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Chapter Text

Albus Severus Potter had always felt he was different.

Ask him why and he couldn't tell you, at least not at first. He wasn't lonely. He had a brother and a sister, a whole litany of cousins, aunts and uncles, and more besides. His house was never quiet and there was always something going on. It was enough to drive anyone to distraction.

But despite that, the feeling persisted that something was—off. Off about him. He didn't realise at first. Not for a long time, in fact. Only when his little sister, two years his junior, began to display accidental magic, did something hard and cold that he identified as panic stick in his chest for the first time. Because Albus had never done anything. He hadn't lit a small fire or made something levitate, or animated a toy and set it to march about the living room, as Lily had done.

And Albus wasn't the only one to notice; two months before his eleventh birthday was the third occasion that nine-year-old Lily's magic showed itself in some grandiose way. As the family gathered around to ooh and ahh, watching the magazines on the table flip and turn their own pages, Albus, grimacing, turned his face away—

Meeting his dad's evaluating gaze instantly. He froze. Harry's head twitched like he considered briefly pretending to have not been looking, but in the end they simply stared at each other, something assessing in each of their expressions.

He wasn't surprised when, later, Harry asked for a private word with Albus, and the two of them went to sit in the family car; the only place they might find privacy in their madhouse. He spotted his mum standing by the window overlooking the driveway, arms crossed, anxiety written into her features. She only went away when his Uncle Ron pulled her away, arm around her shoulders.

It wasn't just his dad who had noticed.

The car, a Honda CR-V in pale gold, was rarely, if ever, actually driven anywhere, and he was pretty sure that his parents kept it only because Aunt Hermione pestered them to. Maybe she knew what Albus was before anyone else, and knew they would need it.

The seats had an ugly pattern and were uncomfortable in the heat. It had a thing for music in the dashboard that his Granddad Weasley once identified as a dape teck, and that Aunt Hermione re-identified as a tape deck later on. They didn't have any tapes to play in it though. And even though his knowledge about the muggle world was limited, he knew that it was considered to be extremely old. 1999. His parents never thought to upgrade.

Staring out at the driveway, neither of them said anything at first. Albus was determinedly thinking about anything else. He couldn't even think the word.

Then Harry said, "Al, you know you can say anything to me," and somehow, as if by enchantment, the floodgates opened.

"I've never done anything magic," he whispered hoarsely. "Not anything, ever."

Father and son were as uncomfortable as each other. Harry, grimacing, rested a hand atop Albus' head, but he didn't seem to know what to say to him. How was he meant to; what did the Wizarding world offer to people who veered from the norm? Despised caretaker of Hogwarts? That was all Albus could call to mind.

Heart hammering, he tried to formulate a follow-up thought as his dad's fingers ruffled the hair on the crown of his head restlessly.

"I think I'm—"

"Al, I—"

"I don't think I can do magic."

The car, already baking in the summer heat, became an airless vacuum.

"You don't know that," Harry said. "It isn't your birthday yet, is it? Your letter still isn't due to arrive."

But it won't, he thought. That feeling of off-ness he had always felt, he knew instinctively, told him that it wouldn't. He couldn't say the word outloud, couldn't even think it, but he felt that electric connection all the same. That spark of two things being pulled together.

"I mean, if you are—If you are a—a squib," Harry said, stumbling over his own tongue, and Albus slammed his eyes shut, "then you know it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me and it won't matter to any of your family."

But it would. Look at his family, full of world-famous heroes; war heroes, Quidditch heroes, heroes of every stripe, and their rising stars in sports and adventure and derring-do. His siblings and cousins surely fated to dazzle and wow. Some of them already were; Teddy Lupin a renowned heartthrob and werewolf rights activist. He made activism sexy, according to Victoire, but Albus thought that was a bit stupid.

And then him. Albus the—

You know.

"At least we know what's wrong with me now," he muttered, eyes still firmly shut.

"There's nothing wrong with you, Al."

"I mean, we're a family of wizards and I can't do magic," he said. "That's a definite aberration."

"You don't even know what that means," Harry said, sounding pre-occupied with something in his head. Probably how he was going to handle his weird son. But Albus did know what it meant.

Aberration: a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected, typically an unwelcome one. He learnt it from Rose the last time he realised that he was different to everyone else. The only one of his siblings not named after their grandparents; the only one who never felt the need to erupt with chants of Gryffindor! and jump around the living room, pretending to slay a basilisk with the man's legendary sword. He'd always felt like he wouldn't be sorted into Gryffindor and now here was the reason why.

"Look, for all we know you're just a late bloomer, okay? You know Neville was as well?"

Albus muttered, "Yeah, his family threw him off a cliff or something, because they thought he was a—like me."

"They did not—" Harry broke off with a rough sigh. "Squib or not, everything's going to be okay, Al. I promise." The hand on his head gave him an extra-hard wobble, and Albus' eyes flew open so he could cut his dad a very scathing look. Harry didn't appear affected by it. "I'll ask Hermione, see what lines of assistance there are... We are going to figure this out, Albus Potter."

But Albus already had it figured out. It was fast becoming his greatest fear that much like the forgotten Honda CR-V, it was his fate to linger at the periphery of the family consciousness, left to gather dust.

So, because his family's home was so chaotic and it's magic all-consuming, and because it was generally agreed upon by the grown ups that Albus was becoming an absolute misery, it was decided that his parents would purchase a second home—a more mundane one, as his mum accidentally said once, and then, flaming red, immediately took back and never said again—where they could make a life that centred around him and his—

"Mundane-ness?" he asked snidely.

Ginny Potter's face crumpled as Harry's hardened.

"That's enough, Albus. Your mum didn't mean it like that." Pinching his eyes shut, Harry breathed in deep through his nose; Albus watched on resentfully. "It's what's best for everyone, but you especially." He forced a smile onto his face. "You'll like the house! Only five minutes away from a lake, where we could take a boat out, beautiful forest, really peaceful—"

"And the bedroom we thought could be yours has a little—a platform thing," Ginny added, smiling too much to compensate for her earlier slip-up. "You always wanted a room with a platform when you were a kid, didn't you?"

Albus stewed silently over this. He didn't like that the best descriptor that his dad could think of for this place was peaceful. His mind went, invariably, to the legendary halls of Hogwarts and the chaos that James always bragged of, as if it were something he was responsible for himself, before he would rein his ego in and his vision would shift to one that included Albus.

Not anymore.

He looked out of the window that his brother's letter had arrived at, that several of his cousins' had arrived at, that his sister's would one day arrive at, but that would always remain empty for him. His anger was beginning to subside into something more quietly dreadful and he knew, instinctively, that this was a fight he had already lost.

He turned to his mum, with her big pleading eyes, and hated that he had her looking that way, because his mum never pleaded for anything. He looked then at his dad, whose expression was open and earnest. All the patience in the world. Yeah. Albus was not winning this fight.

He ground the toe of his shoe into the floor. "Where is this house?" he mumbled.

"We'll take you there," his mum said, brightening a smidge. "You're going to love it."

He wasn't so sure about that, but he couldn't throw his mum's optimism back in her face, not when she was looking so hopeful. She had been quiet and low ever since they first visited the physician and had it confirmed that Albus was—what he was. Not in the sense that she didn't love him anymore, she reminded him of that every single day, but in the sense that she obviously didn't know what to do with him now.

His dad had been a bit better at handling the news. Maybe because he spent the first ten years of his life as a muggle. Maybe because he was a better actor than Mum. But Albus' condition was a blindside to the whole family and this was the first time in weeks that any one of them had looked at him with something resembling real hope.

"I s'pose we can try it out," he said at last, because the thought of having to stay around all the magic he would never get himself, especially as his eleventh birthday approached, made his stomach twist in dread.

And so he was sent, with compassion, into the muggle world.

Their chosen locale was one of the lesser known lakes of the Lake District. One of the really lesser known ones. No one was skipping over Lake Windemere or Lake Buttermere to go to Lake Winsome. Which was kind of a funny metaphor for the way he knew people felt about himself and his siblings. No one at Hogwarts was going to mourn the loss of Albus Potter when James and Lily were right there.

Harry insisted that they make the five hour drive to the Lake District, which made James moan and groan, and Albus sink down into the seat of the Honda before they were even moving, but Lily wasn't upset.

"We can play Red Car, Yellow Car," she chirped from the middle seat, between Albus and James.

Neither of her brothers were very keen on the idea but her parents played along with her games happily enough. And there were a lot of them; every time one game ended she was asking them to play a different one. Each time this happened his parents sounded less and less enthusiastic to participate, but Lily had them nicely entrapped.

Albus slumped miserably in his seat, only moving when road signs signalling the Lake District began to appear. His spine straightened slightly as they passed the brown sign denoting a cultural landmark. A while after that came green signs for Lake Winsome. Lily was still playing her car game and James seemed to have fallen asleep out of sheer boredom, but Albus was suddenly on high-alert.

Some minutes more passed until the tops of tall trees came into view. They were at the lakes. Windemere was the largest and most famous, a tourist trap with ancient roads clogged up by cars and backpackers. They drove through and out of Windemere and were onto big empty roads surrounded by hills and fields.

Sign-posted were more of the lakes, and amongst them was Lake Winsome.

39 miles.

29.

19.

It was upon them before Albus could believe it.

"Do you think we can go out on the lake straight away?" Lily asked, nudging him repeatedly in the side to provoke a response.

She was the most excited of the family for the adventure, and the one who took the news about Albus the best. Whereas his brother and cousins responded with awkward silences or platitudes, conversations suddenly cutting off if Albus walked into a room, Lily seemed genuinely chipper after her initial surprise passed.

Albus thought it was because she was just glad she wasn't the only one not going to Hogwarts. In a couple of years, when that changed, he expected her attitude to shift. But for now she was his most enthusiastic ally.

"Lily asked you a question, Al," his mum said gently from the front passenger seat.

He heaved in a great sigh, batted away Lily's still-nudging hand, and said, "Maybe, Lil. I mean, we don't have a boat."

"We can find one!"

"You mean steal one?"

"There will be no boat theft," Harry said, very quickly and forcefully.

Lily flopped back against her seat, kicking it with her heels restlessly, as the hardest stretch of the journey—the final few minutes—began. Albus kept his eyes glued to the window, feeling his throat dry up as they moved closer by the second—

Until at last a road sign declaring Welcome to Lake Winsome. In slightly smaller letters, below that, Please drive carefully through our town. Then, in the smallest letters of all, at the bottom, Twinned with Meersburg. Two flags, of the United Kingdom and Germany, crossed over each other.

They were driving down a road forested on all sides with tall trees that stretched as far as his eyes could see. Then up ahead, through the trees, came a large, tranquil body of water; Lake Winsome itself.

The car turned left onto the lakeside road. They passed two, three, four houses, scattered without much forethought across the landscape because they had been in situ for a very long time, since before careful placement of houses was something people thought much about. Then his dad was switching on the indicator, starting to slow down, and Albus found himself leaning forwards to get a good look, as they turned and pulled into the driveway.

It was a white plaster house with an old front door and lively garden growing all around, and the word that came into Albus' head, despite the house being fairly big, was quaint.

His parents twisted around in their seats to look at him. Identical smiles; only a little bit strained.

Maybe they had practiced in the mirror this morning.

"We're here, mate," his dad said. "You want to do the honours?"

And his mum dangled the front door key in Albus' face. He took it only after it became obvious that this wasn’t really a question.

Conversely to the twittering nature of the lake and woods, the silence inside was gaping; wide open and hollow, leaving him liable to fall into it. The combined Potter-Weasley household was so alive with noise. The house at Lake Winsome was silent as the grave.

Albus tried to huff, and choked on ambient dust instead.

He walked slowly through the rooms of the ground floor; the living room to the left of the front door, which led out onto a patio and a small garden, which was itself hemmed in by forest. The kitchen was small and hadn't been updated in a few years but Albus didn't care about something like that. Leading on from there was a small dining room.

To get to either of those rooms he had to go through the living room first, which Albus didn't think was very good floor planning, and he told his parents this.

"Yep. Echoing floorboards, bad spacial planning, toilet and sink squeezed in under the stairs," his dad said wryly, wrapping his knuckles against the door to said toilet. "All the trappings of a proper old English cottage."

His family were walking around the place like it was all very exciting, and Albus didn't appreciate that none of them were being nearly as miserable as him. The floors were aged oak and creaked underfoot, the walls all cold white plaster. Ancient. The house seemed to grow from the forest floor like the trees around it.

Lily joined them in the hallway then, leaving her first-floor bedroom—the last room on the ground floor, to the right of the front door and next to the toilet under the stairs—looking absolutely delighted. Traitor.

"I get to sleep downstairs," she sang, moving past them all to get to the back garden, which lay beyond a set of sliding glass doors.

"Is that a good idea?" Albus asked his parents.

"The room isn't big enough for us," Ginny said. "And we don't trust James enough to let him sleep so close to the front door."

Not that either of his siblings would be at this house often enough to get into any sort of trouble. Looking around at the town's dead atmosphere as they drove through it, he was sure they were safe.

He trailed up the winding stairs, his parents' eyes following him silently, to the door at the top which he knew was his.

The room was way bigger than his one at home, with big windows that let in lots of lights and, indeed, a bed placed upon a wood platform. He had wanted one of them when he was younger. He thought they were fancy. The appeal was dulled in light of why he had one now.

Wooden floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he stepped further inside.

"No way you've got such a cool room." James had followed him inside and was peering around with his eyebrows raised. "Mine's way smaller than this."

Albus was glad that his brother couldn't see the way his mouth quirked up into a smile for a moment.

The house at Lake Winsome was to be magic-free, because the squib sensitivity expert, who his parents consulted for help, said that it was best not to surround him with the things he would never have himself. All they could have was floo powder by the fireplace, and invisible enchantments to keep intruders out. Beyond that magic was banned.

This made James groan like he had been left to bleed out, Lily to wilt like a dying flower, and Albus to once again feel even worse than he already did.

His mum insisted that it was actually so that no one in this all-muggle community noticed anything odd about them. He knew she was lying and when he put this to James, his brother agreed.

"Muggles would never notice us anyway," he said.

Albus rolled his eyes, dropping onto his new bed with a small bounce. "That isn't what I meant."

"Still true though," James said, looking very self-satisfied. "All sorts of people at Hogwarts live surrounded by muggles whenever they're not at Hogwarts. They do magic all the time. The muggles don't know about this whole world that's parallel to theirs. It isn't their fault but it does make them kind of ignorant."

He was so smug, so undeservedly, that Albus realised he wanted to defend the same people he had been slandering a moment ago.

"If any of the grown-ups heard you talking like that, you'd be in trouble," he said, realising as the words left his mouth how weak a response that was. James didn't pick him up on it, just smirking, stretching his arms up over his head, yawning.

He and Lily both had bedrooms here, but they were much smaller than Albus'. Lily was moody over not being given the room with the best view and, she said, the cool bed platform. Albus wouldn't pretend that didn't give him a small bit of pleasure. Maybe the squib sensitivity expert wasn't a complete quack.

He didn't even know why James and Lily got to have bedrooms in the new house. Why did they get to have a place in his world when he didn't have one in theirs? But he knew that voicing something like that aloud would only land him in trouble, so he kept the thought to himself. They wouldn't be here most of the time, off at Hogwarts with their four poster beds and moving staircases and portraits you could have a conversation with.

James was still snooping around the nooks and crannies of Albus' new room. Albus rolled over on the bed until he was facing the window, so that he didn't have to see, and willed the curtains to sway at his command.

Of course, they never did.

Thank Merlin for Rose Weasley. She insisted on hopping right on over to the new house, as soon as their ETA had been passed, and floo'd into the new living room without warning only minutes after the front door was unlocked for the first time. Without his cousin's steadying presence, Albus would have been utterly overwhelmed. Her almost belligerent determination to "handle the situation" with logic was a needed familiarity.

Her plan was for them to explore Lake Winsome together and figure out where in this strange place Albus was to fit in. He hadn’t really listened, but there had been a lot of talk about him getting in with the right people, making the right first impression, starting as he meant to go on.

Rose moved with power and confidence, like she could feel her magic flowing in her veins every day, with every step she took, and for all Albus knew, that was true. Maybe the power did flow like blood and if anyone had ever bothered to describe the feeling, he might not have spent so many hours of his childhood trying to make his magic manifest itself in rocking chairs that rocked by themselves or taps that turned themselves on.

He walked beside her down the road, turning his head half towards the ground and half towards the lake that the road ringed around, shoulders hunched. Power did not run through his veins, and it never would, so he could not yet stand to look at Rose and see how she moved.

Like magic manifest.

She was talking, as she had been doing non-stop, since she first arrived.

"You need to establish yourself as a fun and cool person," she was saying. "Most of these people have grown up with each other, like we did, and their friendship groups will already be formed, so it might be tricky for you to integrate yourself."

"Yeah," he mumbled. He kept staring at the lake. The water gleamed like mercury in the setting sun.

"It would be best if you could do it before September. Where is your new school, by the way? We haven't seen it yet."

They hadn't seen anything yet. The walk into Winsome’s supposed town centre took fifteen minutes and they were only just beginning to spot establishments up ahead, after nothing but the occasional house amongst the trees on the way up the main road.

His new school, Winsome Comprehensive, was a half an hour walk away, or ten minute drive, on the outskirts of the forest on the opposite side of the lake to his house. He hadn't been to see it yet and he wasn't looking forward to it.

"I don't know how you're going to get yourself in with anyone," Rose said. "I mean, if you were going to Hogwarts it would be easy. Harry Potter's son? People would be falling over themselves to get to you." His heart missed a beat, and not because of the four-wheel drive that just zoomed past them. "But here? You're anonymous. It's going to take some work, but we'll do it!"

She said this bracingly, and with the unimpeachable confidence only possessed by a Granger-Weasley, but Albus would have felt more buoyed if she weren't talking about how hard he was going to find making friends without his dad's influence.

He could make friends just fine, thanks. Not that he wanted to. Or planned to.

To the best of his ability Albus was determined to be miserable.

Rose glanced back at him—he was deliberately trailing behind her—and she raised her eyebrows. "Have you thought about what you're going to do yet? I was looking into Winsome last night, on Mum's computer, and there's not much going on here. Winsome Comprehensive has a football team that you could join, I guess." Neither of them were particularly sporty. "There wasn't much to find out about the place, to be honest. The only news article I found was from six years ago; Psycho Badger Rampage."

She didn't sound very impressed.

"Eight years ago a child from Buttermere went missing, and the police were in Winsome for a while looking for her. She never turned up. The Department of Energy has a set up not far from here," she added. "Maybe you could ask for a tour."

"Yeah, I'm sure I'd be beating potential friends away with a bat if they knew I was asking for tours of government buildings in my free time," he said.

She glared at him. "It could be interesting!" He gave her a flat look and eventually she turned to face the approaching town again. "I'm just saying..."

The heart of Winsome was the Market Square, ringed round with shops and inns. There was a pedestrianised area at the centre which Rose headed straight for, rather than go down the less populated path which continued to follow the lake, and the road around the outside of the town. Albus wished they could have just taken a stroll around the lake; he was not in any mood to be perceived.

An ancient monument sat at the centre of the Square, mounted with an equally ancient clock that had only one hand—the hour hand—which invited visitors to explore the area.

A gathering of signs with confusing directions indicated a crazy golf course, a lido pool, and several national walking paths, one of which went through the mountains that Rose said the Department of Energy was behind.

"Are you sure you don't want to have a look?" she asked him.

"I am," he said. "But you seem keen enough."

They spent the afternoon exploring the town, which didn't really have all that much going for it. The buildings were similar to his house; white plaster with attractive black sat roofs, but they didn't have the crowds of Windemere, that was certain. All of them were very old, that he could tell, and it seemed the sort of place where well-off middle-aged people who hated children, yet each had 2.5 of their own, would settle down.

They stopped by a corner ice cream shop built of gray brick, with a green roof—freshly painted, Rose pointed out—and bought themselves ice cream.

"They obviously think an awful lot of their town," Rose said quietly to him as were handed their ice creams. Strawberry for Rose, mango for Albus. It was actually pretty good but he wouldn't admit that. "They look after the buildings very well."

They were attracting some curious stares as they went, but Albus didn't care if people stared, and Rose actively saw it as a good thing.

"It means people are taking notice of you," she said, catching drips of ice cream from the melting cone in her hand. "You'll get yourself in here easy. There's not much going on, I mean, you might be the most excitement Winsome's seen in years. Or ever..." she added quietly.

Albus didn't say anything.

It took them a while to actually find any other people their age, and the sun was on it's descent in the sky by then. His mum had told them to be home by four o'clock and they hadn't found anyone to talk to yet. Not that Albus wanted to do the whole tell the class something about yourself thing until he absolutely had to.

They walked right through the town and back out onto the original path they had been following, where they carried on down to a break in the metal barrier running along the road, separating it from the lakeside. There was a long stretch of lake here that could be driven up to, the shoreline vast enough that you could walk up and down for ages. The presence of proper sand pricked his interest for a heartbeat.

A group of kids their age were hanging around by the water's edge.

When they noticed Albus and Rose, they went quiet. A boy and a girl, who seemed to be watching over a small gaggle of even younger kids playing some kind of role playing game in the shallows, splashing around and shouting made up words at each other. Sprays of water were caught beneath the sun, like fistfuls of diamonds being thrown about.

"Hello," Rose said, all confidence. "My cousin's moving in today so we're exploring the lake. He's Albus and I'm Rose. And... you are?"

The boy turned away quickly, like he was frightened of her, but the girl offered a hesitant smile.

"I'm Nancy. This is Jonathan," she added, nodding at the boy whose attention had turned back to the kids in the water. Nancy looked at Albus curiously. "Will you be going to Winsome Comp?"

He nodded, only speaking when Rose jutted her elbow into his ribs. "I—Yeah! Yeah, I will be..."

"Hey Will!" Jonathan shouted to the kids. "It's time to go!"

A short silence overtook, during which time the kids moaned and kicked the water, but one of them waded back to shore and went up to Jonathan.

"Can the boys come over tomorrow?" Will asked, as Jonathan tugged him away by the arm.

"Ask Mum when she gets home," Jonathan mumbled, keen to get away now he had his brother in tow. "Bye, Nancy."

Nancy watched him go without much familiarity. It looked as though they only knew each other through their little brothers. She turned to Albus and Rose again, smiling.

"I guess I'll see you around, then," she said.

"Very good!" Rose said, before he could say anything himself. "I won't be around for him—I'm going to school in Scotland you see—and I don't want him to be alone here."

Albus wanted to die. He wanted to wade out into the water, past the kids still splashing about, and keep walking until his head was submerged. Then he would stay down there, or else wait for the lake bed to open up and swallow him whole.

Perhaps, as his lungs filled with water, he would be able to rid himself of the embarrassment. Perspective, and all.

Nancy looked between them. "I see."

"We should be getting home," Albus said, before Rose could dig his grave even deeper, and perhaps even push him into it. "It's nearly four. Bye," he added to Nancy as an afterthought, before he turned away from the lake and started stalking back the way they had come.

He left Rose to catch up with him.

He got the feeling that she was so determined to find him a friend because when she stopped, if she let silence invade the space for even a minute, she was afraid that she would stop speaking to him forever. Because he could tell that she was flustered in her own way. She didn't know how to speak to him any more than his other cousins did. She just covered it up with action while the rest of them offered him awkward smiles.

If she could find him a friend then she had done her duty and successfully positioned herself as a supportive cousin. Albus didn't want to bring it up because he was recently trying out this thing where he pretended that he actually didn't care about the magic thing. His magic situation. Obviously he did or he would be able to say it.

He was completely turned around but doing his best to style it out.

By the time they were back at the house, Rose had caught up with him, and was chattering on about—something. He didn't know what.

In the hallway, by the front door, his gaze landed on a stock photo on the wall that the estate agents had forgotten to remove; a still image of Lake Winsome. Nothing in the frame moved. Albus took the frame by its edges and removed it from the wall, hiding it in the cupboard behind him. The hall was a bit duller for it.

That was fine.

At fifteen years old, Albus Potter cut a spiky and isolated figure. He preferred the company of his four bedroom walls to any party going, hadn’t cried in his grief for Hogwarts since he was twelve, and he’d never read a one star review that he didn’t wish was longer.

It was a late Sunday afternoon. The mercury was higher than expected for the time of year, the school term was nearly over, and Will Byers had been officially missing for a day and a half.

The town stood in a hesitant standstill as half of it's population tramped around the woods in search of him, despite the heat, and the sun reflected strong off Lake Winsome, sending Albus blind for a few seconds. He flapped his arm in front of his face trying to block it out.

"Fucking hell," he muttered, at last just shoving his sunglasses in place. "Bloody—sun."

It was springtime, four months until his sixteenth birthday, and Albus was waiting by the lake for his dad to get home from work so he could go driving. He was allowed to apply for his provisional licence when he was fifteen years and nine months old. That was only a month away. Albus was clinging to the thought like a life jacket. Until then he was tiding himself by with very slow trips around the lake, his dad in the passenger seat with a hand on the handbrake, his knuckles usually insultingly white.

James learned to apparate a year ago, and Albus had been itching to get his hands on his own freedom of travel as soon as he could. A driving licence was the best he was going to get, unless he stole a jetboat, as Lily occasionally egged him on to do.

He was pretty sure Nancy's parents had a fancy boat somewhere but he wouldn't tell Lily that. He didn't need stealing their boat added to the list of reasons his girlfriend's parents hated him. The only thing worse than a moody bastard was a thieving moody bastard.

Plus, he would only crash it, and then his parents would owe them money, and probably be pretty pissed about it.

They were tense enough since yesterday morning, when the news about Will Byers first broke. Everyone was. Albus had no idea how he was meant to handle news like that; it was only a couple of days ago that he had last seen the kid, when he was walking Nancy back to her house after school.

Her brother and his friends nearly bowled them over in their haste to get back home and keep playing their Dungeons and Dragons game. Will was the only one who stopped, and shouted, "Sorry!" before he sprinted after them.

Next he was hearing of Will was that the kid was gone, vanished, into thin air.

Albus stared into the water, a frown etched deep into his face, and tried to process the idea that something had happened to him. But it was too confusing, it made something in his chest twist, and he was glad he had the sunglasses on to cover the look on his face.

Fucking hell.

"Al?"

He turned around; his dad was crossing the shoreline to reach him, the Honda CR-V idling at the mouth of the road. In the sunlight the pale gold paint made it impossible to look at directly.

"Hi, mate." Harry came to stand at Albus' side, and they stared at the water together for a few seconds. Then his dad said, "They find the Byers boy yet?"

"Not as far as I know."

His dad exhaled slowly through his nose, his jaw working silently, and at last he tossed Albus the keys to the CR-V.

"Let's go for a drive," he said.

Albus was getting pretty good at taking the circuit around the lake. They had only been doing these lessons for a month, but he was a decent learner, and his dad a good teacher. Nearly five years they had been at Lake Winsome, and he knew the road that ringed the lake well, well enough that at this time of the afternoon he was safe to drive around it without having to deal with other cars on the road.

All the kids from school who could drive were long gone, to one of the nearby towns with a bit more life in it.

"That's good, Al," his dad said, after he remembered on his own to give way when they approached Albion Street, one of the roads that fed into the road around the lake. As he waited there he glanced up it and saw a police car parked at the edge of the woods.

"How are you doing?"

Albus put the car back into gear and slowly drove on. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I know you know Will Byers," his dad said. "I know how scary this stuff can be."

"I'm fine." His foot pressed down on the accelerator a bit harder than he would have liked and had to ease off. "I'm fine," he said again. "I don't even know the kid, not really."

His dad was quiet for long enough to process this, and then he said, "I know better than to try and make you talk. But you know you can, whenever you need to."

That wasn't strictly true. His dad had been getting busier at work since Christmas, dark magic raids of some sort. He'd missed dinner more than once recently, leaving Albus and his mum to make idle talk over a dining table with space for six. Sometimes one of his various Aunts or Uncles joined them, but not often. Then his dad would come falling through the fireplace in a blaze of green, at eleven o'clock at night, sometimes bleeding, sometimes not, but always bone-tired.

"I know," Albus said.

A little further around the circuit, he asked, “How’s the James thing going?”

His dad’s heavy sigh should have been answer enough.

”Your brother is going to get himself expelled,” he said, audibly restrained. “With a month to go before he’s due to leave school as well.”

”We’re so proud,” Albus said, and Harry’s lips twitched.

”Plus, Lily was caught out of the common room after hours last week. You’re my only well-behaved child, Al. Please never start doing drugs.”

”Don’t check the space under my bed,” he said.

”Oi.”

”James is really in trouble then.”

”McGonagall was furious. It’s one thing to mess around with the Quidditch balls, and another thing completely to do it on the night before a match. Served him right though; he messed up the enchantment, set the bludgers to badger the Gryffindor players instead of the Hufflepuffs.”

”Imagine trying to rig a match against Hufflepuffs,” Albus said. “They have it bad enough just being in Hufflepuff to begin with.”

"Albus Severus—"

"I know, I know, Cedric Diggory was a Hufflepuff, Dad, you might have mentioned that before."

His dad was giving him a very hard stare, and Albus was working very hard not to start laughing. Then they drove past one of Will Byers’ search parties, and he didn’t have to try at all. In the trees, with their bikes, he saw Nancy's brother, Mike, and the other two who were friends with Will. Mike caught Albus' eyes across the distance, and his unhappy countenance became a full-on glare.

“Poor Joyce,” his dad muttered, staring at the party as the car passed them. “We need to check in on her.”

”You don’t even know her.”

”It’s still the right thing to do,” he said sternly. “It’s important Joyce doesn’t feel alone right now.”

Albus didn't say anything. When he had completed his slow track around the lake—only stalling once—he parked up in the driveway and headed for the front door.

"Hey." He turned around, one foot inside the house. His dad was still standing beside the car, frowning at him. "I meant it, Al. You can talk to me or your mum whenever you need to."

He nodded, wanting to avoid his dad's eyes, and went into the house, shooting straight up the stairs and into his bedroom. He closed the door with a bit more force than intended. A mess that he described as modest was gathered on the floor and he had to kick it aside to reveal the old floorboards underneath as he made his way to the desk that overlooked the road and the lake.

Nancy kept trying to beautify the room because apparently he made it look like something from a penal colony. She had hung voile curtains from both the big windows in the room last week. They blew gently in the breeze.

He struggled to hear about life at Hogwarts. It still hurt. Was still a world he was not and never could be a part of. The exclusive club that he knew all about but was denied entry to.

He was kept sheltered from it, out in the middle of the Lake District, but he knew the reality of his condition had caused a seismic stir in the Wizarding world. When he went to the Burrow for dinner, his Granny's hugs were more crushing than usual. His Granddad kept him under close watch as he interrogated Albus about all the muggle things he was surrounding himself with now. Their defensiveness of Albus ramped up for seemingly no reason.

So he bugged his cousins for the truth, asking one of them to tell him what was being said about him, hounding them all for weeks. Once Hugo cracked, and the truth came spilling out, he wished he had never asked. The gossip. The headlines. It had been years, and it still made him bitter.

Albus Potter, son of the great Boy-Who-Lived, and a squib.

He had at least known better than to go looking for these headlines himself.

James responded to the scandal with brashness, reminding the Wizarding world that the Potters were no joke, by making one long nuisance of himself. Like enchanting Quidditch balls the night before one of the last matches of the year.

At Hogwarts, it sounded like the children were free-range for the most part, allowed to roam the castle and expansive grounds as they liked.

His parents were concerned with allowing Albus that same sort of restricted freedom, and so they had come to an agreement a while ago that would allow him, within reason, free rein outside of the house. He was allowed to come and go as he pleased up until ten o'clock at night, and as long as he always answered the phone if one of them rang him. He was grateful for it.

They wanted him to feel as similar to his siblings as he could.

Albus stuck his Spotify on shuffle, emptied his backpack onto his desk and fished out his homework diary from the mess of books, pens and empty crisp packets. He had three worksheets to complete for Double Sciences. He decided to get started on them before dinner. They were all due in first thing tomorrow.

The sounds of the Seventies and Eighties dominated his music charts; osmosis from listening to the things Nancy liked, punctuated occasionally by bands like Gorillaz. Sam Fender. It was easy to lose himself in the sound. The only time it was easy.

Layla, by Derek and the Dominoes, blasted from his speakers at ear-piercing volume until he felt a broom handle bumping against the floor—the ceiling of the dining room—in warning. He turned it down slightly.

An hour later he was called downstairs, to the dining room, where his parents were sitting down to eat. A third place was set for him. As he took his seat, he tuned in to what they were talking about.

