold. Her eyes roved over them unappetizingly.

        Luca didn’t really want to talk about it. Not with Amos.They hadn’t been living with each other very long, but already she understood that he was the sort of person that listened to people’s troubles only so long as he could do something to resolve them. And she didn’t want to argue over this with him.

        She had been plagued by insomnia these past few nights, in a worse way than she ever had before. Luca normally didn’t get much sleep. Ever since being bitten - ever since waking up in Saint Mungos that first night - she had been having a reoccuring dream of the night of the incident. It remained mostly the same, with little variation. What was worse, sometimes the dream would reach the end of its run and everything would go black, before starting over again. Those nights were an endless loop of blood and rehashed pain, leaving her entirely drained and burned out by the time she managed to wake herself.

The full moon was tomorrow. And Luca knew that reliving the original incident - over and over and over again, potentially - was probably the worst thing she could do to herself right now. So she had been pulling all-nighters for the past three days, keeping herself occupied at night with getting through the stack of used books she had purchased last week at the Strand.

Now more than before, she missed her dad’s telly.  She had never had a case of insomnia this bad before, when she had lived with her parents, but in those few cases, Luca had found the best way to spend a sleepless night was by marathoning Doctor Who reruns until the wee hours of the morning.

Amos didn’t have a television. Or a VCR. Or a cassette player. Luca was kind of surprised that he owned a microwave oven. When she had asked after where the air conditioning unit was, he had given her a look of unbridled bewilderment, bordering on abject terror as she tried to explain what AC was. All of these were, apparently, “No-Maj” or “Muggle” inventions that simply weren’t commonplace for people like Amos. She understood that magic was pretty much the answer to everything for him and his kind, but Luca wasn’t entirely onboard. Sure, there seemed to be spells to manage the temperature of the apartment, and most of the dishes tended to “wash” themselves in the sink by that same, self-propelled magic.  But one radio, tuned into a couple of whacky underground wizarding stations, just didn’t compare to twenty-four/seven access to shameless television soap operas and horrible decade-old sitcoms - or whatever it was that Americans watched here in the States.

“Um…”

Luca looked up again, realizing that she had been drifting off. Amos stood in the kitchen, his back to her, and he slowly turned around.  He had the coffee tin in his hand, which he began to pour into his mug. A few measly grounds fell out of it. Luca flinched.

“Sorry.”

Amos crooked an eyebrow at her.

“I got this tin, like… at the beginning of this week.”

Luca shrugged, not offering up any explanation. She could feel his gaze searching her.

“Do… you want the rest of my eggs?” she volunteered, her voice rising with guilt.

Amos put the coffee tin back down on the counter.

“Luca.”

“Nevermind, I can just reheat them.”

“Are you…”

Amos stopped, coughing to clear his throat. Luca stood, picking up her dish, and carried it over to the microwave. She could feel him staring at her turned back.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Luca said, forcing a chipper ring into the word that she did not feel.  She tossed the plate into the microwave and mashed a couple buttons. She turned around to face him.  His arms were folded uncomfortably over his chest. He was wearing boxer shorts and a bleach-stained t-shirt with a band name called 142 Staircases, which Luca presumed was one of his “wizard rock” groups.  Sometimes Luca forgot that Amos was only twenty-seven.

“Just tired.”

He dumped the unused coffee grinds into the kitchen sink.  The sink lever popped up, startling Luca, as it began to run water of its own accord to wash the residue down the pipe.  Amos peered at her skeptically.

“Luca…”

DING !

They both turned around.  The microwave was beeping obnoxiously, and Luca yanked open the door. A swell of steam came billowing out, breaking over both of them with a stench of burnt plastic. She waved it away, peeking through the cloud. The scrambled eggs were sizzling with distress. She picked up her fork and poked them experimentally. There were as tough as rubber.

“I can… not have eggs.”

“I was about to make something myself,” Amos interjected, moving around her to get a glimpse at the mess she had made.  “You could - ”

DING!

They both looked at one another. It wasn’t the microwave this time. It was the doorbell to the shop downstairs. Luca hit the “clear” button on the microwave. The time was half an hour past eleven.  They opened in another thirty minutes.

“I got it,” Luca said, walking over to the coffee table and picking up her mug.

Amos shook his head hastily.

“No, you don’t have to open the shop, I can -”

“No you can’t,” Luca interrupted him. He narrowed his eyes at her in confusion.  She sent him a pointed look as she downed the rest of her coffee. He followed her gaze down to his boxer shorts.

“No, I can’t,” he agreed. With a lazy swipe of his hand, and a mumbled word under his breath, he levitated the scrambled egg plate, still steaming, from the microwave and dropped it into the sink. “I’ll be down in a second,” he said, running quickly into his bedroom.

“Yup,” Luca called after him.  She heard the door close after him.  It was a such a tiny apartment, with hardly any barriers or privacy: there were three rooms, one room that served as both living room and kitchen, and two bedrooms. And Luca had a sneaking suspicion that her room had been hastily “added on” after Amos discovered he was going to be adopting her.  From the outside of the shop, she couldn’t see where the room was. Though from her bed she could see the street, from the ground outside she could not see her window. It was as though it didn’t exist.

She flung open the front door and went bouncing down the narrow concrete steps. She hopped down onto the landing, putting a hand against the employee restroom door to steady herself.  She realized, only now, as her feet stung from the landing, that she was only wearing a pair of mismatched socks.

Luca pushed aside the curtain that walled off the back of the shop.  She hesitated before flipping on the lights. The shelves of knick knacks and trinkets were blanketed in shadows, and she squinted through the dark as she strode forward, her feet padding softly on the carpeted ground.  The blinds on the display windows were still drawn, admitting only the barest rays of sunlight through the cracks. She walked behind the counter and pulled down on of the panels, peering through.

She saw a couple making their way leisurely past the rows of shops outside, their necks craned upwards to take in all the signs.  Luca pulled the panel down sharply, trying to get a sideways look at the shop’s front door.

She released the panel quickly, causing the entire blind to shudder.  The doorbell rang again. Her face slowly folded into scowl.

“Bloody fucking-tastic,” she swore under her breath, making her way quickly from around the counter.  She went to the door and began yanking off all the bolts and turning all the locks. Leaving only one chain bolted, she wrenched the door open.

“We open at twelve,” Luca snapped, and then came up short. Sol Syres’ face was hovering only a few inches away from hers through the crack in the door.

They both took an involuntary step back.  Luca watched his face blush from the roots of his stupid blond head down to the crook of his neck.

“Yeah,” he said hastily, rubbing at his forehead, his brows creased with embarrassment.  “I know, I just thought - ”

“Are you going to open the door or not?”

Luca frowned at Sol. His face had gone from pink to cherry red. The voice had come from behind him. A second later, a small, thinning young woman with wild white blonde hair barrelled him aside. She stepped forward, closing up the space between herself and Luca, practically pressing her face into the crack of the ajar door.

“Well?”

Luca felt spit fly across her face. She took another step back, reeling.

“Is this how you treat your own kind? I won’t stand for this sort of discrimination!”

“Mom, please...”

“Mrs. Syres!”

Luca leapt back.  Amos had suddenly appeared from behind her, fully-clothed, and wearing an all too familiar forced smile.  He brushed Luca gently aside and began to unlatch the front door hurriedly.

“How good to see you!”

“It’s about time, sir.”

“You’re looking lovely, as always.”

“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?” Mrs. Syres seethed as Amos swung open the front door.

“Not at all.”

“I better not, you half-blooded tit.”

She plowed past him, bumping Luca as she stormed into the shop, leaving her son standing awkwardly on the front stoop. Amos began tailing behind her, attempting to maintain an ounce of control as he directed her towards the back of the shop.

“Just that door on the left, Mrs. Syres.”

“I know where the door is, you idiot, I’ve been here before.”

Luca watched them disappear into the employee restroom, their voices fading. The front door fell shut with an unapologetic clang .

She turned. Sol stood on the doormat, his hand still on the knob, staring at his shoes.  The restroom door slammed shut too.

Luca cleared her throat.

“Do you need me to… open it for you?”

Sol glanced up at her. His eyes were narrowed with a combination of shame and contempt. She felt her throat clam up. He gave his head a small shake.

Silently, Sol shuffled over to one of the nearest tables of healing crystals, picking up a piece of rose quartz. Luca gawked only a moment longer before dragging her attention away. She padded awkwardly back behind the counter, conscience again that she wasn’t wearing shoes, and began to draw open the blinds.

“I’m sorry.”

Luca glanced over at Sol. He was standing stiffly beside a rack of pendants and charms, pretending to study them intensely.

“For my mom.”

“It’s not a problem,” Luca offered, trying her best to sound earnest. From the way that Sol shrugged his shoulders, turning away from her, he didn’t agree.

She watched his back for a moment, crouching over some of the displays towards the back. She sighed through her nose, leaning over the counter to try and tug on the cord to the blinds on the door.

“Here.”

Luca heard a strange word muttered from behind her, and then suddenly the blind was shooting up, the cord nearly whipping her in the face as the window was whisked wide open.

“Jesus fuck,” she hissed, leaping back. She threw a contemptuous look over at Sol. He had his wand out and raised, a puzzled look settling over his face. He lowered his wand slowly.

“Sorry,” he said, his tone more questioning than apologetic.

“It’s fine,” Luca snapped. Now she could feel her face beginning to flush. She ran her fingers through the voluminous nest that was her hair, twining her fingers around the gnarly roots. She moved from around the counter and went to the last blind left closed, trying to make herself look busy.

“Why don’t you just…”

Luca turned to look at him. Sol was motioning towards the window again with his wand, his face creased with confusion.

“It’s fine .”

Luca yanked the blind open, turning her face away so he couldn’t see her blush.

“Amos says you’re not supposed to use magic in the front of the shop.”

“Alright,” Sol said defensively. Over her shoulder, she could see him putting his wand into his back pocket.

It had been months. Months since this whole thing had been explained to her. Nothing could have been more of a shock than, firstly, being told that she was now a werewolf; and secondly, that there was a whole community of people out there that knew that werewolves were totally a thing. Because they themselves were magic. Or, you know, practiced it. On a daily basis.

It had taken her weeks to even be able to say the word aloud with any seriousness, and yet here she was, ages later, working in a wizarding wholesale supply shop, and she still couldn’t stand near a little charm without shrieking.

“I didn’t mean to…”

Luca turned around, finding Sol scratching at the back of his neck awkwardly. She shook her head.

“Just don’t sweat it,” she said bluntly, plopping down on the stool behind the counter.  “I’m just… kinda skittish or whatever.”

“You don’t really seem like the kind of person to scare easily,” Sol remarked, smirking slyly.

Luca felt herself flinch. In her mind’s eye, she could see the massive hulk of a wolf’s head, turning a corner, could see the blood and gore clinging to its short snout, and felt her pulse quicken.

She had once thought so too.

“That’s not a bad thing.”

Luca blinked at Sol blankly, coming back to herself. He was staring at her with a measure of concern.

“Scaring easily,” he went on. Luca shook her head again. She didn’t seem able to survive a conversation with this kid without making him think he’d offended her.

“I don’t,” she snorted. “Usually. I used to stay up all night rewatching Return of the Living Dead.”

“Pshhhhh.” Sol waved her off with a blithe smile. “That’s not even kinda scary. You gotta step up your game, girl. None of that weak 80’s shit.”

“Well, I haven’t exactly been to the cinema lately,” Luca said defensively.

“Well maybe you oughta.” Sol cocked his head at her thoughtfully. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

Luca felt herself pale. All at once, the edges of her vision were going dark, narrowing before her eyes like a vignette. She grabbed onto the edge of the counter for support, forcing herself to breathe thickly through her nose, to count backwards from ten as calmly as she could.  But she could see Sol there, through the tunnel vision, frowning at her in utter confusion, waiting for an answer, while her heart had begun to feel as though an elephant was sitting on it.

“No,” she gasped, the word punching out of her before she could stop herself. She shook her head, berating herself, watching him gawk at her. “Not tomorrow. I’m working.”

“Okay.”  Sol cracked his knuckles, sounding put out. He put down the piece of rose quartz and began looking through the spirit stones. Luca tried to blink the shadows away from her eyes, leaning heavily against the counter. She wasn’t normally the type to faint. The last time this had happened, right after they’d diagnosed her, she’d passed out. But a hospital - albeit a wizard hospital - was the proper sort of place to pass out. Not in front of a boy she’d only just met and apparently wanted to take her to the cinema.

“Maybe the next night,” Luca said quickly, making an effort not to wobble in her seat. Or keel over.

Sol glanced up at her hopefully.

“Actually, I have a family thing Sunday,” he said, scratching his arm awkwardly. “But, um, what about tomorrow morning? How long is your shift?”

Luca chomped down on the inside of her cheek.

“Ummm…”

“‘Cause me and my friends were gonna hang out tomorrow morning, and you could totally come. And hang out with us.  They’re kind of jerks, but, I mean…” Sol shrugged. “I could give you a sorta tour. You said you haven’t been outside of Greenwich?”

“Well, I mean… I’ve been outside of it…”

“Just haven’t seen much of it.”

Luca nodded. The motion caused sparks to fly in front of her eyes.

“Well, I could show you around.” He smirked at her. “Maybe we could even make it up to Broadway.”

Luca inhaled deeply through her nose. The more she focused on the panic, the worse it got. Her fingers had begun to numb, and she could barely see Sol through the smog over her vision.

“I’d have to see if I could get the time off.”

Sol furrowed his brows at her, a shade of disappointment beginning to settle over his face.

“I’m sure I can,” she added quickly. Luca jerked her head towards the employee restroom. “He’s my uncle.”
His brows flew up. “Ohhhh.” He nodded slowly, looking around the shop as though he had some sort of newfound appreciation for it. “Cool. Cool. So… should we just swing by here tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, sure,” Luca said.  “Anytime. I should probably get back by five though.”

“Cool.” His smile was almost as bright as his hair.

The door to the employee restroom went flying open, hitting the wall behind it with a slam .  Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling.

“SOL!”

Just as quickly, the grin was gone. Even through the black that was creeping at the edges of her line of sight, she could feel the gloom that bled from him like dusk, leeching all the humor from the crinkles around his eyes and mouth. He sent a dark look towards the back of the shop.

“See you tomorrow,” Luca said quickly.

Sol glanced up at her. The corner of his lip pulled up, as though the rest of him was weighed down. He gave a small wave.

“Tomorrow,” he said, making it sound like a promise. He walked through the shop, jamming his hands into his pockets. He hovered on the threshold of the back door, his shoulders suddenly stooped.

“SOL!” his mother shrieked, her voice echoing around the vast confines of the supply shop.

“I’m right here!” he hollered, grabbing the knob and closing the door behind him.

“I’m not going to pick out your robes for you, you miserable - ”

The door click ed closed.

Luca remained in her seat a moment, letting the silence swoop back in, filling up her ears with a ringing. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the old wood, closing her eyes tightly, giving into the pull of gravity. A low moan escaped her throat. She felt her stomach flip.

She lurched to her feet, nearly losing her knees out from under her as she swayed. She held onto the edges of the glass shelves, staggering through the shop, her vision nearly entirely obscured. She tipped over a display as she hurried past. She sucked in a deep breath and it caught in her throat, making her gag.

Just as she was coming onto the restroom door, it was flung open.

“Luca, could -”

She nearly fell into Amos as he began to squeeze himself through.

He stopped short, his eyes widening at the sight of her.

“What…?”

Wordlessly, Luca grabbed onto his sleeve and dragged him forward, forcing him to close the door behind him. Then, as he scrambled to get out of her way, she wrenched it open again, onto the scummy public city restroom, and heaved herself inside.

She crashed onto the floor beside the toilet, throwing open the lid and sticking her head inside. She held onto her hair as she retched, feeling the back of her throat light on fire.

Between the puking and the hyperventilation, Luca could feel her insides scalding, her lungs blooming with an inferno of torment. She tried to suck in a deep breath and hold it inside of her, to get control of herself again, but bile caught at the back of her throat and she gagged. Tears were springing freely and with a painful warmth from her eyes.

Luca felt a hand brush against the small of her back. She reeled.

Amos was kneeling just behind her, his arm held at a distance, as though he was afraid to touch her.

“Are you okay?”

Luca shot a derisive look over at him. She spat into the toilet bowl, her tongue curling up at the taste sitting on her palate.

“Okay,” Amos said quietly. She felt his hand retract. “Right.  Are you feeling better now?”

Luca squinched her eyes closed tightly.

“Yeah,” she croaked. She sputtered into the toilet again.

“If you let me go back into the shop, I can get you a vial of Pepperup Potion - ”

“It’s fine,” Luca wheezed, leaning back onto her haunches, wiping the dribble from her lips. Her chest radiated heat and pain like a rising hearth.

“Or Draught of Peace, I know I have a dose lying around, or Calming - ”

“I SAID IT’S FINE.”

Her voice echoed harshly around the small concrete space, making her ears ring hollowly. She sat that way for a moment, her shoulders bent at an uncomfortable angle, before turning to face Amos.

“For fuck’s sake,” she seethed, taking in the blank and wounded expression settling across his face. “Can’t you just be normal for once and offer me a fucking aspirin ?”

Grabbing the seat of the toilet, Luca began to pull herself back onto her feet. Amos stepped forward as though he meant to help, but she waved him away. She latched onto the rim of the sink and held herself there, breathing shallowly, staring down at the rusted old drain, unable to meet his eye. The room still swayed and wobbled slightly around her.

“I can…”  Amos cleared his throat. “I can take care of the shop for today.”

“No.”

“You can go and have breakfast - ”

“I think I already vomited enough of it up, thank you very little.”

Out of the corner of her eye, as she tugged the faucet of the sink on, she could see him biting on his bottom lip, his face hardening.

“Well,” he quipped, watching as she cupped the running water in her hand,  tipping it back into her mouth and swishing it around. “If you’re going to work, you could at least get some shoes on.”

As Luca spat, she looked down at the ground again. At her cold, stocking feet on the grey concrete.

“Make sure you turn around the sign on the door.”

With that, Amos closed the bathroom door.  She stood there, leaning against the edge of the sink, listening to his footsteps recede up the stairs to the second floor, each footfall landing a little bit heavier.  She let her head drop, inhaling thickly, her breath scraping against the back of her raw throat.

Luca turned the faucet again, dipping her hands under the lukewarm water. As she raised her head, she caught a look at herself in the old tarnished mirror. There was only one ancient fluorescent lighting up the room, but in its glare, she looked hollow. Her cheekbones protruded sharply from her face. There were dark bruises under her eyes. Her olive-toned skin had taken on an ashen cast. She looked as though she were one week into a hard case of the flu.

She supposed, in a way, she was.

She leaned her forehead against the mirror and felt it give underneath the pressure, causing her image to warp.

“Fuck.”

 

***

 

Luca sat against a pile of pillows, her knees pulled up towards her chest, and a book leaned against them.  She was slouched down in her bed, her quilt tugged up to her chin. She had the bedside lamp turned on. Outside her window, the city streets were dark, or as dark as they ever got. A warm glare of streetlights and the white cast from a million different windows in a dozen different buildings, still lit up like Christmas, shone into her bedroom. Even with the lamp turned off, she could still make her way around her room, her vision unimpaired.

It wasn’t much of a room. It didn’t seem like her room, at any rate. She had flown from London with only a suitcase of clothes and toiletries, none of which were really hers. She had left all of her possessions back in Linton. Not that she’d had much of a choice. Everything that she’d owned was back at her parent’s house. And the fellow from the Office of Misinformation had informed her that she was never to be allowed to go back there.

The day before her flight to JFK, a Healer from Saint Mungo's had taken her shopping around London in order to buy her a week’s worth of “Muggle” clothing. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Luca had been so apathetic at the time, that she had neglected to purchase a set of pajamas. She was sitting in bed now in nothing but a large t-shirt and a pair of undies.  The sheets that Amos had made up her bed with were old and starchy. The quilt still smelled of mothballs. There was a dresser across from the foot of her bed. All of her belongings fit into the top drawer.