"And no one's heard anything yet? Oh, how awful," his mum was saying, and she turned to Albus. "Has there really been no news of Will Byers yet?" He shook his head, mouth already full of pasta. "The boy's poor mother. She works at the grocery shop in town. Lovely woman."

Albus turned his head down, concentrating on his dinner rather than the thought of Will Byers, because it still made his stomach twist.

His parents seemed perfectly capable of talking about it. As dinner progressed they talked of joining the search in the woods, offering what services they could to the police put in charge of the case, going to Joyce and her older son, Jonathan, to offer them help.

Albus didn't think appealing to Jonathan would bear much fruit. If he had worried five years ago that he would be the odd one out at Winsome Comp, he was wrong to; Jonathan managed to take the title despite a lifetime spent in the town. Albus had never spoken to him much. He felt bad for him now, obviously he did, but that didn't translate so easily into doing something about it.

"Anyway, until Will turns up, I think we need to talk about restrictions on when you're out of the house."

It took Albus about ten seconds to realise his mum was talking to him. He paused, fork hovering halfway between his mouth and the plate, and stared between his parents. The lights flickered in their wall brackets. At last, what she had said sunk in.

"What?"

"Albus, if something's going on, I don't want you to get caught up in it," she said. "I'm not talking total lockdown, this isn't Azkaban, I just want to make sure you're safe."

"But we don't know that something's happened to him!" he said. "He could have just—I don't know, I mean—I'm meant to be going to the cinema tomorrow night!"

"Oh, are you? With who?"

His dad sounded neutral enough, but it was obvious this was fast becoming an interrogation.

"With Nancy," Albus said hotly.

"Well, what time is this film on? We want you in the house at eight o'clock—"

"Eight o'clock?"

"Yes, Albus," his dad said sharply. "We don't know yet whether what's happened to Will is something more serious than a young boy running away from home. Until we do I don't want you out past sundown."

"This has to be a joke."

"I hope this film you're seeing has an early showing," his dad said, stabbing a piece of pepper with great force. "Because you're going to be home for eight."

The lights flickered again, more strongly, and Ginny's hand went to Harry's arm. His glare didn't lessen, and neither did Albus'. Then the lights stabilised, if anything shining stronger than before, and Albus threw his fork down onto the table, knowing he had lost. His dad kept on eating, his expression set in grim satisfaction.

Chapter Text

Will Byers had been missing for two days, and on Monday, in the halls of Winsome Comprehensive, he was all anyone could talk about. Most of the chat was that he was dead or kidnapped. Albus found it inappropriate, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself by telling anyone he thought that.

"Stop listening to them," Albus said, lowly, into the ear of Nancy Wheeler.

She'd been all freaked out and sad doe eyes since the news broke. She was one of the only people in the school who actually knew Will, and was sincerely worried about him. Listening to people like Tommy and Carol whisper malicious things from behind their hands wasn't making her feel any better.

Albus and Nancy weren’t the most natural of coming togethers. Rose’s matchmaking skills had left something to be desired, but Nancy was nice and when she saw him alone at school on that first day, she made an effort to approach him. He hadn’t been in the mood. Quelle surprise. But she sometimes stopped to say hi in the halls, or to offer him a smile, even when he was determined to make his own life hell.

Over the years they just drifted towards each other, and he supposed that yes, she was his first real friend.

Then one day a couple of months ago, when he discovered he had been snubbed for another house party invite, it was her who told him why.

”It probably has something to do with your reputation,” she had said, archly.

Albus’ eyebrows rose. “I have a reputation?”

”People think you’re a bit…” Nancy shifted in place. “Spooky.”

”And what about you?” He remembered suppressing a smile, trying not to revel in it. “Do you think I’m spooky, Nancy Wheeler?”

When she didn't say anything now, he dropped a kiss behind her ear, hoping that would snap her out of her funk.

"Can you hear the way they're talking about him?" she hissed, incredulous. He barely supressed a sigh, leaning back so he could see her pinched expression and flushed cheeks. "It's like he's already dead to them!"

"He is dead to them," Albus said, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets and casting a look over the students in the hallway with them. "Trust me, when you've never met a kid before and then suddenly you're hearing all sorts of shit about him, you make up your mind on things like that pretty fast."

"Oh, like you'd know." They were quiet as Nancy took a moment to rein in her bruised emotions. Then she cut him an apologetic look. "Do you think he's okay?"

Albus had no idea. Should he lie to her and just say yes, or was that unintentionally cruel? Because what if he wasn't?

"We should probably head to class now," he said, ignoring the flash of hurt in her eyes. "Don't want to be late."

There was a moment of hesitation. "R-right," she stuttered. "Yeah. Obviously. You're right."

He didn't know how to talk to her. Normally he would try to make her laugh. Or put her mind on other things.

He and Nancy had fun together, but they weren't natural friends. The school environment forced them together, but they were both moderately well-liked, though not enough to be spared the jeers and jokes of Steve Harrington and his posse. Albus especially could be a target at first, when he was new and strange, moody all the time, determined to be hostile to his peers.

It had offended Steve that Albus rejected his boastful offers of friendship, and their relationship never went up from there. It hadn't gone down though; unlike his friends, Tommy and Carol, Steve just ignored the people he didn't like. Ever since he and Nancy had started dating, he had begun noticing glares emanating from Steve's direction, and wondered how long their strange peace would last.

"Are you going to wait for me while I'm at netball tonight?" she asked him.

"I—Yeah! Of course. If you want."

"I do want," she said, smiling. "Or I wouldn't have asked."

Last time he hung about waiting for Nancy to go through netball practice, two separate students asked him if he wanted to go and sniff glue with them, and he had to relocate to a different woodland bench because a fight came crashing into his solitude and he was almost trampled to death. He might see if he could just hang about in the field until she was finished tonight.

"And then we can go to the cinema," she added, and tweaked the collar of his shirt like she was going to flatten out one of the many creases to be found there.

On their way to the Humanities corridor, they passed more people talking about Will Byers, and Albus really hoped that the more sensationalist theories weren't true. They were talking about murder and human trafficking and all sorts of awful shit. Some of the worst of it left Nancy looking on the verge of tears.

He tried to think of something to say to her, something comforting, or dismissive of the rumours, when she stopped.

"Look..."

Over by the staff room, Jonathan Byers was sticking a missing poster to the wall. Will smiled out at them from it.

Nancy was already approaching him. Albus stayed where he was. "Merlin," he sighed.

He recalled to mind the day he first met Nancy. Jonathan had been with her as their brothers played by the lake together. He was always pale and withdrawn. He looked terrible today.

After the news about Albus' condition went public, when the 1st September arrived and he wasn't at Platform 9 ¾, James went into overdrive trying to handle peoples' reactions. He had always been fairly cocky, but it was personable, the kind of confidence that made everyone around him feel big as well. Following Albusgate that affability turned sour, as James bounced between defending his brother's honour, and being short with Albus in the letters they exchanged.

Years passed and James calmed down; Albus slipped from the public consciousness, and new scandals came up to occupy the smaller minds of the Wizarding world. But their relationship was never the same. James still looked at Albus as someone who he simultaneously needed to protect and was frustrated by.

Albus was still a squib.

Things like that, public scandals, could change a brothers' relationship forever.

As Nancy stood talking in low tones to Jonathan, three Year Sevens in uniforms that swallowed their frames came bundling past him. Nancy's brother Mike, and his friends Lucas and Dustin. They didn't notice Albus or Nancy and Jonathan, all wrapped up in their own world, and less distressed than he might have expected.

"Maybe we can use the old AV equipment to contact him," Lucas was saying. "If we could only do it without Mr Clarke listening in..."

He watched them disappear into the flood of students, frowning. They were being—odder than usual. It looked like they were up to something, though he knew Mike well enough to know that wasn't strange. But with the fourth member of their group having just disappeared...

Albus' sense of danger, perhaps the only thing he had inherited from his father, was beginning to ring in the back of his head.

The head of the Police Department was leading the search; Jim Hopper. They saw him stalking off towards his car, as foul-tempered as ever, and followed closely by Powell and Callahan. They slammed the doors getting in and over-revved the engine setting off. Albus had no idea where they were speeding off to like that. Maybe someone had found Will. Hopefully alive, because the thought otherwise made him break into a cold sweat.

"Do you think they've got something?" Nancy asked, watching the police car disappear.

"Looks like it."

"I doubt they would zoom off like that for some farming dispute," said their persistent third wheel, Barbara Holland.

Albus did not like Barb. There was something sanctimonious about her. He was reminded of Rose in the worst ways; the quiet sense of superiority, the judgement of things she deemed silly, the way she looked down on people less studious than herself.

Barb did not like Albus either; she thought he was cagey and a bastard.

She was following them to the cinema, badgering Nancy to meet up afterwards so they could revise for their exams, until Nancy agreed that they would go back to her house later. Only then did Barb leave them alone, honestly, couldn’t she take a hint?

Their local cinema was old, with only two film screens, that had stood since before the Second World War. It was the only one for miles around. The seats were red velvet and the lobby full of vintage film knick-knacks in glass cases. It was still called the Kinema in the Woods, despite the urban sprawl that had unfolded around it down the decades, and was like taking a real step back in time in the sense that it was from a time when the country wasn’t shit.

He'd heard that the new shopping centre being built on the outskirts of town was going to have a proper cinema. Hopefully by then he would have hisdriving licence.

They were going to see Last Night in Soho. As the film progressed, Nancy got less tense, like the darkness was depriving her of her senses and making her forget. She even leaned into him at one point, which was ace. But when they left, awareness rushed back, and she became fidgety again and moved away from him.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, I was just..."

A crowd of local mothers were organising around the one-handed clock in the centre of the town square, loudly passing around torches and bottles of water, babies strapped to their chests. In a town the size of theirs, pretending that nothing was wrong was impossible.

The street outside the Kinema was emptying. The sky was painted a hazy shade of heather. A soft, earthy breeze blew by.

"I should go,” Nancy said, a certain dread lingering behind her eyes. “I'm meant to meet Barb, down by the water. Bring her... back to my place..."

The hideous new-build estate on which the Wheelers lived. Huge McMansions that looked like shit. Middle class as hell.

She was staring up at him like she wanted a distraction, but for him to do the distracting. Invent a delay. He thought about his parents' insistence that he be home before eight. That alone made him want to rebel. Nancy's parents had imposed the same kind of restrictions on her.

He joked sometimes that her parents were Tories.

She was looking to him to defy them for her.

It never went down well.

He was happy enough to oblige her now.

Albus looked around to see whether they were alone. He nudged her back until she was stood against the wall, and finally beginning to crack a smile, and Albus thought to himself, well done, before he leant down and kissed her.

A voice in the back of his head reminded him, in a stringent tone much like Rose’s, that he risked giving up his car privileges. But Nancy’s gravity held him fast, and made him feel normal for the first time since Will Byers disappeared and dredged up all sorts of bad feelings, and he didn't much care in the moment. There were slender fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and his whole body was beginning to zing with electricity.

Partially hidden around the side of the Kinema, Albus and Nancy lingered for far too long, exchanging long, sweet kisses that he would never admit he was capable of giving or receiving. Sweet wasn't one of the words most people associated with him and he was happy for it to stay that way.

At last she pushed against his chest, and he backed away, just enough to look at her face.

"I need to go," she whispered. The sky overhead had become a deeper shade of purple, and he was definitely late. "Albus..."

"Nancy Wheeler."

"Albus Potter," she said, grinning full-on, "I need to go."

He took his hands from her waist, held them up in the air, waggled his fingers. That made her grin again.

"You're free to leave."

"Well good, because I am late to meet Barb, and we are both going to miss our curfews now."

Albus found he didn't care much. But he let her go anyway, and she only looked back at him twice as she headed down the town square, towards the main road. He realised he was smiling, and began the walk home, in the opposite direction, with something of a spring in his step.

But inevitably, as he wandered down the street, his mind turned to the woods that Will Byers vanished into. The spring in his step departed, and his smile with it.

When he walked through that creaking front door of the place he now knew as home, his thoughts took a turn for the even-worse. He was quiet as he could be, knowing what he was in for when his parents saw him, and it seemed he was too quiet, because when he eased the front door closed and listened, he could hear them talking from through the living room door.

"...things people are saying about that Will boy," his mum was saying. "I've heard awful rumours, Harry. Apparently the police think it might have been a homophobic thing. That Will Byers is gay and someone knew, and attacked him for it."

Silence, on his dad's end.

"But that can't be true, can it? I mean, in today's day and age—There aren't people around here who would do something like that."

"There's always someone waiting in the wings to disappoint you," his dad said, speaking at last, in a quiet voice.

Albus thought that was his que to enter, stage right. He pushed the living room door open and bared himself to the lions. As expected Harry and Ginny's heads snapped towards him instantly.

"Albus Potter." It sounded sweeter when Nancy said it. "I told you to be home at eight o'clock."

"I know that," he said, trying to speak slowly, so he could calculate just how much sass he could get away with; it seemed not much. "And the small hand on the clock..." He pointed at the one on the wall, "is still at eight."

"Albus." His mum shot up from her chair. "You didn't listen to us."

"I did! I just—I got waylaid."

"Waylaid? No, that's not good enough," she said. "A child has gone missing in Winsome for the first time in three hundred years, Albus. When we set limits at a time like this, it is your job to heed them."

"I'm not even an hour late!"

The fire in the grate flared green for a second, cutting off her reply.

"That must be McGonagall," his mum said, to his dad. "She asked me to meet her. Albus, I want you to stay in your bedroom—"

"I'm not a child!"

"—so we know where you are—"

"You are a child, Albus, you're not even sixteen yet."

"—and I don't have to worry that the person who attacked Will Byers will go after you next!"

The fire flared green for a second time, and his mum huffed, like she was disoriented and trying to keep her head straight.

"You go, Gin, I'll take care of him," Harry said.

He and his mum locked eyes for a very long second, Albus worried about what would happen if he looked away first, and then she shook her head. She checked herself over and headed for the fire, where the only magical thing in the house sat on the mantel in a nondescript pot; the floo powder.

She looked back at him one last time. "I'm not joking, Albus. What you did tonight was reckless. Never ignore us like that again."

Then, she threw a handful of floo powder onto the fire, and was gone in a blinding flare of green.

A very anaemic silence followed her departure.

"You agree with her, right?"

"Come and sit down with me, Al."

"You're siding with Mum," he said, even as he did as his dad said, and followed him to the pair of chairs his parents favoured.

He sat down with all the force and anger a teenage boy could. Harry's hand hovered over his shoulder, like he wanted to plant it there. He didn't in the end.

"I am on your side," he said. "I always have been, I always will be. Trust me, I've been on your side since long before you were born."

His dad was always so painfully sincere. Albus didn't know how to process it. So he ignored it instead, and ignored his equally sincere gaze-of-sadness.

"But there are certain ways in which you have to take responsibility. To not worry your mum, to do as she asks at times like this, it matters more than you realise. Maybe this is nothing, but maybe it's something, and if it lets Mum sleep easier, then until Will is found, it is your job as her son to grant her that ease of sleep. And me," he added. "Because I worry too.

"You might not understand a word I'm saying now," Harry went on, quietly, "but I guarantee, you'll say it all yourself, before you die. I do what I do, now, so that you can reach that age, Al. Do you understand?"

Albus didn't know what to say to that. So he just sort of... looked at him.

His dad's countenance was subdued. "It's funny," he said at last, scratching the back of his neck. "You don't hear a single word I say sometimes. I just hope that it will stay in your head, in the back of your mind, so that when you really need me, and I'm not there, you don't feel alone."

"Dad, do you think Will Byers was attacked for being... different?"

"I don't know, Al. Have you heard anything to that effect?" He shook his head. "Then I'm sure it's just a rumour. You know how it is; the halls of a school always know. They see everything." Harry stared into the fire. "Go and eat your dinner, Al. Then go to your room."

Hours later Albus stared out of his bedroom window, at the moon's reflection glittering on the surface of the lake, and for the first time he was willing to admit to himself that he feared for Will Byers, not just in a vague sense, but in one much deeper and more personal.

He knew how a society could turn on a boy, even one as young as eleven, for something totally out of his control.

Albus was developing cabin fever, restless and agitated, because in the span of hours everything had gone from bad to worse. Barb was missing. Nancy was panicking. She was blaming him.

His parents, vindicated, would never let him out of the house again.

So, Albus was stressing. Or, to be fully frank, he was tearing his hair out. He knew Barb hadn't shown up for school that day because he sat by and listened as Nancy called Barb's mother at lunchtime. He hadn't been worried then. Sometimes people bunked off. Or they had a mental health day. Or, they had forgotten to finish an important piece of work, and pretended they were having a mental health day so they could avoid getting in trouble.

Deep down he knew that was not what Barbara Holland did. Barb Holland followed her friend to the cinema, encroached on their dates, because she was so focused on school that she didn’t think any of them should have lives outside of it. She would not bunk off or have unfinished work. She scoffed at the idea of mental health days.

But he couldn't admit that to himself.

Then later, as Albus stewed in his room at home, Nancy called him in a fluster. Barb, she said, was missing. Just like Will Byers.

She was distracted on the call, shooting off half-baked plans to track Barb down, talking about roaming the woods looking for her, having the police dredge the lake, and it wasn't until she hung up on him halfway through a sentence that he started pacing.

Scratching his hands through his hair like it was itching his scalp.

Staring out of the windows of his room.

Ginny Potter sat at a desk by the sliding doors, downstairs. Facing the back garden. Writing an article for the Wizarding World News on the Quidditch League's most recent match-up between two of the Big Four teams; Holyhead Harpies and Ballycastle Bats. She was deeply occupied.

Albus stared at his bed for a few seconds, his heart in his mouth. Then he used it as leverage, to shove open the window and climb out of it.

The summer nights were beginning, very slowly, to draw out, and he had an hour or so of light in which to find Nancy, or Barb, or someone who could tell him what he was supposed to do in a situation like this. Because he was pretty sure that while he and Nancy had been necking in an alleyway in the town square, Barb had gone missing. And how exactly was he meant to live with that?

He was careful to skirt around the area that his mother might have in her sight. He was convinced that any errant move would have him discovered, or that she somehow knew he was gone from the place he was supposed to be. He had left his music playing over his speakers but that didn’t mean anything.

He was going to be discovered.

Nonetheless, he started his search with the woods that surrounded Winsome on all sides. He searched away from the heart of town, because if he knew Nancy like he thought he did, then that was where she would be looking, and there was a better chance at one of them finding Barb if they split up.

But he didn't find her.

He didn't find anything. By accident he ended up on the road where Will's bike had been found abandoned, and a chill ripped up his spine when he realised where he was, but there was nought but himself and the police tape and the trees, growing up and around and over his head.

"Shit."

Albus stood in the middle of the empty road, the feeling unfurling in his stomach that he had fucked up in a big way, somehow. They couldn't have known. He and Nancy, they couldn't have known. Couldn't have known that something would happen to Barb while they delayed their separation by inches and minutes.

The gray sky was spinning.

His phone rang.

Albus startled out of his skin.

Then he answered it, and spoke to Nancy. "Albus, no one's seen her. Word's getting around that she's gone, but the police aren't interested." She said this without any kind of greeting, and breathless like she was talking and running at the same time.

He swallowed; his throat was like sandpaper. "I've gone looking for her..."

"And? What did you find?"

The silence on his end seemed like answer enough. Nancy gasped like she had been stabbed. The noise made his heart leap.

"Oh my god, Albus, where is she?"

"Where are you?" he managed to ask at last.

"I—I'm—I don't know, I feel like my head's spinning—"

"Go home," he urged her, suddenly feeling vulnerable himself. The trees seemed to move in on him from above. "Really, Nancy, it's not safe."

She scoffed, but the harsh sound wasn't directed at him. "Oh, it was safe enough last night when we were messing around together."

It might as well have been though. As much as this was Nancy beating herself up, when he was privately thinking all the same things, it had the same effect.

"Please, Nancy, I'm—"

He was deathly afraid of whatever they had entangled themselves in.

Her breathing was jagged. "Okay." She sounded on the verge of tears. "I'm going—I'll go—" She couldn't finish the thought.

"Right."

"You, go home too," she said. Her voice was thickening, cramping with unreleased tears. "Don't stay out there."

He listened to her. In the future he would make a point of doing that more often. He found his way back home on numb legs. Went in through the bedroom window, somehow not making a scene as he did so.

His absence hadn't been noted, but it would have been had he been any later; footsteps on the stairs announced his mother, who knocked on his closed bedroom door and told him she was heating up leftovers for dinner; Care to join me?

Perhaps she mistook his reticence as they ate for moodiness over his grounding. She spoke to him in carefully measured tones, asked about school, about Nancy and her netballing. But he couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't, because he couldn't get his vocal chords to work.

He waited for the flash of green that announced his dad getting home. But instead, the front door went, after nightfall. Harry Potter appeared a minute later in the doorway to the dining room. There was an ill palor to his face.

"What's happened?" his mum asked, like she already knew.

Harry took a great breath, and told them his news. Barb Holland is gone. And then Albus got up from the table and walked away. He made it up the stairs before his legs stopped cooperating. He sat with his back against the bannisters, staring open-mouthed at the wall.

Something was going on at Lake Winsome. An aberration. Barbara Holland was missing. And then the police said that Will Byers' body had been dredged from the lake in the dead of night.

Nancy didn't speak to him for a few days. She was letting his calls ring out and his messages stay on read, and stopped lingering in the halls at school so he couldn’t talk to her between classes and try to get any gauge on what was going on.

Barb didn’t turn up. A funeral was arranged for Will Byers. Albus attended it and stood apart from her through the ceremony.

She was panicking. They both were. Albus couldn't even condemn her for it, because he was too frightened of what confronting her might mean. So he went about his business for the next few days, envisioning Will Byers' body slowly bloating in the lake, Barb's perhaps doing the same thing, and kept his head down.

This meant that he was in the dark when, a few nights after the funeral, Nancy finally called him.

That old word of Rose’s, aberration, rang out again as he took in the tone of her voice.

"Jonathan, he—He didn't think Will was really dead. He was saying that the body they pulled from the lake wasn't real, and it wasn't. And he was taking pictures out at the lake on the night Barb vanished, and he caught something on camera, this thing, this creature. Albus, there's so much going on, I don't even know where to start. But Will is still alive. We're trying to save him."

Will was alive.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"We're at the school—It's a long story, we needed to make this deprivation tank thing—with the kids and Mrs Byers, and Hopper."

"With the kids?" His heart jumped. "With Will?"

"No, no we've been looking for him. Please, Albus, can you come down here? As quick as you can. Jonathan and I need to take care of something and we don't want to leave the kids on their own. Please, come and look after them."

"I—"

It would take him a while to get there on foot, but his parents had taken the keys to the car. Neither of them were at home so he couldn't lift the keys from their pockets. He would just have to run.

The house was empty as Albus threw open his bedroom door and thundered down the stairs.

"I'm on my way,” he told her.

"Thank you," she breathed.

In the cupboard under the stairs, the one next to the toilet, his dad kept a baseball bat. Albus took it.

"And take something you can defend yourself with!" she cried. "It's not safe out here."

He paused, just out of the front door, and considered the baseball bat for a few seconds, then bolted for the back garden. He ran to the shed, found a box of nails and a hammer, and made the bat a bit deadlier without also crippling his own fingers.

Then he left for Winsome Comprehensive before he could think about what he was doing.

The journey was solitary and unnerving. He thought he was seeing ill-defined lurkers in every shadow or rustle of shrubbery. The lights of the houses he passed were sole signs of life in the darkness, but they didn't make him feel any less alone. His pulse was so loud in his ears that it drowned out the ambient wood noises around him.

The trees loomed and reached overhead, snatching at his hair, his arms—shaking—any part of him they could grab for. He was going to die out here, he’d made a mistake, he should have just—

He should have ignored Nancy, chalked it up to nightmares, stayed where he was safe.

But he kept walking, somehow, when his legs felt like jelly.

Eventually he came to see the school buildings up ahead of him, at the end of the wooded road. He had been walking forever by that time, and his eyes had grown wild with paranoia, flicking violently towards every twittering bird, every snapped twig in the distance.

But he could also hear something growling. A wild animal or—something. He went still at the sound, waiting to see if something would emerge from the woods. Then Dustin Henderson burst from the treeline, screaming, and crossed the road without any attempt to stop, look, listen, and ran into the woods on the other side of the tarmac.

"Sweet Merlin—"

Albus' brain spent a few seconds malfunctioning, before he went tromping off in pursuit of the kid, thoughts in his head of missing kids and fake bodies in the lake.

It couldn't happen to another one of them.

It was eleven o'clock, which was like the Devil's Hour for eleven year olds, and he was hoping the kid hadn't made it too far while Albus was panicking on the side of the road. Certain he was following the route that Dustin had taken, he undertook a short, unpleasant stumble through very dark woods, listening for any growls or twelve-year-old human cries.

The path ahead was dictated by trampled grass and snapped twigs, and worryingly, places where the trunks of trees had been clawed. Some of the trees arched so densely that they blocked out the beams of the moon. Gouges and scratches in the wood showed him the way.

But no blood, he reminded himself. He couldn't see any blood. That could only be a good thing.

"Dustin?" he called in a low voice, cracking with fear, into the dead of the night. No one called back. "Shit. Shit."

He moved more hastily into the woods, the feeling sitting very deep in his chest that he had to hurry up and find the kid, like, now. The freshly-trampled path he was following was getting messier.

Then he heard it; a strangled scream ripping through the night, scaring the birds from the trees.

Albus' heart skipped a beat. He staggered to a stop. Then he pelted, full speed, towards the sound.

Bracken scratched at his face and clothes and hair, and he flew then into a clearing, where Dustin Henderson was on the ground, arms over himself to protect from the six-foot-tall thing bent over him.

He never stopped to take the sight of it in properly. He just raised the bat, barked out, "Hey!" to draw it's attention, and started swinging.

It was roaring and stalking towards him, eight foot tall and swinging it's humanoid limbs like clubs, but Albus dodged the claws and landed one strike, then another. The nails hammered into the bat got stuck and he had to yank himself free, bringing the thing stumbling forwards. He didn't think. He didn't even notice how much time was passing. He just kept swinging and he wasn't bad at it; his hits were landing.

Vaguely, in the background, he heard a kid screaming, "Holy shit holy shit holy SHIT!" on repeat.

The bat kept making contact, with wet thuds that made his arms shake, and took too much effort to pry free from flesh that was beginning to stain red. One of it's swipes got him and ripped the wool of his jumper. A searing pain sliced down his chest. He swung again and knocked the thing off-balance.

When it finally, screaming, was forced to the bracken and stopped moving, he only just noticed. For good measure he swung the bat into what he assumed was the back of it's cranium.

Albus was left panting, half-wielding a cricket bat riddled with nails and covered in the bloody offal of the thing on the ground. Finally, he took a closer look at it.

It's skin was a sickly pale, the white of the already-dead, and almost slimy to the eye. It was charred in places, and one of it's ankles was bloody and mangled. He hadn't done that. It's head resembled a gigantic, fleshy flowerbud, closed, but he had seen it opened up like a flower of death, all teeth and saliva, trying to swallow him. Rip him to pieces.

He was nearly dazed by his own act of heroism.

He held the bat up and inspected it under the moonlight. Stringy bits of viscera were clumped around the nails, gleaming wetly at him. He made a small, disgusted noise in the back of his throat and let his arm fall.

Dustin stared at the thing on the forest floor for a few seconds longer, before he craned his neck slowly upwards, staring at Albus with glittering eyes.

"Woah," he breathed. "That was wicked."

Albus had a very limited view on what else had happened that night.

As he frogmarched Dustin out of the forest and back into Winsome Comp, Dustin babbled on to him about demogorgons, girls with shaved heads and superpowers, something called the Upside Down, but Albus' head was spinning and he struggled to take much of it in.

"What were you doing out here?" he managed to ask, as they made it to the doors Dustin insisted were unlocked. The back of his neck was tingling.

"Nancy and Jonathan just up and left us at school alone!" Dustin cried. "I went to go looking for them. But then the demogorgon turned up and I got split up from the others!"

"Maybe just stay put next time," he said. His arms hurt from all the swinging and thudding and his legs kept almost buckling beneath him.

Inside the PE Hall was a scene he struggled to take in. A pool filled with water, empty salt bags all over, and huddled together by the wall, Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, and a girl with a shaved head and frightened eyes.

The kids immediately burst into a squabble, all trying to talk over each other; Dustin screeching his words at the top of his lungs and gesturing wildly back at blood-spattered Albus every few seconds, Mike shouting one thing, Lucas another. The girl was the only silent one. She was staring at him, and at the bat in his hand.

"What is it?" he asked her.

For a moment, he thought she was mute, but then she said, "It's coming," and the room fell silent.

"What? No, it can't be coming, Albus beat the shit out of it," Dustin said.

"It's coming," she repeated, more assuredly.

He seemed to believe her this time, whirling on the other two. "What are we gonna do?"

"I don't know!" Lucas cried. "Run?"

"Blockade the doors!" Mike said.

He was about to bolt off and do just that when Albus’ brain started working again and he snatched the back of Mike’s hoodie.

"Hold on," he said, and looked at the girl again. "You're sure it's coming back?" She nodded hurriedly. "How does it know where we are? Sound? Smell? Can we hide from it?"

"I don't know," she whispered.

"Nancy said it could smell blood," Mike said. "I don't think it has eyes, but it can definitely smell us. Which is why we need to block the doors!"

He pulled against Albus' grip again and this time, he let the kid go, processing what he had just said. Dustin and Lucas, and then the girl, joined Mike in shoving chairs and crash mats against the double doors. Albus told Nancy he would keep them safe.

Before he could even start to think of a plan, car engines sounded from outside, and the kids stilled.

"Nancy? Jonathan?" Mike said, looking around at his friends.

"I'll check," Albus said. "Stay out of sight."

”It might be the bad men!” Lucas called after him.

”Bad men?”

Albus climbed up the barricade until he could see out of the windows above the doors. A squad of black cars and white vans was rolling up. He described them to the huddled kids.

“Does that sound like the bad men?” The girl nodded vigorously. “Can they smell us?” She shook her head. “Right. Come on.”

He dropped down from the barricade and gestured the kids to follow him from the PE hall, pronto.

He knew of a few good hiding places from those early days of his squibhood, when he kept a little list of bolt holes scribbled down in his pocket, for when the dark moods got too much.

The sound of doors being battered down pursued them from the PE hall into the main school, and Albus' heart hammered as he stuffed them into an abandoned Language storage room, and instructed them to be quiet, because they were managing to squabble, even now.

"Be quiet," he hissed. "They'll hear us."

Their breathing was all high-pitched and squeaky, because their lungs were so little, because they were children. And they were hiding for their lives.

He cut a look towards the girl, sandwiched between Mike and Dustin, and tried to figure out what her deal was. She just blinked back at him.

"Are we okay?" Dustin breathed.

Albus couldn't give him an answer.

So he just hid the kids, and for a while he thought they were safe; he could hear the creature, and alarmingly, gunfire, as the bad men stormed the halls of their school. Perhaps they would take each other out, he thought. But after the initial minutes of hiding, wherein he started to relax, it all went wrong.

His bolthole wasn’t good enough.

The bad men found them.

The girl as good as killed herself repelling them. Somehow. He wasn't going to linger on that just yet. Albus just scooped her up and ran, the boys following him closely, and he locked them in a classroom. He thought he could keep them safe.

He told Nancy that he would; her brother was under Albus' protection.

The creature—Lucas called it a demogorgon—it found them anyway, and Albus saw just how impotent he was without magic to keep it back.

He thought, as it advanced on them, that if only he were magic, he could repulse it, slice it's head off, do anything that would prevent the girl, whose name he didn't even know, from stepping forwards, hands out-stretched, and trying to kill it herself.

But she was tiny, this girl. A baby. As small as his mother had been when Tom Riddle possessed her. The thought made Albus' arms twitch into action of their own accord. When the demogorgon reared it's bloody mess of a head at Eleven, Albus stepped up to it's side, realising for the first time it's immense height, and struck it's knee. Then it's head when it was on the floor.

He smashed the bat down, again and again, until it was not possible that it could still be alive. Until it was a pile of viscera on the tile. Until he began to register the three boys all clamouring for him to stop.

Eleven's wide, unreadable eyes met his when he was done. For a long moment they seemed to communicate without words. Before they could say anything to each other, the door burst open.

He realised they had forgotten the Bad Men just as Eleven raised her hands to them, and screaming, knocked them all down like skittles.

She killed herself in the process.

When the ambulances rolled up, with their flashing lights and roaring sirens, Albus didn’t react. He sat with his back against the classroom wall, staring at the place where he had last seen the girl.

Eleven.

Was that how old she was or a number the men chasing her had given her? He couldn’t ask.

Only when the paramedics came looking for them did he move, when they told the kids that Will Byers was waiting to see them at the hospital. Dustin dragged him along by the hand despite his reticence.

And in the waiting room, he was silent upon the arrival of his near-hysterical parents, who had come home from the Headmistress’ office at Hogwarts, to an empty house. He let Joyce and Hopper, and the shady government officials who suddenly appeared as if from the shadows, do the talking for him, and hoped they gave him a good enough story.

All he could see in his mind’s eye was Eleven. A third kid. Gone.

Will Byers, dwarfed by his hospital bed, was malnourished and sickly-pale, but alive. Albus stood in the doorway of his hospital room and watched him reunite with his friends. His head was splitting as if from a headache over thoughts of Will and Eleven.

He could have tried demanding answers, but there was Nancy, drawn and sorrowful, turning into his arms as soon as she saw him and whispering, “Barb is gone.” What could he do except hold her?

Jonathan avoided looking directly at them. But he had always been that way.

So as abruptly as it began, so too did it end, and he was taken home.

(He went looking for the nail bat the next day, and found it fallen behind the teacher's desk in the classroom where Eleven was last seen, and took it home. He pried away a panel in the platform his bed stood upon and stowed it away. Near at hand, but not so near that when the demogorgon appeared from the shadows of his room, he made himself a danger to his wan and shell-shocked parents.)

On his sixteenth birthday Albus received his provisional driving licence in the post. He sat around the family table at the Burrow and let his Granny place an enormous cake down in front of him. He looked at the pans that washed themselves over the sink and wondered whether the girl, Eleven, was a witch, and whether there was a chance that she was still alive.

There had been no body, after all.

He held onto that thought.

"Harry told us about that little boy going missing," Aunt Hermione told him, leaning across the dinner table. "We're so glad he's home safe now. But that Holland girl, did she not turn up?"

His parents shook their heads.

"Oh, that's terrible. I hope she'll be home soon."

"Er, yeah. Me too," he said, saliva turning to sand in his mouth and appetite evaporating.

He would never forget the death-mask paleness of Will's face as he lay in that hospital bed. The look on Nancy's face as she told him what Eleven had declared Barb: "Gone." Those initial hours of genuine terror.

He was working on compartmentalising it.

"Should you have really left Al alone that week, though?" James said to his parents, quietly enough that he thought Albus couldn't hear him. "He might have been in trouble, I mean, what if he got hurt? He couldn't defend himself."

"Don't be so ridiculous," Ginny said, her voice strained in a way only Albus picked up on, and that was because he went looking for it. "Millions of muggles defend themselves from attackers every day."

"Yeah, but—" James cut himself off. He sounded frustrated. "But what was Al gonna do if that kidnapping creep went after him?"

"You're overreacting, James."

"You should have brought him home."

That kind of chat wasn't uncommon. When his Aunt Audrey wasn't around, and nowadays when they thought Albus wasn't listening, he heard his family worry about his ability to defend himself. Like they couldn't imagine how he would do so without magic.

It irked him even if they were right.

As everyone floated to different parts of the Burrow, Albus caught sight of the Daily Prophet on the kitchen counter. It was still tied with hemp. Last time he had seen a Daily Prophet he was eleven years old. It was Christmas and the family were gathering together as they usually did.

The chaos was such that no one noticed the paper lying on the table, unopened, bearing the headline Damp Squib Potter! and a long-distance photo of himself, taken as if from a concealed position. Uncle Ron saw it a second after Albus did, and snatched it up, throwing it into the flames. Ron ruffled his hair and told Albus to join him in a game of chess, but Albus hadn't forgotten that headline.

Years later, all that had him out of joint, when he looked back, was that they called him damp.

But at the time he had privately been very upset. As far as he knew his parents had never bought another Daily Prophet again.

He left the paper where it was and went to join his cousins, Rose and Hugo, only to catch himself lingering outside the room they were in when he heard voices whisper to each other.

"Can you believe that no one goes missing in that town for three hundred years, and then as soon as Albus moves in, someone vanishes? That's Potter luck, that is."

"It's creepy!" Hugo chirped. "I heard they found the body, but then he turned up, alive, a few days later."

"Well, that obviously isn't true. Someone was just making things up."

"But Mum said so."

As Albus listened, his eyes drifted to the grandfather clock opposite; the one that declared the status of each of their family members. Several hands were currently crowding around Home, including his own. When he followed Dustin into those woods, had it gone to Mortal Peril, even briefly? Granny's heart would have stopped if it had, and she had seen it. Merlin, what a way to get rumbled.

"No need to worry about that, Winsome's boring as they come, isn't it?"

Albus jolted, looking around for the wizard reading his thoughts, then realised the voice had come from behind the door. Hugo. Still talking about him?

Rose's tones joined her brother's as she hummed agreeably. "I'd call Hogwarts more eventful, certainly."

Feeling like a creep for hanging around outside, Albus opened the door, and Hugo's reply, whatever it was supposed to be, died on his lips.

Lily was with them too. They were sitting around in the den that the kids all used to crowd into when they were smaller. Funny; Albus remembered a time when all of the cousins could fit inside easily, but now he found the ceiling was too close to his head, and the sofas too small.

"Hiya," he said. "Can I invite myself in?"

"'Course!" Hugo said, beaming.

Rose turned an expectant smile on him the moment he was sat across from them. "So?"

"So what?"

"So, tell us about Will Byers."

NDAs floated around in his head, and made his hand twitch with ghost-cramp, as he wondered what he could say. He wondered what he wanted to say. After all, going missing under any circumstance was probably a very personal affair, never mind when you were taken by an interdimensional monster, and held hostage in a mirror version of your own world.

Will Byers deserved protection.

So he just shrugged. "There's probably nothing to say that you haven't already listened in on from your mum and dad."

She looked a bit disappointed. "Really?"

"It's not like Al found Will Byers himself," Lily scoffed, shooting him a rather sharp grin. She had been laid back against the sofa, in a bored slump, but sat up at this. "He spent the week in his bedroom because he got grounded."

"I was not grounded," he said. "I was just—You know—"

"Yes?" Rose was smirking thinly. "Makes sense that the first thing to happen in that town in basically ever, you get grounded for. Classic Albus."

"Yawn," Lily said, pretending to inspect her nails. She was growing an attitude ever since Dad signed her Hosmeade permission slip. Mum said it was all performative but that didn't make it any less annoying. "Can I visit you in your common room next year, Rose of Ravenclaw Tower? I’ll nick the Invisibility Cloak back off James and sneak in.”

"Maybe, if you promise not to be such a little shit." Then she turned to Hugo, like she had just remembered something, buried in the back of her mind. "Did you hear about Harry Serling turning a section of the grand staircase into a slide at the end of term? I think it's a load of codswallop, but Lily insists that it's true."

"It is," Lily said, holding her hands up. "I was there!"

"He was trying to impress Polly Chapman." Hugo made a sicking-up noise. "Why would he bother?"

Rose sniffed. "Well, quite. You tell me, Hugo."

Albus tried to add his voice to the discussion, but found no real ways into it, as his sister and cousins got wrapped up in their own world again. That old feeling that once consumed him at all hours of the day was beginning to flare again. It had taken years to fully throw off the moods that his different-ness induced in him.

He sat and listened for a few minutes more before he gave up on trying to add anything of worth, and left to find Granddad.

He had a report to give on all the interesting new muggle things he had done recently. He wouldn't bring up monster slaying, because he didn't think it fit into the definition of muggle, exactly.

Chapter Text

Something was happening in the Wizarding world.

"Even the Aurors don't know exactly what," his dad admitted. "But we're... trying to figure it out."

There was serious drama kicking off, and Albus didn't really understand what any of it meant, but all of a sudden the atmosphere around the Burrow was tense. His aunts and uncles were all exchanging very grim looks at Sunday dinner, Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron were outright missing, and Teddy was sitting there in as bad a mood as he normally only got during the full moon.

"The timing's good I guess," Teddy said, stabbing at his plate indiscriminately. "Shit always happens around here in October. Of course it does, we're stereotypes."

"Watch your mouth in front of your grandmother," Ginny said mildly, ignoring Grandma Weasley's askew look.

Albus watched them all interact with each other, trying to pick up on social ques that might clue him in; James was causing tension again. Post-Hogwarts, he had moved back into the family home and was moaning and groaning at their dad now coming back as well.

"If you want to live alone, James, you can find a flat, and a job that pays well enough to fund it," Ginny had said.

"I am finding a job," he said moodily. "I've got lots of offers."

"So take one of them!" Ginny said, and at that point left them to go and find Granddad out in his shed. Probably because she had had this conversation one too many times already.

Lots of offers, and not a job to go to. What did an ex-Gryffindor Chaser with uber-famous parents do when they finished school? James had excelled at Charms but Albus didn't think he had any interest in working with them. When he was a kid he assumed that James would be a star Quidditch player, just like Mum, but he didn't seem to have the drive. It took work that James didn't have in him.

Now, at dinner, he was mullishly eating the Sunday Roast set before him, and not offering much to the discussions around the table. Albus, sat opposite, was so busy trying to pinpoint the mood of the household that he wasn't either. On top of Teddy's foul mood, Grandma Weasley wasn't very happy with any of them.

"You would think that between them, three growing boys could think of a thing or two to say to their grandmother, who they only see every few weeks," she said.

This brought Teddy out of his funk, but sent James further into his, and Albus bizarrely found himself trying not to talk about Eleven.

"Is Lily doing well at Hogwarts, then?" he asked eventually. She was into her third year now, and seemed to be flying.

"Of course, Al, didn't you read her last letter?" Ginny asked, spooning more spuds onto her plate. "We left it on the living room table for you."

"Mustn't have seen it," he said, inwardly cursing because he had seen it. He was just in a fit of panic at the time, busy closing all the curtains when it was barely nightfall because he had thought he saw Barb standing outside his window, and the guilt was overwhelming him.

Even if he had read it, he wasn't sure how he would have responded to whatever she wrote. He didn't really know how to talk to Lily anymore. It wasn't just the physical distance that meant they went weeks without proper conversation, it was the growing cultural gap between them. Much as she liked Lake Winsome, it was her summer home at best. To Albus it became more and more the place he belonged with every passing month.

What was he meant to talk to her about, exactly?

"Any news from Hermione yet?" Ginny asked Harry, under her breath, and he shook his head.

His dad took Albus aside after dinner, out onto the grass, to talk about what him and his mum alone at Lake Winsome for the next few weeks would mean. Harry was getting called in at all hours of the day and night, and pretty often as well. It took just three days of him scrambling for the fireplace in the middle of the night, or the loud crack of apparition waking the house, for Harry to conclude that he had to return to the family home.

"While I'm gone, I don't want you going out and getting—getting bonked off your tree, and getting in trouble."

"Bonked off my tree?"

"Getting drunk, Albus. You're only sixteen. I didn't have a sip of firewhiskey until I was seventeen."

"You were busier than I am, though," he said.

Harry smiled wryly. "That is true."

"Pretty sure you'd have been off on one if there wasn't a maniac after your blood. You'd get bored."

"Absolutely not," he said. "I want your conduct to be as impeccable as mine was."

"Ron told me once that you got high on luck potions before you went to interrogate your teacher."

"I'm gonna kill Ron one day," Harry said, contemplatively. "Seriously though, Al. I do trust you, but please be sensible."

"'Course I will be," he said.

In his dreams, some nights, the demogorgon came back and attacked the kids, and he was always too late or too incompetent, watching as Will and Eleven were taken to a place he couldn't follow them to, as Dustin was caught by a demogorgon in the forest because Albus didn't reach him in time. Barb was dragged into the lake, alone and screaming.

He couldn't imagine something actually happening to one of the kids because he was drunk out of his skull and unable to protect them.

"You can trust me," he added.

The house at Winsome, after that night, was a lot quieter than he was used to, and it unnerved Albus more than he would admit. He watched TV in the living room, feet up on the coffee table in a small flex of his rebellious muscles, and his eyes flicked down to the brick fireplace that the TV was mounted above every few minutes. He couldn't even conceive of the kinds of trouble that might be brewing.

But, Albus was mostly a grown up now, and he could get by on his own well enough. He liked to keep his own company anyway, and he could go about checking that the doors were locked without worrying that he was going to be asked what was wrong. He could freeze in the hallway in the middle of the night, sure that Barb was there in the shadows, without being asked if he was okay.

That had been a nuisance.

The sleepless nights where he lie in his bed with an empty feeling inside even moreso. Harry Potter would not have let Barb die. But they already knew that he was his father's son in name only.

A knock on the front door startled him from his brooding reverie; he was in the kitchen, unknowingly letting a bowl of cocopuffs go soggy. The knock came again. It was a polite and patient sound. He left the cereal on the kitchen counter and went to answer it. Ginny was gone to work half an hour ago, interviewing the newest player to join the Harpies. A young woman from the Romanian league, youngest ever out of her country.

He hadn't expected to find Will Byers on the other side of the door.

It was a dreary autumn morning and the drizzle had only just subsided. Will was without a coat, shivering on the front step. Rain droplets fuzzed his jumper. Albus, dressed in only a stained hoodie and a pair of jogging bottoms, stared at him like he was something from a different dimension.

"Er..." He shook his head to clear it of lingering sleep. "What's going on?"

There was a vacant, hurt look in Will's eyes; tears threatened to spill over. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Albus wasn’t prepared for this.

"You told me when I was in hospital that I could talk to you..."

Had he? That sounded like something Albus might have said; at the time he was consumed with worry, imagining that there was a link there between them, that they were similarly ostracised.

Then Will never came to him, and Albus supposed that in all the chaos and dodging questions from relatives, and guilt over Barb and Eleven, that he just forgot.

"Right. Come in, then," he said awkwardly. Will followed him through the living room and into the kitchen, silent. Albus pointed one door further, to the dining room. “You can sit down, I was just making breakfast.”

He didn't say that breakfast was a bowl of soggy cocopuffs that were inedible by now. He just put the bowl in the sink and started frying eggs. Rather than take a seat, Will stood around watching him. As the pan heated he threw a dishtowel at Will's head, telling him to dry off.

Then he thought he should probably try to get Will talking. He had come all this way, after all, in the rain.

"So, why are you here?"

To look as if he wasn't interrogating him, he flipped the eggs too soon and they fell apart. He just didn’t want Will to feel as if he was going digging. But Will didn't say anything, at first. It took another egg-flip, when they were beginning to turn light golden brown, before he opened up.

"No real reason."

"Oh yeah? You sure that's true?"

Albus put some bread in the toaster. He looked over at Will to see him fiddling with a scrappy piece of paper. He was frowning down at it.

"What's that?"

Will fiddled with it harder. He was biting his lip. He looked at Albus almost guiltily.

"Is it true that you were sent away from your family?"

Albus' throat dried. "Where did you hear that?"

"Mike listens in on you and Nancy sometimes." That was where the guilt came from. "He told us."

Albus paused for a minute, letting the eggs sizzle in the pan, and worked on suppressing this surge of annoyance. Fucking Mike. But Will looked so wide-eyed and nervous, he put it aside for the moment.

"And what does my family have to do with that scrap of paper?"

"It means... you know what to do when you're on the outside of something."

Not really. All Albus had done was let himself be sent away. Then he sat and stewed in self-righteousness for five years.

The toast popped; Albus served it on two plates, and slid the eggs on after. Turned off the heat on the stove. Dusted his hands off.

"Right, let me see it then," he said, briskly.

Will hesitated. His grip on the paper didn't loosen. Albus realised that he was being too brusque and tried to soften his edges.

Tried.

"I turned out not to be like the rest of my family," he made himself say. "It meant I couldn't stay with them, and even though they don't mean to, they act like I'm different sometimes. You just—You concentrate on yourself."

"What does that mean?"

"It means—" What did it mean? He thought about sitting in his room, listening to his music. "It means that you just—Just concentrate on making yourself happy. Do things that you like and that you're good at, and put those people out of your head."

Will bit his lip, and shoved the paper at Albus' chest before he could change his mind. Albus passed him his egg on toast, and as Will shuffled off into the dining room, he looked at it.

It was a newspaper clipping from the week after Will was rescued from the Upside Down. The Boy Who Came Back To Life the headline declared, along with a picture of Will smiling brightly.

But green scribblings had defaced it. The words Zombie Boy glared up at him. Will's eyes had been crossed out by the same pen. Because he had "died", and come back to life. Or, according to the official story, spent a week lost in the forest. And rather than be happy for him, or considerate of his trauma, one of his classmates had done this.

There was something about the hopeful eyes and innocent disposition of the Will in the photo, mixed with the harsh lines of the graffiti on top, that made Albus' stomach twist.

Zombie Boy.

Sweet Merlin.

He made two cups of tea and went to join Will at the dining table. Outside, the October rain had resumed. Will was watching it patter against the window, and failed to notice when Albus put his tea down in front of him.

The egg on toast was only half-eaten.

"It never rained in the Upside Down," Will said. He sounded a thousand miles away. Albus went still, as if trapped with a bear that hadn’t yet seen him. "It snowed, and it bled, but it never rained."

Albus tried to visualise such a place but came up dry. He watched Will for a few moments, nudged him to make him keep eating. Took a sip of his tea.

"Would it help you to tell me about it?" he asked, placing his mug carefully back on the tabletop.

Will turned two big eyes on him. Contrary to the cruel whispers of his classmates, there was life in those eyes yet; he hadn't been beaten down by them.

Albus was going to keep it that way.

"Would it help you to talk to me about the Upside Down?"

One day in late October, as the weather turned frigid and miserable, a knock came at the front door. It was the case that neither of his parents were at home, so when the knocking persisted, he shoved himself out of his desk seat and stomped downstairs, half-expecting to find Will there again. They had come to a quiet understanding, and Will knew he was welcome now.

He had stopped in once more since that morning, but only drank tea and ate Skittles.

Orange and brown leaves clumped in wet piles on and around the doorstep, on which was stood Dustin Henderson. Beaming up at him. Like they were friends or something.

"What do you want?"

"I've got a demodog to find. Can I raid your fridge?" Dustin asked, and invited himself inside with a quick, "Nice place you got."

Albus watched on silently, his expression nonplussed, as Dustin rifled through his fridge, stuffing his own pockets with Kit-Kats and Dairylea Dunkers. His eyes kept flicking to the rounders bat sticking out of Dustin's backpack. Albus gnawed on his thumbnail until he could keep his mouth shut no longer.

"You'd better not empty out my fridge just so you can go looking for this demogorgon-whatsit."

Dustin looked outraged. "Albus. First of all it is a demodog. Second—"

"Dustin—"

"You taught me to be fearless when you saved me from the demogorgon, so I've gotta go looking for Dart, before he hurts someone!"

Albus took a few seconds to let his head spin, and a few more to imagine himself throwing this ungrateful child out, which was nice.

"Yeah, you know what, Dustin?" he said, at last, wondering whether he was badly out of the loop or either going insane, because who the fuck was Dart? "I don't think fearlessness is very good for your health. How about that?"

That got him an eyeroll. An eyeroll. This child was rolling his eyes at him.

"Hey, dickhead," he snapped, clicking his fingers in front of Dustin's face to draw his attention. "Listen to me. I do not want you idiots going after this thing on your own, okay? I want you to tell Hopper."

"Idiots?" Dustin said, shoving into his bulging pocket a can of Fanta. "You failed your last Science test. Mike heard you and Nancy talking about it! And Hopper's gone awol!"

"Tell Mike not to listen in on—Don't change the subject! I'm serious, okay? This is serious."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." When Albus' stare didn't get any less severe, Dustin sighed. "I won't go after the demodog, okay?"

"Okay, good." Albus released a sigh of relief. "And uh—Really don't listen in on me and Nancy. Okay?" He scratched the back of his head, as Dustin blinked up at him, nonplussed. "Bad things could happen."

After Dustin left—taking the contents of the Potter fridge with him—Albus went about his day for another hour or so before a creeping feeling of oh shit started to filter through his system. In the middle of moving the rest of the junk food in the fridge to the higher shelves, he paused, eyes glimmering in their sockets.

"Oh, shit."

He abandoned the fridge and ran for his bedroom. He felt the sudden, strong conviction that the kid was about to do something incredibly stupid. Dustin wouldn't go after it but that didn't mean that the Party wasn't planning on doing something dangerous.

Where the hell did he put that nailbat?

He tore through his room, kicking the shit out of the mess cluttering his floor to move it out of the way, diving to the floor to scrabble around in the detail, pushing books and loose papers and clothes around, but it was nowhere to be seen. He stopped and thought about it for a second, scratching his hands through his hair.

Under the platform. He'd hidden the nailbat under there months ago. He knee-crawled over to it and pried away the wood panelling, and there it was.

He hefted it in his hands, eyeing the nails, wondering whether they had rusted or if that rusty red was dried blood from the demogorgon that he never washed off. There was no time to worry about cleaning it up now though. However gross it was to think of the demogorgon bits it was seasoned with.

He found Dustin after only ten minutes of walking along forest roads, eventually spotting the distinct curly head, going it solo despite what he had told Albus.

"Hey, dipshit!"

Being seen hanging around with this kid would make him feel silly, and he hated to feel silly. Albus liked to be taken seriously. But then Dustin explained what he was doing properly, told him about finding this demogorgon thing, Dart, in the bin outside his house. How it's face opened up and ate his cat, and now it had escaped from his house, and he thought the kid couldn't be left alone.

So Albus agreed to help him look. They went and fetched rubber gloves, and bought raw diced meat from the butcher's, and went back into the forest after fetching the CR-V so they could cover more ground.

Luring Dart in before he ate another household pet was ideal.

Use of the CR-V was a luxury in the circumstances; he couldn't actually pass his driving test until he was seventeen, so driving it alone was very illegal, not responsible necessarily, but on the other hand, Hopper wouldn't arrest him for this and his dad would never find out. Probably. Besides, he was a good driver.

It was only a few minutes after they started in their task that he realised how hard it might prove to be.

Dustin seemed to appreciate the company, if his chatterbox tendencies were anything to go by. In less than forty minutes of tromping around the forest together, Dustin had called an earthworm a snake, referred to a carrot as corn, and dubbed the slot machine in the local pub a cash register. It was a miracle he could breathe automatically.

But then the conversation was steered in the direction that Albus suspected it had always meant to go in; girls.

"You know how even though you're kind of weird, you have a really hot girlfriend?"

"Excuse me?"

"You and Nancy," Dustin said. "How did you make that happen? You're not very charismatic."

"Thanks very much."

”And you’re honestly a pretty unpleasant guy to be around.”

”Well, I try my very best.”

"But she still really likes you! So how did you do it, I guess, is what I'm asking."

"Dustin, listen. I know less about girls... than anyone in the world." Dustin didn't stop staring at him. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. "I mean, me and Nance aren’t even talking right now." He whacked a chunk of meat to the ground. "I think we might break up."

"Really? Why?"

"We had a fight."

They had been walking home in the dark from the house that Barb once lived in. Nancy was irritable, as she always was after such a visit, and shot him a jilted look when he kept fidgeting.

"What?" she asked.

"We can't keep doing this," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because, Nancy, Barb is dead," he said, gesticulating with his hands, "and going to her parents house for dinner, sitting at their table, eating their food, surrounded by pictures of Barb, and listening to them talk about finding her, is insane."

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't know it's— it’s cruel?"

"Well what do you expect us to do?" she cried. "You told me we can't tell them anything! And we certainly can't tell them that their daughter got kidnapped by an interdimensional monster who murdered her!" A short scream caught in her throat. "It's all such bullshit!"

"I don't know what we're supposed to do," he had said, "but it's not—it's not this. This cannot be the answer, Nancy."

She had to know he was right, but they went their separate ways with barely another word to each other, and hadn't really spoken since. That was three nights ago. Albus was starting to think it was over.

They had never been held together by much. Some teenage attraction, his reputation, him running to protect her brother when she asked.

But he wouldn't be the one to say so. He threw another hunk of meat to the forest floor. It did nothing to relieve the tension.

Events moved fast.

He and Dustin ended up at a scrapyard by sunset, where Lucas Sinclair turned up with a red-haired girl in tow who looked so much like Lily that for a second, Albus’ heart stopped. But this was Max Mayfield, the girl of Dustin’s pre-adolescent affections, and now she was tangled up in this mess too.

”Oh, you’re bringing another child into this,” he hissed at Dustin and Lucas, pointing at Max with the nailbat. “What a great idea!”

”Hey, my theory is that she’s safer with us and the demodog than she would be with her brother,” Dustin said, and there wasn’t enough time to argue over it properly.

Albus really needed these kids to stop getting themselves in trouble.

But he looked after the trio as best he could. He protected them when the night fell and the demodogs descended upon the scrapyard where they made their stand. He saw Eleven in Max as well. Maybe he would see her in every girl of his sister’s age for as long as he lived.

He couldn’t fail Max like he had failed Eleven.

Through the fog and the fire, the sharp teeth and guttural snarls of the demodogs, he put himself between them and the kids. And he kept them safe. The bat was his ally again, but his arms still ached when he was done, and the last dog's legs gave out. Last time, with the Demogorgon, he had barely been able to lift his arms for a week after. God, the ache had been—

Otherworldly.

The demodogs were lighter. Obviously smaller. But they moved so fast, he could barely keep up. Razor-sharp teeth had sliced his arm at one point but he didn't feel the burn until the danger passed. The cut wasn't deep, when he prodded at it, but the sensation of wet, exposed flesh made his stomach turn violently.

"Oh man, that was so fucking sick," Dustin said gleefully, jogging straight past him to examine one of the felled dogs.

He had the slight suspicion that he was actually good at this, you know. He was if Dustin's whoops and hollers were anything to go by. The ache in his arms felt good. He liked the adrenaline. And when Max rolled her eyes at him and called him insane to his face, he found he didn't mind so much.

Lucas left the bus last, rolling his eyes at Dustin. "He tried to keep one of these things as a pet, you know," he said to Max, and high-fived Albus as he went past. He barely had the presence of mind to raise his hand in time to meet it.

Still panting, he stared around at the scene; the bus, the junk, the bodies on the ground, already covered over with fog. His hand, holding the bat, was slick with sweat.

He blew out one long breath. "Fucking hell," he whispered, and then pulled himself together to hurry after the trio of kids already making tracks into the distance.

Events moved fast.

They followed sounds in the woods for far too long, and found the lab that called itself the Department of Energy at the end of it, headlights of the car creeping up first on wire fencing, and then falling to illuminate an empty car park. Nancy and Jonathan, also, two deer in his headlights.

"What are you two doing here?" he hissed sticking his head out the car window.

Nancy's eyes went big and round. "I could ask you the same thing!"

He sighed. "Dustin's been keeping a demogorgon as a pet and it got loose," he said, and Jonathan raised his eyes to heaven, cursing.

"It wasn't a demogorgon, it was a demodog, you imbecile!"

His eyes flicked back to the Department of Energy behind them. He amused himself for a minute with the thought that he was finally going to live out Rose's dream of touring the place. Flicked his gaze back to Nancy.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

But before she could say anything, be it to tell him the truth or rebuff him, Hopper was screeching up in his police car, with Mrs Byers in the passenger seat who looked like she had seen a ghost, and Will wrapped up in her arms—the ghost. Mike was thrown into the backseat, white-faced and frantic.

”The hell are you doing driving that car around, Potter?” Hopper barked, pulling up at their side. Albus, gaping, couldn't answer him. “Just—follow us back to the Byers house. Carefully, so I can kill you myself."

Maybe if the world didn’t end, Hopper would be happy enough not to arrest him, or at least not tell his parents.

So Jonathan and Nancy flung themselves into the boot of the car, where two rumble seats were tacked on like afterthoughts, and Albus threw the CR-V into gear and raced off after Hopper. The lab shrank in his mirrors, and Albus' skin crawled until it was out of sight.

Back at the Byers house they pooled their information, and the kids dubbed this new monster the Mind Flayer. It was a creature from Dungeons and Dragons, apparently, and they had been using that game to name these monsters since Will first vanished. He looked at Will's drawings, where the kid was depicted as a wizard, of all things.

But the white, clammy palms, the darkening pupils, the veins under paper-thin skin that were beginning to spider out in shades of black, they were not the work of a wizard.

"It's in his head," Mrs Byers cried. "It's killing him."

When Mrs Byers tried to bring Will back from the brink, Albus, like the rest, could only watch. He wanted to help, but...

What was there that he could do? No magic, no nothing. A moody, unhelpful disposition. Intellectually not that bright either. Nothing the wizarding world was missing and nothing he could do now to help save Will.

Mike was at his back, trembling like a leaf; his own attempts to get through had fallen on deaf ears and the veins were darkening to a frightening degree. Mrs Byers looked around at them with wide, watery eyes, finally landing on Albus. He felt the weight of her hope very heavily on his shoulders when he realised her gaze wasn't moving forwards.

"He said you helped him," she whispered. "After he came home. He told me you two talked."

On numb feet he stumbled forwards and fell to his knees. Will didn't even flinch at the sudden movement. Clumsily, he put his hand atop Will's, flinching himself when he felt how cold his skin was.

"Will? Can you hear me?" Not even a blink. Albus swallowed and tried again. "Know how people at school called you names? Well people called me names too. It's why I had to leave home, come here. They called me squib." He forced the word past his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut when he heard his own voice sound it out. "You—You might not understand what that means, but it wasn't a nice thing to say. I’ve never given myself a chance at getting out from under the things they said about me. I have run from it, I have hidden from it, but I have never got out from under it. So, if you come back to us, I’ll do it. I’ll try to give myself a chance. Me and you, we’ll do it together. What do you say?"

For a brief moment he thought there was a flicker. His heart skipped a beat. But then—nothing.

Nothing he said reached Will either, nor did the music Jonathan played from his phone. Something by the Clash, a band his Uncle Ron loved, that Will did too. It failed to get through to him.

Those expressive eyes of his were now totally blank, and the music was hurting Albus' ears, and Will's death mask was returning.

I'm sorry, but Will isn't in at the moment.

"We've gotta do something!" Mrs Byers said to Hopper, who was grimacing in the corner. "Think, Hopper, what can we—"

And then, there was something in the surrounding trees that snarled. It was coming closer. Scraping, bumping, a sound at the door. It was—

No.

It was Eleven.

Albus felt like the universe was slapping him in the face.

Eleven, all—alive and stuff. I mean, she's dressed kinda weird, he thought, taking in the odd attire for one bizarre moment before his synapses connected and he realised that Eleven was alive. And, apparently, had been all along, according to Hopper, who had been hiding her, keeping her somewhere hidden from the bad men.

And he hadn't told any of them.

Not the kids who mourned for her, crying fat tears in the hours and days after, feeling a sadness that they didn't even understand. Mike, especially, who was a wreck in the months since she had vanished.

"He lays in his bed every night cradling his walkie-talkie," Nancy whispered to him, one night, when he was at the Wheeler house for dinner and they saw him slinking down to the basement, alone and miserable. "When the batteries die he throws a fit."

Not Albus, who lay awake in bed at night even now, laden with guilt for letting her be the one who stepped up to take on the men in suits who she had trusted him to hide her from.

Eleven was alive, and she always had been.

Then something like relief unfurled in his chest, and he let himself feel it. Eleven was alive.

And events moved fast.

Eleven was alive, and prepared to close the gate in the lab once and for all. They didn't stop to ask more questions. No time for it. Next thing he knew, everyone was rushing about, getting ready to leave again. The adrenaline focused his mind, gave him something to do with all those years of built-up angst.

He and Nancy still hadn't spoken about what happened between them, but she stood in his bubble, outside by Mrs Byers' car, and tucked her pinky finger around his. She brought him back down to Earth.

"Go with Will?" he asked her. "Look after him for me."

"You, look after Mike," she said. "Like you did before."

"I didn't look after him then," he said. "I nearly got him killed. I—I thought I'd got Eleven killed. I thought she was dead for months."

Nancy's eyes shimmered with some unspoken grief. "You went to Mike when I asked you to. You ran into danger for him without even knowing what it was. You didn't have to do that, you could have made me waste time explaining."

"I didn't need you to explain." You asked me for help was left unsaid. "I always take you seriously."

She stepped forwards after a moment of silence, and pressed her lips to his. Shock flooded his system and made his extremities go numb. Then she pulled back, waiting for him to say something to her.