She had been reading the same sentence of Les Mis for the past twenty minutes.  Her attention kept straying out her window, staring out at the buildings across the street, and across their roofs to the purpling night sky.

As if she expected to see the moon in the middle of New York City.

A knock fell on her bedroom door.

She dropped her legs onto the bed, sliding up to her full height. She stared at the splayed pages of her book a moment, drawing a breath through her nose.

“Come in.”

The door creaked open. Amos peeked his head through, looking at her a moment before pushing it all the way open. He was carrying something in his hand.

Luca slammed her book closed.

“I told you, I don’t want - ”

“It’s not,” he interjected sharply, stepping into the room, leaning against the doorjamb.  “It’s the Wolfsbane.”

Luca stared at him, feeling her heart drop into her stomach.

“Oh.”

As Amos approached, she felt herself gawking at the silver goblet that he held in his hand, a blue fog smoking faintly from its surface. He placed it on her bedside table, brushing aside the stack of paperbacks that she had piled there. A whiff of the smoke blew in her direction, and she felt her stomach roil. She put a hand on her gut.

“I don’t think… it’s such a good idea.”

Amos looked down at her crossly. Luca shrugged her shoulders. It was true, she had been ingesting this Potion since the first of August, before going to “bed” every night, almost exactly a week ago now. She’d had to do the same thing during her first transformation at Saint Mungo’s. She knew what Wolfsbane tasted like by now. But in the first place, she didn’t think there was ever going to be any getting used to the revolting, acrid flavor. And secondly, she could still feel, very acutely, her sore and emptied stomach devouring itself from the day’s earlier trauma.

“It has to be every day, Luca,” Amos said, almost lecturing. “Or else…”

“I know what else,” she snapped quietly. Hesitating a moment, she reached forward and grabbed the goblet by its stem. She couldn’t help but reveal the slight tremor in her fingers as she brought it towards her. She paused, cradling it in her lap.

“I found a place.”

Luca’s head jerked up to look at him. His arms were folded across his chest, and he shifted his weight from side to side uncomfortably.

“Where?”

“It’s upstate.”

Luca felt herself blanche.

“How far?”

Amos shook his head hurriedly.

“No, don’t worry about that,” he said, walking around her bed and leaning back against her dresser. “We’re using a portkey to get there.”

Luca stared at him wordlessly, her brows knitting together in confusion. He glanced up, taking in her expression.

“It’s…” He faltered. “It’s like, um… oh, I don’t know, what’s that telly thing you talked about?”

Luca gawked at him.

“Ummm….”

“You know.” Amos waved his hands around helplessly. “With… the doctor. And the flying box thing?”

“Doctor Who?”

“Sure.” Amos shrugged carelessly. “It’s like that.”

Luca lowered her eyes to him sardonically.

“It’s like the flying box thing?”

“Yeah.” Amos nodded emphatically, smiling, clearly proud of himself. Luca just shook her head to herself and decided not to question him any further.

“Where upstate?”

“Some small town. Out in the middle of nowhere. The location is an old school house. And there’s a room… in the basement.”

Luca nodded slowly, feigning understanding. Honestly, she had a lot of questions.  How exactly had Amos located an abandoned school, in the middle of nowhere, with a lockable basement, that they could apparently reach by flying box thing? But the more she thought about it - the more she thought about tomorrow night - the more her stomach upset. She felt a rod of pain beginning to wedge itself way between her eyes. She messaged her forehead roughly.

“When… do we have to leave?”

Amos shrugged.

“Sunset, I suppose.”

“You suppose ?”

“We’ll be there in an instant, Luca. That’s how portkey works.”

She breathed in deeply, holding the air in her belly.

“Okay,” she exhaled. She stared down at the foaming, periwinkle blue surface of the Wolfsbane Potion, feeling goosebumps form thickly on the surface of her skin.

“Luca…”

She didn’t look up. She could feel Amos’ concerned gaze focused on her.

“I know you don’t want me to be there… but I just thought - ”

“I need the day off tomorrow.”

Luca glanced up at him. His face had been shocked into a blank slate.

“Okay,” he murmured, regaining his composure. “Yeah. Sure. But, I just really think…”

“I’m going out with some friends.”

Amos gaped at her.

“ What ?”

“I’ve been invited to go… to Broadway.”

“ Tomorrow ?”

Luca nodded stiffly. Amos’ mouth hung wide open, aghast.

“With who ?”

Luca said nothing. She stared down at the book in her lap, gnawing gently on her lip. Comprehension dawned across his face.

“Those boys ?”

“Yeah.”

“Luca - ”

“I’ve never been anywhere since I got here.” She glared at him sternly. “I’ve been here every day, working for you.”

Amos stared at her silently, clearly startled out of words. He stammered, taking in a sharp breath.

“Yeah,” he said, averting his eyes, looking a little ashamed. “Okay. Yeah. But…” He gaped at her, incredulous. “ Tomorrow ?”

Luca scowled at him.

“It’s my bloody choice.”

“Okay.” Luca could feel the frustration tangibly in his voice. He clapped a hand to his forehead, struggling for words. “But I mean, you were the one who was…” He waved at her pointedly, but seeing the dirty look she was casting him, decided not to mention whatever he was about to say. “And you don’t know those boys, Luca. They’re - ”

“Oh, and you do?”

Amos huffed, scoffing.

“ Yes ,” he urged. “Those boys’ families have been shopping at this store since I was a kid.  They’re a lot of pureblood bigots, and there are even rumors that the Syres kid’s parents are descended from Scourers - ”

“You seem to forget that all of that means nothing to me,” Luca seethed.  “I don’t have any idea what a pureblood is, or a Syres - ”

“It’s just the family name - ”

“ I don’t care! ”

Quiet enveloped the room like a thick foam, swallowing up all the space between them, making it feel hot and claustrophobic. They glared at one another. Luca watched Amos’ jaw grind in irritation.

Picking up the goblet, she threw back her head and pushed it to her lips. She chugged it back, feeling her tongue writhe in protest, and squinched her eyes shut, the thick slop slugging down her throat. She was only halfway through it, wishing she’d thought to pinch her nose.

Luca finished the last few drops and came up gasping, her face puckering with distaste. As she slammed the goblet down on her bedside table, sticking out her tongue, Amos came around and took the goblet from her. He shook his head, almost to himself.

“I’ll get a glass of water,” he said glumly, walking to the door. He paused in the threshold, taking a deep breath as though to calm himself. “Curfew is six.”

Luca glanced up at him, her tongue pressed against the back of her hand, as if she expected the taste of her own skin to relieve her. His eyes were dark and folded, his shoulders hunched in defeat.

“I won’t be gone that long,” Luca promised.

Amos just shook his head. He closed the door behind him.

He didn’t believe her.

Chapter Text

“You look nice.”

Luca’s head shot up. Sol was regarding her with a crooked smile, his amber eyes combing over her.

Luca looked down at herself. She had gone through three different wardrobe changes just this morning, not including all the time she had spent just last night settling on an outfit. In the end, she had settled on a long skirt, and a thick, cabled green sweater. She hadn’t slept, again, and she could feel the exhaustion pulling at her eyes as she offered Sol a wan smile.

“Thanks.”

They stood on either side of the same pole, their fists clenching it tightly as the subway car around them rocked violently as it hurtled onward. Sol’s friends stood around them, leaning against the doors and holding onto each other for support, laughing each time a bump in the tracks unbalanced them. Luca and Sol were nearly standing chest to chest. All the seats were taken up, the air inside the car sticky and claustrophobic. She could feel his breath against the bridge of her nose.

“You must be hot.”

Luca took her hand off the pole to tug at the collar of her sweater.

“I’m starting to wish I wore something lighter.”

“I bet,” Sol laughed.  “Who wears sweaters in August?”

Luca slapped his elbow playfully.

“I thought it would be cool enough for a jumper,” she scolded, feeling the smile around her lips already begin to tire.  “It probably would be back home.”

Sol looked confused for a moment, before understanding dawned across his face.

“It’s that cold back in the UK?”

“Yeah. It’s cold. It also just never really changes drastically, the temperature. It’s always a bit brisk. And rainy.”

Sol’s grin was radiant.

“Do you miss it?”

“The weather in England?”

“Home.”

Luca felt the smile slip entirely from her face. After a moment, she nodded somberly.  She thought about her parents. She tried to remember the last time she had even seen their faces. That last night, her dad had been asleep. She had snuck out of the house. She hardly remembered talking to him at dinner. And her mother, at that time, she hadn’t visited for weeks.

“Did your folks send you over because of what happened?”

Luca snapped out of her reverie, her face immediately blanching and turning, she felt, bright crimson.

“What?”

Sol blinked at her. His face had taken on a much more serious cast.

“You know.”

Luca just stared at him blankly, her heart hammering in her chest. He couldn’t possibly be referring to that night. He couldn’t possibly know. Sol almost seemed to reel back as comprehension softened his expression.

“Seriously?”

“What?”

“I know you said you’re homeschooled, but… you seriously don’t know about what happened at Hogwarts?”

Luca just stared back at him, open-mouthed.

The subway car lurched abruptly, the wheels squealing, and she pitched to one side.  Sol reached a hand out, grabbing her shoulder, just as she steadied herself.

“Yo! Sol!”

It was his friend, Jake. The one who towered over Luca by a full foot.

“This is our stop!”

The train braked harshly as the station platform came into view.  People got up from their seats and began to walk for the doors. His hand still on her shoulder, Sol guided her towards the press of people, just as the doors hissed open. Luca allowed herself to be pushed out of the car and onto the teeming platform, conscious of Sol’s lingering hand at the small of her back.

As Sol guided her through the turnstiles and up the northeast entrance to ground level, Luca felt the sun strike her with its full force. She could feel sweat already begin to trickle down her neck and spine, and lifted a hand to cover her face as Sol paused to locate Jake and his friends, already having dissolved into the crowd.

“Where are we?” Luca asked, blinking away the sun to look Sol in the eye. He still had that stupid grin on his face, as though he revelled in the prospect of knowing something she did not.

“Chelsea,” he said, nodding as he spotted his other friend, Laverne, waving at the two of them over the heads of the thinning pedestrian throng. “And heading towards West Village.  South. It’s only about six or so blocks from here.”

“What’s in West Village?”  Luca was acutely aware that Sol’s hand only drifted from her back once they had caught up with his friends, waiting on the curb for the pedestrian light to change. Before Sol could answer her, Jake turned to her with an incredulous look.

“She’s never heard of the Itchy Owl before?” he said, gaping at Luca.

“She’s a newb, Jake, go easy,” his friend Byron chided, leaping ahead as the crosswalk freed up.

“But it’s a total tourist trap!” Jake enthused, practically jumping as the group of them walked along. Luca caught Sol rolling his eyes. “S’first place every witch or wizard honeymooning from Australia or some such place comes when they visit the city. How could she not know?”

“I’m right here,” Luca butted in, a scowl furrowing her face. Jake and the others just laughed at her before turning back to each other to complain about tourists. Luca felt a gentle pat on her shoulder and turned to see Sol’s sympathetic shrug.

“They grow on you,” he said, winding his way around a trio of uniformed students hogging up the sidewalk. Luca said nothing, and followed silently behind. She didn’t want to be rude to Sol or his posse so soon after meeting. But she really rather doubted the boys would be growing on her anytime soon.

Luca soon began to regret her choice in shoes only after a couple of blocks, feeling blisters forming on the back of her ankles, accompanied by a festering regret towards just how out of shape she was. She had never been active in school sports back at Linton, nor very acutely aware of just how long six city blocks were, compared to her small hometown. They were walking down another block, the heat radiating up from the pavement and the surrounding concrete like a dense wall of fog, when Sol put out a hand to stop her.

“This is it.”

Luca stared, baffled for a few moments, watching as Sol’s friends darted across the middle of the street before a taxi barrelled down it. It wasn’t until Jake ducked inside the building just across from them that Luca understood what Sol was referring to.

When Jake had said they were going to “The Itchy Owl”, and with all the pomp and condescension of someone who could not believe there existed a person who had never heard of Disneyland, Luca had imagined some sort of hip, bookish pub, of the sort she’d heard about from friends back home who’d been to the Temple Bar District in Dublin. What sat across the street from her, however, was instead a rather unassuming New York cafe, its interior, glimpsed through the tall front windows, dark, dated, and grimy. The only feature which announced its purpose was an old faded sign above the narrow door in red lettering saying “COFFEE SHOP”, and the only aspect beyond that to mark it from the dozens of archaic cafes they were sure to have passed on their way from the subway station in Chelsea was another sign, over the far left window, in the same lettering: “PSYCHIC”.

“It doesn’t say The Itchy Owl,” Luca muttered, still staring as Sol stepped down onto the street. He shook his head at her and motioned her forward.

“C’mon,” he said, and she followed him across the street, looking both ways nervously despite how recklessly the others had jaywalked. Sol trotted up to the door and shouldered it open, making a sweeping gesture for her to step inside.

“Thank you,” Luca murmured, wary of his mischievous smirk. As she passed through the threshold she blinked, bright spots flashing before her eyes as they struggled to adjust to the gloom after the sharp glare of the New York City sunshine.

She stood on the welcome mat for a moment or two after her sight had adapted to the shadowed shop, gaping rather openly. Sol came up behind her, letting the door close and hit the bell over the frame with a jangle.  She could see his smug grin out of the corner of her eye.

“Don’t make them like this in London?” he quipped, bumping his shoulder against hers.

“Linton,” she mumbled under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Luca did not bother to say what was really on her mind - that there were no pubs or coffee shops at all like this back in England. Not that a Muggle like her would have been invited to, anyway.

The interior that she had glimpsed from the windows out on the street was completely different from what stood before her. Rather than rows of white retro tables, cracked faux leather booths, and tarnished linoleum countertops, she was confronted with an equally cramped wood panelled space, packed with oak tables, stacks of scoured pewter tankards, and in the corner, a roaring fireplace.  The place was crowded with men and women in dark robes or long, rawhide jackets, sitting on stools along the bar or pulled up to the worn tables, drinking from goblets and eating from old porcelain bowls and plates. Luca watched as a tea kettle and a tin coffee pot levitated gracefully across the room, hovering by a man’s shoulder. They hesitated there a moment, before the man lifted his mug, allowing the tea kettle to refill his drink.

“One table for two?”

Luca snapped back into focus. A small, spritely woman with pink streaks in her pulled back hair, tucking a wand into the waistband of her apron as she approached them. Sol nodded towards a circle of couches and armchairs over by the fire, where Luca could see Jake, Laverne, and Byron already setting up shop.

“We’re with them,” he said with a small smirk. Luca could have sworn the look on the waitress’ face darkened, but it passed quickly. She motioned towards the fire with a fixed smile.

“Your party has taken their usual spot,” she said. Sol brushed right past her, sparing a thankful nod in her way. Luca could not shake the feeling as she followed after that the staff were not necessarily pleased to have them as regulars.

As they passed through, winding their way around the tables and chairs, Luca could not help but stare at the locale. Over at the bar, a man with a balding scalp and a crooked nose was using his wand to float cubes of sugar into his mug of coffee.  There was a small person seated next to him, and when they turned to extend their cup to accept some sugar, Luca stifled a gasp. The hair on either side of their head had been covering up the large, pointed ears which stuck out from the face, and Luca could see his small, beady eyes, a thin, hooked nose, and pale, lumpy skin.

“Psst.”

Luca jumped, glancing over at Sol. He followed her gaze to the small, wrinkly man, and cupped his hand around his mouth in a conspiratorial manner.

“It’s not kind to stare,” he hissed with a smile. Luca blushed.

“Sorry,” she muttered, averting her eyes to her shoes. Sol seemed to enjoy her reaction, because he chuckled to himself all the way to the back of room. Jake, Laverne, and Byron had already begun usurping the seating around the fire, having flung their bodies across the couch and the armchairs lazily, putting their shoes up on the upholstery.  Sol threw himself down on the red cracked leather couch, and in danger of being sat upon, Laverne quickly scooted to the side.

Sol kicked up his feet on the coffee table before the fire, sighing contentedly. Luca stood awkwardly to the side, scowling at the four of them. Sitting in the armchair next to her, Jake grinned up at her and patted the arm of his chair with an inviting look. Luca just glowered at him.

The waitress with the pink highlights appeared at Luca’s elbow, a notepad in hand. She took one cursory glance at the state of their table, before plastering another paltry smile onto her face. Luca noticed how she focused all her attention on Sol.

“My name is Kimberly, and I’ll be your server today. Can I get you anything for starters?”

“Kim!” Jake chimed, throwing his hands up in the air in apparent elation. “Can I call you Kim?”

From the hard set of Kimberly’s mouth, Luca could tell that she most certainly did not want to be called Kim, but Jake plowed on before she could summon up an answer.

“We’d like a round of butterbeers, please,” Jake said, with a beaming smile. Luca could have sworn she saw a nerve twitching in Kimberly’s forehead.

“Sure,” she said tersely, tapping her pen against its pad. “May I see some I.D.?”

“Left ‘em at home. Didn’t think we would need them.”

“It’s shop policy, I’m afraid,” Kimberly replied, struggling to keep the smile from slipping.  Jake looked up at her incredulously.

“Oh, come on!  We’re of age! Look… Lola.” It took Luca a long moment to understand that Jake was looking right at her. A flush crept up her neck, and she glared at him furiously.

“ Luca .”

“Right!”

Sol had burst into laughter, burying his face into the crook of the couch. Jake was still waving Luca’s way, his look imploring.

“You have I.D., right? And you’re of age back where you’re from. Back in Ye Olde England? Show the lady!”

Luca could feel her teeth grinding together, the sound of Sol’s obnoxious laughter and the sight of his friends’ stupid grins grating against her nerves.

“That’s not how it works,” Kimberly cut in, fortunately sparing Luca from having to answer.  “This is still the U.S. We don’t take foreign I.D.’s.”

“Oh, I know that’s not true,” Jake said, with a teasing wink. The smile finally fell from the waitress’ face, and she opened her mouth to contradict him.

“We’ll have five cups of pumpkin juice, please,” Sol said quickly, cutting her off.  He offered her a sympathetic smile. “And an order of poutine.”

Kimberly hesitated a moment, her gaze flickering from Sol’s entreating eyes to Jake’s scandalous smirk.  After a beat, she let out a shuddering sigh and made a quick jot down on her pad, shaking her head to herself.

“Thanks, and I’ll be right back with your drinks,” she muttered, turning on heel and quickly walking away. Luca could still feel the heat in her face blazing up - embarrassed for herself, and to have been party to that scene.

Sol beat his fist against Laverne’s shoulder, his eyes fixed on Luca.

“Scoot over, Lav.”

With a grumble, Laverne did so, and Sol made room for her on the couch next to him.  He patted the empty space with an apologetic look. Reluctantly, Luca sat down beside him.  She sunk down into the cushion, and tried to ignore the place where their shoulders touched, or how closely they were pressed together.

“Told you we shouldn’t’ve come here on a Saturday,” Laverne chuffed, shaking his head.

Jake shrugged, still a peck peeved. “What a fat, ugly gargoyle.”

Luca followed his eyes to where their waitress stood behind the bar, waving her wand to refill somebody’s goblet before ducking into a door in the back. Jake gave a contemptuous chuckle.

Sol leaned over to her, his breath in her ear.

“On Thursdays, there’s a different server here,” he explained in a low voice. “And she never cards us.”

“Oh.”  Luca didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t see what the big fuss was over “butterbeer”, or drinking. It was the middle of the goddamned day.

If they had been her friends, from back in Linton, Luca would have thrown this back in their faces. But she didn’t think they’d appreciate that kind of humor, and she wasn’t going to risk that sort of thing just yet. Some part of her was still more concerned with impressing them than anything else.

“How do you like it?” Sol asked her. She stared at him stupidly for a moment. He roved his eyes around the interior of the Itchy Owl pointedly, with a toothy smile.

“Oh. It’s…” Luca glanced around the pub. She caught sight of the wrinkly little man and his companion eyeing their group reproachfully. She quickly looked away. “Quaint.”

The grin on his face seemed to grow bigger. Luca wondered if it ached to keep it there. Though his eyes sparkled faintly with amusement, something about the smile did not seem genuine.

“It’s pretty cheap,” he said, shaking his head as he stared into the fireplace over the tops of his sneakers.  “Professor Aelfwine told me once that it’s basically just a cheap replica of the Leaky Cauldron.” He cocked his head at her. “You ever been there?”

Luca racked her brain a moment, panic beginning to set in, before the memory settled.  She felt herself sink with the recollection, images of shadowy corners, rolling thunder, and grim faces brewing up inside of her.

“Yes,” she said flatly.

Sol raised his eyebrows at her, clearly catching the disdain in her tone. “Did you really dislike it so much?  Professor Aelfwine speaks so highly of the Leaky Cauldron - and Diagon Alley. He’s from England. Says there’s no American equivalent.”

Luca shrugged her shoulders, her focus becoming unglued from Sol and his friends. It wasn’t that Luca had disliked the Leaky Cauldron. She had little opinion about it at all.  Rather, she disliked that she’d had to go there in the first place.

Her first time at the Leaky Cauldron had also been the first time she had met Amos. It was the location that Jeromy Crowle, head of the Office of Misinformation, had agreed on as a meeting place for her and her future guardian. That had been the condition Luca had given him.  To meet her new guardian in person, before she was shipped off to America. And in return, Luca had, in essence, signed away her old life - committing some sort of magical oath which bound her by wizard law never to contact her parents, or anyone she had known previously from Linton or “the Muggle world”.

If she had not taken that oath - if she had refused to meet with Amos, or go into his custody, she would still be in the England. Quarantined, under the studious watch and care of the Saint Mungos staff. For the rest of her foreseeable life.

“It was alright,” Luca said, realizing she had been quiet for too long. She forced a small smile. Sol just stared at her curiously, his smile disappearing.

“So you don’t like the Leaky Cauldron,” he said, leaning back on the couch, staring up at her profile. “You don’t seem to know anything about Ilvermorny. Were you homeschooled your entire life?”

Sol asked the question as if he already knew the answer - as if he thought it was impossible. Luca stammered, her skin prickling as she felt his calculating gaze sweep over her.

“I…”

“But then why did you move?” Sol went on, as though thinking aloud now. His brows knitted together in question. “There’s been something of a mass exodus, you know, from the U.K. But that’s because -”

The waitress, Kimberly, appeared right beside Luca with a tray of pewter mugs and a small woven basket piled high with chips, gravy, and cheese curds.  She had reapplied the smile to her face, but her eyes trained mostly on Luca as she set the mugs down on the coffee table, along with the poutine. Sol scrambled to move his feet out of the way.

“Enjoy!” Kimberly said brightly. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

Jake looked about to open his mouth again, malice glittering in his eyes.

“We will!” Luca said quickly, offering the waitress a wan smile as she turned away. “Thank you.”

Jake gave Luca a dirty grin. She just shook her head, reaching for the mug set before her.

“A toast!” Jake chimed, grabbing up his mug as well, letting the orange liquid slosh over the rim. He met Luca’s eyes. “To foreigners!”

Laverne and Byron chuckled, lifting up their mugs.

“To fat, ugly gargoyles!” Byron called out loudly. Luca could feel every eye in the establishment on them as they laughed and chinked their drinks together. Her face felt hot, and she took a timid sip of her pumpkin juice, surprised by just how pumpkin it tasted.

When she turned again she found that Sol’s eyes were still on her, but that grim look she had seen on him when they had first met had fallen back over his face. There was something harsh, even desperate in the cast of his eyes.  He took a long draught from his mug, staring at her, before opening his mouth once again.

“Sol!”

He glanced over at Laverne, whose chin was dribbling with gravy and cheeks stuffed with chips. Luca felt herself deflate a little with relief.

“You better get some of these, man, or Byron is going to eat them all on you!”

“What!” Byron exclaimed.

Sol grinned.  “Says the man speaking around a mouthful,” he chided.

The four of them fell into ragging on one another, talking around half-chewed poutine or into the caverns of their mugs. Luca sat by quietly, smiling when it was polite, sipping her pumpkin juice and eating the too-crisped chips at the bottom of the basket.

Whenever there was a lull in the conversation though, she could feel Sol’s eyes digging into her. She would not meet his gaze. She had a feeling there would be no affection for her to see there.

 

***

 

The boys had ordered two more rounds of pumpkin juice, and another basket of poutine, before they finally began to grow restless. Luca had begun to wish the Itchy Owl had windows - though she supposed that would defeat the purpose of a “magical” establishment - just so she could judge how much time had passed since they had entered this place. She hadn’t brought a watch.

Sol had been watching her furtive glances towards the door, a quirk of amusement in his constant grin.

“Anxious to get home?” he asked at last. It was the first thing he’d said to her in more than an hour. Luca shrugged anxiously, averting her eyes.

“My curfew’s not ‘til six,” she said quietly, turning the mug over in her hands. She had finished her juice long ago, but still kept drinking from it, as though she expected to find another drop somewhere at the bottom that would keep her busy.

“That’s not an answer to my question,” Sol said carefully, his look questioning as well as amused.

“Your curfew is six ?” Jake spat, clearly incredulous. Luca bridled, grateful for being spared answering Sol’s question, but annoyed to be under Jake’s disapproval once more. She couldn’t remember the last time she had encountered a person quite so privileged.

“Yes,” she said tersely, leveling her gaze on him. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Jake glanced over at the other boys, leering.  “Well, if we’re going to go to the Maelstrom tonight, then we’d better go now.”  He downed the rest of his pumpkin juice and stood up. The others all did the same, and Luca stared around at them in confusion.

“The… what?”

Jake grinned down at her. Sol put out a hand and helped her up.

“I need something a little stronger to drink before this night gets started,” Jake cackled.

Byron cheered, and the two high-fived. Luca glanced over at Sol questioningly.  Sol shrugged.

“Maelstrom is a club,” he explained. “Lower East Side. They don’t card minors. They might before midnight though,” he said, glancing over at Jake.

Jake brushed it off with a wave of his hand.  “No way to find out unless we try.”

Grinning like loons, he and the others led the way to the door.  Sol lingered by their table, digging into his pockets and dropping a couple of coins onto the coffee table. Luca stared at them. She had seen them before, though it was always Amos who handled the wizard currency.  He had explained them to her once. They were used a bit likes euros, or Czech korunas, as Luca understood. They were called something like “doubloons”, if she remembered correctly.

Catching her look, Sol offered a smile before stepping over and taking her arm gently.

“I gave her a generous tip,” he said conspiratorially, guiding her towards the front door.

Luca nodded, forcing a smile. She blinked as they stepped back out into the street, her eyes adjusting to new light. She felt a thrill of anxiety course through her. The sky had already begun to darken. The sun was low in the sky, hidden behind the bulk of the tall, skyscraping giants which loomed all around them, and certainly much closer to the horizon line.  Luca wondered just how much time had passed while she had been inside the Itchy Owl.

“You alright?”

Luca looked over at Sol and nodded automatically, but he seemed to catch the hastiness in her reply, and his expression shifted.

“Maelstrom isn’t too far from where you live,” he told her, and Luca felt his hand smooth over her elbow in an almost soothing manner. “You’ll be back before curfew, no trouble.”

Luca raised her eyebrows at him dubiously. They both hurried to catch up with the others, already crossing the next intersection, sliding comfortably into the flow of pedestrian traffic.

“Isn’t Lower East Side on the east side of town?” she chided.

Sol shrugged and smiled.

“I’ll walk you home,” he offered.

Luca chuckled, nodding. “Thanks,” she murmured. She did not want to argue. To them, she was sure the curfew was no big deal. But it wasn’t exactly a grounding she would be in for if she turned up at the shop past sunset. The punishment would be much more severe - and of her own doing.

They were heading south now, and Luca glanced around as Sol helped navigate her through the crowd, his hand not always quite touching her, but never far away. Luca wasn’t sure that she liked the feeling. Being touched. She hadn’t exactly dated back in Linton, but she’d had a good snogging here and there. The memory of it made her blush. She couldn’t imagine anything like that with Sol, not even if she tried. Life would be a lot simpler if Luca could, though.

“You know,” Sol said, breaking into her thoughts, his look earnest. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?”

Sol nodded over at the three boys, galloping ahead of them, wrapped up in an enthusiastic world of their own. “They don’t get it. But having strict house rules is nothing to be ashamed of.” He tilted his head to regard her. “Not that I’d have pinned you for the having the ‘over-protective’ type. Didn’t  you say that man at the shop was your uncle?”

“Oh.”  Luca let out a heavy breath, finding, once again, that she had been expecting the worse. It always seemed to her that Sol suspected much more about her than he let on, and she was beginning to become intensely uncomfortable with it. “Yeah. He is. He’s just… careful. That’s all.”

Sol shrugged. “I guess I can’t blame him. It is New York City after all. And you are a girl.”

Luca bristled, frowning over at him as they mounted another curb. Her legs and feet had begun to ache again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sol blinked at her in confusion. “It’s the city. Bad things happen to girls alone in the city at night.”

“I can take care of myself.”

Sol just smiled. Luca turned away, letting the matter drop. For a moment, she felt a surge of seething resentment boil through her, and thought about what it had felt like those nights - what it would feel like tonight. The rippling strength in her jaws, her fingers solid and powerful, claws hooked and sharp, teeth serrated and tongue salivating.  He had no idea just what she was capable of doing at night.

And just like that, the rush of strength ebbed from her, leaving her deflated and hollow as she realized that she had begun to drool , her muscles tensed up and apprehensive. She wiped quickly at her lips, a shudder running through her. The bloodlust had already started.

When Luca thought that her legs would take her no further, Sol pointed at a low building which sat across the street. Jake and the others were already on their way over, and Luca was not surprised now to see that it was a run-down and boarded up bar, the old rusted sign over the door announcing the place as “Joe’s Pub”. The windows were taped up with lengths of filmy tarp, and the door was falling off its corroded hinges. There was a sign posted below one of the windowsills which said “FOR SALE”. The business on either side of the old pub appeared ramshackled and abandoned as well.

As Luca lifted her head, crossing the street behind Sol, she looked up and felt a thrill of pure terror run through her body.  The pearly white disc that was the full moon had appeared in the eastern sky, dull and faded against the pale blue sky. She stopped short, standing in the middle of the crosswalk, her chest beginning to heave. The world around her seemed to slowly start to spin.

What if Amos had been wrong?  What if it didn’t need to be night for the transformation to begin?  There it was, looming in the daylit sky, trapping her in its bloodless gaze. She imagined herself turning, right now, in the middle of this street.  A heavy sweat broke out along her brow and spine. Her arms and knees began to shake.

“Oh no,” she breathed.

Sol had turned around at the other curb, puzzled to find her not by his side. He took one baffled glance at the expression on her face, and then another at the traffic light, before hurrying across the road to stand beside her. His hand circled her wrist and tugged gently, his eyes imploring.

“Don’t get run over,” he joked, pulling her along the crosswalk, just as cars and taxis began to lurch forward, beeping at the two of them before they whizzed past. “I’m sure your uncle would never forgive me.”

Sol kept hold of Luca’s wrist as he stopped outside the door to the club, frowning at her as she struggled to level her breathing.

“I’m just out of shape,” she said hurriedly, shaking her head and straining her lips into a tight smile. A trembling laugh escaped her. Sol looked at her worriedly.

“If it makes you that nervous, I can just - ”

“Yo, Sol!”

Jake and the others were standing with the door propped open, waving at the two of them excitedly.

“Get your ass in here!” Grinning, Laverne held the door open while Jake and Byron ducked inside. Sol threw Luca a questioning look, opening his mouth to speak.

“I’m good,” Luca pled, nodding fervently. “I want to check it out.  Sounds fun.”

Sol eyed her disbelievingly, but offered her his arm. She took it hesitantly and followed at his side as they entered the Maelstrom Club behind Laverne, letting the door close behind them.

Luca was instantly overwhelmed by all of her senses. Strobing blue and green lights pulsed through the darkened room, illuminating a throbbing crowd of dancing people in little fits and bursts.  Heavy electronic synths played out over the entire place, making her body vibrate with every harsh beat, and her ears ache. She fought the urge to cover them as Sol pushed through the cramped mass of people. She brushed past lots of young people, wearing bright crop tops and baggy flannels or jean jackets. Most of them at least ten years her senior. Many of them had their wands up in the air, casting illumination spells over the heads of the mob. Others were wearing fuzzy bras or jeweled headpieces, their bodies jumping up and down in tandem to the music.

Sol pulled Luca behind him until her stomach was being pressed up against the edge of a wooden bar. Sol leaned across the bar, staring down its length towards where the barman was lighting the surface of a man’s pint glass on fire.  Sol waited patiently as the server went up and down the line of waiting patrons, before finally catching his eye.

“What can I get for you?”

“Yes, can I get two firewhiskeys, please?” Sol had to shout over the roar of the music.

“Will that be Ogden’s or Brigg’s?”

Sol glanced over Luca with a grin that told her there was some inside joke he was about to tell.

“Ogden’s.”

“That’ll be one dragot.”

Sol laid the coin down on the bar, and the barman swept it away, turning and taking down two brandy glasses which he set down before them.  A golden bottle seemed to appear in his hands, pulled from thin air, and Luca blinked as he managed to pour the liquid into both glasses at the same time, separate the fluid into two separate spouts, before flicking the bottle up with a flourish. The alcohol fizzed with what appeared to Luca to be actual sparklers for a moment, before the flare died down. The barman slid them over to Sol.

“Thanks,” Sol called out to him, turning with a smile to hand Luca her drink. She was unable to hide the perceptible shaking of her hand. Sol held out his glass. “To… finding a new home.”

Luca chuckled uneasily as they chinked glasses. Her drink sparked briefly as the liquid sloshed around inside. “Cheers,” she bleated. She watched him down his whisky in one swift slug, and tipped the liquid back to her lips timidly. The second it touched her tongue, it shot a shock through her. She recoiled, gasping, staring at the drink incredulously. It was like getting a static zap on your tongue. She heard outrageous laughter from behind her.

“Never had a firewhisky before?” It was Byron, his arm already slung over the shoulder of a young girl their age with a ripped t-shirt and rhinestones studded along her eyebrows. Byron cast a mischievous glance over at Sol, waggling his brows. “You found yourself a real wet blanket, Sol.”

Luca felt her face burn bright crimson. Jake appeared, laughing, at Sol’s elbow.

“I thought Brits drank stout straight from the baby’s bottle,” he bellowed over the noise of the club. Luca glared at him openly.

“Would you kindly -”

“C’mon!” Byron shouted, talking over her. “There’s a game of wizard pong going on in the back!”

Before she could protest, Luca was being shoved along by Jake, cackling obnoxiously in her ear. As she stumbled forward, bumping against every partygoer she passed, she turned around anxiously, realizing she had lost Sol in the thick of the crowd. Feeling a wave of rising hysteria threaten to overwhelm her, she downed the rest of her drink in one gulp, shuddering as it softly burned its way through her insides.

Jake’s hand dug into her back as he prodded her forward, coming finally to a stop at a neon-lighted corner of the room. There was a low mahogany table with a mob of people packed around it, and as Luca peered over their shoulders, she saw that they were all staring at two clusters of floating solo cups at either end of the table. The neon light, it seemed, was resulting from various flashes of spells being cast across the table, by people standing on either side.  It took Luca a moment or two to realize why the spells kept zinging back and forth, rebounding before they could reach the levitating cups - they were casting spells on a ping pong ball, trying desperately to send it flying to their opponents side, but never letting it reach their cups.

“What is this?” Luca muttered.

“ Wow ,” Jake said incredulously, having apparently overhead. He downed the rest of the pint glass which had seemed to just materialize in his hand, and then cheered rowdily as the opponent on the left side got the ball into the other’s highest floating cup.

“ Chug! Chug! Chug! ” The crowd gathered around the table began to chant, as the loser, grinning sheepishly, waved the three cups over to himself with his wand, and poured them all back into his open gullet. The people gave a roar as they applauded him. Luca flinched.

A hand tugged suddenly at Luca’s wrist, and with a gasp she watched as Jake plunged her hand up in the air, high above the heads of the onlookers.

“We have a pong virgin!” he shouted.

“No!” Luca shrieked, but it was too late. Everyone had already turned to her, grinning stupidly and reaching out to pull her forward, leering at her in their drunken stupor. She was flung up against the pong table, the blood drained from her face, staring at the floating cups as one of the barmen refilled the empty ones with a clear, sparkling fluid. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.

The winner, an older twenty-something with a goatee, wearing a green flannel under his robes, grinned down at her. He patted her shoulder sympathetically.

“Don’t worry, this will go quick,” he shouted over the ruckus. “Do you know the rules?”

Luca shook her head fervently. “I can’t - ”

“Don’t worry it’s simple, just like Quidditch.  Minus the Bludger or Snitch.” He grinned at her, clearly drunk off his rocker. “Ten points every time you get the ball in a cup.  First to get to one hundred and fifty points makes the other player drink. You ready?”

Luca stared at him, her chest beginning to heave with panic. She scanned the crowd surrounding her, their faces all turned towards them, expectant. Witches and wizards, glowing with drunken stupor. She could feel her lungs start to compress, her breath coming shallow and quick. The man pushed her towards her side of the table. She stumbled forward hesitantly.

“Wands out!”

The wizard with the goatee drew out his wand. Luca stood there, frozen, her heart seizing up inside her chest.  She looked around again, at Jake’s leering face, cheering her on, Byron and Laverne grinning from the crowd. he caught sight of Sol, standing behind someone’s shoulder, staring at her curiously. She began to hyperventilate.

“Wands out.”

The goateed man was frowning at her now, lowering his wand in confusion.

“You okay?”

Luca’s arms and legs were trembling, threatening to collapse.

Not here .

Luca sprinted away from the table, shoving through the press of people, shunting them aside in her haste.

“She’s gonna barf!” she heard one of Sol’s friends jeer. People started to laugh. Luca felt tears pricking at her eyes.

A hand snagged her wrist, pulling her back.

“Let go!” she shrieked, reeling as she tore her hand free. She caught sight of Sol’s face, confused and alarmed.

“Luca -”

She turned her back on him, elbowing her way past all the dancers filling up the main floor, stumbling and tripping over feet and outspread arms, until she finally fell out the front door, catching herself on one knee.

She heard the door close behind her, the sound of pounding music and the roar of chatter swallowed up as it clicked shut. Luca stayed crouched on the ground, her hands shaking, unable to make herself stand. The light which fell over her was warm and golden.  It was sunset.

A sob racked Luca’s chest, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, struggling to stifle it.  The gravel from the sidewalk stuck to her shuddering palms. She thought she heard a door opening, and fought to stand, her legs quivering, threatening to buckle. Luca turned and saw a middle-aged man stumble out of a convenience store a couple doors down, lighting up a cigarette. She thought of Sol’s grip around her wrist, and knowing he might not be too far behind, forced herself to walk down the street, wiping her hands off on her skirt.

When she got to the first street corner, she nearly started to weep again. The street signs were not numbered.  There were no signs to point out the nearest metro station, and Luca realized, with a sinking feeling, that she didn’t even remember what her street was called.

Tears running down her face, Luca began to turn a circle, trying desperately to remember which way she had come from when she had been walking with Sol. But she had been paying more attention to him, and what he was saying, than to the street signs or even to landmarks.  Wiping furiously at her face, and sucking in a deep breath, Luca picked a direction and began heading up the block. She could feel the glare of the moon’s glow at her back, and could not stop herself from trembling.