Before he could, Mrs Byers was climbing in to the driver's seat and telling Nancy to help Jonathan with Will. Then they were gone, and so was Eleven with Hopper, to close the gate that had opened up in the lab which pretended to be the Department of Energy.

It was just Albus, and the three remaining kids. The sudden stillness nearly swallowed him up, but he kept busy by barricading them in the house and pacing between the rooms to check for weak spots, flexing his fingers, a low thrum of energy pulsing through his system. Barely had they been clearing up the mess in the Byers' house for five minutes when headlights beamed across the window.

They had not been expecting headlights.

"Shit," Max hissed, turning frightened eyes on Albus. "It's my brother."

"Lemme see!" Dustin shoved his way to the window beside Max, bumping her out of view. She retaliated by bumping him back, unthinking, before she froze solid, and dove out of view again. "Oh, fuck, did he just see you, Max?"

"Jesus fucking Christ," Lucas groaned. "Dustin, you're so fucking stupid."

"Shut up, dick!"

"No, you—"

"Both of you shut up!"

Albus was straining to listen for sounds from outside. He heard a car door slam. Heavy footsteps on the gravel drive. On the wooden stoop. Three booming knocks sounded out.

"Shit..." Dustin scurried to the door before Albus overtook him and pushed him back.

A fourth knock shook the walls. He opened the door before it could be busted down, and Max’s brother waited on the other side.

Parked haphazardly beside the CR-V was a souped-up Subaru. Standing before him was a boy who did not look like a boy. He was tall and muscled, all blond curls and cigarettes, and Albus had to admit he stared for a few seconds too long.

Max's brother was lighting a cigarette and taking a drag, as Albus said, “Can I help you?”

The boy looked at Albus without saying anything, unnerving in his silence and his steadfastness. He seemed more like a man than a boy. Albus suddenly felt all sixteen of his years, and not in a good way.

He blew a long, steady stream of smoke out, into Albus' face. “I’m here to collect my sister,” he said.

“You want to go with this guy?” Albus asked, turning to look at Max.

She hesitated for a moment, and then turned wild eyes on him, and gave her head a shake. That was good enough for Albus, who took the action as the chance to step in front of Dustin and shove him further back. It was good to put a body between them and him.

“She doesn’t want to go with you.”

“That’s the funny thing about her being twelve; she doesn’t get a fucking say in the matter.” He tried to force his way past Albus, who just about blocked him. Billy stared at him. “You wanna fight, is that it?”

The answer to that was an emphatic no. Billy looked like he hit as hard as a truck, and he had this thing in his eyes that made him seem empty. But Albus had all this pent up aggression he needed to get rid of, and Max got this haunted look in her eyes when she thought about being alone with her brother…

He took a step closer to Billy, hand still on the front door, considering slamming it shut. He smiled at Billy, laying on the smarm because he felt like it, and he wasn't thinking straight.

“Sure, why not?”

At first it looked like he might have this. He pulled the seventeen-year-old away from Lucas when he gunned for the boy. Even landed a few decent punches. Shoved the guy back towards the front door.

"Get. Out," Albus told him.

Max's brother looked at him with the eyes of an apex predator.

"Don't, Billy!" Max cried.

"Maxine—"

"She told you to go, mate," Albus said, sharply. "She doesn't want you here."

Billy turned his eyes on him again. "Max is fucking twelve years old, she doesn't get to decide what she does and doesn't want. And here's another thing; you. Are not. My mate."

He punctuated this with an almighty shove that sent Albus crashing back against the sink, and the fight was on for real.

If it could be called a fight.

The pounding rush of adrenaline definitely helped, but Billy was still laughing, the whole time, this constant, mocking, knowing laugh, like there was no question that Billy was going to win and Albus was doomed from the start. For a while, though, Albus dared to feel confident. He had good reflexes and no muscle, but David did beat Goliath—

Then something jagged and heavy and incredibly painful crashed into the crown of his skull.

He dully registered that he was sprawled out on the floor, and he could hear Billy crowing something, victory, through the ringing in his ears. He felt a great weight drop down on top of him—Billy, he assumed—but he couldn't really see anything. The punches started coming again. His reflexes couldn't save him this time.

His last thought before the world slipped away was that well, at least he got Billy away from the kids, and then the next thing he knew—

The next thing he knew everything was dark, and the world was spinning, and Albus felt like he was moving at speed. He heard the kids squabbling with each other over something. Panicked. Shouting. But no Billy.

He couldn't hear—He couldn't hear Billy. His extremeties were numb. Everything moved fast.

Albus eased his eyes open as far as they would go, and saw trees moving past the window at break-neck speed. It was like being in a car with Granddad Weasley. Because—Because he was in a—

He was in his car. The CR-V. But then who—

He forced his eyes wide open, and spied the red-head girl in the driving seat. Lily, he thought immediately, before the moment came back to him and he remembered.

"Oh, sweet Merlin!" he cried, voice garbled because his throat was swollen. "Max!"

The kids jumped and the car swerved, and Albus' stomach turned upside down, and the kids were still screaming, they were going to crash his car.

"Pull over," he said, with as much commanding prowess as he could in the monent. They didn't listen to him, instead arguing with each other. "Stop the car!"

"I told you he'd freak out!" Mike said, who was pressed up against Albus' side.

"Maxine!"

"We're almost there!" Lucas shouted over the commotion.

He was in the passenger seat, and twisting to look back at them, and not wearing a seatbelt.

"Belt," Albus blurted. Lucas frowned at him, confused. "Put a—Put your fucking seatbelt on!"

"Turn left here," Lucas told Max, swinging back to face front, ignoring Albus completely. "Left here!"

The car veered wildly, swinging off towards the left, and Albus thought he was going to be sick.

This was so undignified.

They finally stopped moving, a minute later, in a field that stank of decay. It smelled like the demogorgon. The kids were scrambling out of the car before he could blink. He in turn had to scramble to chase them down.

It was a miracle that his legs still worked.

Crossing the field, they hurried over hundreds of ruined crops. The whole scene brought to mind images of ashy landscapes, where the skies bled rather than rained, where Will said he thought time stood still. Albus felt the back of his neck prickle.

"Would you fucking get back here?" he roared at the kids' backs.

Only Max spared him a glance, and that was insultingly dismissive in itself.

They found the hole in the ground that Hopper had dug when he first got an inkling of what was happening around the town. The smell was strongest there. He tried to stop them from going down there but his head was gone and there were more of them than him, sometimes alarmingly so when his vision doubled up.

He blinked, and they were surrounding it, trying to decide who was "going first", and then he blinked again and Mike looked to be gearing up to climb inside, and at that point he yanked his consciousness firmly down to Earth, and volunteered himself.

Rather him than them, right? His head even cleared somewhat under the weight of leadership. It was becoming easier to think again.

He made them put on the protective bandanas, goggles and gloves from his earlier stint with Dustin, and went first down the hole. He emerged into the place of Will's nightmares. The nailbat was gripped tight in his hand and he imagined, as he tried to peer through the darkness, that this would be so much easier if he could cast a spell to provide them with light.

He'd be happy to break the Statue of Secrecy if only he could.

Instead, as the kids followed him down into the tunnels of the Upside Down, the only thing protecting them from oblivion was underwhelming, insignificant, underachieving Albus, and his rusty old bat.

Growls echoed towards them from deeper inside the tunnels, and he straightened his spine and walked towards them. He would just have to be good enough on his own.

It was the only option he had.

Chapter Text

The tunnel system they were in seemed to be a living thing, a gigantic organism, spreading out beneath the town. In the Byers house there had been pages taped together, stapled and glued to the walls, papering the entire house and covered in frantic scribbles, that Bob, Joyce's partner, said mapped these tunnels out.

Albus wished that he had paid them better attention now that he was in them.

He had a habit of learning his lessons too late.

The air was thick and ashy. It almost sounded like the tunnels were breathing. Felt like it too, if that musty, not-quite-breeze were anything to go by. He thought that if these tunnels connected to the Upside Down, and to their world, that there really couldn't be that much physical distance between the two worlds at all. It wasn't a comforting thought.

The kids huddled around him. He supposed that the sound of distant growls, echoing down the tunnels from places far away, would prompt that.

"We have to find the hub," Mike said, his voice muffled from behind the bandana. "Will swears it's important."

That was Albus' thinking. If they burned the hub, and the Mind Flayer was connected to it—the vines creeping around them—then they burned the Mind Flayer. And hopefully that would eject the Mind Flayer from Will's head.

"Why though?" Max asked.

"Because the Mind Flayer thinks it's important."

Mike sounded self-important on the subject; Albus rolled his eyes, and was sure Max was doing the same.

"Just follow me," Albus said irritably.

His head was startlingly clear considering... what it had just been put through. The temptation to apologise to his cranium was strong. Or an early onset sign of concussion.

He led them along easily enough, remembering the map they had studied well enough to know generally where they were supposed to go. It was a lesson, he told himself. Pay closer attention to these things in future. He had his hand closed around the lighter Lucas passed him—Merlin knew where he had got it from in the first place—and he was habitually flicking it to keep his nerves steady.

"Are we in the Upside Down?" Dustin asked. "Like, does this place count as the Upside Down?"

"Of course not," Mike said.

"The tunnels are obviously just another layer between our world and the Upside Down," Lucas agreed, and then they started bickering over it.

Albus let them; he didn't have an answer to the question, and as long as he could hear them arguing, he knew they were still behind him. He glanced back to make sure Lily was—Max. To make sure Max was there.

Then those growls that had been pursuing them since the moment they arrived in the tunnels got stronger. Louder.

Albus slowed to a stop.

There was a demodog up ahead, growling at them, bearing it's rows and rows of sharp teeth.

Albus reached for the nailbat—

He startled; Dustin was at his side, then he was creeping forwards.

"It's me, it's your friend. It's Dustin." Albus snatched a hand out to stop him, but Dustin waved him off, saying, "It's okay, it's okay, I know him. He knows me."

"How do you know that?" Albus hissed.

"Please, just trust me." To the demodog, Dustin said, "Will you let us pass? I'm sorry about the storm cellar. Pretty douche-y thing to do." The creature was still growling, but Albus had to admit that it was behaving as though it knew Dustin. It hadn't tried to rip him apart yet at least. "You hungry? I've got our favourite. Noughat! Yeah? Alright? Here you go buddy."

Albus surveyed the tunnel ahead of them for more demodogs, and couldn't see any, but he didn't let Mike just march onwards like he was trying to. They had to ease their way around Dustin and Dart without breaking the spell that had befallen the two.

To their backs, Dustin was still talking to Dart.

"And I've got—I've got more." Albus turned around; Dustin was dumping several bars of noughat on the floor. His shoulders were downturned with sadness. "Bye, Dart."

Albus sighed, watching the feasting monster as Dustin rejoined them. He put his hand to Dustin's back, and used it to push him onwards. He kept his eyes on Dart until the creature was out of sight.

Soon enough they came upon the hub. It appeared to be a graveyard for animals, their bodies strewn around all over, hard not to step on. Piles of shedded demogorgon skin further clogged up the floor. When he accidentally stood on a pile of it, his foot nearly gave way. Albus' stomach turned.

He took out the lighter and studied it. It was old-fashioned, silver, with an elaborate design on the front, and had warmed in his hand. He wiped his palm on his jacket.

"Be ready to turn and run," he warned the kids. He knelt down closer to the vines, which squelched and slid over one another; he wrinkled his nose and braced himself. "Merlin, we are so deep in the shit," he said, and then he struck the lighter.

He threw the flame into the heart of the nest, and when it struck, the nest started to scream.

The fire spread faster than he had anticipated—it was a wall of heat rushing towards them like a bomb—and at a single shout the kids started gunning for the exit. Albus was quick on their heels.

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god," Dustin chanted.

They reached the hanging rope and Albus snatched up Max first, lifting her up to it and holding her until she was halfway up.

He reached for Lucas next, shouting up to Max, "Help pull the others up when you're out!"

Lucas latched onto the rope, but Albus had to hold him for a few seconds more, because it was swaying so much as Max struggled to climb up it. Then she was out, the rope calmed down, and he could let Lucas go, and reach for Mike.

Something was coming. Thundering up the tunnel. He could feel the vines beneath his feet begin to vibrate.

"Oh shit," Dustin cried.

The dismay in his voice was plain, but rather than let those thundering vibrations reach them, Albus sent Mike up the rope and reached for Dustin. He pulled him close just as the noise reached deafening levels, and shadows began to grow along the lining of the tunnel. Mike was going as fast as he could. He saw two pairs of small hands reaching down for him.

But there wasn't room for Dustin yet.

The demodogs reached them. Albus pulled Dustin tight to his body and pushed him against the wall, gripping the nailbat, waiting to feel rows of teeth rip through the material of his jacket.

Dog-sized bodies shoved up against his back, his legs, with bruising force—

They were battering him, he could barely breathe, his ribs were being squeezed—

None of the dogs stopped. They were bolting past in waves. They were leaving Albus and Dustin alone.

He turned his head and watched them go, bemused, heart hammering, and wondered what was going on. Could it be that they had found a juicier target? Could it be that Dustin's ridiculous offering of noughat worked on more than just—

No. That was insane.

"Eleven," a muffled voice breathed.

He looked down, at Dustin, who was watching the demodogs race past them like he was, despite his position smushed between Albus and the wall.

They didn't hang about when the last of the demodogs pattered past their field of vision. Deeper into the tunnels, hopefully to stay there.

Albus peeled himself back from the disgusting walls, hoping they didn't carry any cancerous ameobas. He watched the tunnels for a few seconds more. Then he tested the rope to make sure it was okay, and called up to the three shrieking kids on the top that they needed to stop shouting, if they didn't want to bring the demodogs back.

"Are you okay?" Lucas cried.

"We're fine," he said roughly. "Be ready to help Dustin."

While he waited for Dustin to struggle up the rope, Albus looked up and down the tunnel, expecting at every second that more of them would appear, snarling through their bizzare, flower-like heads. Flesh petal heads. Did they eat and smell through one hole, or...?

He shook his head, realising suddenly that Dustin was gone, and now four heads were peering down at him.

"Come on!" Dustin said. "We'll help pull you up!"

He stowed the nailbat away, took a fortifying breath, and started to climb.

Despite his initial assurances that he didn't need to be pulled up by them, he found that in fact did, and Albus registered the thought that he was doing himself a disservice not to strengthen up in future, because this was humiliating.

Two kids gripping an arm each helped haul him out of the ground. They stumbled out of the pit onto level ground. Albus breathed in as much fresh air as he could, no matter the smell of rot.

"Do you..." Max trailed off, her voice garbled with fright. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Do you think we're safe?"

"Maybe," Albus said, staring at the ground.

His head was spinning and his face was one big zone of pain. His bones seemed to tingle like they did if he ever went too long without sleep, and he panicked briefly, wondering whether time moved differently in the Upside Down and that they had been gone for longer than a few minutes.

"Probably," he corrected, when he realised that the kids were all looking at him, wide-eyed and pliant, waiting for a lead to follow.

They'd have to wait a few minutes for him to pull himself together. If a hoard of hungry demodogs came spilling out of that hole, there was nothing he could do about it. When his legs gave way he didn't try to stop them, and he fell back on the soil, the stars over his head spinning.

Like a bunch of little puppets with their strings cut, the kids all followed suit. A collective sigh of relief puffed out of them.

"What do we do now?" Lucas asked after a few moments.

Albus didn't have an answer, just let out a long, low noise of exhaustion.

"Do you think Dart's dead?" Dustin mumbled.

Hopefully was definitely the wrong thing to say. He recalled to mind those things attacking them in the scrapyard, and shuddered. But he still didn't tell Dustin that.

"I dunno, mate," he said. "He's probably just... hanging around down there with the other demodogs."

"But he wasn't like them," Dustin said. "What if they reject him?"

"Dart's a strong demodog. He can take care of himself." If he wasn't already dead at the hands of Eleven. "Are the rest of you okay?"

Mumbles and muttering met his question, and not satisfied that they were taking him seriously enough, Albus forced his head up.

"Hey, dickheads, are you all okay?"

"YES," four irritated little voices chorused.

His eyes dropped shut and his head fell back against the soil again. Good. He'd kept them all alive, in one piece, and with what he was pretty sure was a concussion too.

"So... Are we going to find the gate now?" Mike piped up.

He swallowed. "No. We're going to the Byers' house, and we're staying there."

By the grace of Merlin he made it to the car, stumbling over uneven ground but with a small hoard of children around him to add moral support if nothing physical. He slumped behind the wheel, and stared at the dashboard for a solid minute, before he realised that the problem was that his seat had been moved forward as far as it would go, and he had to readjust it.

His limbs slowly reconnected to his brain, and then he managed to start the engine. The situation wasn't ideal, but he would take it over letting Max get behind the wheel of the CR-V ever again.

"What—Why are there blocks taped to the pedals?" he muttered, leaning down to rip them away, and then staying down for a moment. Just to rest his head. The wheel was comfier than he thought it would be...

Someone kicked the back of his seat, jolting him, making him realise he had been sat there doing nothing for another minute or so, the engine rumbling lowly in his ears.

"Can we go, please? Come on, I don't want—"

"Hang on a second!" He rested his forehead back onto the steering wheel, groaning. "Shit..."

Dustin was in the passenger seat, and he prodded Albus in the side. "Are you okay?" When no answer came, he said, "We need to find a hospital," to his friends in the back.

"There isn't one, not for ages," Albus told the dashboard. "The closest hospital is like an hour's drive away. Just—Just shut up and let me navigate. Seatbelts on," he added as an afterthought, and a series of clicks followed as they all buckled in.

His first instruction, though, they didn't listen to at all; as he eased his way out of the field and onto the road, they managed to keep their mouths shut, but as he travelled down the empty road, the double beams of his headlights and the four children yelling at him to drive this way or that were quintuple assaults on his concussed head. His teeth were gritted and his breathing very careful, but his stomach had been churning from the moment he picked himself up off the ground.

"You just missed the shortcut!" Mike cried, as they passed an entryway into the woods at twenty miles per hour.

"That's because I'm not taking it!" he said, and that exclamation was the straw that broke the camel's back; his stomach roiled again.

Without warning he pulled the car over and threw open the door, hanging out as far as his seatbelt would let him to empty the contents of his stomach, which was mostly acid.

A chorus of revulsion from the backseat of his car added irritation to his litany of things to be pissed off about, as he heaved himself back into his seat, panting, and slammed the door shut again. The road was spinning.

"Are you dying?" Lucas asked, like he was already resigned to it, and now they were going to have to find another gullible teenager to drive them around and fight monsters for them.

Albus didn't say anything. Just threw the car back into gear and kept driving, at a lower speed than before. There was some kind of scuffle happening in the backseat but he decided that as long as it wasn't a stowaway demogorgon it didn't matter.

In half an hour they were pulling into the Byers' driveway, and the headlights illuminated the darkened bungalow. No one back yet. Front door hanging open; it looked like Billy had gone. His car was missing.

Albus' cargo waited until he got out to pile out of the CR-V after him, and they clustered around him like nervous puppies, either to protect him or be protected by him should something in the shadows attack. Gathering another surge of strength, he ushered them inside, and bolted the front door behind him.

He didn't feel much safer; if anything had followed them from the tunnels, a thin wooden door wasn't going to stop it. He was reminded, briefly, of the magical doors guarding Hogwards, fifty feet tall and loaded up to the rafters with locks and enchantments. They ultimately had not been enough to stop Voldemort's army in their tracks. Not that he had ever seen them. Maybe the tales were exaggerated.

History was full of exaggeration.

There was a dead demodog in the fridge. Shattered glass in the living room. Smashed plates on the floor of the kitchen. Blood splattered over the linoleum.

Before he let himself collapse he did a sweep-over of the bungalow and confirmed they were alone. The kids followed him from a distance, and when he nodded to say the coast was clear, sighs of relief puffed out of their chests, and they shared a glance like What sort of a night have we had?

Same, Albus thought. He imagined he was less enthused than they were, though. Merlin, his face hurt.

Then, lying down on the sofa for what felt like the first time in his life, he closed his eyes and listened as between them, Dustin and Lucas explained their version of the week's events to him. Slowy, as best he could when his head was split in half and his storytellers were constantly speaking over each other, contradicting what the other said, and shouting the other down, he completed the picture of what had happened.

He needed to start writing this stuff down.

Will's possession by the Mind Flayer, because the kid could not catch a break, happening only a couple of days after Albus found him on his doorstep with hollows beneath his eyes was a bitter pill to swallow. Max's brother Billy being a psycho somewhat less so.

Albus hoped that when he awoke from the Max-induced coma he had temporarily slipped into—he eyed the used needle lying on the floor not far away from them, and got Lucas to throw it away—that Billy had gone looking for her around town, seeing the house was empty, and that he wouldn't be coming back.

"At least the demo-whatsits are gone," he muttered.

"Demodogs!" Dustin said, passing him a fresh bag of frozen peas as the first one he had been given was defrosting. He placed it over the right side of his face, which was where most of the pain was. He was starting to feel his back and legs bruising too. "Will's mum probably has some Calpol or something. I'll go and look."

He wanted to shout that he needed something stronger than Calpol because he wasn't ten years old, but his mouth refused to open.

As Dustin went to do that and Lucas went to find Mike and Max, who seemed to be arguing in the kitchen, Albus began to drift out of consciousness. He thought about Nancy and Jonathan, and hoped they were okay. He was trying to remember when he last heard from either of them and couldn't. Was that the concussion, addling his brain? Was Nancy kissing him a concussion as well?

He heard Lucas cry, "Why the hell is there a dead demodog in Mrs Byers' fridge?" and Dustin clear his throat, and say, “I’m going to preface this statement by reminding us all of the importance of preserving and cataloguing new scientific species—”

"Dustin."

"For fucks sake," Mike sighed.

Then as Albus became less tethered to reality, his mind went to his brother, James, and the trouble he had been having post-Hogwarts. Unable to find a job that enthused him, that made him want to put himself out into the world. At one point, Albus had quietly enjoyed James' misfortune, which felt ghastly to him now. It was funny how different everything looked with a bit of perspective.

Maybe he and James were similarly lost.

An undefined span of time later, a set of headlights flared across the windows, jolting Albus back to life with a gasp.

He blinked, and looked around as rapidly as he could; the kids were gathered around the kitchen table, looking between him and the door with wide eyes. Albus went and twitched the curtains, squinting against the light—

Before they cut out and the outside world was plunged into darkness.

"I think—" He shook his head a bit, realising that it was a bit easier now to think than it had been an hour ago. "I think it's Will."

Then car doors slammed, and if he squinted more he could make out Mrs Byers and Nancy, both in one piece, thank Merlin. Then following them, carrying a large bundle, was Jonathan Byers.

He and Nancy had been investigating something when everything kicked off. Albus wondered why he hadn't been with them.

"They're back," he said to the kids, who startled and jumped up, as he went to unbolt the front door. Albus looked back at them once more. "Don't tell them I threw up," he said, pointing around at them, and then threw the front door open.

He didn't much fancy a trip to the hospital, which is where he would end up if Joyce and Hopper knew he had been sick.

The kids flocked to Will, who was only half-conscious and looked like hell, but was no longer possessed by the Mind Flayer. He was soaked in his own sweat and Albus wondered how they had got the Mind Flayer out of him. Was it definitely gone, as well. How did dis-possession work?

"Does he need anything?" Albus asked, peering into Will's face.

Jonathan, carrying him down towards his bedroom, gave Albus a hesitant look. It was the look of a wounded animal eyeing up someone who they knew was either their saviour or their killer. But he shook his head a moment later.

"I just need to put him down to sleep," he said. He sounded as bad as he looked; nearly worse than Will, Albus thought.

"Well, let me know," he said. "I don't mind."

Jonathan didn't reply, just took Will off down the corridor to his room, and disappeared into it. Zombie Boy wasn't dead yet; he felt oddly triumphant on Will's behalf. Albus turned back to the rest of the reuniting party. Hopper and Eleven were still absent. He assumed they were on their way back.

Nancy had Mike folded into her arms, when she looked over and saw Albus. Her eyes went wide.

"Oh my god, what the hell happened to you?"

She released Mike, though kept one grounding hand latched on his arm, and moved closer to Albus. Her free hand, soft and sooty, went to the side of Albus' face, which was all cold and wet from the frozen peas, and swollen from the hits he took from Billy.

"Doesn't matter," he said.

He wasn't particularly in the mood to go over the story of how Max's insane older brother beat the absolute stuffing out of him.

"Albus saved us!" Dustin crowed.

"It's nothing."

"No, this is not nothing," Joyce said, nudging Nancy out of the way so that she could get a closer look at his face.

Albus sighed, and said, "Billy Hargrove came here, looking for Max."

He felt a hand go to his side, holding him there. He didn't know why she was doing that until he realised he was slumping against the wall.

"Come on," Joyce said, moving him without much need for force. "You sit back down. Nancy, will you clean him up for me please?"

He wanted to tell her that he had been sat down for quite a while already, and that he didn't need either of them to mother him, especially Nancy, but what actually happened was that when his back hit the sofa cushions, he was rendered immobile with exhaustion.

Nancy perched on the edge of the sofa next to him a minute later, her brows drawn together, and a washcloth clutched to her chest. He winced as the cloth touched the cuts on his face. They found themselves in an intimite little bubble despite the hoard of kids buzzing around behind them.

He was eyeing her hair, frazzled from heat, and a drying sheen of sweat like a film over her face, a reminder that he wasn't the only one who had been busy.

"Why were you and Jonathan going places together?" he asked. His voice was barely above a whisper, and good thing too; any louder and his insecurity would be declared to anyone who could hear him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"We weren't going places together," she said, not pausing in her work. "We were, like, kidnapped. By the people at the lab. The people who hurt Eleven and opened the gate to the Upside Down. They knew what me and Jonathan were in Buttermere to do, somehow."

Something loosened in his chest. "And what were you doing?" he asked.

"Albus…" she whispered. Now she paused in dabbing at his face. "I was trying to do the right thing. To tell them. Barb's parents."

He unstuck this throat. "How’d it go?"

"Awful." She resumed working. "They never showed up, not in time, or maybe they thought I was crazy when I called. Me and Jonathan, we got the bus out to Buttermere, but I felt like we were being watched. The next thing we knew, our path was blocked and those—those creeps from the lab were there. They took us in. Admitted to what they'd done. They admitted Barb died because of them."

Her voice cracked a bit on the word died.

"Wow," he muttered.

He didn't know what quite to say to that. He stared out of the window behind Nancy's head, flinching when the washcloth in her hand grazed over a particularly nasty cut. His attention snapped back to her, and for half a second he could swear Barb was sitting next to them. But it was just his imagination.

"I was thinking quick on my feet though," she went on, as if there hadn't been any pause. "I recorded them. Then I took it to that crazy guy who lives out in the middle of nowhere, close to that industrial estate. Murray Bauman? Yes, the conspiracy theorist," she added tiredly, at the look on his face. "But he knew what to do with it."

"What—"

"We sent it to a few newspapers. Made up a cover story about a gas leak. The truth about Barb will come out soon, or most of the truth, at least."

"The kind of truth people will believe," he said, ponderingly. "So her parents will find out after all."

The thought was grim, and made Albus feel a bit sick, not for the first time that night. Somehow, it was what made his mind linger on Barb the Person more than the months of absence had. In his mind she had existed as Barb the Ghost. But the pile of photos that her parents hung about their house, like a shrine, was where the ghost would live from now on.

He felt a little something in his chest break.

But he scraped a smile for Nancy. "Well done. Proud of you."

A tiny smile tried to twist her lips, but she wouldn't let it. "Shut up."

"Even after all of this, you're trying to order me around."

"Albus Potter!" She whacked him on the arm, and found herself fighting a smile when he cracked one. "You've got a brick on a string for a heart."

That made him laugh, barking with surprise, and pain surged through his head again. Her amusement died. Delicate fingers ghosted over his hair. She bit her lip.

"I'm gonna get that put on a t-shirt," he told her.

She ignored him this time. "Go to sleep, Albus." He listened to her instructions too well, and passed out in seconds. The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness, was her saying, "And tomorrow, we can talk."

There were no dreams, perhaps because he was just so bled dry of energy. It was like a weight was making his brain heavier. Like it was weighted down too much to shoot about the neurons that made dreams happen.

Like a very long blink, he came temporarily back to consciousness a undetermined amount of time later, and found Hopper leaning over him with the godfather of all grumpy frowns on his face.

It was honestly aspirational.

"Hey, Potter, what happened to you?"

All Albus could do was groan, which probably wasn't a good thing.

"He was wicked," Dustin said from somewhere off to the side. "I mean, he got his arse handed to him—"

"Okay," Albus tried to say.

"I mean, he really got the ragdoll treatment. Like, so much—"

"AL-RIGHT," Albus shouted at the ceiling, and set his head ringing again.

Hopper narrowed his eyes at him. Threw a throw blanket over him. Told him, in a short voice, to go to sleep.

Albus didn't need persuading on that front.

He woke early the next morning, before anyone else, when the sky was a very pale, gossamer blue and half the birds in the trees were still asleep. Hopper wasn't anywhere in sight, but when Albus got up to check, he saw his car parked up outside the house next to the CR-V, so he was probably somewhere.

The slumbering kids on the floor were draped over each other in a little heap.

Even for a night on sofa cushions that had lost most of their cushion, Albus felt better than he did last night. Those few hours of sleep had worked wonders on his beleaguered head, and he thought he was probably fine to drive home. For one, it was going to be super awkward when everyone woke up and then he was just there on the outskirts of them all. For two, he wanted to be home before his mum woke up and decided to peer nosily into his bedroom to make sure that all was well.

If he wasn't already in the shit, that was. Hopefully she hadn't glanced out of the window when she got home last night, and seen the car was gone.

He eased open the front door, and had one foot outside into the frosty morning air, when a little sleepy voice piped up.

"Albus? Where are you going?"

"Go back to sleep," he whispered, looking at the pile and trying to see which one it was.

He wasn't particularly surprised when Mike sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"Are you leaving?"

"I've got to get home."

"No you don't," Mike said with an eye roll sort of tone. "You can just tell your parents you had a sleepover."

"Sorry, but no. Just go back to sleep. I'll see you later, okay? And we can talk about you listening in on me and Nancy."

He didn't wait to see if Mike argued further; some of the other kids were beginning to stir and he did not want to be at the centre of any more controversy, thank you. Albus pulled the front door quietly shut behind him and fished his car keys out of his pocket. The morning sun was nice enough that he wanted to stand around in it's cold rays for a few hours, but he didn't need to be hanging around.

He slumped behind the driver's seat, yawning, and started the engine.

"Albus. Albus!" He turned to see Dustin chasing after him, with the dead demo-thing in his arms. "My house is on the way to yours."

Albus wrinkled his nose at the demogorgon. What a scenery killer. It was a perfectly nice spring morning a few seconds ago.

He blinked down at Dustin. "Okay?"

Dustin had the nerve to, once again, roll his eyes. "Okay, so, take me home too, please?"

He really shouldn't. Albus might not be wracked with nausea anymore, but his vision still wasn't set quite straight, and now that the adrenaline was all gone he was beginning to feel very shaky. He'd risk himself on a relatively short drive, but Dustin? Dustin, who was looking at him with these big puppy eyes, and pressing his hands together like he was praying.

"My head's still fucked," he warned.

"So? If you start to swerve off the road I'll grab the wheel," Dustin said. "Please, Albus, I wanna be home before Mrs Byers finds out we had the demodog in her fridge. I think it's stained."

He didn't want to say that that particular cat may have already escaped from the bag, but instead he sighed, gave his head an experimental wobble.

"Oh, go on," he said. "Get in. But keep that thing off my seats."

The CR-V was pulled up outside the Henderson house, idling. Albus' head was long gone and all he could think about was getting home and crawling into bed, but Dustin was saying his name on repeat, and eventually grabbed hold of his arm and shook so hard Albus thought his head was going to come loose.

"Oi! Fucking stop that."

"I said, give me your phone number."

Albus blinked; a battered Samsung was being waved under his nose. He blinked down at it, and then stared at Dustin, whose expression was stony. No child who wasn't Mike Wheeler had any business looking so scornful.

“In case I need to call you,” Dustin went on, like it should be obvious.

Albus squinted at him. He looked a bit banged up; there was a scratch down the side of his face that made Albus wince, but it wasn't bleeding, and he was in one piece. He found himself thanking every entity that had failed to protect his father for keeping these kids from getting hurt under his watch. They were fucking uncontrollable. He would never admit to anyone how much these munchkins freaked him out.

“Why would you ever need to call me?” he asked.