It was too much, she thought as she trudged onward, struggling to steady her breath.  She should have never come here with Sol. She’d wanted to make a life here. It had seemed like the thing to do. She was tired, after all, of sulking around the shop all day, watching strange people with bizarre customs come in and out of the place, while Amos hardly said so much as “boo” to her.

But she did not belong to their world. She worked in it. She had been forced to participate. And yet, she was human. Muggle. Worse, by their standards - by anyone’s standards - she was a monster. Less than human, Luca realized. She would never belong with wizards or witches. She would never belong anywhere, not so long as there was a full moon that would rise in the east and fall in the west.

She kept on a straight path, but after a couple of minutes, constantly looking over her shoulder to look at the sun’s waning light, she was sobbing openly and was more lost than before. People stared at her as they walked past, their heads following her as she went by. It wasn’t until she had stopped at a crosswalk waiting for the pedestrian light, a couple blocks later, that an old woman approached her on the sidewalk and asked her if she was lost.

Luca had trouble explaining where she lived. She told the woman that she was new to town, but that she knew that her apartment wasn’t far from Washington Square Park. The old woman told her to walk back the way she had come, five blocks, and then head down Houston until she reached 6th, and then to head up that avenue. The old woman even asked Luca if she wanted her to phone the police to escort her there, but Luca turned her down.

By the time she had hit 6th, there were blisters on her heels and ankles. Her back was drenched with sweat, and the tears had dried on her flushed face, stinging like saltwater. She headed up 6th until she recognized one of the intersecting streets.  At the end of it, just sitting behind the corner, Luca saw the shop’s sign in the display window, backlit by a fluorescent glow. Luca deflated, shuffling across the street, ignoring the sidewalks. As she approached, a figure stepped out from beneath the threshold. Luca slowed down.

Amos looked at her from across the street, his face haggard and nervous. He was wearing jeans and a beige workman’s coat over his wool sweater. He waved her over frantically, his wand clutched in his other hand. Luca jogged across the street, stopping right before him. Amos was already opening the door to the shop, holding it aside for her.

“You’re late,” he muttered, his expression taut. “We’re going to have to -” He came up short as he caught sight of Luca’s face, his eyes softening, taken aback. “What is it? Did something happen?”

Luca shook her head fervently. “Please,” she croaked, her voice hoarse from crying.  She stepped into the shop. “Let’s just go.”

Amos hesitated a moment, considering her, before shaking his head resolutely, and closing the door behind them. Luca frowned as he zipped across the front shop, making a beeline for the employee restroom and enacting the opening sequence.

“Don’t we have to go?” she asked. Amos shook his head, waving her over once more.

“I told you before, we’re not going by road. We’re going by portkey.”

“By…?”

Amos flung open the door, reaching out to take her gently by the shoulder and ushering her inside.

“Quickly, now.”

They rushed down the scaffolding to the ground floor, racing past all of the tall, cramped shelves towards Amos’ office. Luca let him guide her up the stairs to his door, feeling numbed and hollow. Inside, he walked over to his desk, nodding down at a baseball bat which laid across it.

“Now, I know you’ve never used one before…”

“Used a what?”

Amos nodded again at a rusted baseball bat which was sitting on his desk.

“This is the portkey.”

Luca stared at it emptily. “The…?”

Amos shook his head impatiently. “Look, I don’t have anytime to explain now. All you have to do is wait until I count down to three, and then we’re going to grab this bat at the same time. It’ll take us to the place I talked about.”

“Okay.” It came out as hardly more than a squeak. Amos gazed at her imploringly.

“Just hold on very tightly, and don’t let go until I say so. It’s extremely important you don’t let go.”  There was a moment of silence, and Luca realized Amos was waiting for her reply.  She nodded quickly, and put out her hand, ready to grab onto her end of the bat. Amos came around the other side of the desk to hold onto his. “Ready?” he asked.

Luca nodded, her heart beating a steady tattoo inside of her chest.

“One. Two. Three.”

Luca watched as Amos lunged forward to grab the bat and leapt to do the same. The moment her hand clutched the bat’s handle, there was a great jerking at her navel, and she was pulled off her feet.  She could feel herself scream, though she couldn’t hear the noise exit her mouth. All the world around her was a great, dark blur, and she felt an aching in her knuckles as the bat continued to yank her along. She scrunched her eyes shut.

“Don’t let go!” she could hear Amos shouting.

Wind ripped past her ears, blowing her hair all around her face, pulling at her skirt. Her breath seized in her lungs.

Her feet hit ground with tremendous force, and her knees buckled. She tumbled onto her side, falling to the ground, and was unable to keep her hand from slipping. She shrieked again, the sound echoing for miles around. She rolled across hard, damp dirt, branches and leaves catching at her arms and face, until she finally came to a stop.  Her eyes were still clenched closed.

“Luca!”

She heard the sound of crows cawing indignantly, rustling tree branches as they took flight overhead.  She felt heavy footsteps approaching her, and flung her arms over her head, panting.

“Luca!”

Hands clutched her shoulders, pulling her up, and she nearly screamed again. She felt someone’s fingers brushing away the dirt and debris on her face.

“Are you alright?”

Reluctantly, Luca opened her eyes. She was staring into Amos’ wide eyes, his face ashen. Her eyes came unfocused a moment, and she saw that they were in the middle of a wooded glade, full of tall grass and brambles, shaded by maples and oaks on all sides.  A solid, concrete building hovered just in front of them, its windows dark and empty.

Amos put a hand on her face, bringing her back to the present.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded.

Luca shook her head. She watched his eyes slid up to the sky above them, and followed his gaze.

It was dark now. The sun was behind the horizon. And the moon was nearly at full brightness.

“Quickly,” he whispered hoarsely, his voice choked with fear. He pulled her to her feet, putting an arm around her shoulder and rushing her into the building. Concrete hallways and exposed drainage pipes sped by her, the rooms passing by too fast for her to fully comprehend. Before she could understand where they were, they had plunged down another set of stairs, heading into the cobwebbed dark.  Her breath was ragged in her throat as they paused on the landing.

“At the end,” Amos said, pointing, and led her down the hall. A rusted metal door was set in the far wall.  As they approached it, Amos let her go, clutched the heavy latch with both hands and wrenched it upward. Luca felt the creak it issued as it opened like a stab to her heart. Amos yanked the door open, sending a sidelong look at her.

“Luca…”

She wouldn’t look at him. Luca stepped into the room, looking around her. The ceiling was low, with only one slit of a window in the far corner, blocked up with iron bars, letting in only a shaft of moonlight. The floor was littered with crumbled concrete and dead leaves, the walls covered in algae and old plaster. It was empty but for a three-legged table slumped against the back wall.

Luca turned to Amos, her eyes wide.

“Shut the door.”

Amos stared at her, his chest heaving with exertion. For a moment, as he stood there with his hands on the door, she was afraid he would insist upon staying with her. He cast his eyes toward the ground, and with a grunt, shoved the door shut, blocking out almost all light from the room. Luca felt the slam of the latch falling into place shudder around the barren room.

Luca stood still a moment, panting to catch her breath, gazing at the closed door. There was a prickling sensation at her back. She turned to face the sliver of moonlight. Tears clung to the sides of her nose. Sobbing quietly, she slowly stuck out a shaking hand, and touched the silver light. She watched as her skin paled at its touch, and she felt her veins begin to harden within her.

“Please no,” she breathed, swallowing thickly. “Not again.”

Chapter Text

Luca felt something in her spine pop and collapsed to her knees with a cry.  She clutched at the small of her back, tears springing from her eyes, as all her bones began to tremble with a terrible, aching energy. There was another snap at the back of her neck, and Luca felt a shriek rip from her, which bottomed out into an agonizing howl.

“Luca!”

Her head snapped towards the bolted door, barely illuminated in the sparse moonlight. She could hear the entrails of Amos’ voice echoing around the barren hallway outside.

“Don’t talk to me!”

She had intended it as a plead, but as her voice struggled to squeeze past the pain building in her throat, it became a harsh snarl.

Her spine gave another crack , like a bundle of twigs snapping all at once over someone’s knee, and she felt her back contorted. She doubled over with a scream, balling her hands into fists as she sprawled onto the floor. A sob racked through her, a pitiful moan that strained through her clenched teeth.

“Luca?” Amos called again, his voice tentative and wavering.

“Please!” Luca implored, her throat thick with tears. She felt her vocal chords bulge, and gave a thin wail, as her neck began to stretch forward. “Don’t let me hear you! I don’t - ”

A shrill scream pushed past the words which garbled in her mouth, and Luca sunk down onto the leaf-strewn floor, holding herself. Her entire body had begun to tremble and seize, saliva pooling at the corner of her mouth and spilling down her chin, intermingling with the tears which poured forth readily.

“Ah, god,” she wept, squinching her eyes shut, a plaintive moan issuing from the back of her throat. She dug her fists into her forehead, yearning to block out the pain. Her back and neck continued to snap and the bones to protrude, as though each disk of her spine were separating and elongating. Each crack forced a sob through her body that resoundingly began to sound more and more like an animal growl. Her skin crawled as each hair of her body began to stand at end, pushing out of her pores.

Luca forced herself to sit up, and she grabbed desperately at the hem of her sweater, remembering only now that she should try to save her clothes while she still could. She wrestled to get her sweat-slick arms out of the sleeves, watching as the hair all along her forearms grew dark and thick, in large rough patches. Another split of bone cleaved through her body, and her entire form convulsed, her head arching back. A lamenting howl issued forth from her, no longer tender or supple, but harsh and jagged. Her voice was no longer a keening gale but a turbulent, husky storm.

She rolled onto her side, letting the change rack her, feeling her once firm body become suppliant and malleable under the light of the moon. By the transformation’s end, she was left exhausted and heaving in a puddle of her own sweat.

Luca blinked at the room before her through new eyes, and a bitterness welled up in her throat. She just wanted to lay there, sore and throbbing in her new skin, feeling the mild breeze from the barred window tickle against her matted, coarse fur. She nursed a mournful whining at the back of her throat, expelling every intake of residual pain out into the cramped room in waves of whimpering.

The rubber soles of a well-worn pair of shoes scuffed over a dirt-strewn floor nearby.  Luca tensed. She could hear someone’s weight shifting in the hall outside, could sense their heat radiating from the other side of the door. Their scent was pungent and leathery, tanging in Luca’s snout with the warmth of coppery blood. A human.

Luca could feel the Wolfsbane sitting in her stomach like a sip of warm whisky, churning violently, clouding her animalistic instincts. She knew, faintly, that it was Amos outside. But what she felt was her lips pulling back, the canines exposed, the nerves of her newly extended gums glistening coldly with saliva in the crisp autumn air.

Alone. She needed to be alone.

She rose from the chill concrete floor, her hackles raised, a growl beginning to resonate at the back of her throat. Luca froze mid-motion, stiffening as a new scent curled around her nostrils, overpowering everything else. Hot. Musky, a tang of earth and its own piss.

Luca’s animal mind reeled. The scent was everywhere. Out in the hall, on the ground outside her window, even in the corners of her room.

A guttural, sunken growl echoed distinctly in the hall outside.

She could hear a sharp intake of breath. His shoes scuffled as he turned.

“...Luca?”

The pit-pat of many leathery padded feet descended down the stairs at the other end of the building.

Luca let out a sharp bark, the sound reporting about her small room. The smell of the other dogs filled up her nostrils, fogging up her head. The barking ripped out of her, frenzied, seeming to fall back on only her ears. She could sense the fear dripping off of Amos as he backed away from her door.

A rippling snarl issued down the hall outside, and Luca’s voice caught in her throat. She heard Amos turn again, the breathe seizing in his throat as he undoubtedly locked eyes with the wild dogs which were now standing at the other end of the hall.

Instinct snapped through her bones in a swift convulsion. Luca threw herself against the steel bolted door, growling slovenly, slobbering at the mouth.

“Shit.”

The word was barely a tremble on Amos’ voice.

She heard the snick of wood sliding against fabric outside. The dogs released a knifelike growl, and Luca could hear them lunging forward. Electricity crackled through the air.

“ Confringo! ”

There was a snap and the scent of burning hair hit the air.  The solid, resound smack of flesh slamming up against a wall echoed towards Luca, followed by a short yelp and a dissolving electric sizzle .

But even as Luca heard the dog’s body collapse onto the concrete floor, stinking of charred hair, the others charged down the hall, closing the distance between them and Amos as barks ripped from their heaving chests.

Luca slammed her body up against the door again, repeatedly, feeling her ribcage reverberate with each impact.

“ Confringo! ” Amos yelped once again, and Luca heard the sound of mortar shattering.

She leapt forward, her canine body rippling with intensity, and her jaws locked onto the iron bolt over her door. She pulled.

Her vision swam hot with red.

She felt her body shuddering with the effort, felt the growl intensifying in her chest, felt the strain in her teeth, the nerves in her gums as incisors began to rip loose with the effort, blood gushing down her jaw.

The sound of iron rending filled her ears.

Luca felt the door caving to her, and a gust of air blasted past her as a sliver of the hall beyond was opened to her. She shoved herself through, snout first, scrabbling for purchase, the gap she had afforded herself no bigger than her head.

Her ribs grated over the jagged edge of the door. The red screened across her eyes bled into the scene before her, a filter of violence descending on everything.

The dogs had circled Amos, hackles raised, teeth bared, leaping forward and nipping at him. Amos raised his hand above his head, wand clenched in white knuckles, and another curse on his lips.

A dog leapt up, its jaws closing around Amos’ wrist, and Luca heard her uncle scream in agony. The wand struck the floor with a soft, hollow tinkle.

Luca burst forward, collapsing onto the hard ground and immediately flinging herself forward. Her head whipped out, her teeth wrapping around the snout of another dog. Luca clamped down her jaw, feeling the flesh rend beneath her sore incisors, felt the bone shudder under her grip. The dog recoiled immediately, turning away from her, but the motion only dug her teeth in deeper.

She shook her head madly, the froth dribbling down her chin becoming pink as her blood mixed with the enemy’s.

Blood gushed onto her tongue, spilling hotly down her throat, acidic and sharp. She felt another dog lash out, sinking its teeth into her flank.

Luca ripped her head around, dragging the dog’s body with her. She released her hold on its snout, smashing its body against the wall, streaking blood along it. It turned its eyes to her, wide and unseeing, its legs trembling and collapsing beneath it as it attempted to stand.

She turned to the others. They had slunk back down the hall, forming a quivering, growling wall of tensed muscle. Amos stood with his back against the opposite wall, his face pale and strained as he stared down at Luca, nursing his bleeding wrist.

Luca cornered the already injured dog. It lashed up at her, its teeth grazing her neck and its claws rending at her shoulder. She pulled away from it, snarling wetly as she crouched. It lunged for her again, and this time she surged upwards, her jaws fastened around its throat.

She bit down, and blood spurted into her eyes. The dog lashed its head back and forth, fighting her hold, and Luca struggled to maintain her purchase. Its head dashed just above hers, jaw snapping, and she felt it desperately bite into her ear and rip the flesh apart.

Her whole body shook. She felt her teeth tearing through flesh, her tongue tasting fur and salt. Her incisors bumped up against the slender bones of its throat as it thrashed against her, driving her teeth deeper and deeper.

Luca twisted her head sharply to one side. She felt her teeth knife through the taut strings of arteries, and something warm and slick sloshed over her chin, gushing down the front of her downy fur.

The dog went limp in her maw.

Luca faintly heard the whimpering as the rest of the dogs retreated, scrambling down the hallway and up the stairs, back into the cool, safe night.

Luca gave her head a little shake, relishing in the feeling of the dog’s flesh cleaving from bone as it dangled, limply, from her jaw.

And then, suddenly, her entire body went stiff with a cold terror.

Her jaw snapped open, and she let the dog fall with a wet slap onto the cold concrete ground. Everything was bathed in red.

There was a sharp intake of breath beside her. Luca turned and saw Amos with his back still pressed against the wall, sidling along it. They locked eyes.

Luca saw him throw a furtive look to the ground.  She followed his line of sight to his wand, rolled up against the far wall, its hilt dipped in the blood of the fallen dog.

A low, guttural growl rubbed against the cords in Luca’s throat, as she turned her head towards him. She shifted her body so that she stood between him and the wand, her lip curling as she bared her teeth at him. Amos inched away from her, shuffling with his back along the wall, moving his hands out slowly in front of him.

“Luca…,” he croaked, eying her warily.

Luca gave a sharp bark, her body crouched towards the ground, side-stepping so that she remained constantly in front of him.  Within a beat, he had run out of wall, and was standing with his back towards the now half open door.

She growled at him, her eyes flicking between him and the twisted door. He stared back at her incomprehensibly. Luca gave another yip, watching as he flinched. His eyes drifted towards her line of sight. His hands shaking substantially, he reached towards the bolt and struggled to heave it aside against the now horribly bowed door. He wrenched it open with an ear-splitting shriek of metal on concrete, and shouldered it open, facing Luca all the while.

With the door now standing full open, Luca approached Amos slowly, smearing blood across the floor as she stalked towards him. Amos backed up slowly, hands out to her.

“Luca,” he coaxed, barely disguising the tremble in his voice.

She snarled at him, and his hands snapped back down by his sides.

Luca backed him into the room, their eyes locked, until she stood in the doorway and he under the slant of moonlight cast from the lonely window. She straightened, considering him for a moment.

Slowly, she lowered herself to the ground, placing her head on her paws, her eyes bright and narrowed on Amos. He stood stockstill at the center of the room, as if afraid to move a single inch before her gaze.

A minute or so passed, the only sound the reverberation of her harsh, hot breath as it struggled to catch up with her, and the caws of the crows whom had alighted the trees outside the building once again, the danger now passed.

Luca felt a scorching pain in her haunch. She whipped back to look at it, teeth barred.  There was a large wound gushing steadily from one of her back legs. Growling lowly, she arched her head around and started to lick the blood clean from her already matting fur.

“Luca,” Amos began uneasily, attempting to reach out to her once again. “I can help you. Let me - “

Luca whipped her head around to face him, a snarl bouncing around the empty room. Amos pulled back, his mouth a thin line.

He put his hands out and slowly, never breaking eye-contact with her, lowered himself onto the floor. Luca watched him, tensed, as he settled down, hands on his knees, watching her. After a few beats, she felt reassured that he wasn’t going to move. She turned back to licking her wounds clean.

As her tongue scratched over the sore, flaming punctures in her skin, Luca was aware not just of the warm pain that was starting to seep through her, but of a cold, penetrating sadness. Her nose was overwhelmed with the stench of already decaying dog-blood out in the hall. Her ears throbbed with the quick but steady rhythm of Amos’ breathing as he examined her cautiously.

Through the fog of adrenaline and Wolfsbane, flashes of memory assaulted Luca, unbidden.

A quiet, suburban house, cloaked at the dead end of a cul-de-sac.

The chips of paint which rubbed against her palms as she mounted the windowsill.

The terse stillness.

The empty bedroom, torn to shreds.

Blood and entrails gleaming wetly in the dark.

A dark, grizzled snout towering over her.

A low whine escaped Luca’s throat.

She lowered her head back onto her paws, overwhelmed with grief. She could feel the blood on her neck fur drying, glueing her chin and legs together. Luca began to rub her head furiously against her paws, attempting to rub the cloying blood from her.

It was useless. Luca turned her head to the ceiling and let out a long, miserable howl.

When she settled her chin back on her paws, she found Amos staring across the room at her sadly. He reached a hand out towards her, and then seemed to change his mind, letting it fall back into his lap.

“You’re hurt,” he said bluntly.

Luca raised the edge of her lip to let a growl curl out of her mouth.

Amos’ face hardened, and Luca watched as he dragged himself back along the floor, until he was leaning up against the wall. He crossed his arms over his chest and settled into himself.

“I’m right here.” Amos stared at her levelly. “I’m not leaving.” He watched her a beat, his eyes darting over her head for a moment, towards the bloodshed outside, before he let his chin drop onto his chest. Luca watched his eyelids flutter close.

She kept her gaze intently on him, conscious of the way his muscles stayed tensed, his breathing sharp and alert for another hour before it finally settled, his head drooping and arms falling limp in his lap.

Luca grumbled, attempting to adjust her position on the floor, so her thigh did not ache.  She turned away from Amos, back towards the hall. There was no sound of the wild dogs, but the carcass of the fallen one, already swathed with flies, filled up her nostrils.

Her stomach grumbled. There was a pit of hunger rolling around in her stomach, but she would not act upon that base instinct. The Wolfsbane had provided that much.

Luca squinched her eyes shut against the gore of the hall. A part of her wished she hadn’t taken the Wolfsbane.

At least then she would have no memory of what took place here.

As she drifted towards sleep, and the night ached on, the darkness becoming fainter as the sun crept closer to their little grove of the woods, Luca knew that she would never be able to wash the stickiness of this night from her.

Chapter Text

Luca felt a calloused hand gently prodding her shoulder.

“Luca.”

The chill of the concrete floor seeped into the flesh of her bare chest. Her eyes shot open.

She could feel her sweater draped across her naked body, the wool chafing at her goosebumped skin. Her eyes flicked open. She jolted up.

“Easy.”

Agony laced through every muscle and tendon in her body, and her eyes stung of salt. A groan wheezed out her mouth. She blinked up into the faded daylight.

Amos hovered over her, his face wan and taut with concern. His hand rested gingerly on her bare shoulder.

She became conscious of many sensations at once. She was lying, naked, her body pressed against the cold ground, with nothing but her wool sweater across her back to maintain her dignity.  She supposed she had Amos to thank for that. Sunlight had once again prevailed upon the lone window in the cell’s far corner, and it was shining down on the two of them, its rays barely touching the chill that sat within her.

Ribbons of pain were lashing up from her thigh, and she could feel something sticking to the side of her neck. She could not feel her left ear. The skin around her mouth and neck was taut. Tacky.

Luca quickly looked away from Amos, her face scrunching up. Shame shot through her like a bucket of scalding water, doused over her head.  She couldn’t bear it. It took all the remaining strength in her not to cry.

Amos’ hand rubbed her shoulder.

“Shhh,” he coaxed, his voice dripping with warmth. “It’s alright.”

A small sound choked out of Luca, squeezing past her lips, barely restrained.

“Shhh.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and allowed a burst of hot tears to run down her face, balancing precariously on the tip of her nose. She took a rapid, ragged intake of breath, and held the air tight in her chest.

“Do you think you can stand?”

Luca nodded tersely.

“Do you need my help?”

Luca shook her head.

She turned her arms around, her muscles warming up with the strain it took to set them into motion, and braced her forearms against the floor. Slowly, she attempted to sit up, her whole body shaking with the effort. Amos lifted his hand off her, but she could feel his gaze pressing down on the top of her head.

Luca stopped when she sat half-upright, propped up on one hand, her body turned away from Amos. She could feel the sweater slipping off her shoulders, and scrabbled to snag a corner of it before it fell to the floor. Amos’ sneakers scuffled back across the floor.

“I’ll turn around.”

Luca dared a peek over her shoulder. Amos had his back to her, his head facing the far wall.  She expelled another jagged breath. Her sweater scratched at her raw, almost swollen skin as she dragged it off her, pressing the fabric against her chest.  Her arms were stiff and taut with pain as she attempted to pull the sweater over her head, tugging at the hem as she slipped it over her head inch by inch. Raising her arms over her head made her ribcage broil with a searing pain, and so Luca managed to dress herself with her back hunched.

She cast around the room, looking for her skirt and creepers, but saw only tatters strewn amongst the fallen leaves that had snuck in through the window. Luca pulled down on the hem of her sweater, a stone in her heart, agonizingly aware of how little the fabric covered. She braced her hands against the floor, and with a sharp expel of breath, pushed herself up.

Her arms wobbled underneath her, and her chest burned in protest. The effort to even so much as get her knees underneath herself was extreme. It felt as though Luca had been running ragged for days, without stop for rest, food, or water.  The whole of her felt bruised, bone-tired, and her skin stretched tight and salty with dried sweat.

Luca teetered as she raised herself upright on her knees, and suddenly Amos was again by her side.

“Here,” he said softly, taking her arm gently and lifting her to her feet. Luca leaned into Amos’ weight, grabbing hold of his wrist to steady herself. Her bare, padded feet felt sore and calloused against the cold concrete.

Amos allowed her to lean on him through the hallway, passed the corpse of the wild dog.  Luca turned her face into his shoulder as she staggered by, the stench of decay gagging her throat with bile. In the faint, fresh light of morning, Luca could see the graffiti from students of decades past as they staggered by. A lone, rusted school bell was mounted above the doorway they passed through. Her stomach clinched, and she could have laughed. In some alternate universe, Luca would be sitting in first period at this time of day. Not limping, bloodied, off the premises of a ramshackle schoolhouse somewhere in Upstate New York.

Mounting the stairs up to the ground floor was a whole other matter.  Amos offered to carry her, but Luca shook her head, holding onto his arm with one hand and pressing her other palm to the crusty drywall with another, climbing the steps one shaky foot at a time.

The dewy morning sunlight pressed down on her as she stepped out into the forest, her bare, blistered feet touching lightly on the damp mulch. Luca bowed her head, blinking the brightness away. Bathed by the dappled light, Luca only felt how the chill had settled on her. Her skin offered no more to the sun’s than a stone on the bank of a river. Amos’ hand on the small of her back, guiding her towards the baseball bat still laying in the brambles, felt like a flame by comparison. Her body seemed to leech cold.

“Ready?”

Amos’ voice broke Luca from her reverie. His hand was poised over the portkey. Luca extended a shaking hand over it, swallowing, a pit forming in her stomach at the memory of last night’s journey.

“One… two…” She felt his eyes on her as he counted down, ever wary. “Three.”

They both latched onto the baseball bat at once. Nothing could have prepared Luca for this second trip. Her body felt like no more than a windsock battered brutally about by the gales of time and space, with no substance inside of her to anchor her down. She felt flakes of rusted aluminum come loose under her fingertips as she lost her purchase on the baseball bat. Amos snaked out a hand and hooked it around her waist, clutching onto her desperately, his fingers digging into her side.

The ground rushed up at her. Luca crumpled, her cheek striking linoleum. She sucked in a sharp breath. Aluminum shelving stretched far up above her, reaching towards the high plaster ceiling tiles. She could see under miles of the shelving units, crammed and overflowing with strange oddities. They were back in the Greenwich magical warehouse.

Beside her Amos scrambled to his feet, the bat clattering hollowly. His hand pressed against her back.

“Luca. Are you okay?”

Luca expelled a hard huff of air from her chest, feeling it bounce back up at her off the hard floor. She put her hands under her, attempting to push herself to her knees. Her eyes sought out Amos’ face, pale and urgent, but an invisible hand pulled at her stomach. She whirled, back bowing, and retched onto the floor. A watery bile dribbled forth at first, then chunks of red and gore. She sobbed. Amos’ shadow fell over her as she heaved dry, his hand remaining on her back as he knelt beside her.

The floor underneath was swaying, tilting back and forth gently like a ship at sea. She just wanted to lay her cheek back against the tiles. It was the only way to get a grip on this ground, to steady herself. Amos caught her arm as she sagged back towards the ground. His arms went around her, and in a moment Luca was off the floor, her head thudding softly against his chest as he carried her through the maze of shelves.

Luca’s lips were thick with drool, and she could feel it pressing into his shirt pocket.

“Sorry,” she whispered softly.

“You’re fine.” His force was clipped, terse, hoarse. Out of the corner of her eye, Luca could see his mouth pressed into a hard line. She felt tears pricking at her eyes. It was all she could bear, to think that Amos might be angry with her. The tears sprung forth, warm and gluey, until there was nothing to do but close her eyes, and let the sadness seal them shut.

Chapter Text

“ I heard a noise.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Maybe it’s some... THING.”

Luca stirred, the pillow beneath her cheek wet with her saliva and chafing against her skin. Tinny voices drifted from behind her back. Her body was turned into the crook of a couch, layers of flannel blankets clinging to her clammy skin.

She blinked her eyes open.

Afternoon sunlight flung itself across Amos’ tiny living room, and the reflections of car windows from the street below danced along the ceiling. Luca twisted around. A hulking grey box of a used television squatted on the far side of the room. The characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were distorted from time to time by a green splotch which blossomed like a bruise on the old screen.

A cinnamon-warm smell tickled Luca’s nose, and under the crackling of the television voices, Luca heard a soft sizzle . She craned her neck up.

Over in the galley, Amos stood before the stove, prodding at the contents of a pot with a wooden spoon.

Luca blinked over at him, baffled.

“Since when do you cook?” Her voice eeked out, gravelly and small. Amos whirled around, holding the spoon aloft like it was his wand. His face spasmed between expressions of surprise, concern, and confusion.

“Luca. How are you feeling?”

Luca just stared at him blandly. Her tongue felt glued to the roof of her mouth, and her throat thick. Taking in her silence, Amos nodded.

“Are you hungry?”

Luca shook her head, feeling the emptiness roil around inside of her in response. Amos turned, flicking open a cabinet with a twist of his hand, and floating two bowls onto the counter.

“You should try to eat something anyway.”

Amos portioned steaming heaps of something vaguely brown and gloopy into the bowls. Two sets of spoons followed him into the living room, levitating down onto the coffee table as he set one bowl in front of her. Luca took a deep inhale.

“It’s porridge.”

It smelled of cinnamon and honey, and Luca could see globs of melted banana floating amongst the warm, soggy oats. Amos took a seat on the couch by Luca’s feet, the bowl in his lap, his eyes trained on the television. Luca watched him carefully. A new sensation turned in her stomach, but it wasn’t hunger. She swallowed thickly.

“Since when do we have a telly?”

With effort, Luca sat herself up. She felt bandages tighten around the skin of her thigh as she stretched, and pressed to her ear.

“Since now.” Amos shoved a spoonful of steaming oats into his mouth and seemed to immediately regret the decision. Pursing his lips, he chewed, his eyes never meeting hers. “I thought it’d make a nice addition to the apartment.”

Luca studied Amos, and saw him bristle under the intensity of her gaze. He sent a sidelong look her way.

“What?” he asked quietly.

Luca looked down to her portion of porridge. The smell coming off the steam in an instant drew her back to her mother’s kitchen. Sitting at the table on a Sunday morning, watching Ren and Stimpy on the tiny kitchenette telly, her cheeks bulging with hot oats. Her mum used to cut the banana slices into little stars. The memory stung as much as it soothed her. She bowed her head, hiding her face as her eyes scrunched up, tight with an onslaught of tears.

Luca reached a shaking hand out and grabbed the bowl, setting it down in her lap. She wished that the steam could thaw that cold, aching something that was crawling up from deep inside of her.

“A boy came asking after you.”

Luca froze with a spoonful halfway to her mouth. She set the spoon back down with a clatter.

“Blonde?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to see him.”

Amos glanced over at her, his brows creasing.

“You haven’t even asked his - ” Amos fell short, his gaze darting across her face. “Luca? What’s wrong?”

Luca turned away, shaking her head. Tears glued her throat together, threatening to well up to the surface.

“Luca. Did this boy hurt you?”

“ No .”

Luca whirled to face Amos, finding that hot tears were already pricking their way down her cheeks. She couldn’t quite meet Amos’ eyes.

“Then what?”

Luca drew a trembling, hoarse breath, willing herself to calm. She clutched her porridge bowl tightly, wishing so dearly that she were eating in a different living room, of a different house.

“I can’t do this,” she choked out.

In her peripheral, she could see Amos’ brow furrowed.

“Do what?”

Incredulous, Luca gave a cursory wave to the entire apartment.

“ This .” Luca set down her bowl on the table with a hard clatter, pulling her knees up to her chin. As she squeezed her legs tight, she could feel the bruises blossoming under the sweatpants Amos had no doubt been forced to dress her with while she was unconscious. Tears spilled down her face unbidden.

“It’s not fair,” she sobbed.

“I know.” Amos shifted uncomfortably in his seat beside her. “I can’t imagine - “

“No, you can’t.” Luca sniffled, wiping her nose off the back of her hand. “You’ve never known anything else but this , huh? You always knew that there was a magic, yeah?”

Amos stared into his lap, his face drained.

“Yes.”

“You know, when Torrie and I were kids, we used to play at witches and wizards. There was no way I could have known.” An image of Torrie, as she had been before that fateful night, rose to the surface of her memory like a swirling fog, and she could not push its vague, shifting shape away. “And now I know that all of it’s real. Except I don’t get to be the wizard. I’m a monster .”

Luca sunk her face into the crook of her knees, warm tears soaking into the fabric. Amos’ voice was soft and uncertain.

“You’re not a - “

“ Shut up ,” Luca quipped, her voice muffled into her knees. “You don’t think I know? I didn’t wake up like this one day. I was attacked . I know exactly what I am, Amos.”

Her entire chest was trembling, a floodgate of hysteric sobs threatening to spill over within her ribcage. She wrapped her arms around her face, blocking out the sunny living room, and let them come. Amos’ hand touched gently at the small of her back.

“I am so sorry, Luca.”

That stung worse than anything. Luca hugged herself close, feeling the warmth of Amos on the couch beside her dig into her heart, and realized it was because it was the first time anyone had ever said sorry to Luca since she had been bitten. The staff at St. Mungos had been clinical, blunt, and the few people she had met from MACUSA or the Ministry had been even more distant.

Luca shook her head, lifting her face from her knees, her eyes stinging and cheeks sticky with salty tears.

“I just don’t understand. How can magic exist if things like… me exist?”

Luca turned to Amos, desperate, only to find his face swathed in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Luca was incredulous. “How can you not have found a cure for this?” she demanded. “We’re - or Muggles are - finding cures for regular diseases every day, aren’t they? You have magic .”

Amos pulled away, his gaze going to the telly, which still played Buffy underneath its warped glass screen. “Luca… I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is! It has to be.” Luca wiped at her face furiously, ashamed now of having broken down in front of him. She glared in his direction. “Has anyone even tried?”

Amos did not answer her. He stiffened, his attention trained on the television set. Luca shook her head.

“I thought so.”

Luca braced herself on the arm of the couch, and felt every bone in her body creak and pop against the stiffness in her limbs as she leveraged herself to her feet.

“Luca,” Amos said, standing suddenly, alarmed. “What are you - “

“A walk,” Luca snapped, stretching out gingerly, feeling a warm pulse of pain ribbon its way up her thigh under the bandage Amos had no doubt placed over last night’s wound. “I need some air.”

Luca staggered over to the door, jamming her feet into her sneakers, her heels squashing down the backings.

“Luca - “

She whirled around to face Amos, her hand on the doorknob. Under her bristling gaze, she saw Amos recoil into himself, and his normally stiff, focused face softened with a touch of regret.

“Please get home safely.”

Her shoulders sunk, and Luca felt the cold, hard anger in her chest dissolve. Her eyes darted towards the ground.

“I will. I’m just going around the block.”

She waited a beat for a response, and finding none, unlocked the chain on the door and stepped out of the apartment, leaving Amos behind.

The heat of the day outside was oppressive, and in her borrowed tee and baggy pants, Luca could feel herself wilting before she had taken more than three steps beyond the stoop of Stick Stone and Bone. She breathed in deeply, willing fresh air into her lungs. If she was being honest, she wasn’t even certain what the confines of her “block” meant, so she picked a direction and continued on down Christopher Street. Even in the shade of the brownstones lining either side of the street, waves of heat radiated up from the pavement under her feet, providing no shelter.

As Luca walked on, she stepped out onto a wider avenue, and found that across the block from where she stood was a small, fenced in park she had never noticed before. Waiting for cars, she darted across the street.

Picking her way through the paved walking path, she roamed until she found an empty bench. Until she sunk down onto it, Luca had been unaware of just how sore she was. The way the full moon transformation echoed in her bones for days after was indescribable. It was a hollow sensation, a pain which Luca could only imagine was comparable to the sensation of having one's bones scraped bare of their marrow, so that they were lighter, weaker, and raw and chafing from the experience of it.

Luca leaned back into the seat, tilting her head back so the planes of her face - still tender from her violent crying - were swathed in the mid-afternoon sunshine.

“Luca?”

She shot forward, opening her eyes.

Sol stood in front of her, in a black tee and baggy ripped jeans that hung much too loosely over his slight frame. His darkened, sleepless eyes stared down at her apprehensively.

Luca jumped to her feet, her eyes blacking out immediately with the bloodrush.

“No, wait, please. I just want - “ Sol fell short. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Luca said tersely. She felt his hand touch on her arm gently as she sat back down, blinking as she waited for her sight to return.

“You look…,” Sol began, but seemed to think better as Luca glared at him through the remaining blurriness obstructing her vision. “I just came by because I wanted to say I’m sorry. For the other night. And sorry for the guys, they were out of line.”

“You shouldn’t be apologizing for them,” Luca grumbled, not meeting Sol’s gaze. She had all but forgotten her night out with Sol and his “boys”. The full moon that had immediately followed had entirely eclipsed it.

“I know,” Sol said, tugging at the collar of his shirt sheepishly. “But I know they won’t. So.”

Luca glared up at him. His white blonde hair was surrounded by a halo of blazing sunlight, nearly blinding her again. “Why do you even hang out with them?”

Sol shrugged. “They’re… around.”

“You have to have better people at your school to hang out around.”

In the shadow of the backlit sky, Sol’s face took on the shade of a brewing storm. “It’s complicated.”

He looked away, balling the collar of his shirt up between his fingers. Luca just watched him, waiting. Eventually, he sunk down, taking the seat beside her.

“Look,” he began, sending her a sideways glance. “About that other night.”

Luca felt her entire body fill with chill at the memory of Maelstrom. The lights, the burn of firewhisky down her throat, the heat in her face as laughter filled the room around her - at her.

“What about it?”

“You’re… you’re a squib… aren’t you?”

Luca just stared at him blankly.

“What the bloody hell is a squib ?”

Sol’s expression was just as bare. “I… am so confused right now.”

“What is a squib ?”

“A squib! You know. Witch or wizard born without magic.”

Luca bowed her head, feeling the rage bridle up within her, egged on by the waves of heat radiating up around them.

“I just thought,” Sol continued, clearly stalling in her silence. “At the club. You didn’t have a wand. So maybe.”

“No,” Luca snapped, whipping her head up to face Sol. “No, Sol, I am not a squib . I’m a Muggle.”

The blank, perplexed expression remained fixed on Sol’s face. “A…?”

Luca’s eyes rolled into the back of her head. It took her a moment to remember what Amos had called it. “A No-Maj! You know? A regular bloody person? What is with this bloody endless secret code with you people?”

Sol’s face seemed to have gone bloodless. “You’re… a No-Maj?”

The disdain which dripped off his tongue fueled the anger brewing inside Luca’s chest like oil to a flame.

“Yes, Sol, I’m a No-Maj. And you know what else I am? A fucking werewolf. Do you know what that is? Or do you Americans have another bloody fucking term for that as well?”

Sol just gaped at her.

“So glad we could get this sorted out.”

Luca leaped to her feet violently, and again a wave of nausea and vertigo overtook her that had her stumbling forward onto one knee.

“Luca…”

“It’s fine.” Luca felt Sol’s hands pulling her gently back onto her feet, leaning her back onto the bench.

“I’m sorry,” Sol stammered, “I didn’t… I mean, that’s not the reaction…”

“It’s fine,” Luca quipped again, cutting him short. She clutched at her head, willing the bench underneath her to stop lilting from side to side and the world around to grow still.