Dustin's glare intensified. “Really? After all the shit that happened last night you have to ask? Aren't you supposed to be kind of smart?”

Kind of smart.

"Get out of my car," he said, beginning to drum his fingers on the steering wheel because he was getting restless. "Your mum's going to wake up soon and you want to be in bed when she does."

"But what should I do if I find another demodog?" he asked, hefting the dead one in his arms like Albus needed a demonstration.

"Don't keep it as a pet this time," he said. "You've had one cat eaten, surely the lesson is learnt."

"Albus."

Two ends-of-the-world was enough for a lifetime, thanks, but Albus was tired as fuck and bruised all over, and his patience was used up.

"Okay, fine, whatever." He snatched the phone, which was exactly where it had been at the start of this discussion, waving under his nose, and punched his landline into it. "There. Now go home already."

Despite Albus' brusque tone, Dustin looked absolutely delighted, and sprang out of his passenger seat with his dead cat-eater. He slammed the door shut so loudly that Albus' body jolted with leftover fright. As he backed off towards his front door, he turned to show Albus the double thumbs up and a big, toothy grin.

He pretended he did not see it.

"Hey Albus!" Dustin then yelled across the grass. "It's nice to have a badass normal on our team!"

"I don't know what that means!"

"It's like Batman without the money!"

"Without the money?" he muttered, watching Dustin disappear into the house with his dead demodog. "The money's the only good thing about him..."

By the time he was at home and back in his room, sunlight was painting the curtains, and his mum was dead asleep.

He stowed the nailbat below the platform again and straightened up slowly.

In the mirror Nancy had hung next to his door, dark blemishes were forming around his nose and cheeks, the skin still stinging from the unholy beatdown he was subject to at the start of the night. Which wasn't good.

He stood there for a few seconds, staring at himself, wondering what to do. His dad kept potions in the bathroom cabinet that might help, but it was locked, in case any of Albus' muggle friends ever went snooping. There was a key somewhere. Right? His brain was sluggish. That sounded right to him.

He moved back out into the hallway and into the bathroom, closing the door with a soft snick behind him.

Nancy had cleaned the blood from his face in the inital hour after it was all over. Neither of them spoke about the tension between them, but it was clear that they would have to talk soon about what was going on now. He thought about her getting on the bus to go with Jonathan to break the news about Barb to the Hollands, and felt his stomach sink.

It wasn't that he wouldn't fight for her. It was that he didn't think she'd want him to. That is, if what he thought was happening, was happening.

The more he thought about it, the worse it felt.

He turned on the light over the mirror and set to searching for the key, eyeing the potions cabinet like it had locked itself just to inconvinience him. He rifled through boxes filled with fresh bottles of shower gel and shampoo, looking for a glint at the bottom of any of them. When he heard a noise from the hallway he froze, waiting. Just the house settling. No one came in.

He picked up a box of Neutrogena face wipes—

And dislodged something that dropped to the tiled floor with a whimsical tinkle.

"Fucking finally," he muttered, lunging for the key and shoving it into the cabinet lock.

He identified the bottles that he needed, held up for a second by sheer shock at how out-of-place these bottles looked to him after months of living apart from the Wizarding world. All ornate and—well. Magic.

With a sigh, he unstoppered the three that he identified as needing—one for the concussion, one for the cuts, one for the bruising—pinched his nose and necked them in quick succession, grimacing for a solid minute afterwards at the texture and taste, gripping the marble-look counter, breathing through his nose like a wounded animal.

He watched in the mirror as the cuts and bruises, the lasting marks of Billy Hargroves' shocking brutality, lessened in front of his eyes. Wizarding medicine was incredible. He was thankful that they even worked on squibs. He wasn't bruise-free, but the worst of his wounds were slowly going away; cycling through the process of going purple, black, yellow, in seconds and minutes rather than days and weeks.

Nancy would ask questions if she saw him like this, but maybe he could avoid her for a while.

He stoppered the bottles again and shoved them back into the cabinet, figuring that there was no reason for anyone to go looking in there, and even less reason for them to want the same potions that he had just used. He had time to get them replaced.

He opened the door—

And framed in the light spilling from the bathroom into the hallway was Ginny Potter.

Albus stared, but he was too tired to feel shock. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her skin was the colour of the sleepless. There were slight hollows beneath her eyes.

"Where have you been? It is six o'clock in the morning. Were you at Nancy's house? You took the car, Albus, illegally, I might add. I..."

She stopped quite slowly. She was staring at him more intensely all of a sudden. He wished she wouldn't say Nancy's name like that; like she didn't like Nancy, even though they had never met beyond brief moments that couldn't really count as meeting.

Nancy and his parents. He didn’t know what that looked like; he had two worlds and they were separate to each other. He had one or the other. Even in his house, he had one or the other.

But now his mum was studying the fading marks left on him by Billy Hargrove, and he didn’t know what to do.

The palms of her hands were cold as they held him. Like Joyce had hours ago. He didn't know what kept him in place; fear or the strength of her grip.

"What on earth happened, Al?" she asked. Thank Merlin she hadn't seen him before he took the potions.

He swallowed.

When Will was rescued from the Upside Down, on the night Albus fought the demogorgon, he asked the government suit making him sign NDAs, "What does NDA mean?" and the woman smiled at him, and said, "It means that if you speak to anyone about what really happened here, we'll kill you."

Before Albus could retort, Hopper's hand had landed on his shoulder. "Well that's fine, because nothing happened." He had managed to sound threatening even when it was him being threatened.

"I got in a fight," he breathed, into the stillness of the hallway.

The light of day was trying to force its way past the curtains, unsuccessfully.

"I can see that," Ginny said. "Albus, you've been gone all night."

He was scared that if he raised his voice above a whisper, that the spell would break, and his mum's concern would turn to anger. His head was tender and his brain, wrung out like a sponge; he couldn't take her shouting at him right now.

"It's going to be in the papers tomorrow," he said. "That Barbara Holland is dead."

One of her hands left his face and went to her mouth. Her eyes became prefectly round for a few seconds. He watched her pupils twitch as she absorbed what he said.

"What do you mean? Albus, what are you talking about?"

"It'll be in the papers," he said, again.

His thoughts were beginning to break down and so was his ability to form coherent sentences. His knees were shaking with the effort of holding himself up. Barb was dead and he wanted her ghost to stop haunting him now. The people responsible for what happened to her were going to get what was coming to them.

Albus had never been so tired in his life.

Perhaps recognising this, he felt Ginny's hand—the one still holding his face—tighten briefly into a fist at the side of his head. She took a deep breath.

"Go to bed, Albus," she said. She seemed to be controlling herself quite forcefully. "We'll talk about this when you're not out of your mind with exhaustion. I won't get anything out of you when you're like this."

The hand at his side vanished, and Albus swayed in place for a few seconds, as he caught up with what she'd said. Then he nodded, and lethargically turned in place to go back to his bedroom. Those few steps across the hallway were like trekking through treacle.

He crawled bonelessly onto his bed, the last twelve hours finally having caught up with him. The bruises may be going, but the pain wasn't.

He would sleep for nearly thirteen hours.

Chapter Text

He slept all day and into the early evening, then woke up and realised, firstly, that there was dirt in his hair, clinging to strands and clumping them together. Throwing back the covers, he looked down and realised how much gunk from the tunnels had clung to him.

"Merlin..."

There was a heavy pounding in his head, that could either be after effects of the beating he took from Billy or a side effect of sleeping for too long. But he needed to wash his hair and change his clothes. Maybe burn these ones, and the bed sheets they had spent hours rubbing up against.

He was bruised all over, but mostly on his back, and the backs of his legs, where he had sheltered Dustin from the charging demodogs. In the shower his mind drifted of its own accord, and he only realised how long he had been standing beneath the spray when it began to run cold, a horrible shock. He towelled off, dressed, and shoved his ruined clothes into his school backpack.

He could burn them down by the lake at some point.

Uncomfortably aware of how bad he still looked, he wondered whether he could just stay upstairs, only long enough to avoid the incoming commotion. But like a gravitational pull, he dragged his heavy body downstairs. His mum was in the living room, reading the newspaper.

She looked up, and stared at his face for a very long moment. Her eyes narrowed to slits, before she said, "You looked worse when you came in this morning."

"Must've just looked it with the bad light," he said.

The hallway had been dark, the curtains shut, the yellow glow of the bathroom backlighting him, throwing his face into dramatic shadow.

Or so he assumed.

Ginny moved onto a different track of thought after that, so he supposed he gambled well.

"What happened last night, Albus? I got back at seven, and you were gone! No note, no text message—I had to charge my mobile phone to find that out! You took the car illegally, and that's not happening again, by the way. I've already spoken to your dad about it."

"Dad?" Albus' ears pricked up. "Where is Dad?"

"Still at work," she sighed. "Emergency. Where were you?"

"There was an emergency," he said, aware of how damp an answer that was. When her expression didn't change, he added, "Nancy's brother and his friends got themselves in trouble."

"The kind of trouble that left you like this when you intervened?" She held his chin between her thumb and forefinger. Her voice went flat and hard. "Who did it?"

"Someone from school. He was giving the kids trouble. Lost his temper."

"I want a name, Albus. I can't let this go."

"You can't talk to him," he said, appalled. The thought alone was mortifying.

"I don't want to talk to him, I want to talk to his parents."

"Mum—"

"Albus. I'm not joking around right now."

Billy Hargrove would bust a gut laughing if Albus' mother tried to tell him off. That, or he would go full serial killer. Either way he just couldn't see how giving the name away would help. Billy Hargrove broke a plate over my head. Among other things. He imagined that admitting to that would land Hargrove in a jail cell of some sort, which admittedly he thought sounded alright.

"No." He shook his head. "No, you can't make me tell you."

"Albus—" His mum cut herself off, breathing through her nose like a bull. She took a few calming breaths. "Okay. I'll—I'll give you the space you need to tell me by yourself. But I expect you to do that eventually."

He felt compelled to say, "I'm sorry."

Ginny eyed him tiredly. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

A gaping chasm of silence cracked open between them. It was dark outside and the living room was lit by quirkily small gold lamps, with faded maroon shades. The room was usually warm and inviting. But now there was that chasm in the floor.

Eventually, Ginny held her hand out. "Give me the keys to the car. You aren't going out in it again." He knew that without her having to tell him.

He dragged himself to fetch them. They were a depressing weight in his hand, and he tossed them a couple of times, glancing out of his window to look down at the SUV parked just below him. He could see mud caking the wheels, and the light of the front porch making the pale gold paint gleam. That car had saved them last night. He sighed, and took the keys to his mum.

Handing them over, she closed her fist around them and then snapped, "Do you have any idea how frightened I was, Albus?"

His dad's months-old speech about not doing this sort of thing to her raced back to the forefront of his mind and made him feel even worse.

"I'm sorry," he said, again, with more feeling this time. "I am, really, but I thought I had to do it! Nancy's brother—"

"—was in trouble," Ginny finished. "So you said." She scrubbed a hand through her hair. "Nonetheless, Albus. You call the police, you leave a note, you leave anything behind to tell us where you've gone. You can't just—go off."

He sucked his lips into his mouth to stop himself from pointing out that his dad just went off all the time when he was younger, in his Hogwarts days, and he had survived it just fine. No matter how miserable he was, he was smart enough to know that was a bad idea.

Something of it still must have shown on his face, because her eyes narrowed. "I sent your father a message about this, by the way." He started groaning, low in his throat, as she went on. "Of course I did. When he's finished at work, I'm sure he'll have something to say."

"Why isn't he here now?" Albus asked, dispirited and curious all-in-one.

She hesitated; her lips opened and closed. "You should know," she muttered, one hand on her hip and the other scratching at the corner of her mouth. "There's a killer on the loose in Wizarding Britain. Your dad's been put on the taskforce to catch them."

"Oh—" His mouth moved faster than his brain— "my god. What?"

She'd come home to an empty house as well. Albus like felt a right twat. He wished he had thought to leave her a note.

"He's been after them for a while, but all their leads take them nowhere. Like going in circles." Now she was talking about it, he recognised stress in her features. How long had she been internalising this? "People are starting to grow frantic. That's why he's not here now; there was a murder last night."

"Someone else died?"

"The fourth in as many months." Ginny sighed, and placed her hands around his shoulders, pulling him into her. She pressed her lips to the crown of his head; he had to crouch slightly to let her. "I'm so glad you're here and not there, Al."

Wanting to make her laugh, he said, "Being a squib had to pay off at some point," but she only nudged him and muttered, "Hush."

She didn't let go of him for a good minute, and he didn't try to pull away from her.

Yes, he thought, thank god I wasn't in the Wizarding world. Thank god I was here, in Winsome, where a gate to another dimension lives in tunnels beneath the ground, and blood-thirsty monsters hide in the trees, waiting to rip people apart.

The arrival of winter was slowly freezing the ground solid, and Albus would turn seventeen in just over eight months. The keys to the CR-V stayed with his dad, and Albus found himself aching to be out on the road again. That sense of freedom, of agency, hadn't been appreciated until it was gone.

Not that he regretted taking the car that night. On the whole, he thought it was probably the right thing to do. The kids had needed him, and it seemed they still thought they did. Now that things were going back to normal, he found them wanting to hang around him more and more, no matter how grumpily he stared them down.

"I don't get it," he complained to Nancy, hanging around at the back of the school field. "It used to be that if I looked pissed off all the time, people would assume I was busy. But they bug me anyway!"

"You make them feel safe," she said. "That's why they stick to you like Velcro."

"Safe," he repeated, scornfully. “They keep coming into my house. Why is it always my house these days?”

“Every group has a friend whose house is the house,” she said. “You’re that friend.”

”But what if I don’t want to be that friend?”

She shrugged, and smiled at him. “Tough,” she said.

He continued to complain but there wasn't much heart in it, and it was only a day later, a Saturday, that the whole lot of them turned up on his doorstep. His dad was off looking for the killer as he always was, and his mum was at the Burrow—Albus had been invited along, but preferred the solitude—so when the doorbell rang he released a breathy string of curses as he abandoned the show he was watching and went to answer it.

Dustin led the entourage, as Albus might have expected, and with the boys this time were El and Max. They waited to be invited in.

“Are your parents ever home?” Will asked, an odd look on his face.

“No,” he said, with a level of familiarity that he was beginning to build when he talked to the boy. “Well, at night, my mum—But not my dad, right now.”

Will hummed but said nothing. Some part of him, Albus suspected, remembered the vow Albus had made the night the Mind Flayer was ejected from Will’s mind, because he kept talking to him, looking at him like he was disappointed whenever Albus said something too cynical, too self-deprecating. Almost subconsciously, he had started keeping his darker thoughts about himself inside, projecting something approaching confidence to the outside world.

Will had been doing the same, with a great deal of pointedness, so he guessed that was just something they were doing now.

Dustin grinned wildly and led the way into the house for the other kids to follow him. Albus could only watch in disbelief.

As Dustin led his troupe into the living room, he further explained, "We’ve been trying to find somewhere safe to have El over so we can show her how to play D&D. So we thought here was our best shot."

The kids looked around with blatant interest as they followed him into the kitchen, and passed on to the dining room. Without preamble, Dustin and Mike began setting up their D&D game on the dining table.

Will glanced up at him. "Is this okay?" he asked Albus.

"Is—Is El allowed out of the house like this?"

El just stared at him, wide-eyed, and he couldn't interpret the look. It was either fear that he would drag her back to Hopper, or just how she looked at people sometimes.

"She is," Mike explained. "If she's super careful. I mean, we're safe here."

"Yeah, you can just drive us home later, right?" Lucas asked.

"Uh..."

"It's cool, right?" Mike said, rather than asked. "It's cool."

They set up their game and sat around the table, and looking at it with all it's chairs filled, he realised for the first time how cramped the dining room was. The chairs nearly hit the wall when they were pushed back. With less people it looked much more spacious.

Max didn't seem very interested in learning to play; she slumped back with her arms crossed as Lucas and Dustin tried to impart the rules on her, but El was listening with nearly comical seriousness as Mike explained everything to her. She nodded her head and examined the little figurines intently. Picked up a multi-headed dragon piece and looked at it for a very long time.

Eventually, she said, "Demogorgon."

Mike nodded. "Yeah, that's him." Her eyes narrowed imperceptibly. “And this is Thessalhydra, and here's my player character..."

"Hey Albus, have you got any coke?" Dustin asked. "Pepsi will do."

He sighed and went to look. Albus wondered about El sometimes. He wondered how she had ended up like she did. Her powers weren't like anything he had seen or heard of before. He wondered whether she was a witch.

Could a magical child end up like El if they were kept in a lab all their lives? Obviously he couldn't just come out and ask her something like that, but he wanted to.

He pulled a six-pack of Coke Zeroes from the bottom of the fridge and took them into the dining room. Their "campaign" had already stared. When he put the pack down in the middle of the table, six snatching arms shot out and picked the plastic wrapper clean in seconds.

"Thanks," Dustin said, as six bursts of fizz sounded. "Do you wanna stay and watch? We can teach you to play."

"No thanks," he said. "Just play your game. I have school work to do."

He still sat close enough to the door of the living room that he could hear if they were in trouble.

He felt increasingly... not normal. Just going about his life, there were moments when he felt like he was existing on the outside of reality. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he felt like he was slightly underneath it. In the tunnels beneath Lake Winsome.

Were they still there? Still growing beneath their feet? Or had they died when El closed the gate at the lab?

He watched as the twenty-year-olds in their Corsas and modded Ford Fiestas pulled up outside Winsome Comprehensive to pick up their seventeen-year old-girlfriends, and speed off to who-knew-where. Chrissy, from Nancy's netball team, was always being picked up by someone. And he felt like he was viewing life from one side of a sheet of glass. Or from behind a mirror.

His family noticed when he started to zone out, but they didn’t know why. He wouldn’t talk about it, either. Obviously. But they shouldn’t worry. He had never been a boisterous personality. His mind just lingered more in the tunnels these days.

His dad, when he spoke to Albus after that night, didn't seem to know whether he should lecture or listen. In the end he did both, but Albus didn't feel like there was much he could say, so it was mostly just a lecture. He wouldn't reveal Billy's involvement in his injuries without a compulsion charm, and a strong one to boot.

"I can't drive you home," he called into the dining room, at last, shaking his backpack out onto the sofa with violence that betrayed his frustration. "You'll have to make Jonathan fetch you."

On the night before the double funerals of Barbara Holland and Bob Newby, Albus was long since asleep in bed, when his phone, on the mattress next to his head, began to vibrate. It snapped him into a half-awake state. Still mostly asleep, he managed to answer it.

"Can I come in?"

He recognised that voice. He wasn't used to it sounding so subdued, but he knew he knew it. Dustin?

"Albus, can I come in please?"

Dustin didn't say please. "What's wrong?" he rasped.

"Can we stay here tonight?"

Way too tired, way too asleep, to think of a way to get rid of him, Albus at least thought that leaving Dustin on his doorstep in the middle of the night was a bad idea. His brain wasn't working right but that seemed like a bad idea.

"'s a key under th' plant pot," he mumbled. "Room on th' left, top o' the stairs."

"Thanks," Dustin said, and hung up immediately.

He wasn't completely sure that had actually happened. The human brain tricked it's meatsuit all the time. Albus rolled onto his back and willed himself back to sleep...

Then heard a small stampede of feet going up the stairs and down the hall. He exhaled slowly. Counted sheep for a few seconds. Entirely against his will, he heard thumps and shuffles coming from James' room. The low hiss of voices exchanging words.

Albus lay in situ for a few seconds longer, then heaved a sigh and dragged himself out of bed, and stumbled the few steps that separated his room from James'.

The door was swung shut, but a soft glow shone from under it, and when he pushed, it thudded softly against something. He frowned, and peeked in the gap.

The bedside lamp was on. Dustin was in James' bed, already asleep. There were some blanket-wrapped heaps on the floor that were probably more kids. Three heaps in sleeping bags, when he squinted, and no floor space left to walk around them. Not that he wanted to.

Albus sighed, rubbed his hand over his face, and went back to bed.

He barely remembered the incident when he awoke in the morning. All that was on his mind, as he stared up at the ceiling, was the double funeral he was about to attend.

One for Bob. One for Barb.

Albus had never met Bob, but he knew of what the man had done for Will and Joyce. What he had done for the world, really. He hadn't deserved his fate, but no one who encountered the Upside Down ever did. The thought that the Hollands had no body to bury was particularly sickening. Nancy would keep her distance from him today, he knew, both emotionally and physically.

With a great, depressed heave, he rolled out of bed, and tried to get himself in order.

"Albus?" There was a rap on the door. "Can I have a word?"

It was his mum. He let her in, still squinting against the light of day, and confused by the look on her face. Hesitant. More than a little concerned.

"What's up?" he rasped.

"Why is there a small cohort of children in our living room who say you let them into the house last night?"

He blinked at her. His brain caught up. "Oh shit."

He dodged past her and went down the stairs fast enough to spill. Dustin, Will, Mike and Lucas were gathered awkwardly on the sofas in the living room. The relief on their faces when he walked in was nearly comical.

"I thought I dreamed you lot up," he groused. "What are you doing here?"

"Shouldn't you have been asking us that last night?" Mike asked, not as snidely as he might. Albus just raised his eyebrows, and Mike lowered his head. "We were having a sleepover at Dustin's and there was a power cut. Wi—We freaked out."

Will shifted, trying to make himself smaller.

"Your house was closest," Lucas added, subdued. "We wanted to be somewhere with electricity."

Will looked more uncomfortable with every additional thing his friends said.

"We have two funerals to get ready for," Albus said eventually. "You need to, like, eat something."

His mum had walked into the room at some point while they were talking, watched their exchange with a frown on her face, but didn't do anything except ask if she could call their parents to ask them to collect their kids. Still subdued, the kids shuffled off to the kitchen, and Albus sighed.

His mum put her hand to his back, and said, "You need to eat as well, Al." He could hear the unasked question in her voice, and was grateful that she restrained herself.

In the hours leading up to the funerals, he went through the motions, showering and shaving and dressing. His suit hung off him awkwardly in some places, but he was beginning to fill it out. He had less the body of a boy in recent months.

At the crematorium, he was zoned out. His mum held his hand in moments, like she knew he needed tethering. Bob's coffin rested at the centre of the crematorium and Mrs Byers wept over it. Ginny let go of him then, and went over to her, lacing her hand with Joyce's. The two didn't know each other very well but it didn't matter in the moment.

He kept wondering about what would have happened if Bob Newby hadn't happened to be able to do—whatever it was he did to save them all. Albus didn't know, exactly. Will talked about the maps, the ones of the tunnels that were plastered all over the Byers house. He supposed that must be it.

A lot of the circumstances that led them all to this graveyard, he was largely ignorant to. That needed to change. If he stopped waiting for the Upside Down to come to him, maybe he would be prepared the next time one of the dumb kids got themselves into trouble.

Then it was Barb's turn. She wasn't being cremated, obviously, so an empty coffin was being buried.

He heard the wailing tributes from Mr and Mrs Holland, and looked on from afar as Nancy tried to read a poem without crying. She looked limp and forlorn. She hadn't wanted anyone’s help.

To worsen his mood, he heard gossip from townspeople only minutes after Barb's empty coffin was lowered into the unforgiving soil—that new shopping centre project was mysteriously changing hands, Mrs Byers and Hopper were sleeping together, the guy who ran the local paper was suicidal—and really, couldn’t they wait? But he didn't take too much in.

As Barb's funeral drew to a close, the kids clustered around him, sniffling, trying not to sniffle.

Someone was sobbing by the end, but Albus would never reveal who it was, because he had to go and find that person hiding in the woods afterwards, and promise them nobody else heard.

It was a secret, held between the two of them, and so it would remain.

It was the night of the Year Eleven Proms, or the Snowball, as the planning committee had named it. He was taking Nancy. They had signed up for it before the Upside Down dredged the Barb thing up again and neither of them wanted to lose the deposit money.

Rose Weasley had made herself very comfortable at his desk chair. She kept staring at him, tilting her head from side to side. Albus, trying to get the knot of his tie right, ignored her.

“Can I take credit for this relationship?” Rose asked at last. “You would have never spoken to Nancy Wheeler on your own steam. I’m responsible for this, right?”

“If it makes you feel better to think so, sure,” he said.

“What time do you have to go?”

His eyes flicked to the clock on his bedside table. “Ten minutes, maybe.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat. “Let me fix that.”

Rising, coming over to the mirror by the door, Rose redid his tie from scratch and then tugged on the lapels of his blazer until she was satisfied that he looked good enough.

“Yeah, it does make me feel better to think so,” she said.

Albus didn’t know how he was going to play this. He wasn’t much in the mood to party, and he knew that Nancy wasn’t. He had promised Will that he was going to try though. Try to give himself a shot at happiness, if Will did the same thing. That counted for something but he wasn’t sure what.

“Why’ve you got that face on?” Rose asked, squinting.

He sighed, rolled his shoulders. “This is just what my face looks like,” he told her.

“You aren’t fit to take a girl dancing. You have a nice face but the second you open your mouth you lose, like, all your charm. You’re very loud. And rude. And honestly really mean sometimes for no reason.”

He had nothing to say to that, so instead he just said, “Say the part about my face being nice again.”

“I should take Nancy instead.”

From the living room, as he stood in the entryway, he heard his parents chatting in low tones to Rose’s parents. Aunt Hermione had told him to let her see his glad rags before he left, and he supposed it would be rude of him to quietly slip out the front door. Rose jabbing him in the back pointedly also held him off.

“I don’t know why you look so pissy about going to a party,” she hissed in his ear, “but if you don’t want Mum interrogating you then you’ll start smiling now.”

“I don’t smile when I am happy,” he said, but did manage to make himself look less annoyed by the time Rose had pushed open the door to the living room, and nudged him inside.

“Oh, Albus, you look so handsome!” Aunt Hermione said.

Rose snorted and slipped past him to drop into the sofa next to Uncle Ron, who had turned away from his conversation with his dad momentarily to give him a vaguely interested once-over.

“Yeah, well…” Uncomfortable under the attention, Albus flicked his eyes around the room. “The mirror didn’t crack, or anything.”

He was wearing a bottle green waistcoat, one his dad said used to be his when he was around the same age Albus was now, and over it, a black suit jacket. He didn’t feel like he was made to wear clothes like this but Nancy said she would hit him with his own car if he turned up for the Prom in a pair of jeans.

“Oh yes.” His mum was tugging on the lapels of his jacket just like Rose had, rearranging them again, eyes flicking all over his outfit. “Yes, you look wonderful, darling.” She gave him a wavering smile. “You’re the only one of my kids I’ll get to do this with. Hogwarts doesn’t throw balls most of the time. It’s such a shame; the Yule Ball was one of the best nights of my teenage life.”

“Right,” he said.

He wasn’t sure how to add to that. His mum did this more than his dad did; slip magic into mundane conversation. She didn’t mean to, he was pretty sure. She just didn’t think that he might not want to hear it.

“I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to be anything like the Yule Ball,” he said eventually. “Not posh enough to be a Ball, for one. Although, Mahsuda Snaith told me the school put balloons up, so it’s already one up on any event the school's ever had before.”

A kiss on his temple, a last straightening of his collar. “You’ll have a great night, darling. You deserve it. Forget everything that’s happened recently and just have fun.”

Empty coffins and cold hard ground were two things he would struggle to put aside, even for a few hours. A gaggle of sniffling children turning their faces to him for some kind of solace, the poor sods. The responsibility of them, and everything else. Although, none of the shithead kids were going to be interrupting this night for him, so maybe he should be trying to take advantage.

Keep your promise to Will, he thought.

“And drink responsibly,” Aunt Hermione added. “I’ve read the letter your school sent home and made note of the line about two drink tokens per student, so you’d better adhere to it. No hip flasks, or taking anything from hip flasks other people offer you. Harry,” she added, looking back at his dad, “check him for any hidden flasks before you let him go.” She turned a look on him that was half-joking, half-serious. “I know what teenage boys are like.”

“Is this indirectly about me?” Uncle Ron drawled.

“Yes,” Hermione said, sending Albus a small smile.

“You’re always catching strays,” Rose said to her dad, knocking her knee into his.

“It’s a hard life, Rosie.”

“I don’t think I need to check Al for hip flasks,” his dad said, coming over to them. He smiled as he took in his middle child. “I trust him that much. Plus, he’ll have Nancy with him. She’s a lot like you, Hermione. She’s smart.”

“Oh, and I’m not,” Albus said.

“You’re the one who let a twelve year old bully you into stealing the car in the first place,” his dad said, trying not to smirk too obviously in case Mum saw. “That wasn’t your brightest hour.”

And it was the reason he wasn’t driving himself to the Snowball tonight. He reminded that plenty of students were also being dropped off and tried to force himself not to feel embarrassed.

“I was a hero that night,” he sniffed. “Heroes don’t need to be smart. Surely you understand that.”

“Oh! Harry, he’s done you,” Ron laughed as Albus made himself relax enough to grin as well. “You can’t let that go, mate.”

“Really interesting thing to say to the man holding the car keys,” his dad said.

“I’ve never claimed to be smarter than you. Can we go now?”

“No! I need pictures first,” his mum said. “Oh, and I have to remember to ask Karen to send me copies of her pictures.”

“Two sets of photos!” Ron heckled, altogether too gleeful for his liking. “Rather you than me, lad.”

“Ron…”

“Can you imagine if Mum had been around on the night of the Yule Ball? We’d never have made it to the party at all.”

“Considering those robes she sent you in, that might have been for the best,” Ginny said.

It wasn’t uncommon for his Aunt and Uncle to come over for an evening like this. Less so for Rose, who was only here because Hogwarts was still on Christmas break, but her parents came over fairly often. Hermione in particular had been a voracious supporter of Albus and his… condition. He had overheard her more than once going on about plans she had to expand the rights of people like him in the wizarding world, or at least achieve proper integration. She never spoke about these plans in front of him.

Sometimes they talked in front of him about their school adventures. Rarely deliberately, though, and he suspected that the quack sensitivity expert had told them not to talk about any stories involving magic. Even so, he wondered about them.

He wondered about how it had been for them when they were his age, and younger, so often alone in the face of danger. He struggled to actually picture them as kids, no matter how many photos his grandparents had of them around the crooked halls of the Burrow, but it got easier, oddly, when he compared their adventures to the death brigade Will and his friends seemed determined to make themselves into.

Harry Potter had famously faced down death multiple times from the age of eleven onwards. It was a fact which Albus struggled to connect to the reality of the man beginning now to squint at him, but when he swapped out his father’s face for Will’s, Professor Quirinus Quirrell for the many-legged horror of the Mind Flayer, suddenly it made sense. It made him feel a bit sick.

“Al?” his dad asked, the concerned squint turning to a frown. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, a bit breathless.

His parents had survived it. His aunt and uncle had survived. So far, Will and his friends had survived. If Albus had anything to do with it, the Party would, in the decades to come, be able to laugh together about the better times just like his family did now.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, strengthening his voice when he noticed Rose making faces at him from her father’s side. “Can we make the pictures quick, Mum? Nance will be waiting for me.”

Chapter Text

It was freezing, and cold diamonds studded the velvet night sky overhead. The CR-V was running behind him, a low growl in the middle distance. There was something deeply humbling about the fact that his dad was driving them to their prom, but while Harry had been sympathetic, he hadn’t budged on Albus’ ban.

Fucking Henderson. Albus was going to kill him one day.

Nancy opened the front door when he knocked, ushering him inside with surprising haste.

"I wanted to say hi before Mum swans in taking a million photos," she said, rolling her eyes, and only then stopping to take the sight of him in. “This waistcoat suits you,” she said, reaching a hand out to feel the velvet. “It makes your eyes look really green.”

"Thank you. You look..."

Silver-blue satin dress. Silver earrings. The silver necklace he had begged off his mum to give her as a gift for the evening. It had a small heart pendant dangling from it.

The bridge of his nose had gone warm; he released a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. "Great."

Despite the nervy look on her face, that made her smile. "Thank you," she said, nearly whispering, just as her mother crashed the scene. Her father, Ted, was slow on her trail, leaning up against the wall silently.

"Well, don't you both look wonderful?"

Karen seemed to have finally accepted, on some level, that Albus was a person who existed on an at least semi-permanent basis in her daughter's life. The smile she had for him now didn't seem forced. Much. Maybe Karen was just so delighted to get to dress Nancy up like a doll that she didn't care who she was dressing up for.

As predicted, a camera was clutched in her hands.

"Uh, thanks, Mrs Wheeler," he said. Mike had drifted into the hallway at some point, and was making a quiet show of rolling his eyes at the scene and pretending to gag. "My mum wondered if you could send her some of the pictures you take tonight?"