“No, it’s not.” His voice lashed out, a quick sharp crack. Luca whipped around to face him. His face softened, ashamed. But under his eyes she saw the flash of dark rage before it settled back under the surface. “Look. I guess you could say I come from old magic. In a way. My mom and dad are… obsessed with our lineage. But I’m the only wizard in our family. And they hate me for it.”

Luca blinked at him, taken aback.

“You’ve met my mother.”

Luca had the grace to blush. “Well…”

“Yeah, exactly. I know it’s not the same. But I never want to be like them. So, I mean, please don’t think…”

Luca shook her head slowly. “And being a werewolf. That doesn’t… concern you?”

A bewildered gasp escaped Sol’s mouth, as it hung open, searching for words.

“Thought so.” Luca pulled her legs back up to her chest instinctively, hugging herself tight. She wished she were anywhere but here.

“It’s just, how… how ?”

Luca could feel Sol’s eyes boring into her searchingly.

“How what ?”

“How did you end up here ?” Sol shook his head, struggling to take it in. “And you… you’re uncle. He’s a wizard. So how…?”

“He’s not my uncle,” Luca snapped, but then thought better. “I mean, he’s barely my uncle. I never knew Amos until… all this. They just stuck me with the nearest magical relative that could stand to take me. So I landed here.”

“So… you’ve never been to Hogwarts?”

“No. Though I guess Torrie did.”

Sol tilted his head, looking at her quizzically. “Who…?”

“It’s… complicated.” Luca let the sarcasm gush over the words. Sol bowed his head, taking her response in stride.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. It’s just bit of a shock. I’ve never heard of… you just never hear about this kind of thing.”

Luca felt a wry smile creep onto her lips. “Wow. I feel so special.” She met Sol’s eyes, and still found only a question there. She sighed. “Basically, I had this friend. We’d known each other since we were kids. Except, turns out she was like you. Magical. Only she never told me.”

Luca felt her lips twisting, the words leaving a sour taste on her tongue as she spoke them aloud.

“Also, turns out she was bitten. By a werewolf. Only she never told anyone about that either. So she came home from her school or whatever this summer, and surprise, surprise. Full moon, and she turned.”

Luca shot Sol a derisive glance. He was staring at her wide eyed, looking for the first time since she’d met him like a child being read a scary story. “How… how did your friend get bitten?”

“I’m not sure. No one ever told me.” Luca screwed her face up, memories of St. Mungos flying back at her. “I heard Hogwarts mentioned. Dunno what they did with Torrie after that. Don’t much care either.”

“I bet it was that battle, at Hogwarts,” Sol mused. “I did wonder. Every witch and wizard with half a brain is talking about it right now. I thought it was strange you didn’t know.”

“A battle?” Luca was unable to keep the disdain from her voice. Trying to imagine people like Amos and Sol fighting with their wands, like party magicians, in a battle was just too much for her in that moment.

“Wow, I guess you really wouldn’t have been told anything then. See… where to start? There was this wizard who went bad in England. Started killing a lot of people. Magical and no-Maj. The short of it is, he and his followers attacked Hogwarts - the school for witchcraft and wizardry over there - and it went down badly. They say he’s dead though… the dark wizard. There are a lot of rumors. But a lot of students got hurt - or died - during the attack, people are saying.”

Luca took that in.  “What would any of that have to do with… werewolves?”

“Greyback - he’s this really infamous werewolf over there - joined You Know Who in the attack. He has, like, a cult of other werewolves who follow him.”

“I’m sorry,” Luca quipped, cutting Sol short before he went into further explanation. “Who is it I’m supposed to know?”

Sol stared at her, brows knitted, before realization softened his face. “Oh. Oh! ‘You Know Who’ - that’s what everyone calls the Dark Lord. You’re… we weren’t supposed to say his name.”

Luca shook her head slowly. This was too much information to take in, and she truly couldn’t weed out which bits were truly pertinent to her and which were just wizardy mumbo-jumbo. One thing was certain - with the mention of this Greyback, Luca could not shake the image in her mind of a pack of werewolves prowling through a school. Torrie’s face flashed through her head, her close-shaven head bowed as she clung to the leg of a desk, trying to make herself smaller. Luca shook the imagery loose.

“Answer this for me, Sol. How is it that you people allow packs of things like that Greyback to just prowl around, attacking innocent kids? You said he was infamous. If everyone knows about him, why had no one hunted him down?”

Sol’s lips pressed into a hard line. “It’s not that simple.”

“I think it is.”

Sol looked at her sharply. “Luca. I’d think you of all people would understand. Werewolves are people still too. They’re citizens of the magical community. Until the attack, Greyback was a dodgy character sure, but there was no proof of any crime. There had to be something solid before the aurors just hunted him down.”

“Instead they just waited for him to attack a school.”

“They had him on watch, I’m sure.”

“Not close enough.”

Luca couldn’t meet Sol’s eye any longer, but she could feel his gaze on her. She stared straight ahead, watching a young couple swing their clasped hands as they walked their dog through the park.

“I’m real sorry Luca. I’m not trying to make excuses for what happened to you - “

“Really? It sort of sounds that way.”

“I’m not. For sure, things could have been handled better. There were a lot of good people who dropped the ball, if you believe what the papers say. But you have to remember… I guess this has only just started to be real for you, but we were at war. People were doing the best they could.”

“It wasn’t enough.” Luca ground her teeth, chewing over the question that was bubbling to the surface again. She whipped around to face Sol. “Why hasn’t anyone found a cure yet?”

Sol looked taken aback. “What? For lycanthropy?”

“Yes.”

“Well. I mean, there’s Wolfsbane - “

“That’s not a bloody cure. It barely even qualifies as a hangover remedy.”

“I guess… I mean, I’ve never really heard of any witches and wizards researching a cure for lycanthropy. It’s just not a priority. What I mean is,” Sol plowed on, catching the flash of rage that lashed across Luca’s face. “That’s not what the focus is on. It’s all about containing. There have been some pretty bad outbreaks in the last couple decades. That’s why most countries have anti-werewolf laws. And why the WCU - the Werewolf Capture Unit - was a thing for a while.”

“You’re missing my point,” Luca snapped. “Werewolves have been a thing for centuries - yeah? So clearly your silly potions and ‘anti-werewolf’ shite isn’t cutting it. Why putz around with a bunch of stupid legislation? Why not try to fix the actual problem? You have magic !”

Sol shook his head slowly. “I just feel like, if there was a way to reverse it, someone would have discovered it by now.”

“No. They wouldn’t.” Luca leveled Sol with a tepid glare. “You know why? Because none of you people could give a rat’s arse what happens to people like me - do you? You just want us as far away from society as possible. In containment. Why not just throw us into a bloody concentration camp while you’re at it?”

Sol looked appalled. “Luca.”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

Sol screwed his lips up together, relenting to the truth like a sour taste in his mouth. Luca held her legs a little closer to her chest.

“I’m going to be stuck in that shop for the rest of my life. I’ll never see my parents again. And every month, my bones will break and dislocate until I become… a monster. To think I used to think my period was a bitch.”

That elicited a dry laugh from Sol. “Maybe… maybe you don’t have to.”

“I don’t have a choice. It was this or a permanent residence in St. Mungo’s.”

“But what if you made an appeal to MACUSA to go to Ilvermorny?”

Luca blinked at him. “Ilver-what?”

“Ilvermorny. The American School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

“I’m sorry Sol, but how would that be any better?”

“You wouldn’t be stuck in your uncle’s shop. And maybe you could get some of the teachers to help you.”

“Help with - ?”

“With finding a cure.”

Luca leaned back against the bench, absorbing what Sol was saying.  “But… I can’t do magic.”

“So? James Steward was a No-Maj.”

Luca was nearing the end of her rope. “Who is James Steward?”

“The co-founder of Ilvermorny. He didn’t have a drop of magic in him.”

She blinked at him, stunned. “Really?”

“And squibs can’t do magic. They still let them attend school.”

“But what would be the point , Sol?”

“You’d be learning the theory of magic, I guess. Besides, I bet there are tons of things you can learn to do that don’t require a wand. Potions, maybe. Astrology. History.”

Luca shook her head. “It’s a nice thought. But the Ministry stuck me with Amos for a reason. No one’s going to want a werewolf at their school.”

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But maybe it’s worth trying though?”

Luca rubbed self-consciously at the bandaged wound concealed beneath her baggy sweatpants, feeling the ache resonate throughout her leg.  If there was a chance, however small, of finding a cure… should she take it? A chance not to live out her entire life behind the counter of Stick Stone and Bone. A chance at a normal life.

Of returning to her family again.

Luca tapped her fingers against the wound on her thigh, thoughtful.

“So how do you go about making an appeal to this MACUSA anyway?”

Chapter Text

“I need you to tell me, one more time Luca. Why do you want to do this?”

Amos’ hushed voice echoed harshly off the vaulted ceilings of a Woolworth Building lobby. The ends of Luca’s hair were still damp from August’s first heavy rain. But within the walls of the MACUSA headquarters, the dull glow of early morning light poured from the uppermost windows, soft and yellow. The impossible sunshine warmed Luca’s face now as she turned on Amos, sitting on the bench beside her.

“How else do you want me to put it? I want a normal life.”

“You have a normal life,” Amos hissed, attracting the attention of a few wizardly statesmen passing by the wing they sat in. They were situated in some small little alcove in one of the upper floors, having been shown to this little lobby by a portly woman clad in a honey-colored pencil-skirt, who had met them at the reception. After being escorted through a system of elevators which appeared not only to travel up and down, but across whole swaths of each floor, Amos and Luca were then led through a maze of hallways before being brought to this lobby, outside a small, dark oak door.

The door to the courtroom in which Luca’s case would soon be heard.

“Nothing about my life is normal.”

“Well, it’s as normal as… normal gets,” Amos whispered with a huff. He had dressed in his best, non-moth eaten clothes today, which for Amos meant a button-down shirt and a clean-pressed set of slate-gray robes. He had been tapping his fingers on the knees of his camel slacks endlessly for the last half hour. Each minute had been marked by the exit of yet another patron called through that big oak door. The chairs had nearly all been taken when they had arrived early that morning. Now their whispers were all that carried through the unoccupied antechamber.

“But it’s not. Forget everything else. I’m not even normal by magical standards, am I?” Luca quipped.

“Luca…”

“I want a better life than this.”

To her surprise, Amos flinched, his eyes darting towards his oxfords. Though they had argued this ceaselessly since Luca had first brought the idea up after her conversation with Sol, it was the first time she had ever seen him react with anything but frustration.

“Luca, I… I understand.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’m understanding as well as I can,” Amos amended with a sharp exhale. “But I need you to understand what it is you’re asking for…”

“I know you think it’s not likely,” Luca whispered, her words falling short as a witch rounded the corner, striding into their alcove and taking a chair in the far corner opposite them, never meeting their gaze. Soft lavender peeked out beneath her uniform gray robes, and her permed, auburn hair was pinned back from her face. Luca shot Amos a wary look before continuing, dropping her voice even lower. “That doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Amos muttered, his chin lowered onto his chest. Through his eyelashes, his eyes bored holes into the courtroom door that had remained barred to them as the minutes trickled by. “Luca, I’m not worried about whether they will approve your request. What concerns me is what they will say to you… during the hearing.”

Luca sat up, taken aback. She studied Amos thoughtfully. It was the first time he’d given rise to this concern.

“What do you mean?” she asked softly.

Amos made a quiet tsk -ing noise under his breath. “Just… I need you to be prepared for how they might treat you in there. For the longest time, werewolves were considered to be - less than - second class citizens in the wizarding community. And… honestly, while some of the laws might have changed… not much else has.”

Amos scratched the back of his neck, not meeting her eye.

“Anything has to be better than hiding in the shop all day,” Luca grumbled, folding her arms over her chest.

“These men and women won’t see it that way,” Amos breathed, his eyes still trained on the door as though he were seeing through it, staring down the witches and wizards he talked about on the other side.  “Luca, in your country, there are rules against employing werewolves at all. In the States, it’s not as bad, but… it’s not good either. To them, the arrangement you have with me is a generous gift.”

“A gift ?” Luca hissed. Her voice quavered. It was all she could do to keep her voice down.

“I know,” Amos sighed,  and now he turned to her, his eyes desperately seeking hers out. “Promise me, Luca, that no matter what is said in there, you won’t speak - “

The dark oak door creaked open slowly. The two of them fell silent as a wizened old man in dark purple robes was revealed standing in the threshold. He held the door aside, permitting leave to a tall and lanky man Luca recognized had been sitting in the antechamber when they arrived. He was still bearing a load of tamagotchi eggs cradled in his long bony arms. He stalked out of the room at an alarming pace, his brown threadbare cloak swishing behind him. Luca turned back to find the old wizard beckoning them forward with a small wrinkled hand.

“Torelli, Luca?” he grunted, his voice surprisingly deep and gruff for his frame. Feeling a shake spasm through her fingers, Luca shot to her feet. Amos sprung up beside her, grasping onto her hand to hold her in place.

“Last chance,” he whispered, leaning down into her ear. “We can turn back now. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Luca snapped her head around, staring up into his hazel, gold-flecked eyes. They reminded her of her grandfather. “I deserve better.”

Amos straightened up, his gaze sweeping over her full face. He gave a terse nod, and let his hand rest between her shoulders, guiding her towards where the old wizard stood waiting.

The man stood aside to let them squeeze through. Luca’s breath seized in her chest, and she was only vaguely aware of the sound of the door softly closing behind them. The reception and halls of the Woolsworth - or rather, she supposed, the MACUSA - building seemed to embrace the impossible sunshine, letting it pour down the black and white art deco walls, the arches and pillars decorated with a gold, almost baroque filigree. The courtroom she stood in now was a somber, gothic den. All along the walls stood floor to ceiling windows, but they were shuttered. Lofted stairs, like bleachers, encircled the room, covered in hard black tile.

Luca and Amos stood just before an open square of tile, decorated with a five-pointed star, with a single ray of cold sunlight baring down on the design from a non-existent skylight. At the front of the room, beneath a wall of trefoil arches carved out of a near-black wood, stood a woman wearing men’s indigo button-down and black trousers under her beige robes. Her long black hair was pulled back sharply into a bun, and her cold, almond-shaped eyes were ringed with smudges of charcoal.

“Excuse me.”

Luca stepped aside as the woman from the lobby marched passed the two of them, mounting the bowed wooden steps with surprising grace to take her place at the left wing of the courtroom. Already at attention on the right-hand bleachers stood a mousey man with a receding hairline, wire-rimmed glasses, and a constant sniffle. He fussed with his bowtie as Luca and Amos walked into the room, their shoes echoing starkly off the high walls.

Luca swallowed thickly.

The old man touched a hand to Amos’ shoulder and gestured him towards the rows where the lavender-clad woman stood, watching Luca with a steely eye. “If you please,” the wizard boomed.

Amos shot a quick look at Luca. Her heart was in her throat. Somehow, in all their arguing over whether or not she should actually go to trial, she had failed to understand that she would be standing alone before the court. He gave her a curt nod, his lips pressed tight, before falling into line beside the woman.

When Luca tore her gaze away from him, the old wizard was staring her down. He proffered a hand towards the five-pointed star, ringed in black tile, at the center of the floor, like a grim reaper pointing her towards the River Styx. Luca stepped up slowly to the center, feeling the gazes in the room bore into her from all sides.

In looking towards this day, Luca had always pictured herself sitting before a courtroom packed with important-looking officials, maybe a handful of common onlookers, all staring up at her from rows of ancient pews. Instead, she found herself facing a hearing with no more pomp than a family court. Less than, really. But somehow, it made it even worse. There was nowhere to hide underneath the gazes of this mere handful of people. It made it feel less like she was having her case heard before a court and more like she was to be interrogated. Asked to prove her worth.

Which, in a way, she supposed she was.

“All rise,” the wizened old wizard boomed out.

The statesmen and Amos remained on their feet. Luca thought it was a tad comical until she heard a shuffle coming from a far corner of the benches, and turned to see an older woman clamber to her feet. Her chestnut face was pocked with little brown sunspots, her eyes accentuated with crow’s feet. Her salt-and-pepper dreadlocks were pulled into a neat pile on her head, and her robes were navy blue, lined with satin scarlet. There was a crest embroidered over her breast, but Luca couldn’t make it out. Catching her eye, she could have sworn the woman gave her a small, sly wink. Luca turned away quickly.

“The Department of No-Maj Relations and Regulations of the Inferior Court is now in session. Judge Mikoto presiding.”

“Thank you, Cornelys.” Bowing slightly to Mikoto, the woman in men’s trousers, he went to go take his place standing near the head of the room on the right hand side. Judge Mikoto took a step down one stair, and Luca realized with a jolt she was at least a head taller than the judge. “Good morning, witches and wizards of the court. Calling the hearing of Ms. Luca Torelli. Today’s hearing will be additionally serviced by Ms. Cecily Pucillo, Head of the Body for Protection of Magical Species, in addition to our Director Carson Zwerling of the Department of No-Maj Relations and Regulations.”

The woman in lavender and man in wire-rimmed spectacles inclined their heads respectively to Mikoto as their titles were announced. Luca couldn’t help but notice that the woman with salt-and-pepper hair had not been recognized by the judge.

“Ms. Torelli. You stand before us today to air an official request for admittance into Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Is that correct?”

Luca cleared her throat, wondering now what she must look like to them all. Did her face still bear the tautness of her last transformation? Could they see the chunk missing from her ear from the dog attack? The ragged lines of deep claw marks from that night long passed?

“Yes.”

“I turn the court over to Mr. Zwerling on this matter. Zwerling?”

The bespectacled man stepped off the benches, standing at one of the points of the tiled star, his eyes blinking tearfully at Luca.

“Ms. Torelli,” he began, clearing his throat. “This is… an unusual request.”

There was a beat of silence. Zwerling looked at Luca as though he expected her to fill it. Luca faltered, her lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line, but before she could conceive a response, Zwerling gave another little cough and pressed on.

“This request is… unprecedented. Never before in the history of wizardkind has a No-Maj requested admittance into a magical institution. It is… unorthodox.”

“My situation is rather… unorthodox,” Luca offered to the still air Zwerling once again left in the wake of his words. He spouted statements in the manner of vague questions.

“Yes,” Zwerling mused, whorling the word around on his tongue as he spoke it. “Truly. But I must profess, I fail to see the… purpose of such an admittance.”

“Well, I - “

“You were originally from the town of Lintin, is that correct?”

“Linden, yes.”

“And this is where you presumably came into contact with the, eh, Hogwarts student whom… disfigured you.”

Luca’s brow shot up. Disfigured ? She snapped a quick glance over at Amos. He gave his head a small but firm shake.

Let it go , his look said. Her lips pressed into a harder line.

“I spoke to the Ministry’s Mr. Crowle myself regarding your placement, if I recall, with your closest magical relative.” Zwerling gave a curt but hesitant nod over to Amos. “I presume this man present is your new legal guardian?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not certain what… possessed him to support this claim of yours for placement at Ilvermorny. It seems to me to be entirely out of order.”

Luca felt her heart drop like stone into her stomach.

“Mr. Zwerling,” she began, swallowing.

“You have no magical talent,” Zwerling pressed on, shaking his head with a small but vigorous fervor, not meeting the eye of her or anyone in the court. “And that isn’t even to discuss the potential danger posed to other students by having a… werewolf present among their student body.”

“But Mr. Zwerling,” Luca started again, balling her fingers into fists to hide the tremors. “I understand that you allow… squibs? Non-magical witches and wizards to join - “

“That is an entirely different matter,” Zwerling quipped, cutting her off with another nervous little head shake, like a small dog suffering from an anxious tic. “Squibs, though born with no magical aptitude, are born of magical families.”

“But, then it’s been done before?” Luca pushed her voice to phrase it like a question, rather than a challenge. “A non-magical person has graduated from Ilvermorny? Pardon me, Mr. Zwerling, but I don’t see how my lack of magical ‘aptitude’ poses any less… or more… of a problem.”