Flapping her hand at him, she said, "Of course, of course! I’m sure that Ginny took a whole photo album herself!" She laughed, and aimed the camera, waving he and Nancy together. "Back in our day we didn't get these dances, you know. You're so lucky."

"Uh-huh," Nancy said. Without turning his head from the locked-in position he was facing Mrs Wheeler with, he heard rather than saw Nancy's grit teeth. "Can we just get the pictures over with?"

He and Nancy stood frozen, like statues, painful smiles plastered to their faces for pictures that he knew he wasn't ever going to be able to look back on without cringing. Karen tutted at Nancy's attitude and snapped away for far too long, while Ted stared apathetically in the background and Mike varied between pointing and laughing, and deciding this whole affair was revolting to witness, and that he couldn't bare to look.

"It feels like North Korea in here," he snarked at last, when the only sound for a full minute had been the digital snap of the camera and he and Nancy were still smiling like guns were pointed at their backs.

"Michael!" Karen snapped. "Ted, will you talk to him, please?"

Ted didn't react. Snapped from her photo-taking fugue, Karen let he and Nancy step away from each other for a moment, as she drew her daughter into a last minute lecture about not behaving badly tonight.

The brother was still pulling faces at him. Albus rolled his eyes and silently made the wanker sign at Mike, until he caught Ted watching him with that deadpan expression, and then he stopped quite quickly, and slipped the hand back in his trouser pocket as if nothing had happened. Karen was still harassing Nancy over how she was going to behave at the party, which was patently ridiculous because if Nancy Wheeler was one thing, she was straight as an arrow—socially.

They finally left when Karen decided that they could, slipping out the front door into the cold of night with far too many good-byes and farewells than were necessary. When he glanced back, the top half of Karen's head was framed in the little glass window.

"They know I'm bringing you back in like four hours, don't they?" he muttered, crossing the tidy grass to the car. He was going to ignore his dad in the front seat for as long as he could.

Nancy's lips twitched. "I'm not sure Mum's totally convinced, no. But that's what the rape alarm is for."

"Hilarious," he said, with one long look at her parents' ugly Tory new build before he opened the back door for her and hopped in after.

“Hi, Nancy,” his dad called from the front seat, peering at her in the rear view mirror. “You look wonderful.”

She smiled in that way that adults loved so much. “Thanks, Mr Potter.” As the car rolled off, she shot him a sideways glanced at muttered, “Most people going to this are being dropped off by parents, Albus. Chill the fuck out.”

He knew that was true, but it was still fucking embarrassing. It didn’t matter that the majority of their classmates also couldn’t drive. It didn’t matter that more of them were probably being driven by parents than hiring limousines. He felt again like he was being coddled. Hogwarts didn’t throw balls or parties, but if it did, James wouldn’t need to be brought in by their dad. Maybe because he could tell Albus was spiralling, Harry minded his own business on the drive.

The internal lights lit them in a pale, washed out yellow, and he looked at Nancy again. His eyes couldn’t help but linger on the red patches on her arms, and of course, she noticed.

“It's from the shower. No matter how hard I scrub I never feel clean,” she muttered. “It’s always there on the edge of my vision. The tree trunk I crawled through looking for Barb.”

He could relate. Soapsuds claret against the skin, patches of abused skin which had healed long ago but which still stung, sludge in the shower drain like the sludge of Barb’s insides as she lay decaying in the Upside Down. Shapes in doorways and ghosts in the shadows.

"You'll be okay," he said at last, wishing his dad would drive faster. He always went too slow for Albus’ preference. There wasn’t much he could say in present company.

”We can talk when we’re there,” she whispered again, and patted his hand in a coded way. Buck up, she was telling him.

The student council in charge of planning the Snowball had, in the initial days after Barb’s death was pronounced, discussed at length the idea of re-themeing to a Barb memorial sort of thing. Nancy would never have gone if they did, not for love nor money. Luckily for their deposits, after much talking, Simon Woods declared that he had already bought two hundred pounds-worth of silver and purple streamers, and he didn’t want to send them back.

So, the original theme lived to see another day. Amethyst snowflake, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. Barb would have been delighted, he was sure.

Pets Sounds by the Beach Boys was playing from the speakers and his dad had them turned up high enough that they had a modicum of privacy.

He decided to use it to ask her, "Are you at all happy about tonight?"

A tired sigh. "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing. Honestly. I just..." Want to see you smiling again. "I just think that we've spent way too much money on this crappy school disco for us not to try finding fun somewhere."

"I know,” she admitted, finally looking him in the eye again. “I know that I'm overthinking this. I overthink everything these days.”

Her nerves were understandable. Once word got out that Barb was declared dead, Proper Dead, no she hadn’t run away to Manchester or Edinburgh, the whispers about Nancy and Jonathan had died noiselessly. Why spend another month wringing dry this one scrap of gossip when there was a Big Juicy Death right there for them all to pick over?

But now Nancy was being treated like some Mother Theresa-type figure. People she had never once spoken to regularly stopped her in the halls to tell her how sorry they were with insincere smiles that barely concealed their want for details. Teachers gave her that awkward smile that was meant to be sympathetic, but that actually made them look like they were trying to eat their own lips. They kept telling her that if she ever delayed on turning in homework, they would let it slide.

Silly boon to waste on Nancy. She would melt the polar ice caps personally before she failed to complete her work on time.

If Albus was with her, then his biting statements and reputation kept people away, and Nancy tended to stick to his side more firmly when this happened. Her using him like that didn’t bother him, of course. He would do the same.

She had almost perfected the broken butterfly smile that made people think their words had really made an impact on her. She was very deliberate in this. Between her fragile little smiles, her boyfriend’s unapproachable demeanour, and her little brother’s feral goblin glares, within the first three days of the news breaking, the entire school had learnt to leave Nancy Wheeler alone.

But tonight? A night meant for partying and drinking and school mandated merriment? The eyes would be on her again. Passing judgement no matter how she behaved. They would judge her if she had fun or if she didn’t. Albus was in a mind to make sure of the former.

"We could just sack it off," he said, once his dad had dropped them off with an embarrassingly cheery wave and a reminder that he would be back for them at one in the morning. “We don’t have to go in.” Sure, his parents would actually kill him this time, but if she really didn't want to go...

"No, we should be there." She bit her lip. "I've told people I'll be there."

"What would make you happy, Nance?"

"I don’t know! This is fine. Talking to you out here…"

"We can do that. Let's sneak off to the overlook, just sit there all night and chat shit."

"No," she said softly. "No, I've told people we're going."

He wondered if there was a single patch of darkness that Nancy looked into that didn't reflect the face of Barbara Holland back at her. He wondered how long it would take to excise her ghost.

There was a larger part of Albus than he knew that was still waiting for the resolution to his guilt over Barb. He had yet to learn that most times in life people just died, senselessly and unfairly, as much for the one who died as for the ones who survived them. It was a hard lesson; sometimes things were just over.

It would be a long time before he realised that Barb would be an unresolved string dangling before his face for the rest of his life.

The lights were up in the main hall of Winsome Comprehensive. Balloon arches and streamers and more balloons marked the entrance. A photographer stopped them on their way inside to take a picture, and that time, they managed to conjure up less plastic smiles. It was probably the lack of a watching audience.

He looked at himself looking at Nancy and grinning wide, and Nancy herself, caught mid-laugh staring into the camera. She was ethereal. Of course. Albus, beside her, looked passable.

But once they were in the hall, when people stared at her for a second too long, and Albus sent them a stare that promised painful retribution, and they turned tail to run, the grateful look she sent him made him feel at least, like, weird-handsome.

On the stage at the head of the hall, the Deputy Headmaster, Mr Davies, was standing at the mircophone, glaring at them all. Mr Davies was an absolute cock, but Albus kind of liked him for it. Honestly, he was pretty funny most of the time.

Unintentionally.

"So this is your Christmas party, or Prom," he added, "if you will insist on speaking like our transatlantic cousins. Now, before we let you go to wreak havoc in our hall, we have a few rules. There will be no heavy petting, and I will be the judge of what constitutes heavy."

Someone in the crowd coughed the word, "Pervert."

"I heard that. But if I see anything that I consider too much, you will be sent home, Stephen Harrington. Is that clear? Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," the crowd droned.

"Good. No lacing your drinks, no slipping off to empty classrooms, no fireworks in the corridors, Kusacabe." He gave them all a very unconvincing smile. "Other than that, have a nice evening."

He left as fast as he could, after giving them all a good glare, and looked absolutely fuming to have to spend his night supervising them all. No wonder. It was a big hall; there was no way he could loom over all of them, all night long.

Someone was bound to blow up a toilet.

The band hired for the first two hours of the evening took over from there, kicking off with a song he had heard before, but couldn't remember the name of.

"What we want is a good, structured evening," Mahsuda Snaith was saying as they passed her on their way inside. Tommy Hagan was hanging off her shoulders, casting bored glances around, looking with longing at the dance floor.

Albus nearly choked on his own spit when he realised they were there together.

"What we want is a big mucky disco and a piss-up," Steve Harrington said, an arm around the shoulders of Sabrina Featherington, who was already eyeing up other prospects. "We the people..."

His voice was lost in the hum as Albus and Nancy progressed further into the hall. The balloons and streamers were certainly...

Prominent.

And blood red lips, they shake like leaves. You're flesh and blood, but what's underneath?

Don't turn out the lights, kiss yourself goodnight, 'cause there's a killer and he's coming after you.

"Look at this place," Nancy said, and when he turned his head, she was fighting a reluctant smile. "How much do you think, on just the balloons?"

As someone burst one of the giant confetti-filled ones overhead, he guessed, "A grand?" and winced when Simon Woods started shrieking about leaving his decorations alone.

There was Chrissy Cunningham, in the middle of the dance floor with Daniel McKenna, the Downs Syndrome boy in their year who back-alley traded Pokemon cards. Daniel was pretty cool, even about people who talked down to him. Almost never lost his cool and told them calmly to fuck themselves. He and Chrissy were thrashing about together gleefully, and soon a whole crowd was dancing with them.

It was the sort of thing Chrissy made happen without even trying.

It's alright to scream, I'm screaming too, and why do you think I do the things I do?

For shadows haunted me like ghosts, so I became what I feared the most.

In the line for their first drinks, Nancy got talking to a girl in their class, Vicky, who was absolutely bursting at the seams to tell someone about where their classmate Olivia Benson had vanished to a week ago.

Keeping in mind that he was trying to be more open, give himself a chance at being perceived well, he plastered a look of polite interest on his face and watched as gradually, Vicky started talking to him as well.

“Olivia broke up with her boyfriend and slept with this boy who she had the biggest crush on for ages. Then, a few days later, she starts getting a burning in her vagina.” Nancy gasped. “She thought it was a yeast infection. Nope! It was herpes.” Nancy gasped; Albus’ eyebrows shot into his hairline. They both leant in closer, and so did Vicky.

“However, the guy she slept with, Oscar, had never had herpes before, so his herpes was new too. Where did Olivia's ex-boyfriend get the herpes from? He slept with a woman who had a recent herpes outbreak. This woman had also slept with the ex's father and is now pregnant!”

“But where did the herpes originally come from?” Nancy asked.

Vicky smiled, in a deliciously-scandalised way. “From the ex's father.”

They nearly forgot about their drink tokens in the furore. Nancy forgot about her reticence completely; the scandal was simply too much. She looked like a normal teenager for the first time in months, and Albus wondered whether he did as well.

Aaron Johnson, in line right in front of them, emptied an entire hip flask into the cooler of juice laid out for the non-drinkers, flipped off the student council member roped in to serving the drinks, and walked away without exchanging his token. Albus, Nancy and Vicky watched him pull a full bottle of beer from his trousers and open it with his own eyesocket.

I conduct fear like electricity.

A man-made monstrosity.

They ran into Jonathan when they were one drink deep each, and by the look on his face, he was in his own personal hell.

"You should have brought your stash so you'd have something to do until it's your time to take over as DJ," Nancy told him plainly, and Albus' ears were stood to attention then.

"If I’d have known I was going to Hell, I’d have grabbed it!" he said, looking distastefully at the decor and the people and the music. "Guy round the bike sheds sells it," he added quietly, to Albus, who realised he hadn't blinked in a few seconds. "It helps with the sleeplessness."

"My mum would decapitate me," he said.

Jonathan shrugged, still leaning into him with a newfound familiarity. "So would mine. At least I'll be well-rested."

"I'm sure that's what Marie Antoinette said."

"Having fun?" Jonathan asked, eyes flicking between them in the same way that usually set Albus' teeth on edge. One drink in, it didn't bother him so much. Nancy's fingers were laced with his and they didn't flinch, so he saw no reason for him to either.

"Trying to," Nancy said. "Did you hear Olivia Benson has herpes?"

Jonathan grimaced, and he let out a sarcastic, "Ooh, drama. I hate this place..."

Don't turn out the lights, kiss yourself goodnight, 'cause there's a killer and he's coming after you.

The band left at ten. Jonathan replaced them, acting as DJ for the rest of the night. Nancy said she was just impressed that he knew songs that had been released after 1990.

As the evening wore on, and more popuar couples than them slipped away early to run to their cars and drive to the hotel on the other side of town, he felt himself mellow out for real.

Not enough not to find Steve Harrington's antics fucking annoying. When Billy Hargrove wasn't around to frighten the life out of him, he was as loud and obnoxious as he used to be. Maybe he needed to get beat up. That had definitely knocked Albus' ego for six.

At the back of the hall, his eyes sought out Steve, with his back to the rest of them. At first, due to the low, strobing lights and the distance, Albus couldn't make sense of his posture. But as his eyes squinted, he saw that the movement he'd detected in the dark was another set of arms. Someone else was there, and they had their arms wrapped around his neck and shoulders. It wasn’t even Sabrina.

For fucks sake.

"You know what’s really pissing me off?" he said, squinting harder at the entangled couple, irritated this time.

"At any time, it could be one of a hundred things." But Nancy sounded amused rather than beleaguered. "I think I could probably guess if I really thought about it..."

Then the rest of the movement he'd seen suddenly fell into place, was easy to distinguish—a tipping head, a groping hand—and then Steve leaned forward slightly, and a face peered out over Steve's shoulder...

Matty Olsen.

"Oh—"

Juice went down the wrong pipe in his throat and he sat there choking quietly for a minute as Nancy frowned and asked him what was wrong. He just shook his head and didn't say anything, and when he looked back to the dark spot in the corner, Steve and Matty were gone.

Maybe Davies had got them.

Albus blinked, clearing his throat until the irritation from the vodka orange was gone. In three deep breaths, he was back in the room, and what he had seen was pushed from his mind.

For now.

It wasn't actually that difficult to put it aside with all the noise and heat and the scant alcohol in his system. He could feel it lingering, anyway. Why seeing Steve and Matty like that had affected him so much was something he wouldn't examine for a while yet.

Towards the end of the night, he realised that, quite without their notice, he and Nancy had actually started to enjoy themselves. They just sat back, watched couples break up around them, and had a fantastic time doing it. Tommy Hagan's confusing dalliance with party queen Mahsusa going up in flames was a highlight for him personally.

"Sorry, I didn’t recognise you without Aaron Johnson attached to your face!" he shouted.

"You were flirting with girls all night!" Mahsuda cried, storming past them for the exit. Tommy was hot on her heels.

"Yes, but I didn’t shag 'em so it doesn’t count!" he said, blustering after her into the night. Nancy pulled a face at him, and he knew then what they would be talking about on the drive home.

"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right..." he muttered.

Nancy klinked her drink with his. "And here we are. Stuck in the middle."

"As per usual," he concluded, and took a drink.

If he was going to take his promise to Will seriously he supposed he was going to have start talking to these people without looking at them like he wanted them to combust on the spot. He guessed he’d managed well enough with Vicky McNulty. She smiled at him as well as Nancy when they parted company, at least.

But it wasn't long before they were joined by someone sent by God to test his newfound determination; Tad Middleton, a rich boy nobody liked who had once tried to buy the friendship of Steve Harrington and ended up hanging by his shoelaces from the tree at the bottom of the school field.

He had been drinking too, in this case possibly since birth, and was telling anyone who would listen far more about his horrible family than any of them wanted to know.

“Well, I’ve found out that my grandfather had surgery for a penile implant,” Tad said to him, in that unbelievable way posh people had when they said the most insane thing you’d ever heard like they were talking about the weather. “Those that you can inflate or deflate by a mechanism stored in the ballsack,” he qualified, as if that was what was tripping anyone up. Nancy looked absolutely appalled when he said ballsack. “To be able to have sex with his mistress that he rents a house for in Lake Windemere.”

“That’s absolutely disgusting!” Albus said. “Where did he get it? And what’s the surgeon’s name?”

Nancy snorted, punched his arm and burst into laughter when he tilted sideways and nearly fell. Her glass was empty, he noticed. That was the refill she’d got from the spiked cooler.

Davies had already been seen trying to shake down students to get a confession over who had spiked the juice. Too late, he thought. Aaron Johnson left this party for a much cooler one about an hour ago.

They shook off Tad and sat quietly for a few minutes, letting Nancy get a grip of herself. He didn't think she had had much more to drink than she was supposed to. He wasn’t her keeper though; if she felt like cutting loose it wasn’t his job to say no.

Once she had that grip she decided another drink was in order, so he went looking for the spiked bowl, remembered that it had been discovered and confiscated, and span in a circle, wondering what to do.

”You after a splash?” someone behind him asked, and he turned to see Matty Olsen standing there.

Unbidden to himself, a small flush crept up his neck, but he kept his cool and said, “Two, actually. Why, have you got some?”

Matty surveyed him for a second. “Are you alright?” he asked, and for a heart stopping moment Albus thought he could see the blush in his features despite the dark. Then he went on to say, “It’s just, I don’t really know you, Potter. You aren’t a grass, are you?”

”Oh! No,” he said. “I won’t say anything, Jesus, what do you take me for?”

”Alright,” Matty said, shrugging. “Can’t blame me for asking, you never talk to no one.” And then Matty guided him along to a secluded corner of the hall, where a group of students known for nicking bikes and blowing up toilets had a secret stash of juice.

Davies, he thought, a second spiked punch bowl has hit the school hall.

He took two cups of the stuff from Kusacabe, who slid him a suspicious look, until Matty said, “He says he’s okay. Guess we’ll find out…”

He tried not to stare too hard at Matty and concentrated instead on looking relatively personable and like someone they didn’t need to worry about. He returned to Nancy’s side a few minutes after he had left her. She was swaying to a song on her own, eyes drinking in the glittering lights, and when he handed her the drink, she knocked it back in one go. Caving in to societal pressures, he copied her, grimacing past the strong pang from the apple Sourz.

One song ended with a flare of pyrotechnics, before the dance floor lights went dark, and the opening chords of the next song—electric piano synths—had Nancy gasping and leaping to her feet. She pulled at his hands.

"We have to dance to this, Albus! It's Tears For Fears! Dance with me!"

He knew she liked this song. He knew because she had scrolled to her Spotify playlist once and pointed to it, and said, "That's my favourite song." Head Over Heels. He knew it well.

Even so, he pretended to hum and haw, making her drag him, a wide, knowing smile on her face, closer and closer to the dance floor. He fought off the smile on his own face because it was fun to make her pull him along, but he went pliantly enough.

Then as the opening chords were replaced by the first verse's electric thrum of guitar, and the lights of the floor inverted, red and purple and white, he stopped resisting, and span her in a smooth circle, and pulled her into his arms.

I wanted to be with you alone, and talk about the weather.

But traditions I can trace against the child in your face, won't escape my attention.

Face to face. Nose to nose. In each others orbits.

You keep your distance with a system of touch, and gentle persuasion.

I'm lost in admiration, could I need you this much?

Shimmering and cascading. Piano synth, electric guitar, drum line. Roses in the lights.

Oh, you're wasting my time. You're just, just, just wasting time.

She was mouthing the words to the song at him until he whispered something in her ear that was just for the two of them, and she threw her head back, laughing, and he knew, then, that the pair of them looked for once like a pair of dumb teenagers.

Ah, don't take my heart, don't break my heart.

Don't, don't, don't throw it away.

The clock on the wall told him it was just after one am. There was a bizarre, foul-smelling concoction of alcohols in the cup in his hand, and Matty Olsen’s group was singing at him to get it down in ten, nine, eight…

He’d lost the game of waterfall they were playing. Nancy was cheering, too drunk to join in with the singing, and filming him on her phone, one fist raised in the air.

Wearing a wide, foolish grin, he tipped his head back and necked the whole disgusting alcoholic potion, so well apparently that Matty’s gang were losing their minds, in raptures. Kusacabe reclaimed the empty cup and was yelling incoherently, smacking him on the back. Weirdly he felt fine. It tasted foul but it wasn’t hard to drink. When he said this to them, they only cheered harder.

”You’re alright after all, Potter!” Matty said. Albus only affected a look of attempted nonchalance, then ruined it by grinning wider.

He had watched Steve Harrington and Matty Olsen kiss earlier, and he kept thinking about it when he looked at Matty, and it had settled into him some confusing emotion he wasn't sure he could understand. For some inexplicable reason, the kind that required hindsight to properly understand, his face had grown very warm, and his heart had skipped a beat or two.

”What the bloody hell is going on over here?”

Mr Davies’ hawkish eye had finally found them across the emptying hall, and he was stalking over, a look of hell on his face. He’d spent the night breaking up horrible, horny teenagers, so Albus guessed he’d be in a bad mood.

”Where did this lot come from?” he asked of Matty and his friends. “You were all searched upon arrival, so where did you get it?”

They’d hidden it in their lockers, and around various other locations in the school, before the Snowball started, was the answer. One of the friends whose name Albus didn’t care to remember had let him in on this between his first and second shots of Sourz.

He and Nancy tried to quietly slip back from them as Mr Davies went on, which was difficult because Nancy was absolutely bladdered and Albus couldn’t put two straight steps together.

Kusacabe, apparently feeling like a camaraderie had sprung between them all, encouraged this with small hand gestures as Matty pontificated and pretended to not know where the bottle of tequila in his jacket pocket had come from.

“Out!” Mr Davies roared, confiscating the tequila and bodily shoving Matty towards the exit Albus and Nancy were already heading towards.

Matty postured and made hand signs to Davies’ back, to the applause and jeers of his mates, then stumbled and plodded along ahead of he and Nancy, seemingly unaware of their presence, out of the hall and down the corridor to the exit.

“And detention! That’s for you and Wheeler as well, Potter!”

“Oops,” Nancy giggled.

“Doesn’t Sabrina look a state? Oh, I wouldn’t have left the house,” Albus said to the ceiling, and his imitation of Nancy was actually not bad; he got the vocal inflection right at least.

Cackling with laughter, she pushed him into the wall, and he slid along it for a second before he pushed himself back to his feet, still laughing.

He dropped his jacket, stooped to pick it up, and had to wait a moment for the corridor to right itself before he pushed on, into the soberingly cold night air. The CR-V was parked some distance away and he saw his dad leant up against the drivers side door, staring up at the stars.

It was freezing, horrible really, but neither of them minded. He gave her his suit jacket wordlessly, and they watched as Matty stumbled his way towards the exit, passing by the CR-V, and Albus’ dad, as he went.

“He’s alright, man!” Matty slurred at his dad, nearly falling into Harry’s arms. He didn’t even notice this, pointing back in Albus’ general direction and yelling, “He’s alright!”

“I think so too,” his dad said, visibly pushing down laughter and seeking out his son’s eye. Look at him, convincingly sober and everything. Doing the family proud.

“My parents are going be in Wales next week, on holiday," Nancy said as they took a moment on the front steps. Her breath crystalised in the air.

“Oh.”

“You should come over. If you want.”

Then she stared at him. He stared at her. The look on her face, of startling clarity, made him doubt what his instinct was trying to tell him was going on, but then he caught the shine in her eyes. Nancy’s eyes were overbright sometimes when she looked at him. Like she was trying to use the visual of his face to hammer out a vision of the future that made her feel less like she had been cut adrift.

But they never made plans. Well, not normal person plans. They planned if they ever had to do anything involving the Upside Down, when they could. But normally when it came to usual teenage stuff they were just in each others orbits so much that they didn’t need to make plans.

There was only one thing they would need an actual plan for.

“Uh. Yeah. I could come over,” he said. “What day?”

“They’re leaving on Friday night. Coming back the next Monday. So. Whenever you’ve got time,” she said with an exaggerated shrug that reminded him just how drunk she was.

“I’ve got loads of time.” And then, just to be sure he was not misunderstanding, “Is anyone else going to be there?”

“No," she said.

In the car on the drive back to her parents' house, Albus was silent. Nancy did all the talking for him anyway; he didn’t think his dad had expected her to return in such a state. She was her own woman, though, so if she wanted to get pissed…

He turned over her words in his mind endlessly, trying to convince himself first that they meant exactly what he thought they did, then that they didn't, that he was just a horrible teenage boy who was projecting. All anyone had talked about all night was sex in some form and that was why his mind went there.

But he didn't think that was it.

He didn't want to break the silence. It was too late to clarify now.

Nancy was curled up in the seat next to him, her heels replaced with a pair of slippers she had thought to bring. She was ripping into a packet of jellybeans and still giggling about Mahsuda and Tommy’s short-lived romance.

Outside the car the moon broke over the treetops.

"Can we please listen to something else?" she asked, when Pet Sounds finished, and his dad took the tape out to turn it over.

"You don't like The Beach Boys?" he asked her, as the cassette's B-side started playing.

"Uh, I was neutral on The Beach Boys, but that was several repetitions ago."

"We don't have any other tapes," he said regretfully.

Albus frowned. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Don’t we have any Jon Bovi?”

A beat, then he realised what he’d said just as Nancy burst out laughing, crying, “Jon Bovi!” at the roof of the car as he groaned. “Good old Bovine Jon, we call him!” she cackled.

His dad was watching them in the rearview mirror again, grinning too, though he smothered it when Nancy planted both hands on the front seats so she could pull herself up and into his vicinity.

“He said Jon Bovi,” she told him, so seriously that Harry’s attempt at a sterner facade failed completely.

“I heard it, Nancy,” he said, and added, as she fell back to rest against Albus’ shoulder, “What will we do with him?”

Albus managed to throw a hand over her mouth before she could get all of, “Penis implant surgery,” out. Luckily she was too drunk to do anything but slur it anyway.

"I gave you a blank tape, Nance,” he reminded her, because he couldn’t help himself. “We could be listening to anything you want right now.”

"I'm not making you a fucking mixtape!"

"Then don't complain!"

She fell silent. At the start of the night this might have been a real argument. It probably would have been, actually. Definitely. But the night had passed and they had relaxed. It was just meaningless bickering by now. No tension.

“You gave me a blank tape for Christmas," she said, wonderingly.

“I’m sorry, I thought it was romantic!”

“Bullshit!" she laughed. "How was it—“

“I don’t know, I thought you could make your own custom playlist to have on whenever you’re in my car! I thought it was a nice idea. It's not like it was all I gave you either."

"You're right,” she muttered, pressing her face into his shoulder as she began to drift off. “I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to use shooting range vouchers, though."

"Any time between now and the next time the Mind Flayer hits you up would be ideal," he muttered, eyes on his dad to make sure they were being ignored again.

She groaned. "Hopefully that's a long time away."

"The voucher expires in six months," he said.

Trees on both sides of the car ended, and so too did the fears in the back of his mind that the Demogorgon was lurking in them, and they were on the stretch to Nancy's estate.

By the time they actually pulled up in front of her house, their chatter had become more incoherent, more like the nonsense they usually heard out of Dustin or Mike. Nancy was sleepy and quiet.

They stared together at her front door. He could see Ted staring at them through a slit in the living room curtains. As if he was going to take Nancy up on her offer right there in the middle of the road.

Not on his car seats.

She turned to him with the most honest smile he had seen on her face in... perhaps ever.

"I had fun, Albus," she whispered, like it was a secret. "Thank you."

”You’re welcome,” he whispered back.

Then she shot forwards and pressed her lips to his. Warmth flooded his system and all the nerve endings in his body flared with heat for the full ten seconds—he counted—that they stayed there.

She only pulled back, eyes shining like his face held visions of a less dangerous future, when a throat clearing quietly from the front seat reminded them that they weren't alone.

Albus glanced at the window as she gathered her heels. Yep. Ted was still staring at them.

”I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said, still whispering. “Drive safe, Jon Bovi.”

Honestly. If the Demogorgon jumped out in front of him right now he would just run it over. Wouldn’t even flinch.

The car was silent on the drive home. After a few minutes, or seconds, or some other time measurement that he couldn't keep track of just then, his dad spoke.

"Well, I eat my words about Nancy being sensible."

"Leave her alone, she’s had a hard time," Albus muttered.

"I know mate," he said. "And you have as well."

"Yeah…" He tipped his head against the window to watch the moon shine down on them through the trees. "Kusacabe’s gonna get suspended."

"It sounds like he probably should," Harry said amiably. "I’m glad you had a good night, Al."

He grumbled unconvincingly. "They’re all a bunch of wankers."

"Well, let’s have less of that language, please."

Final stop of the night, they pulled onto the driveway and his dad shut off the engine. They both sat still for a moment. The windows were dark; his mum was asleep.

"Please don’t kill me for getting drunk," Albus mumbled.

Harry smiled at him through the rear view mirror. "I think the headache you’ll have tomorrow will be punishment enough."

Chapter Text

Something was bound to come up to test his new-found ideation of not letting it get on top of him. And indeed it did, in the month of April that year, when he was coaxed back into the wizarding world for his Aunt Audrey’s birthday.

He'd been riding so high, off on his own supply, that when his parents reminded him there was a party on, that he obviously was meant to be attending, he hadn't wanted to go at first. Hadn't wanted to ruin his own good mood, which was cautiously optimistic a lot of the time these days. Efforts to become his own person hadn't gone unnoticed by his parents, who seemed absolutely over the moon.

He supposed he had spent an inordinate amount of time moping over the last few years.

They all met at his Aunt Audrey and Uncle Percy's house, but were going to some restaurant in London later. When Albus walked in, the cousin hoard had gathered around Teddy, who was grinning in the way a man who was pretending to be bashful did. His hair, a sort of candy-blue that day, was longer that he usually kept it, giving him a sort of rockstar look, and he was rebuffing attempts from Dom and Fred to extract some kind of information.

“What’s up?” Albus asked, lowering his head to Rose’s level, keeping his voice low to avoid detection.

She gave him a wry smile. “Teddy’s made the scandal sheets,” she said. “Juggling two girlfriends and a boyfriend simultaneously. They’re all insisting it was informed and consenting, but the papers have gone cuckoo.”

“I bet they have.” He was grinning despite himself. Such a Teddy thing to do. This was the Man Who Made Activism Sexy, after all. “Do the adults know?”

“Andromeda certainly does. She’s flipped her lid, gone absolutely mental.”

“Well, she’s a traditionalist,” Albus said. Andromeda was always very nice to him, but he remembered the wary way she avoided Albus in the first two weeks after his diagnosis. He knew his mum had had words with her, and she returned to her usual self not long after. “What about the others?”

“Pretending it isn’t happening for the most part. I think they’re feeling a bit sheepish. It’s a bit modern for their sensibilities.”

“Al!” Teddy had spotted him over the hoard and was grinning affectionately, beckoning him with an outstretched arm. “How are ya?”

“Grand,” he said, trying to match Teddy’s energy with a grin of his own. “But probably not better than you.”

Teddy winked at him and said, “Life is too short for labels or conventions, Al. I’m just trying to have fun with what little time I have on this earth. Like Cindy Lauper told me to.”

“I’m not judging.” Part of him was wondering if he would be able to pull the same thing off. Really give the Daily Prophet something to crow about. They thought the squib thing was bad?

Teddy’s smile turned to a knife’s edge. “That’s the spirit, Al! Join me on the dark side.”

“I don’t think so.” Rose rolled her eyes. “Hasn’t Uncle Harry suffered enough?”

A quip, meant innocently. It made Albus go tense all over anyway, all the bravado drain from his system, his heart sink down to his stomach. Teddy, of course, felt the moment his demeanour changed, and his amusement fell away.

“Not funny, Rosie,” he said, adding in a mutter, “Merlin’s ballsack.”

Rose had paled beneath her coils of hair and was looking at him with something caught between apprehension and guilt. The cousin hoard were suddenly looking away, all of them reaching for each other’s eyes and avoiding his like the plague.

Words spoken to himself, in private, about how he was going to give himself a chance, were lost to the noise in the back of his head, the shrieking, relentless sound of We’re sorry, Mr and Mrs Potter. Albus has no magic at all.