Zwerling gave a little cough to clear his throat, and she could see sweat beading at his brow. Rattled, he opened his mouth to continue.

“Judge Mikoto? Mr. Zwerling?”

Heads swivelled around to face Ms. Cecily Pucillo, whose fingers tapped against the side of her jaw thoughtfully, framing a stern but heart-shaped face.

“May I take the floor?”

Mikoto turned to Zwerling brusquely, framing no question, but merely raising a brow his way. Zwerling gave a curt nod, sending one fleeting look up at Luca before resuming his place on the benches.

Pucillo stepped down, her heels clicking against the tiled floor.

“Ms. Torelli,” she began, her voice quip, high and lilting like birdsong. “I sympathize with your situation, truly. I do.” Luca twisted up her lips. Pucillo’s voice was as flat and tepid as bathwater. “I simply cannot imagine the shock this all has been to you, as a No-Maj.”

“Probably not,” Luca grumbled.

Pucillo inclined her head towards Luca ear-first. “What was that?”

“You probably can’t imagine.”

Pucillo rocked back on her chunky heels, her lips pressed into a hard yet amused line. She hummed with fake interest. “You are entirely new to this community, and so perhaps you are confused.” She pronounced this last word with such a sweet and satisfied little chirp, Luca could not shake the feeling that she was being talked down to. “But you must understand. While Ilvermorny, like any magical school is equipped - to some small degree - to provide an education for those of the wizarding population whom possess no magical aptitude, this is not the problem which your attendance at Ilvermorny poses.”

Luca gave a small shake of her head, opening her mouth to interject.

“Ilvermorny is equipped to take on all students, regardless of their magical ability,” Pucillo plowed on, with a little jump of her brows which brooked no arguments. “Ilvermorny is not equipped, however, to provide the assistance needed to aid your monthly transformations.”

Luca blanched. She turned to Amos, only to find him staring fixedly at his shoes, his jaw taut. He had been anticipating this response.

“It would be a drag on Ilvermorny’s resources to accommodate a student such as yourself, Ms. Torelli. A werewolf requires far more than simply the daily ingestions of Wolfsbane, already an odd request to ask of Ilvermorny’s nurses in the Hospital Bay.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Luca replied sharply, immediately biting down her tongue. Pucillo’s eyes glimmered only for an instant before continuing on, but Luca could see that her disrespect only fueled the woman.

“There is no place on campus suitable to contain you during your transformations.” Pucillo’s chin was lifted so high she nearly had to look down the end of her nose to meet Luca’s eye. “Regardless of which, outside of a hospital environment, the assistance to these transformations by another witch or wizard must, by any moral standard, be voluntary.” The woman gave a curt nod Amos’ way. “My dear, you were fortunate enough by any measure to find this man to be willing to take on your burden, and he a distant relative. You should count yourself lucky. Any other werewolf in your position would be overjoyed at the mere prospect of employment!”

“ Shame on you,” Amos hissed, the slick, knifelike sound cutting through the room. Every head turned towards him. He bowed his head, collecting himself, but not before Luca caught the unbridled rage which glinted darkly behind his eyes. When he lifted his face again, it was to Judge Mikoto, and his expression was a picture of coolness.

“Judge Mikoto, would you permit me to take the floor?”

“...highly unorthodox,” Pucillo began, but was silenced by Mikoto’s pointed look.

“You may.”

Amos stepped down off the benches, coming to stand with his shoulder to Luca at another of the star’s points. His eyes bored into Pucillo’s back as she took her place off the floor.

“The Battle of Hogwarts freed us from He Who Must Not Be Named barely three months past.” His stern voice fell in waves across the near empty chamber. “Even Stateside, we felt the effects of it. The Death Eaters fell apart. MACUSA filled the cells of Roanoke with their deserters, and New York finally felt safe again.”

Amos’ voice shook, and though Luca could not see his face, her heart hammered in sympathy.

“At a great cost. Many young witches and wizards, along with their professors, gave their lives at Hogwarts in order to assure this peace. Many more were injured or worse.”

Here, he waved a hand back at Luca, and she felt herself stiffen, trying to straighten as all eyes fell on her once more - except for Amos. His eyes were far off, on some fixed point just above her shoulder.

“Luca’s friend, Torie Fishman, was among them. A young witch, born of a No-Maj family, Ms. Fishman stayed with her friends and classmates when Hogwarts was surrounded. We know now that Ms. Fishman was among many to be maimed by the known werewolf and cohort to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Fenrir Greyback.”

He took a shuddering breath, his voice dipping down. Torie’s face came floating to the front of Luca’s mind, and she felt her throat tighten with the salt of rising tears.

“Ms. Fishman went home after the battle. She… kept the source of her injuries secret. Perhaps she feared prejudice. Regardless. The next full moon came, and Ms. Fishman transformed, unaided by the Wolfsbane potion, attacking her own family and… and Luca. Luca, alone, survived the attack. And she bears the effects of that night still.”

Luca’s lips quavered. She stared at the back of Amos’ head. She could not bring herself to look back at Pucillo, Zwerling, or Mikoto, whose eyes she could feel straying to her as much as they stared down Amos. She could not stand to know whether pity, contempt, or disinterest waited for her there.

“No child should ever have to suffer what Torie Fishman or Luca Torelli has suffered.” Amos’ hands were balled into fists at his side, and his voice carried loudly throughout the chamber. “Their loss has earned us a hard-won peace amongst wizardkind, and their story reminds us that magical and No-Maj alike have suffered to bring us this.”

Pucillo scoffed, her heart-shaped face turned ashen with contempt. Amos’ head whipped around to stare her down, broiling with barely contained energy.

“President Letcher herself stood before MACUSA and the wizarding community and said that in light of the tragedy at Hogwarts, the States would stand firm with the Ministry, and provide any assistance we can to those who need it.”

Here he turned to Judge Mikoto, stern. “Or did those words mean nothing? Here before you stands a young woman directly affected by the Battle of Hogwarts, a No-Maj seeking asylum at Ilvermorny, the finest school for witchcraft and wizardry. And you deny her your aid.”

“We deny nothing,” Pucillo quipped, all the honey drained from her voice. “The assistance that the Ministry and the MACUSA - and  you , Mr. Kokernak - have provided this girl in light of her tragedy was more than sufficient, and perfectly in line with President Letcher’s mission. She is lucky to have gotten this far. You ask too much.”

“What you’ve given is a wage-less job dusting shelves, in the home of a stranger, and a promise to never speak to her parents again.” Amos’ voice was as sharp as a whip. “I ask too little.”

Pucillo opened her mouth, but only the sound of clapping emanated throughout the room. All turned to see that the salt-and-pepper haired woman was on her feet, her soft grey eyes glowing down at Amos, as she gave a slow, heartfelt clap.

“Professor Wemple?” Judge Mikoto looked from the woman and back to Amos, her face framed by a grimace.

“Well said, young man.” Without asking, Wemple strode down from her corner of the benches to stand on the floor with Amos. The judge did not appear happy about this, but aired no complaints. “Do you remember me, Mr. Kokernak?”

Amos looked taken aback. “Yes, Professor.”

“Good. Because I must admit at first I did not remember you. It must be many years since I’ve had you in my class.”

“Well over a decade.”

“Excuse me,” Pucillo cut in shrilly, taking a step closer to the floor, her teeth practically bared in her fury. “But this is hardly the time - “

“And you, Cecily. I remember you as well. I still think you could have been a very talented herbologist, had you spent less time skipping classes with your friends.”

Pucillo had the good grace to blush. It matched her blouse very prettily. With her hands behind her back, Professor Wemple began to pace the floor, walking along the core of the five-pointed star.

“Neither of you have attended Ilvermorny in the last decade, as Mr. Kokernak stated. It seems you have a very different concept of the school’s abilities since graduating from it, Ms. Cecily. How fortunate that I should be here.”

Here, Wemple paused and shot Luca a wink. Luca blinked back, baffled.

“I can personally speak to our supply of wolfsbane, moonstone, and flabbergasted leeches, among other ingredients stored by Professor Balakov and myself explicitly for the purpose of educating our advanced potions and herbology students in the complex process of brewing Wolfsbane Potion. It seems to me, in fact, that the staff at Ilvermorny are far better supplied and far better equipped to be brewing and administering such a complex potion than our Mr. Kokernak here. No offense, Amos.”

“None taken.”

“As for the matter of containment, Ilvermorny is vast. You, Cecily, I believe know that better than most.” Luca caught both Zwerling and Judge Mikoto sending Pucillo sidelong glances. Pucillo’s whole face had turned an angry shade of pink, and her eyes watched Wemple pace about the room darkly. “There are dungeons,” Wemple pressed on, “and besides which, the school is secluded by nature. It would be no great challenge to locate a place where Ms. Torelli could transform safely.”

“ You are missing the point ,” Pucillo hissed. “She is a No-Maj!”

“A couple arguments ago, she was a dangerous werewolf.” Wemple smirked. “Or has that become less convenient for you now?”

“Professor, we don’t pretend to ignore the complexities of this situation,” Zwerling butted in, speaking for the first time since leaving the floor. “Mrs. Pucillo is correct. Besides the obvious dangers of having a werewolf attending Ilvermorny, Ms. Torelli is also a No-Maj. By any rights, she should have no knowledge of the school’s existence. MACUSA and the Ministry have already broken with the International Statute of Secrecy by not - “

Zwerling cut off abruptly, puckering in his lips as though it took an actual, physical effort to keep the words from tumbling out. Luca could feel the blood slowly drain from her face.

“What?” Amos spat. “Imprisoning her?”

Zwerling blanched. “No, of course - “

“Just obliviating her, perhaps?”

Flashes of St. Mungo’s spiraled through Luca’s mind - stark white walls and the press of hard tile against her skin, softened by a full moon’s glow - broken only by glimpsing the look on Amos’ face. He had gone white with rage, and she could almost feel the energy crackling off him, powerful enough that she felt to touch him at that moment would cause an electric shock.

“Oh, come now Kokernak,” Pucillo chided, her brows furrowed with contention. “Not to consider these options would be foolish, and with Rapport’s Law scarcely forty years behind us!”

“Mrs. Pucillo, you simply cannot compare Ms. Torelli’s case to Twelvetrees,” Wemple snapped.

“If her story is to be believed, this simply would not have happened had the Ministry instated a law such as Rapport’s!” With every breath, Pucillo’s voice grew more shrill. “This young witch should have never been allowed to befriend this girl - “

“That is quite enough.” Judge Mikoto’s voice, quiet and sharp, cut through the room. Luca was staring down at her creepers. She could feel tears stinging at the backs of her eyes, and wiped at them fervently, willing her hands to grow still.

“The fact of the matter is…” Every head turned to look on Professor Wemple, who shook her head, furrowed eyes looking up from the ground to fall on Luca. “Ilvermorny is not a government run institution. Should Headmaster Fontaine look on Ms. Torelli’s case favorably, MACUSA would have no right to interfere with her admission. However .”

Pucillo, Zwerling, and Judge Mikoto all looked of a mind to argue this point with the professor, but Wemple stared them down one after the other before speaking again.

“There is one person on this matter who we have yet to hear from.”

She turned to Luca. Her grey eyes were as steady as an overcast sky, looking down on her softly.

“Ms. Torelli, it seems you are rather desperate to seek admission to Ilvermorny, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I would love nothing more than as to hear why.”

Professor Wemple took a step back, onto the benches surrounding the chamber. She spread her hands out to either side.

“You have the floor.”

There was a beat of terse silence, where the only noise Luca could hear was her own heart hammering inside her chest. Amos glanced from her to Wemple, before hurrying to step back onto the benches himself. With a glare that pierced through the heart of Luca, Pucillo reluctantly followed suit, sulking, and Zwerling was not far behind.

Luca shot a look at Judge Mikoto. She merely nodded her assent, looking much wearier than Luca had found her upon entering the hearing. Luca swallowed.

She had been obsessing over Ilvermorny ever since Sol first told her about it, begging him and Amos for every scrap of information they would give about the school. But now, confronted with a courtroom of witches and wizards - the wizardkind she was now so desperate to join - she felt her reason sounded naive. How could she convince them, when they already seemed so eager to discredit her?

“I just…” Her voice came out as a squeak. She cleared her throat. “I can’t…”

For the first time, Luca forced herself to meet the eyes of everyone in the room. Amos, with his gentle face transformed by a fidgeting energy. Zwerling, nervous yet detached. Mikoto, calm and unreadable. Pucillo, her expression still bridling with barely contained contempt. And Professor Wemple, her eyes open and genuinely curious. What did they want from her?

Utility? She was only fifteen, and with no talent for magic.

Some sort of compensation? Luca had nothing to give them.

It occurred to her that the only thing she had to give was her honesty.

Luca let her eyes linger on Pucillo.

“Maybe you’re right.”

Pucillo looked taken aback, the indignant rage shocked right out of her.

“Maybe, if Torie had never been allowed to be my friend, none of this would have happened.”

Luca sucked on her bottom lip, preparing herself to continue, but she could no longer keep the swell of tears from spilling over and they did so freely now, trickling down her nose.

“But it did,” she sobbed, fighting to talk past the salty lump in her throat. “And now I’ve lost everything. My mum. My dad. My school. I’ll never get the chance to go to university. I’ll never… get a chance to settle down, not really. Will I?”

Luca looked all around the room, finding now for the first time that it was the adults who refused to meet her eye.

“I’m not human anymore. I can’t very well tell anyone that, not a non-magical person certainly. And you,” she almost laughed, waving around the room slowly. “You don’t want me. Not anymore than I want me.”

She wiped the tears from her face, swallowing hard, her tears like the taste of sweat on her tongue. She took a deep breath.

“I didn’t ask to be this way. It happened to me. Let me make something out of this. I can’t… I can’t believe that any of this was worth anything if I must sit in a shitty little gift shop, nodding silently at No-Majs for the rest of my life!”

Her voice rang throughout the room, and she took a sharp breath, not intending to have spoken sharply. Her eyes sought out Wemple, standing there in the gloom and austerity of this closet of a courtroom, like a tall stone on the bluffs before a raging sea.

“There has to be more than this.”

Silence. The quiet of the room pressed back on Luca’s ears until they began to ring. Judge Mikoto cleared her throat, catching everyone’s attention.

“As you say, Professor Wemple, Ilvermorny is not a government institution. MACUSA has no authority over which students it chooses to admit or reject. However, it is MACUSA’s duty to enforce the International Statute of Secrecy, for the good of all in the magical community.”

Luca felt her heart drop into her stomach.

“But I do not see why this should stop Ms. Torelli from attending Ilvermorny, should she be accepted, provided that she still comply with the government check-ins mandated by MACUSA and the Ministry upon her arrival to the States.”

Luca let out a breath she did not realize she had been holding. A quick look over at Amos told her that he had starving himself for air as well. He practically sagged, glowing with relief.

“Though, your testimony does bring an additional concern to mind, Ms. Torelli.”

She turned to face Judge Mikoto, her heart quickening with fear once more. What else?

“You were set to graduate secondary school in a year or two, isn’t that correct?”

Luca swallowed. “It is.”

“Ilvermorny’s youngest students typically are admitted around the age of eleven, or twelve.” Mikoto cocked her head to one side, very birdlike, as she considered Luca. “Though it isn’t for us here to decide, I must inform you that this, too, would make your admittance… very unorthodox.”

“ Precisely ,” Pucillo hissed, as though all that hot air had been coiled inside her chest, just waiting to come out.

“Why not an independent study?”

All eyes turned to Professor Wemple once more. Her weathered, older eyes were crinkled with amusement. She raised a brow at the courtroom, almost in challenge. “It has been done before.”

“Who would take her!” Pucillo snapped, her patience clearly gone.

Luca and Professor Wemple locked eyes, and Luca found a joviality there for her that did not quite match the situation. As if this was all an inside joke shared between the two of them.

“I volunteer.”

Chapter Text

The letter rested atop what few other possessions Luca could call her own. By far, she realized, it was the most valuable thing amongst them.

Her sweaters, wool skirt, and second-hand jeans were all squashed under the new set of robes Amos had provided her, straight out of the shop. She ran her fingers over the Ilvermorny crest stitched onto the breast and felt a thrill rush through her. Stuffed into a corner were her pile of school books, straight out of the shop. Tucked under the cover of The Standard Book of Spells was the wad of cash she had saved over the summer. Today had been her last day.

Not that she would be needing normal “No-Maj” money. Not where she was going.

Luca smoothed out the letter, her eyes darting over the typewritten letters for the thousandth time.

“Dear Luca Torelli,” she whispered aloud. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…”

The letter was institutional in every regard, hinting nothing at the weeks of meetings and talks with people from Ilvermorny and MACUSA, hammering out all the little details. She had seen more of Carson Zwerling than she had ever cared to that month, while Amos entertained him over coffee in their little apartment. He had been relaying developments between his department and Headmaster Fontaine frequently, down to the nitty-gritty: what classes she would be attending, which ones she would not, how much would be expected of her, academically. Even with all this preparation, Luca still wasn’t sure what to expect.

She looked down on the dog-eared copy of Les Mis beside her suitcase. She had snatched it out of a free bin beside the Strand bookstore back in July. She had been on her second read-through when she got her acceptance letter. Since then, Luca had been pouring over the books Amos had fetched from the warehouse, giddy as a schoolboy. She couldn’t make head or tail of A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration , or any of the books describing spellwork. She peppered Amos with questions over breakfast, lunch, or dinner, frowning over his patient explanations. Not only was it hard to wrap her head around, but to be frank, the books were dull and dry. Not at all what Luca had expected from books about magic.

The only one that really interested her was Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander. She had the entry on werewolves earmarked, though she still found it fairly… troubling.

Luca hugged her copy of Les Mis to her chest. It just didn’t belong with these new books. As much as she wanted to finish her read through, she worried the book would single her out for a No-Maj. Besides, once she got to Ilvermorny, she probably wouldn’t have any time for pleasure reading.

The door snicked open at her back. Luca whirled around to find Amos in the doorway, a nervous smile quirking his lips.

“Ready?”

Luca dropped the book back onto the mattress, snapping the lid to her suitcase closed. It weighed heavy in her hand as she turned back to face him.

“Ready.”

Amos reached out to take the suitcase from Luca and lead the way out of the apartment. She lingered in the doorway, drinking it in for a moment. She wondered whether she would miss this place. It wasn’t home. But she felt safe here now, nestled between the couch cushions, or watching Amos wave his wand around the kitchen.

“Forget something?”

Luca shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

She pulled the door closed, and with a wave of his wand, Amos locked the bolt after them.

There was a breeze as Amos and Luca left Stick Stone and Bone behind, cutting through the stifling summer air. He led the way onward, winding their way out of Greenwich and towards the East side.

“We’re taking the subway to the station,” Amos explained. Luca had to trot to keep pace with his long legs. She tried to sneak a glimpse at him as they raced onward. He had that look on his face Luca had once thought meant he was pissed at her. Now she was more inclined to think that he was anxious about something. He had flipped from ecstatic exhilaration to sulking dread frequently throughout her acceptance process. Luca had never expected him to become so invested.

“You packed the Wolfsbane, yes?” Amos quipped, motioning for Luca to follow as he jaywalked across an avenue.

“Yeah.” Luca swallowed thickly. She had taken her first dosage for the month the night before. The next full moon was in only six days. And it was going to be a lunar eclipse.

“It should last you through the rest of the week.”

Luca nodded. They had already been over this. Multiple times. She never bothered to cut him off. She could tell that he was worried. She was too.

Professor Wemple and Madam Plumbtree of the Ilvermorny hospital bay had volunteered to assist with the next transformation, or so Zwerling had claimed on his last visit. Preparations were being made, but still, Luca did not know what to expect.

Luca followed Amos down the steps to the Uptown 6 train station. Walking underground felt like ducking one’s head beneath a stagnant, tepid tide. It had been a scorching summer, and New York City still had not seen the first of fall. The two of them stood awkwardly wiping the sweat from their brows as pedestrians jostled around them, angling for an open spot on the platform.

Luca and Amos stood nearly nose to nose on the train ride up, packed into the car like sardines. Amos had one hand on her suitcase and the other on her shoulder, steadying her as the train braked at stations. Somehow, he never lost his balance as the car shifted and jolted. Luca wasn’t going to miss public transportation in Manhattan, that much she felt for certain.

Nearly the entire car emptied onto the 42nd Street stop. Amos took a firm hold on Luca’s wrist, guiding her through the press. The station was needlessly disorienting, she felt, spying at least a handful of different exits that all seemed to be marked the same. Commuters were pouring up from a dozen other platforms, coming from train lines Luca did not even recognize.

As they made their way staggeringly towards the turnstiles, Luca scanned the faces around her. Were they all No-Majs? Or were some of them witches and wizards, here to see their kids off to school as well? It unnerved her that after months in this new world of theirs, Luca could still not tell the difference.

Luca followed Amos up a set of steep marble steps, teeming with rushed commuters. She was out of breath when they reached the top. Her mouth hung open as she looked up from her feet.

It was like they had been transported back in time. A warm glow hung about the cream-tiled walls, trimmed with gold. Someone bumped up against her back as she stood there agape.

“This way,” Amos said with a cheeky smile, motioning Luca forward. She hovered close by his side, letting her eyes wander as they scuttled with the press of people. The halls of Grand Central Station seemed to her like gilded subway tunnels.

The two turned a corner onto a wide, open chamber. At the center of the room was a circular help desk, with a vintage gold clock nestled on its roof. Luca craned her neck up.

The high, lofted ceilings were painted a soft aquamarine. Soft white stars, connected in the shapes of the constellations, covered the domed arches. Soft afternoon light poured in from the paned glass window at the other end of the room.

“Pretty cool, right?”

Luca turned to Amos, grinning stupidly up at the painted ceiling. His pointed finger traced the path of the constellations lazily through the air.

“Yeah,” Luca nodded. “It’s pretty.”

Amos glanced at her, brow furrowed. Then his eyes lifted. “Oh. You can’t see…?”

Luca frowned at him, shaking her head.

“Oh yes!” Amos put down her bag, sticking his hands into his jacket pockets and rummaging around. “I was going to give you these at the station, but, well…”

Shrugging, Amos pulled out a ratty glasses case and handed it to her. Baffled, Luca popped it open. A pair of gold, wire-rimmed sat inside.

“Specs?” She shook her head at him. “But I don’t…”

“They’re your new reading glasses ,” he enthused, with a conspiratorial wink. He glanced around the bustling station, as though afraid a No-Maj might overhear. “Go on,” he whispered, nudging her. “Try them on.”

Wary, Luca pushed the glasses on her face. For a moment, her vision warped subtly, before settling back into place. She blinked. The lenses seemed like they were made of plain, clear glass.

Amos jerked a finger up towards the ceiling. She glanced up.

Her jaw dropped. The ceiling was moving . The pointed white stars were slowly flowing across the surface of the domes like the night sky glimpsed through a kaleidoscope. The constellations glowed softly, thin membranes of mist transforming them from a stagnant collection of dots and lines into animated figures. A ghostly Leo constellation pawed at a crab like a kitten with a toy. The Taurus constellation was grazing on stars in the northern corner of the station.

Luca didn’t feel the smile on her face until she turned to Amos and saw it mirrored on his. She touched at the glasses, amazed. Amos leaned in close to mutter an explanation under his breath.

“I put a charm on them. So you can see passed the Anti-No-Maj spells.”

Luca slid the glasses off her nose, stripping her eyes of the lively, sea green sky above.

“How… how many things…?” She struggled for the right words.

Amos shook his head. “You shouldn’t need them all the time. The grounds of Ilvermorny are cloaked. But once you’re inside the school, you won’t have to wear them often.” He tapped her arm gently, gesturing for them to press on. “Leave them on for now.”

They made their way through the concourse to a pair of marble arches set above alike marble stairs to the lower concourse. They filed out onto a bustling floor lined with food stalls all around the walls. At the center of the room, people gathered beneath a lowered ceiling at chrome tables to eat their food. Nestled in between the shops were narrow arches, each leading to a different numbered train track.

“Don’t we need to get our ticket?”

Amos chuckled. “No, hon. Your acceptance letter is your ticket.”

“How do you know what track we’re on?” Luca had seen a dozen different boards and cathode ray monitors announcing departures as they’d crossed the concourse above.

“Always the same one,” he replied. “Track 127.”

Luca mashed her lips together, falling in behind Amos silently as they skirted about the edge of the busy room. Grand Central Station was much nicer than she had been expecting, for New York City. It reminded her of a bit of Paddington Station. The memory flooded her for an instant, clinging on to her dad’s leg as they walked along the edge of the platform. Tripping and falling on her knees. Luca tried to rip herself from the remembering, but it was too late.

What were her parents doing, right now? Were they still looking for her? Had they already given up hope?

What would they think if they knew she was going to a school for witchcraft and wizardry?

“This way.”

Luca snapped out of it, looking up in time as Amos lead them through an arch that was labeled “125” and “126” on either side. She frowned.

“This isn’t track 127.”

“There is no track 127,” Amos admitted, pitching his voice low as they passed a janitor milling about the trash bins on the platform. “Officially.”

“Then…?”

Amos put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a pat. “You’ll see.”

Luca followed him down the platform. A still train sat on the lefthand track, its cabins dark. The doors were sealed shut. They walked passed all of them, continuing on to the very end of the platform, before stopping in front of the last tiled column.

“Amos…?”

Amos glanced over his shoulder to see whether the janitor was looking before whipping his wand out of his pocket. He held it out in front of him, letting the tip rest against the column. He began to trace a shape across the tile that Luca could not follow, almost like a sigil. When he finished, he stepped back. She blinked, waiting.

“Was something supposed to happen?”

“Push on it.”

Luca sent him a wry look.

“Go on.”

Shaking her head, Luca stepped forward, stretching out her hand. She placed her palm flat against the column. There was no give. Just hard, cold tile.

“Harder.”

Huffing, Luca gave it a little shove. The tile bowed beneath her touch. Luca yelped, recoiling, afraid that the column was shattering. The tiles sunk in, roughly in the shape of a circled star. Then the column split apart, the dusty concrete bricks shuffling aside.

On the other side of the narrow gap, the platform continued. It glowed with the sunshine that poured in from the domed, glass skylight above. It was packed with boys and girls in long blue robes, their voices clamoring to be heard over one another.

And on the left-hand track, an old steam train, its sleek wood siding painted black, blue, and gold.

“Quickly,” Amos urged, prodding her through the entrance. Luca stepped forward gingerly, eyeing the now split column. She made a dash through, afraid it would close up around her as she crossed. As Amos stepped through behind her, she turned to see the bricks shuffling back into place, closing off the dim Grand Central tracks.

“Welcome to the Ilvermorny Express.”

Luca shrank into herself. The platform bustled with students ferrying carts of luggage up to the train doors, cages of ravens and a few owls tucked under their arms. In all her time working at Stick Stone and Bone, she had never seen so many witches and wizards gathered in one place.

Amos put a hand on the small of her back, guiding her forward. “Let’s get you situated.”

A hard lump sat in her throat. She glanced around at the other kids milling about the train doors, but no one batted an eye her way. How would they look at her, if they knew?

Amos slowed to a stop. He put her suitcase down and turned to her with a wan smile. “I have something else for you,” he said sheepishly.

Luca shook her head. “Amos, you don’t…”

He had stuck a hand into his coat pocket as she began objection, and she stared wide-eyed as his entire arm disappeared into the pocket, elbow-deep. He came back up with bunch of paperback books clutched in one hand. She blinked at him, dumbfounded.

“I know you might get busy with your studies,” he explained, “but I know how much you love that No-Maj bookstore, so I…” He trailed off, passing the books over. Luca took them gingerly. They were mass paperback copies of Great Expectations , Anna Karenina , and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland .

She glanced up at him, slacked-jawed. “Amos…”

“The lady at the bookstore recommended them. I hope they’re good?” His face was flushed pink. “I told her you liked that French one, Les …”

“Luca!”

They both turned. Sol and his friends stood further down the platform, waving at her.

She looked back to Amos. In an instant, she was drowned in panic and regret. How could this be what she had wanted? To fling herself into the midst of strangers, who didn’t even want her? Away from the only person to have shown her some measure of kindness since she had turned?

He gave her a small smile. “You had better go. Get a seat with your friends.”

Luca nodded numbly, hesitating. His eyes were tinged with sadness.

“I’ll write, if you want me to,” he promised.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thank you. I would.”

“Hey Luca!”

Luca ducked around Amos to throw Sol a frantic wave.

“If you need anything…” Amos trailed off.

Luca nodded, mashing her lips together. She stepped up to him, throwing her arms around his waist. He stood there stock-still in the embrace for a moment, before wrapping his arms around her. She barely came up to his chin. She could feel his stubble scratching against her hair.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice tight.

She felt his arms squeeze her a little tighter, before pulling away. She could have sworn there was a tear in his eye. She blinked, and it was gone. Amos nodded in Sol’s direction with a strained smile. “Go.”

Luca nodded. She smiled as she picked up her suitcase and sprinted down the platform, looking back to throw him a little wave.

Sol beamed as she ran to meet him. “I thought I might see you here.”

“You thought right.” They shared a conspiratorial smirk.

Laverne thumped Sol on the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s try and grab a table.”

The boys rushed the nearest door, wheeling trunks behind them. Luca trailed after, trying to make herself smaller in the bustle of ecstatic students.

“You fit all your school stuff in that?”

Luca turned to see Sol nodding down at the suitcase clutched in her hand.

“Amos put some sort of… charm on it,” she muttered under her breath. “It’s bigger on the inside.”

“That’s not a charm,” Jake admonished, apparently having overheard. “That’s a transfiguration spell. Are you slow?”

“Don’t be an ass,” Sol snapped.

Jake let out a bark of a laugh, and the other boys cooed reproachfully.

“Wow,” Jake whistled as they stepped up onto the train one after the other. “Are you sweet on her or what?”

Sol went red straight to the roots of his hair. Luca glared at the boys.

“At least he knows how to talk to a girl without making a fool of himself.”

Laverne cackled, slapping Jake on the arm. They shuffled forward down the train aisle, passed navy leather seats already teeming with kids. Jake smirked at Luca, but there was a dark glint in his eye.

“Who would want to talk to you?” he sneered.

Luca rolled her eyes. Sol stared at his feet, shuffling across the cream colored carpet, not meeting her eye. She felt a lump of salt sink into her throat. Already, this was promising to be a long train ride.

They group of them idled, waiting for the students ahead of them to get their trunks tucked into storage.

“Did you get that letter?” A small freckled boy hissed loudly at his friend as Luca walked by.

“Yeah, but my mom got to it before I could,” the girl across from him whined. “What did it say?”

“Didn’t your mom tell you?”

“She just told me that if it’s in any of my classes, I’m supposed to write to her right away. She says she’ll write to the headmaster and have my schedule changed.”

“I can’t believe they would even allow a thing like that inside Ilvermorny…”

The girl glanced up, catching Luca staring.

“Luca,” Sol muttered behind her. She jolted forward, the line having moved forward when she wasn’t looking. Her heart had seized in her chest. As she continued down the aisle, Luca heard more talk of a “letter”. And the more she listened, the more she felt that what was talked about wasn’t a letter of acceptance.

She followed Sol’s friends from car to car until they found two sets of four seats each situated across a cafe table. Luca took a seat beside another student who had already claimed the window, putting her suitcase down on her lap. Her palms were thick with sweat. Sol sat across from her, his eyes staring blankly out the train window.

“Hey, Jake!”

Luca snapped her head up, spotting a lanky Indian boy squeezing around the students still in the aisle to make his way towards their group. Jake leapt to his feet, grinning as he reached out to clasp the boy’s hand.

“Hey, Kamil! How’s it hanging?”

“Same as ever. You get that letter?”

“Of course.”

Kamil draped himself across Luca’s chair, his forearms brushing against the top of her head. She leaned away, her heart hammering in her throat.

“So who do you think it is?”

“Fuck if I know,” Jake chuckled.

Students glared at Kamil as they struggled to squeeze passed him to find their own seats.

“It’s not gonna be on the train,” Laverne chided. “C’mon.”

“C’mon, what? How else do you get to Ilvermorny?”

“A werewolf, on a train? That’d be fucking crazy!”

A shock shot through Luca. She glanced up, and she and Sol locked panicked eyes.

“The whole thing is fucking crazy.” Jake shook his head, rubbing at his chin as if there were some sort of stubble there. “Where do you get the nerve, right?”

“It’s insane,” Kamil nodded. “I thought we were still containing werewolves.”

“I bet it’s a first year,” Laverne said.

Luca gripped the handle on her suitcase tightly, tears pricking her eyes, her knuckles turning white.

“Pssh, no way.” Kamil scoffed at him. “How would a first-year even get bitten?”

“How does anyone get bitten?” Byron mused.

Smirking, Jake glanced Luca’s way. His eyes settled on her, the corners of his lips folding down. She couldn’t feel the breath in her lungs. Something clicked behind his eyes. A cunning that made Luca flinch.

“Luca,” Jake said lightly. “Where did you say you were from again?”

All their eyes were turned on her. Luca looked to Sol, but his eyes were in his lap.

She swallowed. “Linton.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s… in Sulley. In England.”

“Right. And, what year did you say you were again?”

Luca scowled at him. “I didn’t, actually.”

Laverne glanced between her and Jake, his brows furrowed. Byron looked just as lost. Jake’s face was cool and his gaze steady.

“Sol tells me you’re a squib.” He said it loud enough that the other students nearby all slowed to stare. Luca felt her face go hot.

Sol slunk down in his seat, his shoulders hunched.

“Is that really true?”

Luca met Jake’s eye, her lips twisted together. She could feel the world shrinking around her, all the warmth sucked from the air.

The lie was on her lips, but she could not find her voice.

“Oh my god.” Luca looked to find Laverne staring at her, horrified. “It’s you.”

Every eye in the vicinity was on her. Luca shook her head fervently, struggling to clear her throat.

“No - ”

“ She’s the werewolf?” Kamil recoiled stepping away from her seat. “Oh my god.”

“No,” Luca argued weakly, her eyes hot with tears.

“Holy fuck,” Byron hissed. “Sol, did you know? ”

Sol was already shaking his head, staring across the table with guarded eyes. “No. I had no idea.”

Luca felt tears burst down her cheeks. She felt eyes on her from all around. The car had devolved into a cloud of whispers and harsh exclamations. To her right, the student who had been resting his head against the window now gaped at her openly in wide-eyed terror.

“That’s not…”

“We don’t want you here,” Jake leveled at her. “You don’t belong in a school. You belong in a dungeon.”

“Jesus Christ,” Kamil hissed, his eyes looking around at the other shocked students. “How are you even allowed to be here?”

Luca just shook her head, wiping at her face furiously.

“Please,” the boy next to her squeaked. He was as pale as a sheet. “Don’t hurt me.”

“You can’t be here.” Laverne got to his feet, flailing his arm out to the aisle as if she were some dog. “Get out.”

Luca gaped at him, open-mouthed. Everywhere she looked, kids were staring, blocking up the aisle, standing on tip-toe to get a look at her.

“Oh my god…” she heard one voice carry.

“Who let her on the train?”

“Who let her on the platform ?”

“But…” Luca stammered, tears clamming up her throat.

“I don’t care where you go,” Laverne simmered. “Get the fuck away from me.”

Luca looked to Sol, desperate. He only shook his head, refusing to meet her eye. She felt her heart shrink down to the size of a cherry pit.

“Come sit with us.”

Every head in the train car turned as one. Luca blinked, standing slowly to see who had spoken. Several seats down, Luca saw the top of a student’s head and a small hand waving.

“You can sit with us,” the voice called. The face of a young Korean girl with a pixie cut peeked around the edge of her seat.

“Don’t let her sit with the First Years!” someone called out.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, kid.”

“Excuse you,” the girl snapped, shooting a look at the surrounding onlookers. “Don’t be rude.” She turned back to Luca, waving her over with a nervous smile.

Luca glanced back at Sol, still ignoring her. Laverne and Byron bristled with anger. The young boy beside her had pressed himself nearly flush with the train window. She plucked up her suitcase, edging back into the aisle. The students standing before her parted like a tide against rock, their faces filled with disgust and fear.

Jake shoved her from behind. “Get packing, mongrel,” he snarled, leering at her.

Luca’s arms shook, barely restraining herself from charging at him. Everyone was still looking at her. What would she even do next? Scold him?

There was a crackle and pop of static. Everyone in the car jumped. The intercom screeched on.

“Ladies and gentlemen, at this time please take your seats and do not linger in the aisles as students are still trying to board. Thank you.”

The click of the P.A. seemed to snap the students out of their reverie. They rushed forward, erupting into alarmed chatter. As Luca sidled her way back through the car, the kids who passed her either threw themselves back or shoulder-checked her as they went by. There was no in between.

Luca paused at the table the waving girl stood at. Another boy sat across from her, his hands clasped to his close-shaven head as he peered up at her.

“You can sit next to me,” the girl chirped, waving at the seat.

Luca’s throat was still clamped closed with unshed tears, but she managed a muttered thank you as she stowed her suitcase under the seat. As Luca settled down, she found that the girl sat almost two heads shorter than her. Beaming, she stuck a hand out to Luca.

“I’m Sun,” she explained as they shook. She jerked a thumb at the African-American boy. “This is Chase.”

Chase gave a half-hearted wave. Luca could tell that he was more than a little stressed out about the situation.

“We’re both First Years,” Sun went on.

“I gathered.”

“Are you… what year are you?”

Luca shrugged, wiping at her nose self-consciously. She could still see students gaping at her in her periphery as they shambled by, some open-mouthed. “I don’t know. Guess I’m a First Year too.”

“Neat!” Sun exclaimed. “And… your accent. Do you mind if I ask… but, are you from here?”

Luca shook her head. “Not originally. No.”

“How come you’re here?”

Luca could already feel her teeth grinding together. Sun seemed like a real sweet girl, but her doe-like eyes drank Luca in with a rabid curiosity that made Luca feel just as uncomfortable as the eyes on the back of her head.

“I moved here to live with my uncle.”

Sun nodded, her face awash with wonder. “Neat,” she breathed.

“Are you really a werewolf?” Luca turned to face Chase. It was the first thing he had said since she had sat down.

She nodded, her eyes cast down. Sun let out an awe-filled breath.

“Wow,” Sun gasped. “That’s… I never… I didn’t think werewolves attended Ilvermorny.”

Luca shrugged, gritting her teeth. “They don’t.”

Sun seemed about to say something, but the train lurched forward an inch. The P.A. overhead hissed to life.

“Students!” the woman over the intercom sang. “Please take your seats. We are preparing for departure.

Sun went to the window, pressing her face up against the glass. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I wonder if I can see my parents from here. Chase, I see your mom!”

Luca glanced over their heads, out through the tinted glass onto the teeming platform. Parents stood on tiptoe, waving frantically at the train as it slumped forward another inch. A few of the students opened up their windows, sticking their heads out to shout goodbye.

As the train at last set into motion, Luca spotted Amos amongst the crowd. He stood out like a gray cloud in an otherwise spotless sky, surrounded by cheering older couples and young children. His face was flat, almost grave. She couldn’t tell whether his eyes found hers as the train rolled away, but he lifted his hand up in goodbye.

Luca imagined Amos taking the subway home, on his own. Cooking dinner just for himself. Opening up the shop the next day, with no one to mind the counter. She had not realized just how… alone Amos was.

Meanwhile, Luca could still feel sly gazes and sharp whispers zipping through the stifling air around her.

What had she done?