He tried to make himself grin, and before he could stop it, the insecurity slipped from his mouth. “Is that how you talk about me when I’m not here?” Which was, of course, all the time.

“Al—No. Merlin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—“ Rose broke off, shooting panicked looks at the cousins to either side of her; Fred and Hugo. Hugo’s blush was burning across his face, and Fred, who usually had a set expression of at least mild mischief, was staring fixedly at the floor.

“Of course that’s not how they talk about you, Al,” Teddy said gruffly. “Rosie just can’t stop her fucking tongue sometimes.”

Rose wilted further, and whispered again, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said, robotically. “No hard feelings.”

"I didn't mean it," came the last, strangled whisper.

But as Aunt Fleur arrived in the room to usher them all into action, speaking in a flawless flow of Franglish, Albus found that he couldn’t quite scrape his careless demeanour back together. Like trying to build a snowman from the grey sludge on the side of the road. Teddy stuck by his side and Rose kept her distance, and he was sure Aunt Fleur could tell. She didn’t bring it up; only kissed his forehead when she saw him and scolded him for not visiting Shell Cottage more often, then ushered him off after his cousins.

“Ignore it,” Teddy muttered. “You’re good, Al, yeah? You’re hot to go.”

Rose wouldn’t meet his eyes for ages after that. Like, half the day at least. He found himself counting down the minutes until he could excuse himself to go home; school was back the next day, and he could pretend he had unfinished schoolwork or something like that.

"How's things with your girlfriend?" Teddy said, sticking with him at the back of the pack. "Have you two, uh—Uh-huh-huh?"

“I mean, yeah,” he said, trying not to blush.

Teddy looked like a proud dad. “It must be so much fun living out in the Lake District. Getting down to any sort of business was such a ball ache when I was at Hogwarts. You’d spend two weeks trying to get alone with someone for five minutes, and then the anti-sex sensors would pick up on what you were doing anyway and you’d get bucked out of the bed or ratted on by some bitch-ass portrait.” Realising that Albus was just staring at him, Teddy’s demeanour changed. “You’re being careful, yeah? And listening to her and shit?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Our talk helped?”

Heh. Teddy and James had ganged up on him when he was fourteen and tried to kill him with embarrassment by giving him the most graphic, over-detailed sex talk ever devised; he’d been so traumatised that he’d left them that night, cackling in the garden of the Burrow, he'd walked straight into the frame of the backdoor, which hadn't calmed them down much.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said, and Teddy’s grin returned. It was never very far away.

“I’m so proud,” he said, pretending to wipe aside a tear. He was blessedly left alone on the subject thereafter.

Aunt Audrey's birthday was ending in a dinner at a restaurant she loved in London, but she had spent the day with her girls and Uncle Percy, on a steam train trip from Carlisle to Edinburgh. She was a huge fan of vintage vehicles, locomotives especially, and said she'd had felt a sense of fomo over the Hogwarts Express ever since Uncle Percy first told her about it. Albus had that feeling too, but he knew the answer to it for him was not to go chasing the feeling. Hopefully she'd had a good time though.

They would be arriving soon, and the herd of cousins were waiting with Aunt Fleur and Uncle Bill for them to get home; the surprise was meant to begin in the family drawing room. The other assorted Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents were joining them at...

Some point. With a family as big as theirs, these things could get lost in translation. He was sure they'd all find their way to the right place eventually. And if one or two of them didn't, it would be hard for Aunt Audrey to tell.

As they waited, in the drawing room of the house, Albus counted the model cars in their glass cases, watched the wisteria through the tall, white windows, and then turned to count his cousins.

Teddy, obviously. Hugo and Fred and Dominique, on the loveseat together. Rose, tying herself into knots in the corner. Louis wasn't feeling well, but he was hoping to join them for the dinner if he could, Fleur said, and Victoire was watching him until then. Molly and Lucy would arrive with their parents. Roxanne was helping Lily and Uncle Ron with Aunt Audrey's present, which they were being extremely secretive about.

He didn't know where James was. His parents, either.

But he was at the heart of one of the family homes again, letting their chatter wash over him as he always had, and wondering if he should buck himself up again, try to find himself an in, when the snap of apparition startled him from his funk. Silenced his cousins, which he was horribly, distantly thankful for.

"Hello?" called Uncle Ron from the other room. "Birthday girl back yet?"

"No," Aunt Fleur said, as Ron found them in the drawing room. "But soon."

Uncle Bill showed up then, and the three of them got to talking, and his cousins found the loose ends of their own conversations, and Albus went back to wondering how he could slide himself in. It was never this difficult at home, even when he was at his least approachable, his moodiest, before he had started trying with people. But he didn't spend all his time around his cousins like they did each other.

They didn't mean to cut him out. They didn't mean it. At some point he had to start believing that, surely.

His eyes went to the clock just as the fireplace flared green, and Aunt Audrey came stepping through with her usual poise. A wide smile was on her face and a novelty birthday badge pinned to her blouse. They all stared for about three seconds, then leapt to their feet, blowing foil blowhorns and letting off enchanted poppers that set off a miniature fireworks display which filled the drawing room.

"Happy birthday!"

At dinner, sitting all up and down a table as long as the dining table at the Burrow, more of his family started to appear, sliding into seats and orderings drinks and food, and he found, when he let himself relax, that the chatter and jokes and their voices were comforting. He realised he was smiling after a while. Yes, it was true that they didn't have all that much to say to him, but Teddy was trying. Aunt Audrey always tried. He listened to the two of them talk, and little by little, the tension drained from his shoulders.

Rose's inadvised joke melted away from his conscious completely.

"Which journalist was it who got the drop on you?" Aunt Audrey asked Teddy, with a sympathetic smile.

Teddy grinned roguishly, and said, “Belinda Stookey. Think she's been following a few of us around. Hit the jackpot with me,” he added, wryly.

“Rita Skeeter’s spirit reborn on Earth,” Uncle Bill groused. "Where's Harry?"

"Head Auror's kept him back in her office," Ron said, with a certain weight to it that Albus didn't understand, but that made the eyes of Bill and Audrey both light with comprehension. "He'll try to get here."

"I know how it is," Aunt Audrey said, waving him off. Bill shot Albus a glance, and he realised then that his mum was still absent herself.

The night wore on, and though Albus failed to find ways of inserting himself into his cousins' conversations about Hogwarts, he did talk to Audrey for a good long while about a vintage car fest she had visited in Brighton. It was a shared love, more for her the vintage side of things, the mechanics for him. He knew when Percy had first introduced her to his parents, she and Grandpa Weasley bonded over vintage cars too.

"You don't get proper petrolheads anymore!" she cried. "Cars are too one-note now. They're all the same internally, from the budget cars to the luxury vehicles. Every. Engine. Is. The. Same." She punctuated this with slaps on the tabletop. "There's nothing to be passionate for anymore."

Albus nodded along, not really knowing enough to join in, but certain that she was passionate enough for every petrolhead on Earth. She worked as an actuary in the centre of London, graduated with a First from Cambridge, which was when she met Uncle Percy. But her true love was vintage vehicles.

Beside him, Hugo and Dom were arguing about a Quidditch score; their teams had played each other two days ago and the match was turning out to be the most controversial of the season.

"Eugene didn't hit Lincoln on purpose!" Hugo cried. "That's not how the Magpies play!"

"Please. Every team cheats, Hugh," Dom said, rolling her eyes at him. "My team does, Aunt Ginny's team did when she was playing. So do your beloved Magpies. Eugene was trying to knock Lincoln off his broom. End of story."

"Was not!"

"Was so, and I'm not having this argument with you!"

"Shut up."

"Don't tell me—Uncle Ron! Hugo told me to shut up!"

From the other end of the table, Ron called, "Did you deserve it, Dom?"

"No!" she cried at the same time as Hugo said, "Yeah, Dad!"

"How are the Mags doing?" Albus asked, taking a proffered bread basket from Aunt Audrey, as Dom and Ron devolved into bickering.

"Good,” Hugo said. "On course for third place, so they could be in the Champions Tourney next season."

"Nice."

The doors to the restaurant banged open to his back but he didn’t do anything other than control the jump in his pulse and split open a petit pain. He took notice a moment later, when James finally burst onto the scene. Clearly the red mist had descended because he didn’t even see most of them; he marched over to Uncle Ron and threw something down in front of him.

“Look at this. Look at it!”

“James, don’t make a scene,” Uncle Bill said with a subtle glance at Aunt Audrey. James ignored him. He didn’t stop to look at Aunt Audrey and wish her a happy birthday. If he had he would have seen Albus, and maybe he would have reigned his temper in.

“She’s not just stalking Teddy, she’s after all of us,” he went on, as a weary Ron slipped on reading glasses and picked the book up gingerly. His eyes scanned the cover for a few moments as James continued to rant.

"It’s got interviews with the healers who examined him, people we used to be neighbours with, one of his tutors from when he was six, for fucks sake!” A creeping feeling settled into Albus’ stomach as James went, but it didn’t solidify until he said, “Dad’s gone apeshit, I think he’s gonna kill someone—"

“Jamie,” Uncle Ron said, slowly, taking his glasses back off and putting the book back down on the table with a sharp slap. “That’s enough, mate. Quiet.”

"Never mind Dad, I'm gonna kill her—"

"James." Uncle Ron never raised his voice at them, but he did then, a sharp bark that had James draw up short. "Bill's right. Stop creating a scene, and sit down with us."

He was trying to shift the book off the table without anyone noticing, but Albus, who had got good at moving quietly and without drawing notice, was moving before he could. James finally realised that Albus was there just as he slipped his hand past Uncle Ron's arm and took the book up himself.

"Al. Merlin, I didn't see you—"

“What the hell is this?” Albus asked the group at large, though obviously, just by looking at them, none of his cousins knew.

James looked caught somewhere between mortification and latent fury. “Give us it back, Al, seriously. Come on—"

“No.”

“I said give it—“

Leaping backwards as James lunged for the hardback, he shouted, “I said no!” He stared at the cover.

It said in small text in the corner, Provisional Cover, but the title, in big blazing letters, was A Study in Squibs: On the Outskirts of Society. By Belinda Stookey. The cover was made up of a mish-mash of faces, and one of them, placed quite prominently, was his own.

Albus stared for a long time, gripping the exposé with a strength that none of them could break, until eventually it exploded in a shower of harmless sparks, and he was left holding empty air. He turned his head to see Aunt Fleur standing in front of him, her graceful, curved wand pointed right at his hands. Her expression was flat on the surface, but when he looked into her eyes...

Her eyes were on fire.

She spat out a harsh, "Pah!" and turned her vengeful stare on her grim-faced husband. "The English press are the worst in the world. Gutter tripe," she lamented, disgusted.

He felt violated. He felt exposed. His skin was crawling and acid was beginning to burn in the back of his throat.

"Al, I'm so sorry, please," James was babbling. His hands were on Albus' arms, patting uselessly. "I didn't see you."

Albus ignored him. It was like the eyes of the world had turned onto him, and all of a sudden he realised that their table was surrounded by people he recognised as aurors. Undercover, guarding their table. Also all staring at him. He needed to leave.

He pulled on Aunt Fleur's sleeve, and said, "Take me home, please?"

She nodded, and took his shoulder in a firm grip, no further fuss needed. When she apparated him back to Lake Winsome, she made it the smoothest transition from one place of any he had ever experienced, which helped when he thought he could throw up at any second. Aunt Fleur was the most talented at apparition in the family.

"I'm done," he ranted, stepping away from Aunt Fleur, who listened to him in silence. "I'm fucking done. Those people don't get to claim me. They don't even want me. Fuck them."

"Language," she said softly, unconvincingly. Her eyes were still burning. They stared at each other, each waiting to see if the other would lash out.

"I'm going to bed," he said eventually. "Thanks for bringing me home."

He had been too busy concentrating on getting out of there to notice how Aunt Audrey's head fell into her hands or how Uncle Bill's eyes slid shut, or how Rose, still trying to think of ways to say sorry, shrivelled into a wilted flower and left the table.

Caught between returning to his old form of moping and hiding himself away, or throwing himself with perhaps too much zeal into his life in Lake Winsome, the latter won out after one sleepless night punctuated only by a knock on the door and his mother creeping in to ask him if he was okay.

“No one’s going to see it, Al,” she whispered. “Your dad and I have seen to that. Stookey’s going to be drowning in legal problems for the foreseeable future, and her rancid little book won't see the light of day.”

It did nothing to lessen the sting of the breech of privacy he had been exposed to. The desecration of his past, the worst time in his life. But it helped him decide how he was going to react. As he headed back to school the next day, biking down the lakeside road, he thought with every beat that passed, Forget it forget it forget it. No one was going to read that book.

He was okay.

“You’re okay,” he told himself, even as he stepped from his still-moving bike and reached blindly for the bike lock, eyes distant. “You’re okay.”

Before he left the bike sheds, nodding to Aaron Johnson, who was selling something in a brown paper bag to Sabrina Featherington, he gave himself a moment to calm down. Breathed in and out slowly. Passed Johnson off when he asked if Albus wanted to buy a square of grass off him.

“Fine, stay like that. Twitchy cunt…” Johnson muttered around the cigarette he was smoking, walking off with his trademark careless swagger. He needed to hurry or he would be late to class.

“Breathe,” he told himself, eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them again two minutes later, he had decided that the road to self-actualisation was telling yourself you were already on it, and set out to behave as such.

It took him a while to get going. It was unseasonably warm for spring and he was sweating in just his school shirt; he kept “losing” his blazer because it pissed off the music teacher, Ms DeBrune. Copped him more than one detention but he didn’t care, especially not on that day. He spent it doing an excellent impression of his ten-year-old self, pissing off teachers he usually got on with and drawing concern from the few who actually cared about their students.

He hated to disappoint Mr Clarke but death spirals like the one he was in were difficult to break free from. He didn't buy drugs from Aaron Johnson—you're welcome, Dad—but money did exchange hands to leave him with two cans of Strongbow in his bag after school.

He snagged Will by the back of his blazer on the way, and told him gruffly, "Come on. Target practice."

The spring air was soft and warm, the falling night a sort of suede blue. He emptied the can into his mouth and went walking—only a slight stumble—to the wall, where he placed the can down beside a row of others that he had scavenged from the area.

He turned back to Will and pointed at it. “Shoot.”

Will raised the BB gun, then thought twice, lowered it. “I feel silly.”

“What for?” he asked, rummaging around in his backpack for the second can.

“Shooting a fake gun. It’s not like I’ll kill a Demogorgon with Ted’s BB gun.”

“The gun isn’t the point,” he said. “The point is you being able to shoot. Come on, try again.”

“Is it a good idea for someone actively drinking to teach me to handle a gun?” Will asked, judgementally, looking Albus up and down.

“Why? I’m not the one holding it, you are,” he said mulishly.

Will stared at him. “I do remember, you know," he said, disappointment plain in his tone. "What you said to me when I was Flayed. Is this what giving yourself a chance looks like?”

Albus looked down through the hole at the top of the can for a long moment, jaw clenched, the fizz of his last drink still tingling on his tongue. The tang of blackcurrant and alcohol. He supposed that to Belinda Stookey, this would only bolster her opinion that squibs were doomed from the start. No drive, no hope, no future. His dad had been texting him all day, and calling in between, but he wasn't ready to talk to any of them yet.

Come here, tell me all about Albus Potter. Did his eyes roll in their sockets? Was he simple? Did he drool from the side of his mouth when you examined him, Healer?

He nearly vomited right then and there. He forced several harsh breaths into his lungs. Fought back the sting in his eyes. Then he put the can down on the wall, mostly full, and headed over to Will’s side.

“Don’t lock your elbows,” he said, standing behind him and adjusting Will’s arms himself. “Take a breath, aim for it. Shoot.”

Having given himself a moment to steady up, Will did. He missed the first shot, but the second struck the can right through the centre. Dark purple liquid, almost black, came spilling out down the side.

"Jonathan been teaching you as well?" he asked.

"Not Jonathan. Hopper."

Albus nodded, still watching as cider trickled down the side of the can and down the stone wall, disappearing into the long grass. T hey stayed for a while, practicing, until Dustin started blowing up Will's phone, asking where he was.

"The guys are at Mike's house," Will said. "You coming?"

It was take the offer, or go home, and have a talk with his parents. "Race you," he offered, hefting his bike up out of the grass.

Will's eyes brightened at the challenge. Shirt sleeves rolled up, tie loose around his neck, Albus filled his lungs with the scent of the grass as they rocketed down the road. He picked a sweet-smelling sprig of cow parsley as they passed—the roads were lined with it, covered—and tucked it into his shirt pocket to leave in Nancy's room somewhere she wouldn't find until he was gone.

Will biked hell for leather, and he let the kid think he was going to win until the home stretch, when his longer legs stepped in to help him steal the victory.

"That... was shitty of you," Will panted, dropping his bike onto the Wheeler drive. He was red-faced and grinning.

"See you later," he said, mimicking Will's action with his bike. "Have fun playing dress up."

"Dungeons and Dragons!" Will shouted at his back.

He ended up occupying one of the sofas in the family living room, because Ted would not let him into Nancy’s room. He had no idea of what they had done the weekend he and his wife were in Wales; it was more a rule he impressed upon them because that was the done thing. Not that he could enforce it in that particular moment; he was fast asleep in his chair by the fire, head tipped back, lost to the world. He kept half-startling himself awake with these little grunts, then drifting back to sleep in an instant.

Holly sat babbling to herself in front of him, playing with one of her books.

Nancy rolled her eyes, a half-amused, half-apologetic grin overtaking her features. From the basement he heard the kids shrieking and hollering as they played their latest campaign, and though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, the sound made him smile. They'd earned their laughter several times over. Even Mike, he thought, as the familiar head appeared around the corner.

”Can we order pizzas?” he asked his mother, standing at the island in the kitchen.

”You certainly cannot,” Karen said, unflappable. She was slicing tomatoes thin, and pointed out to her son, “I’m making dinner.”

Mike grumbled and groaned until Nancy piped up to say, “Maybe the boys can stay for dinner.”

”And add another three plates to the table?” She cut Albus a subtle glance and added, “I’m always happy to have your friends for dinner, Michael, but we haven’t got the space tonight.”

”So let us order pizza! We’ll stay in the basement, not take up any room!”

”I already said no, Michael.”

The tension that entered her voice was sudden and thick enough to cut with a knife. Albus and Nancy exchanged a meaningful glance over the tops of their books as Mike geared himself up for an argument. She jerked her head towards the front door. He raised his eyebrows; she nodded, once, softly.

"Your father and I have to be gone in half an hour, so don't interrupt my flow with your whinging," Karen was saying, and Mike rolled his eyes and sloped off, kicking the wall once he was out of his mother's line of sight.

"The boys could take our place," Nancy offered, getting to her feet. Albus copied her without really understanding what she was doing. "Albus was just leaving, and I've got too much work to do to stop for dinner." She didn't wait to see what her mother said, just left the room, so he followed her.

"What are we actually doing?"

She sent him an askew look but didn't answer, and part of him—a horrible teenage boy part of him—wondered if she was sneaking him away for, you know.

Sex purposes.

They'd been doing a bit of that sort of thing lately. As he waited for her to unlock the front door, he wondered if that was it. Last time they tried Mike and his friends sabotaged the whole thing, and he'd nearly pushed Mike down the stairs in retaliation, and then Mike started hollering so loud he wouldn't be surprised if the whole neighbourhood had heard him, and so Nancy threatened to drown him in the bathtub, which was when Mike said he was going to call Childline. So he also wouldn't be surprised if she wanted to go somewhere else this time.

"What are you two doing?"

Speak of the devil. Mike was standing behind them, glaring between them in blatant distrust, and the same disgust any barely pubescent brother had for his older sister.

Smirking at him in a deliberately provocative manner, Nancy had her finger at her lips in a shushing motion, before Mike had even fully conceptualised what they were doing.

Albus, grinning like a jackal, and mimed putting his finger to his lips as well. The effort not to laugh when Mike’s face went red with rage was tempered only by the possibility of what Nancy was ushering him away for. Mike puffed his chest up, like he was going to start shouting, but then Nancy made a specific hand action that Albus didn’t recognise, and his mouth snapped shut. Face still angry. Of course.

She slipped outside with him, whispered, "Climb the trellis and I'll let you back in." Then she pushed him off with a small kiss.

It took him a moment to realise she wanted him to climb in through her bedroom window.

"Oh," he said, dumbly, when he did realise. "Hell yeah."

He tried not to hurry, just in case someone was watching, because he didn't want to come across as desperate, but once he was balancing on the roof of the garage he became pretty desperate for her to open the window, asap, because he didn't know what he was going to do if someone his parents knew drove past and they wanted to know what the Potter boy was doing sitting on the roof of the Wheeler house.

She let him in after a couple of sweat-inducing minutes, putting her finger to her lips again.

"Yeah," she called to someone on the other side of her door. "I can get my own food once I'm finished."

He tucked the slightly-crumbled cow parsley into one of her books while she wasn't looking.

"Alright, hun," Karen said. "Love you."

"You too. Have a good night."

He knew it was cow parsley because his Uncle Neville had loads of it growing at the bottom of his garden. Once when they had been round there visiting, when Albus was seven and everything was fine, Lily had asked him why he had anything planted that didn’t do stuff.

“Because, Lilypad,” Neville had said, with a quirk of his lips that signalled he was pushing down a smile, “not everything in a wizard’s garden must be magical. Sometimes we plant these things just because we like them.”

He had given them a cutting to plant, but it died after only a week despite all of them trying to care for it. Or perhaps because all of them had tried caring for it. Maybe the poor thing drowned on the kitchen windowsill.

He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to release some of the tension he was still holding in him since his last visit to the place on the other side of the fireplace.

”You okay?” Nancy murmured. She'd changed into sweats at some point, and curled up on her bed watching him.

He waved his hand. "Had a bad day yesterday," he said, trying really hard to sound flippant about it. "Went to visit my family. I don’t know why I let them talk me into it. They hate me,” he confessed, a whisper slipping unbidden past his lips.

That did give her pause. “Who does?”

”The people back—in the place where I’m from. They hate me.”

He wasn’t dumb enough to think their prejudice was right, but no matter how much he told himself when he was here that he was not letting it get on top of him anymore, it was a different sort of challenge not to internalise it when he was right there, faced with it. When they were digging into his past and violating his privacy for the sake of sensationalism.

“We’re heading to the arcade!” Mike called, not bothering to even head up the stairs to speak to his sister. “We’ve gotta work on getting that Dig Dug high score back!”

"Whatever!" Nancy shouted, rolling her eyes. Her restless fingers tapped a rhythm onto his skin and when he stopped his self-recrimination and concentrated, he could make it out; Layla, Derek and the Dominoes.

”That’s my favourite song,” he said. Layla was raw and passionate, it wore an edge probably put there by Eric Clapton's rampant drug use. But it was also... relaxing. Hypnotic and spiritual.

Nancy hummed again and said, “I know it is.”

He had put it on the B-side of the blank tape he gifted Nancy for Christmas. She had done the A-side, filled it with Tears For Fears and the Romantics, Wham and ELO, then handed it back to him, song titles scribbled in tiny text on the paper of the tape, and told him the B-side was his job.

Layla was the first song he chose, without even having to think. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers went on as well, and the Bangles, and Led Zeppelin. Joan Jett and Redbone.

What'll you do when you get lonely, and nobody's waiting by your side? He drummed the rhythm against his thigh. You've been running and hiding much too long. You know it's just your foolish pride. She kept tapping out the rhythm against his skin too, until it petered out as she got lost in some thought or another.

”What’s wrong?” he asked, when the contemplative silence turned sour.

“I don’t want to end up like my mother,” she told him.

“In what way?”

”The house and the kids and the suburbia of it all,” she said in one rush of breath. “I don’t want this. I couldn’t stand it.”

”You could have just said you don’t want to be a Tory,” he said, then when she slapped his thigh, “You can do whatever you want. Go live in the jungle, be an explorer. Be a Wild Thornberry.”

She nearly smiled. “Sounds like fun.” Her hands resumed their tapping, now playing out Talking In Your Sleep by the Romantics. "So can you, you know,” she said. “Both of us. We’ll live in the jungle together. Discover new plant species.”

”I have an uncle who’d be so down for that,” he said, Neville coming to the forefront of his mind again. “We could have a pet dragon.”

”Komodo?” she asked.

”Sure,” he said. “We’ll call him Basil.”

”What if it’s a girl?”

He paused to consider. “Also Basil,” he said. “Dragons aren’t bound by gender norms or naming conventions.”

"We’ll agree then,” she said, huffing a soft laugh. “We’re both going to do our own thing, let people think what they will of us.”

"As long as we’re happy.” He wondered just what that looked like for him. Maybe something like this.

Let's make the best of the situation, before I finally go insane. He tapped it out on her forearm. As the last of the light faded from the sky outside, she leant down to meet him, and silenced the screaming that had lived in his head for most of his life. Please, don't say we'll never find a way, and tell me all my love's in vain.

Chapter Text

For Albus Potter, the summer before Starcourt Mall was always going to be defined by the heatwave that preceded it. He would look back on it in flashes; trekking down the lakeside road towards the town square for ice cream, loose change jingling in his pockets, white trainers more battered by the day. The lake gleaming like mercury under an intense blue sky as heat lines rose up from the tarmac. The roof of the newly-built Starcourt Mall glistened so white in the heat that when he blinked after gazing upon it, he could still see it in the dark, in blue rather than white. Listening to the radio blare from the car stereo as his dad talked him through the XYZ of the car’s engine, as if he hadn’t learnt everything by reading the manual cover to cover while he waited to be granted the keys back.

His dad, he suspected, used this time mostly as a cover to try and talk to him about his sudden change in personality. Reassurances that Belinda Stookey was going to be ruined were repeated, said in undertones as Albus had his head deep inside the CR-V’s engine and his dad found it easier to talk.

“Ignore her, Al. Nothing she says reflects on you at all, and entirely on her. Nobody found out about her book, and nobody is ever going to.”

Except it had taken residence in Albus’ head. He was imagining all sorts of things to make up for the lack of actual facts. What he did know well enough were the insinuations that book had contained.

Though he had yet to know it, trouble was brewing on the horizon, and the first sign of it came storming through the fireplace at the end of May. It was the beginning of summer, and in only a couple of months, he would be seventeen.

Albus had completed his GCSE exams and was to spend the summer waiting for his results to come through. He was going to stay on at Winsome Comp, like Nancy, to do his A-levels. Jonathan would be driving miles every day to go to the nearest college for photography, where they were going to teach him how to be all deep and meaningful.

Eventually, it was assumed that they would all go on, from school or college, to university.

Albus had no idea what he wanted to do with himself. He wasn't actually that good at anything, which was a pretty stark problem. Except for cars. He was good at taking them apart and putting them back together. He guessed he liked it too; the rhythmic nature of the procedure; the keeping his hands busy; the way he was always tired out when he was done.

"You get it from me. I used to sit with my broomstick and meticulously groom it when I was your age," his dad said.

But the town garage was full of grumpy blokes who had no interest in taking on summer apprentices. For this reason he was finding getting a summer job more of a drag than Nancy. Her ambitions of journalism led naturally to the local paper. She had spoken at night of her anxieties, but he thought they were baseless. Any newspaper in the country would take her; she was like a dog with a bone when she got the scent of a story, and wasn't that just what these places wanted?

While she settled in there, Albus was dragging his feet, looking for some spark of inspiration. Or just somewhere that would give him money for the summer.

He was at the Esso petrol station, out at the edge of town, to see if there were any vacancies. His heart wasn't in it much, but he wanted money. As he scanned the board in the window—other business from around the area could advertise on it too—he heard the growing sound of panting, and a slightly rusty bike wheel. Ignoring it, he plucked out a card for the new Waterstones opening up in the Starcourt Mall, and studied it.

"Hey, Albus!" a laboured young voice called. He turned around; Dustin dropped his bicycle to the concrete and walked up to him, red in the face but beaming.

"Hi, Dustin," he said, giving the advertising board another look. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm going over to Will's house, but I didn't know how fucking hot it was going to be," Dustin griped. "It's hot as balls. I need a Calypo. What are you doing?" He stared nosily at the card in Albus' hand and his eyes crinkled with delight. "Are you looking for a job?"

"Yeah." He turned the Waterstones card over in his hand and glanced uselessly at the back; it was blank. "Need to do something with myself this summer."

And his parents might be compelled to give him the keys to the car back sooner if he had a job he needed to drive to. Starcourt was a decent distance outside of town. He hated to be chained down; the call of the open road was increasing.

"Oh my god," Dustin said, seeming to find this very amusing. "You're getting a job."

He gave Dustin a very smarmy smile, and shoved him towards the petrol station. "Go and get your Calypo."

As the heavy door shut with a great whuff of conditioned air, he returned his concentration to the board again, looking now for Starcourt-specific jobs. He took one for an ice cream parlour, and one—with a bit of distaste—for the Gap.

Dustin was back in record time, ripping off and licking clean the lid to an orange ice lolly. "I would have got you one," he said, "but I didn't have enough money."

"Get a job," Albus suggested. Dustin gave him a very disgruntled look.

They couldn't have been there for more than a minute when a familiar car—a Subaru complete with custom wheels and spoiler—tore into the petrol station, jerking to a stop a few feet away. Albus tried not to roll his eyes; he knew the person behind the wheel, and wasn't in the mood for it that day. The car blared rock music. Wango Tango by Ted Nugent. He grimaced with disgust; he also liked that song.

“Billy,” Dustin muttered. His face was screwed up in a sour expression.

The driver's side door swung open and bounced on its hinges from the force, and a second later, Billy climbed out, walking around to the petrol pumps. He shoved his credit card into the card reader, then picked up the Unleaded pump.

Albus tried to usher Dustin along quietly, but Billy was casting his eyes boredly around the station, and soon enough they landed on them. Against his will, the hairs on the back of Albus' neck stood up. He'd been in pain for a long time after that night at the Byers' house.

Billy merely smiled, finished refilling his car, and replaced the pump in its holder. He screwed the petrol cap back in place, shut the small hatch. Then he started walking towards them.

"Shit," Dustin said, emphatically.

“Albus Potter!” Billy called, his voice honeyed. “I'm surprised to see you here. Where's your shitty little Honda?”

"Leave his shitty little Honda alone!" Dustin snapped. Albus' eyes went round for a second, before his arm shot out and he dragged Dustin behind him. Billy was chuckling. It made Albus' skin crawl.

Billy shook his head. "Who raises these kids?" he asked, like he and Albus were commiserating friends. "Speaking of, you seen anything of the Sinclair kid lately? Is he keeping away from my step-sister?"

“Jesus Christ,” Albus said, as he turned to leave. “Leave Lucas Sinclair alone.”

“Hey.” A strong hang grabbed his shoulder and turned him back around roughly. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“Yes,” he said, “you are. You think I don't know what your problem with Lucas is?"

Billy's hands shot out and snatched hold of Albus' jacket, yanking him in close, breathing heavy down on him. His eyes were completely dead, Albus could see, now that he was right up close to him. His temple spasmed with ghost pains.

"You need to grow a pair, Potter." Billy was almost blowing smoke through his nostrils, he was so worked up. Albus could smell his cologne too well. He could practically pick out its notes. "Stop trying to run away."

"Get your fucking hands off me," Albus grunted, struggling to break away from his iron grip.

"Albus already has a pair!" Dustin cried, trying to bodyslam Billy; he went bouncing straight off him. Albus was mortified; Dustin wasn't dissuaded. "Albus is reckless as hell! Fuck with him and he'll fuck with you!"

A second later, an Esso employee burst outside, glaring and waving his arms. “Oi! Whatever this is, you take it away from here. Go on, piss off.”

Billy stared at the man with barely-concealed contempt, only to be given the same look in turn. Albus held his breath. Billy's vice-like grip released, and he was able to back away.

"Have a good summer, Potter.”

Albus didn't reply. He and Dustin stood and watched Billy tear out of the station, tyres screeching on the hot tarmac, and vanish quickly out of sight. The Esso employee shot them one last narrow-eyed look, and then he went back inside.

Albus swallowed. His heart was thudding. "Get going," he said to Dustin, nodding at his bike, abandoned on the ground. "You'll be late to Will's."

The anniversary of Will's vanishing had been and gone, but Will had been lingering on the incident more than ever since then. He was jumpy and tired, convinced that he was seeing things outside his bedroom window. Of course, he told Jonathan, he told his mum, even Albus, when his fears took turns he didn't want to go to his family about, but the fear remained.

"I know that we're trying to give ourselves a chance," he said to Albus quietly, one afternoon, when they were all hanging out in a group. He, Nancy and Jonathan had met for lunch in the town square and soon found themselves swamped with the dumbshit kids. Plus Will. "But it's so hard to get out from under some of this stuff. I don't want to be a disappointment, but..."

"No one's expecting you to be perfect," Albus said. "Just do your best. That's all anyone wants."

"He's right," Jonathan concurred. "And no one's disappointed in you."

Will was doing his best. He'd thrown himself into his drawings and paintings, written a D&D campaign that really impressed Dustin, even stopped shrinking so much from the stares of his classmates. It wasn't easy on him. He had nearly as many bad days as good ones. All of this wasn't helped by one particular factor.

“Mike isn't here,” Will said, in the doorway to the basement, when he was at the Wheeler's house to meet Nancy a month after the Snowball. “He’s gone to see El.”

"They're together all the time now," Lucas said, not looking at Albus because he was busy messaging Max.

Dustin laughed. “You know she’s like his girlfriend?”

Well, no, Albus hadn’t explicitly known that, but he could have guessed. “Sure,” he said, and took note of the glumness in Will's eyes.

That was why, as the sun rose higher into the sky, the blue almost white, he left the Esso behind to set out for the shade of the woods. The job adverts were stuffed into his pocket. He could forget about them for now; his task this afternoon was to rake the woods from end to end, and make sure Will's fears remained unfounded.

Arriving home to an empty house, after the tension he'd racked up wandering the woods the Demogorgon had made a hunting ground of, was something he was consciously trying to avoid.

He called Nancy, and together they used up five hours of their time checking for what he already suspected was true. No evidence of the resurgent Upside Down, which left Albus feeling tetchy and restless. Looking for monsters to fight in every shadow after Nancy went home. He had started going to the home gym of Matty Olsen, trying to burn off excess energy, but Matty was in Antigua for two weeks.

His search for adversaries was fruitless and when he got to his house, he was talking to himself under his breath just for the noise. His timing wasn't half-bad; just as he threw his keys into the bowl, he heard the fireplace in the living room roar to life. A flash of frightening green flumed out from under the closed door, followed by another. Then, after a moment, a third flash. His parents were here, and they'd brought someone with them.

Maybe whoever it was would be up for a scrap.

The first person he saw was his mum, throwing her jacket over the back of the sofa with a very world-weary sigh. It was the sigh of a woman with too large and chaotic a family. Dustin had him feeling that way most of the time these days. Kids really were the worst.

"Long day?" he asked her, and the baffled look she gave him had him remembering who it was he was talking to. "Never mind." Reddening in the face, he turned to see who his other visitors were. His dad, and also—

"Lily?"

His sister was standing by the fireplace with her arms folded across her chest. She did not look happy, and neither did his parents.

"Lily had some trouble at the end of term," his dad said, shortly.

"What kind of—"

"She almost got herself expelled." Albus' eyes widened. Harry faced the sliding doors leading into the garden and took a self-soothing breath. "She's going to stay with us here, for a week or so, to cool down."

"I'm not," Lily muttered.

"You are," Ginny snapped. She put a hand to her forehead. "Lily, you need some time away from your cousins." Though it wasn't said, Albus inferred that away from magic was also part of that deal. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what she had done. He had enough kids in crisis already.

"But I don't want to be here!" she said, at the same time as Albus said, "Hey, I don't want her here!"

Harry turned to him then. "What do you mean you don't want your sister here?"

"Uh..."

It probably wasn't a good idea to bring up the constant, looming Upside Down crisis on the horizon of his mind. Or rather, it was the right thing to do, to get his sister out of the way, but they would probably want him to go with them.

"Because she's... my... sister." He sighed. "I got nothing."

Harry's eyebrows were in his hairline. "Right then. So she's staying."

They turned to Lily and were telling her in no uncertain terms that she wasn't to try anything. This was a punishment, they said, and she was going to heed it. Lily looked furious; she stormed into the hallway, and a second later, they heard her bedroom door slam shut.

Albus knew the feeling.

When his dad, restless and irritable, went into the kitchen to start dinner, Albus followed him, intent on getting him to spill his guts.

"What's gone on?"

Harry set out what he needed for dinner, and gestured for Albus to help him prepare it. He did, beginning to peel and slice onions, and waited for his dad to speak.

"You've heard about what's going on in the Wizarding world at the moment."

"Yeah. Some sort of, like, murderer?"

His dad managed to look even graver at that. "They're very clever, whoever they are. We haven't been able to get close to them yet. It's like they're toying with us."

"And what does that have to do with—"

"Suggestions have been made that the Malfoys are to blame."

Albus frowned. As far as he knew, Draco Malfoy was a complete social recluse, far more interested in the inside of his manor house than in causing havoc outside of it. Admittedly he didn't know more than that. Maybe the five years he spent in jail after the end of the war had fucked him up.

"Why would Draco Malfoy kill anyone?"

Harry took a few seconds to answer. He sliced a small pile of tomatoes with particular violence. Threw them into the mixing bowl. "Draco Malfoy isn't the centre of controversy here. It's his son. Scorpius."

"Scorpius Malfoy." Albus tested the name on his tongue. Rose had mentioned Scorpius before in her letters, but information was scant. "Why, what's he done?"

"Nothing, officially. But circumstances have piled up in his name." His dad was glaring at the cutting board now. "He hasn't been officially accused, if that's what you're asking. He's a Hogwarts student, for one, which makes it pretty unlikely that it's him."

"And what does this have to do with Lily?"

Another few beats of silence passed. "She seems to believe the rumours. So does most of Hogwarts, from what I've heard. Scorpius is friendless and strange. Not that that means anything..."

"Did Lily—do something?" Albus asked, tripping over his own tongue. "To Scorpius Malfoy?"

A long, dreadful pause. "She was amongst a group of students who... confronted him."

"What—"

"Professor McGonagall has asked us to bring Lily home a week early for summer break."

"Sweet Merlin."

Albus had completely abandoned his task of dicing onion. He gaped at his dad, unable to string a coherent thought together. Had Lily got herself in serious trouble over this?

Harry stared at the chopping board with icy precision, now dicing cabbage, and didn't say anything else on the subject. His jaw was clenched tight, Albus could see that, his breathing coming in short, sharp shocks.

It didn't make sense. Lily was so... sweet. She was compassionate and loving, the only person Albus had never doubted in those awful early days of his confirmed squibhood, when he didn't know what his future held and everyone in his family walked on eggshells around him. He just couldn't accept that she would be part of any movement to confront someone, whatever that meant.

"Dad, is Lily in serious trouble?"

Harry sighed, again. "Yes, Al. Yes, she is."

There was more yet to that summer than his sister's indiscretions, or what would happen in the middle of August to rip it all to shreds, although upon reflection they loomed the largest.

He would remember it as an explosion of colour against the increasingly dark expanse of his life. A strobing neon bomb that lit the world up just as he had been tempted to plunge into the black. Dorothy stepping through a door in Kansas and ending up in the technicolour blur of Oz.

Sounds of Glass Animals singing Heatwaves, and As It Was by Harry Styles topping charts, and the Kinks singing Sunny Afternoon from his mother’s CD collection, the sound blaring from the open living room windows as he laid spread-eagle on the grass in the back garden and prevaricated between brooding, and going out to find people to get drunk with. His parents, in the house on occasion, took a break from their individual adult tasks to dance in each others’ arms, and he pretended not to see them.

Lake Winsome was not an exclamation mark on the map of the Lake Districts, but it was certainly a place that one would remember. Picturesque in all of the right ways, most especially in a summer swelter.

In the long purple evenings when rock and roll from Kerrang! Radio blurred into night Quidditch from the Wizarding Wireless Network, time shifted. That summer; from the end of May and Victoire’s birthday, which he feigned illness to miss, through to the middle of August, was a time that went on for a space of years, held magically intact in a web of sounds; the sweet hum of crickets in the long grass at the edges of the garden fence, the body alone listening to the drifting bumblebee; the dog, far away barking and barking endlessly. The golden, Texas drawl of Kasey Musgraves singing Space Cowboy, and the Quidditch announcer’s voice singing with the song and the smell of forest and fresh-cut grass: "Bute has possession of the Quaffle, he races toward the Bangers' goal—Bute is intercepted by Gemmel—Good Godric, what an attempt—!

“Bute scores!”

Jonathan, in a fit of friendliness after Albus' talks with Will seemed to be reaching some sort of positive peak, had put him onto the music of Tom Petty, and he blared through Albus' headphones, blocking out thoughts of Belinda Stookey, as he headed into town once again in the early afternoon.

Well, she was an American girl, raised on promises. She couldn't help thinkin' that there was a little more life somewhere else. After all, it was a great big world, with lots of places to run to—

He found the kids at the lido when he arrived himself, sliders and suncream in hand, but had no inclination to approach them. They were busily splashing around together, sans El and Mike, as was increasingly the case. The air smelled of chlorine and plastic pool inflatables.

When the tides of change turned, they could be sudden, fierce and deadly.

He ripped his earbuds out and stuffed them with the rest of his things into the rented locker, heading back into the sun from the shade, onto the poolside, which was so crammed with life that he wondered if he wasn't just wasting his time by going there.

He saw by the sunbeds members of his form class who he had been making strained attempts at socialisation with in the last couple of months, and considered approaching them, until he heard Sabrina Featherington say, “There are some people who take change a bit too far in my opinion. Like Albus Potter, who seems to have embraced a whole new personality since the New Year. I mean, like, really; is this new character him, or is it just a ploy for attention? And do you think Potter even knows, himself?”

He forwent making his approach and retreated to one of the sunbeds in the shade, sipping subtly from a mixer can he had stored in his swimming-shorts pocket, and inadvertently keeping an eye on the kids. Will was laughing uproariously at something Max had said, and Lucas was trying to drown Dustin beneath the water, without drawing the attention of Heather Holloway.

If Albus didn't interfere, that would devolve into a slapfight, he knew. But Albus stayed rooted to his sunbed, halfway under the scorching rays of the sun, and let them battle it out.

Aiden Kusacabe took notice of him and came over, saying, “Well, whatever happened after the Snowball, I have to say, Potter, you are much more fun this summer. You won't drink with us, now?”

In his mind's eyes flashed images of a grotesque book cover that featured his face, and he shook himself to rid the image, instead forcing a grin and accepting the plastic, false embrace of his classmates, who were passing around tiny, palm-sized bottles of alcohol, out of sight of the lifeguards. Heather Holloway paused as she passed them, but ultimately ignored whatever illegalities she might have spotted.

Only a year ago she was in their position, he figured. The weather was high, and so were they.

"I'm drinking," he said, even though he shouldn't. If Nancy were there, and not at work, she would be looking at him with disapproval.

He pushed the image of the children to the side, along with Belinda Stookey's damned book, rising to his feet through a treacle-thick heat and failing to notice the first looks of appreciation he received from select classmates of his; Steve Harrington's, and Sabrina Featherington's. Sabrina looked on him with disdain, but something edging curiosity.

Steve was less disguised in his intentions, but Albus would not notice for a time yet, so it hardly mattered. He was trapped in his own head, beneath the sun, and oblivious to the things that took place beneath it, all around him. There was this sharp, red, bleeding grief in him.

He did not care for Quidditch but perhaps in another life he found himself traipsing down to the pitch one night, finding that actually, he loved the strategy. Perhaps he was a decent flyer and a great strategist and he made for a good player on the team of whatever house he ended up in. Maybe he was a great flier. Or maybe he had an affinity for the night sky and charting the stars. Maybe he was an expert potioneer.

The endless lost possibilities made his chest ache. Stookey's book had dredged all those feelings back up, and they kept rising to wash over him in unexpected moments.

So what if he threw himself with too much zeal into the life he had in the Lake District? He lived in a picture-book town, was surrounded by good people, was only months away from getting the keys to his car back. He was on the edge of having everything a person could reasonably want from life. There was no reason to continue brooding over a world and people who didn't want him.

When Aiden slipped him a miniature bottle of Jagermeister, he upended it into his mouth before any of the patrolling lifeguards could see.

The Wizarding world didn't matter. The only world that mattered was the one around him. The kids were screeching and laughing, splashing each other in the overcrowded pool. Blood in their veins and breath in their lungs. His classmates, who tolerated him, threw around plans for house parties and trips to the ocean.

The Jagermeister had burned his throat on the way down and he told himself that was what made his eyes sting.

“'And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer,'” Nancy read, from her copy of The Great Gatsby, which she was annotating in preparation for her A-Levels.

They lay in her bedroom, all the windows open and a desk fan pointing their way, not that it cut through the heat. Albus, the alcohol from the pool still burning through his system, just lay there and listened to her, and unintentionally in time was lulled to sleep. It was June, and her bedroom smelled of roses from the rosewater Karen sprayed on the curtains and pillows.

The sunshine was like powdered gold over the white-painted windowsills.

In the long dusk he walked through the suburban streets of the Wheeler's neighbourhood. The setting sun painted the white houses gold and dusted more of it over the dying grass lawns. When he reached the lakeside road, a dull, persistent throb had sprouted in his skull. Scents of maple and cut grass made his limbs loose. He waited for something to happen.

At home, Lily was in her bedroom and refusing to come out. His parents, who had obviously been talking about her before he walked in, dredged up smiles and pretended everything was fine.

"How was the pool, Al? You'll have to take your sister next time you go," his dad said, like Lily wasn't abjectly refusing to go anywhere.

There was no greater a punishment than being made to live without magic, as he knew from having overheard her last screaming fight with Mum, who had after that rushed, like a towering inferno, to smother the words leaving her daughter's mouth.

His mum, now, was sorting through a pile of mail, and said, "Oh, Harry, we've been invited to a wedding next month. At the Royal Gilpin..."

Albus slunk upstairs with a pint of water, despite the rising heat, and laid spread-eagle on his bed. Golden hour light painted his white-walled bedroom in shades of fire, and the heat dragged him back under, sleep claiming him once again.

He was nearly seventeen.

In the Wizarding world he would be on the verge of manhood. As it was, he was facing A-levels after the summer, a job at the local garage during it it—persistence indeed paid off—his driving test was booked for the day after his birthday, and that was as close as he was getting to manhood before he turned eighteen.

All the worrying he was doing about Lily, though, was ageing him well beyond his seventeenth year. She wouldn't talk to him. She stayed in her room most of the time and when he tried to pry details out of her, she either shut down or blew up.

"Is your sister in trouble with the law or something?"

Albus glanced at Nancy. She was dressed for the heat, in a bright linen jumpsuit, a pair of sandals on her feet. A weak breeze was trying to lift her hair, and failing. They had left the Kinema after watching some new horror flick, shuffling into the wall of heat outside, fanning themselves. Nancy preferred the Kinema because it was quaint. He thought, privately, that the cinema inside Starcourt would probably have been air-conditioned.

"I don't know," he said. "All I know is that she got caught with a group of students cornering this one kid for... some reason."

It didn't seem the moment to go into the serial killer thing that was a constant, low thrum of alarm through his veins.

"At this private school in Scotland that your cousins all go to as well. Except for you."

"I'm just too hot for Scotland."

Nancy cast him a long, searching look, but ultimately let it go.

They had started the day in his room, all the windows flung open, sheer curtains fluttering gently in the scant breeze. Nancy stayed over a lot these days; her parents wouldn't notice she wasn't at home, and his were too busy or too absent to register the dual sets of footsteps going up to his room every night. Most of the time it was perfectly innocent anyway.

Whatever had been going on with Jonathan when the Mind Flayer attacked, she had stayed with Albus in the end. He didn't want to pry too deep into it, unwilling to let this scant happiness go so easily, and Nancy didn't seem unhappy. Far from it, he thought. Nights of whispered secrets and shared bottles of cheap rosé, and increasingly dangerous kisses clogged his mind most of the time.

He supposed he ought to feel guilty about it—sneaking around in his parents house—but when they were laying alongside each other in his double bed with his thin sheets draped over her body, he was not thinking much about guilt.

Often it started innocently enough. 10CC playing over his speakers. I'm Not In Love, Nancy humming the tune low in her throat while she tipped her head back against the wall and unwound from the stressors of working at the newspaper. The mixtape. A shared bowl of strawberries. Dancing to Head Over Heels, which was her favourite song.

Albus had been documenting his knowledge of the Upside Down and its inhabitants in a notebook which lived beneath the platform in his bedroom alongside the nailbat and other private possessions. Nancy would sit with him on his bed, or leaning over his shoulder as he sat at his desk, fact checking his sometimes unreliable recollection of events, providing information he didn't have himself, confirming that his sketches were accurate, offering alternative theories on the deeper mysteries of the place.

He drew the Demogorgon, the dogs, the tunnels. An imitation of the Mind Flayer from one of Will's frenzied scribbles. From Nancy's faltering description, he drew Will, possessed, all black spidering veins and a great gushing of smoke leaving through the boy's mouth as the Mind Flayer was expelled over a broiling heater.

The book was swollen with all the information the two of them could recall. He planned to eventually ask Will to corroborate the document. And Jonathan, if he would agree, which Albus thought he would; he was more amenable these days, now he smoked grass on the weekends.

Then Albus would notice, as his pencil slowed, Nancy's painted nails tracing over his sketch of a demogorgon head, or the smell of her perfume, or feel her breath on his neck. His pulse would jump. The moonlight would beam into the room through the open windows.

He would mutter some bullshit like, "I've heard that... the moon is an aphrodisiac, you know," and Nancy would scoff quietly.

She would pull him up, or push him down, and tell him that she knew perfectly well when he was spinning his yarns, and to not try them on her. Then before he could protest, she would engulf him. He was never happier to be controlled, and Nancy, ever a perfectionist, was very good at controlling him.

Now, they crossed the town square and stopped at the old ice cream parlour. The owner, Sulyard, gave Albus a very black look when he handed his cone of mango through the window hatch. Albus accepted it while trying not to look intimidated.

"What was that about?" Nancy muttered to him as they walked away across the square.

"I think he's probably heard about me fraternising with Scoops Ahoy," Albus said, studying his cone and wondering whether it had been laced with anything, and moving it away from Nancy when she went in for a curious taste. "Get your own poisoned ice cream cone."

"He hasn't poisoned you," Nancy said.

"He's pissed 'cause I collect the garage's ice cream orders from Scoops instead of him."

"Scoops is closer," Nancy shrugged.

They crossed the main road when the way was clear—tourists didn't stop in Winsome, but they used the town as a rat-run between more famous lakes—and started looking for the right spot. The summer months were always slightly choked with car fumes.

Someone had hired a load of inflatables for the lake; zorb balls and giant obstacle courses had dominated the water since the end of May, and the kids of Winsome were tumbling about, absolutely delighted. Albus had seen Will, Lucas and Max in line for the zorbs yesterday—and the day before, and the day before—their backs turned pointedly to Billy, who was prowling the shores nearby with a whistle and red lifeguard shorts.

Mike wasn't with them that day, because El wasn't allowed out, and wherever El was these days, so was Mike.

As for Albus, he was spending his down time this summer on the shoreline also, a Stephen King novel cracked open and cans of cider for sipping buried in the sand next to him. He was working his way through It but had to take a break every time it sounded too much like King was narrating Albus' own life. It was a fine way to spend a summer, with his cousins all away on Quidditch camps or holidays, busy with their own friends, or with work. Whatever it was they were doing these days.

He had his own friends. Well, friend. Girlfriend, to be exact. He had his own life, at least.

"Should we go down to one of the smaller beaches, get away from the crowds?" Nancy asked.

Albus shook his head, both to clear his mind and to say no; he found it inappropriate that the shaded sands where Barb had died was the same place everyone from school had decided was the perfect place to drink and shag away from the prying eyes of adults, but he thought that if he said this to anyone, they'd call him over-sensitive.

"If I wanted to watch Carol give Tommy a blowjob, I'd go around the side of the PE hall after class any day of the week," he said instead, and Nancy's face screwed up.

"You're disgusting."

As she walked on ahead of him, shaking her head, he called, "That strip of sand will need an STD shot after this summer, Nance. I'm not going down there without a hazmat suit."

They were coming up on the largest strip of beach that the lake provided. It was where most of the town was spending the summer. Billy was strutting around like a honey-blond peacock as he acted the lifeguard. He saw them as they passed, and from behind his shades gave them a very long, hard stare. Albus returned it until Nancy grappled for his wrist and dragged him onwards down the road.

"I hate that guy," she muttered.

They came upon Steve Harrington at the next, smallest patch of sand, alone with Mahsuda Snaith. Summer Salt was playing from a bluetooth speaker nestled in the sand and a cold box filled with alcohol and ice packs was next to them.

Long day, heat wave. Out of trouble in the making, I'm let on the loose—

Albus was going to walk on, but Steve had looked up at the sound, and a half-amused smile came to his face. He had always liked Nancy. Always disliked Albus for being with her.

"Nancy Wheeler! Potter," he added, with a strange little smile just for him. "It's hot as balls, right?"

"We didn't mean to disturb you," Nancy said, already backing away. "We're just looking for somewhere quiet."

Steve shrugged. "This beach is big enough for the four of us. Just about. You guys want a drink?" He went to the cold box and started digging around in it. "I've got coolers at the bottom, if you want, Nancy. Cherry and vodka."

I've been gone as the thunder moon takes rise from my wasted youth—

"I don't know," she said doubtfully. "We both have work this afternoon..."

But she didn't try to stop him, and she took the cooler when he offered it out. Albus watched this unravel, unsure of what to make of it. Since Billy's arrival in town, Steve had lost his status as King, and it seemed like the diminished attention, and the loss of Tommy and Carol as chief goons, had made him re-evaluate some of his behaviours. When he handed Albus a can of Inch's cider, the smile he gave him was almost genuine.

Albus didn't return it—he wasn't much the smiling type—but he nodded his thanks, trying not to find the situation awkward. Steve Harrington was a strange specimen.

"Why are you guys over here on your own?" Nancy asked him. She drank from the cooler with surprising vigour, considering she had been worrying about work a few seconds ago.

Fast furious and wonderful, I tip my cap and watch the rip tide roll—

"Can't be bothered to watch Hargrove peacock around with his stupid little lifeguard whistle," Steve said, miming blowing on something. He shook his head and his famous hair shook with a life of its own.

When Nancy went to talk with Mahsuda, Steve stayed by the cold box with Albus. "You look good, Potter."

Albus stared at him. "What?" he asked, mind immediately zipping to Steve at the Snowball.

"You know, your school shirts always used to, sort of, hang off you. Like a pencil. Your shoulders have filled out; you been working out recently?" Then Steve felt his arms up.

Albus had, if the truth was known, grown sick of getting knocked flat every time one of the kids was being pursued by some monster. He didn't think he had done much, but he'd done enough for it to be picked up on by Steve Harrington, whose eyes he could sense raking over him from behind his black shades.

He shrugged. "Not really."

"Huh." Steve stared at him for a moment longer. "Something about you's changed recently."

Albus didn't think he had much to say to Steve Harrington, except perhaps to commiserate that they were both unfortunately in the Billy Hargrove Victim Society, but Steve managed to go on and on, about all kinds of inane things. Maybe he was lonely now he had lost his crown. He glanced subtly at Nancy at some point but she was engrossed talking to Mahsuda.

He knocked back some of the cider Steve had given him, even though he wasn't in the mood. The heat prickled at his skin, time swam past him in a haze. And yet—

And yet, at the back of his mind whispered the words outskirts of society. Squib squib squib. He grit his teeth and shotgunned the rest of the can in one go. He didn't notice Nancy shoot him a skewed, suspicious look. The zorbs dazzled in the sunlight. The tinny sounds from Bluetooth speaker nestled in the sand by Mahsuda was infused with the shrieks of kids on the far side of the lake.

Since you've been around, we've been stealing our own tickets to see the stars. In the baseball park, swimming after dark, in our neighbour's yard...

When Billy came waltzing obnoxiously towards them from the roadside path five minutes later, Albus and Steve cursed at the same time. He ended up just a few inches away from them, smelling of water and cigarettes. Steve screwed up his nose and Billy saw it. His eyes hardened.

"Well, well, well. Look what we have here." He blew the smoke into Steve's face and shot a long, loathsome look at Albus as he did. "Look who's started hanging out with each other. The homo parade." He smiled like a knife edge. "Nice surprise."

"What, did you follow us down here?" Albus asked.

Billy shot him a look. "Don't talk to me like that, Potter. Don't forget what happened last time." He looked past him then, and Albus turned to see Nancy getting to her feet, Mahsuda staring at the newcomer with plain dislike. "Hey, Wheeler. You getting a little loser orgy going down here on the beach? There room for me?"

"Oh, aren't you smart?" Nancy sneered, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Watch your fucking mouth," Steve said.

Billy ignored Steve completely, appraised Nancy with a lecherous little smile and then said, "Nah, I'm not here to steal your virtue, Wheeler," he added, with a side-glance at Albus. "Although, your mother seemed pretty interested earlier. Mind letting me know which bars she likes to hang around in?"

"Oh, grow up!" Nancy said, cheeks flaming red. "Don't talk about my mother."

"Yeah, Billy, don't be a cunt," Albus said, eyes boring into the side of Billy's skull. Vaguely, he heard an intake of breath, saw Steve Harrington gape at him over Billy's shoulder.

Then Billy turned his head, slow, like it was attached to a rig, and they were starting into each others' eyes. "What did you say to me?"

Billy took a threatening step closer but Albus didn't shift back. He remembered what Billy said at the start of the summer; that he should grow a pair, toughen up. Well, there he was, not backing away.

"I told you not to be a fucking cunt," he said, and he could feel Billy's breath on his face now, hot like the steam of a boiling volcano. "Do you need help understanding that?"

"Albus, stop it," Nancy said, but he was locked in already. He couldn't flinch first.

Billy, whose eyes contained absolutely nothing, stared without blinking. "You have a fucking chip on your shoulder that you need to sort out, Potter," he said.

"Rich, coming from you."

His eyes were beginning to sting. He didn't blink. His body subconsciously braced itself, recognising the danger in front of him.

His dad used to talk about Voldemort, late at night when he thought his kids were all asleep, in the living room of the family house in Herefordshire. He would speak to Ginny, or Uncle Ron or Aunt Hermione. He talked about that night in the Forbidden Forest. Looking into the Dark Lord's eyes, and seeing nothing reflect back at him.

Nothing reflected back at Albus right now, and he felt danger creep closer.

"Hey, guys, there's no need for this, alright—"

"Shut your fucking mouth, Harrington," Billy said, still not blinking, still not looking away from Albus. "You don't tell me what to fucking do."

"You make a lot of threats but you don’t do much," Albus said, and raised an eyebrow. "Compensating?"

He barely had time to dodge backwards when Billy swung the first punch. It was a clumsy dodge, one that made him stumble, while Billy moved exactly as he intended to. Predator-like. Albus tried to plant his feet but it was a hard thing to do in the sand. He feinted into one stumble, and punched Billy on the jaw.

It was all too fast moving after that.

Billy staggered backward a step and then he launched himself back at Albus, and Steve and Mahsuda were freaking out, and Nancy was calling for them both to stop, maybe grow up, and Albus was fighting like a scrappy little street-dog; quick and vicious and barely even registering the hits that Billy landed on him.

The fight was harder than Albus wished it would be, because for all the small work-outs he had put himself through Billy was infinitely more experienced and strong.

Any of the bad punches he took here he could heal at home with a few well-chosen potions from the bathroom cabinet. Steve though, who was determined to find a way to slot in, did not have the same luxury, which is why Albus reacted with more force than was necessary when he saw Billy gear up to drive his elbow back into Steve's nose.

He took the split-second where Billy's mind was behind his body, with Steve, to throw everything he had into one great punch towards Billy's stomach, winding him—

And that was when Nancy successfully wrenched them apart.

Albus was breathing like a wounded animal, and a trickle of blood was forming a rivulet from Billy's nose down over the bow of his top lip. His lifeguard-chic had been fucked up. By the look on Billy's face, he had failed to draw blood himself, and it was incensing him.

He could feels eyes on him; people across the lake who had noticed the scuffle.

Albus stood straighter. "I think you'd better get back to work," he said. "Before a kid drowns." Nancy and Steve were staring between them, Steve wary and Nancy shellshocked by—something. "You okay?" he asked her in an aside, as Billy bared his teeth for a second, and then shoulder-barged past him.

"Yeah," Nancy breathed. "I told you to stop."

"He wasn't going to," Albus said.

Nancy went to say something else, then turned to Steve and Mahsuda. "We'll leave you guys alone."

He followed her away from the sandbar, up onto the roadside path, and looked around. Billy was gone. Good riddance, he thought.

"I told you to stop," Nancy repeated. Her fists were clenched by her sides. She looked deeply upset.

"He won't try to start something with me again," he said, though he didn't really believe it. He felt good. He had drawn blood for the first time up against Billy Hargrove, and Billy hadn't drawn any in turn. Albus thought about it as he followed Nancy down the road.

He felt good.

"I'm sorry if I upset you," he said after a quiet minute. Nancy was walking ahead of him several paces. "I wasn't going to run away from him."

"Whatever." She turned a muted smile on him. "Maybe he will leave you alone now."

A yellow car—a Fiat Hawaii—pulled up beside them. Jonathan. As Albus' usual lift into work, and Nancy's friend at the local paper, they were seeing more of Jonathan these days.

He had stopped to pick up Albus, but got distracted when Nancy told him she and Albus had been to the Kinema; the two of them agreed about giving money to independent arthouses now that Starcourt had popped up on the horizon.

"That place survived World War Two. It needs our support," he said, approvingly.

"I think if it survived World War Two, it can look after itself," Albus said.

"Albus," Nancy said, shooting him a flat look.

The one he got from Jonathan was markedly different. "So was the film good?"

"Yeah," Albus said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Really? What was it about?"

"Not a clue."

Nancy punched him in the ribcage. He grinned and kissed her, and promised to see her later—her answering smile seemed a bit distracted—and climbed into the passenger seat. The whole car rocked when he shut the door. There was a brown paper parcel in the footwell.

Jonathan rolled his eyes, then seemed to remember something. "Oh hey, Nancy, I thought I'd let you know that Holloway cleared me to check out that thing I was talking about, so I'll let you know how it goes. You can write a sulpiment piece on it. Maybe it'll be printed."

Nancy was still smiling stiffly. "Good idea."

The car was rolling along the road before Albus could ask her whether they were okay. It was fine. He'd talk to her about it later.

Chapter Text

While Lily occupied his house like a black weather cloud, Albus was glad to get out of there every day, and cadge a lift to Mill's Garage from Jonathan, who stopped for him on his way into college.

Jonathan was pensive on the drive up that day.

They never spoke much before, their relationship purely reciprocal, but things had changed since Will had started going to Albus for their talks. Jonathan had wordlessly taken it as a sign that they should talk as well. But the silence that day was preoccupied.

Jonathan's Fiat was pretty shit, this little yellow monstrosity that he'd bought off the side of the road a week before he passed his driving test, but he obviously cared about it a lot. It was well looked after, and when Albus' keys slapped against the metal of the passenger door as he was getting in, Jonathan had given him a good, strong, serial killer glare.

”Watch it, Jon Bovi,” he muttered, and Albus sent up yet another prayer to any gods out there that Nancy would stop telling people about that.

”How’s Will doing today?” he asked.

"Quiet," Jonathan said. "There’s something he won't talk to me about. And then I've got college, and working at the paper as well..." Jonathan huffed with pent-up frustration. "I don't really have the time to pry it out of him, you know?"

"Sure," Albus said.

Without any conscious thought his mind went to the tunnels. He wondered whether Will dreamed about them as well, or whether his dreams were filled instead with fire and demons, and black veins spidering over paper-white skin.

Will had once been haunted by Bob's memory, and Albus was glad they were not in the Wizarding world, where Bob might have lingered as a ghost.

"And..." Jonathan stopped himself, as Starcourt came into full view up ahead. "I get this feeling, like he doesn't really want to talk to me about it, even if I was there."

"Sure he does," Albus said. "You two are really close."

Jonathan shook his head. "I know we are! I mean—"

He flicked on the indicator and turned smoothly into the carpark of the small, dusty garage. A peeling sign declared it Mill's Garage.

"Look, I know something's up. I'm worried that he's having the nightmares again. I even thought about letting him smoke with me," Jonathan admitted, scratching his neck. "I won't, it's a terrible idea, he's too young. Mum would destroy me. But I'm so desperate to fix this fear of his."

Albus didn't know what to tell him. He never talked about Jonathan's smoking, because he was worried that all it would take for him to start was one conversation, and in a week he'd be a dopehead or something.

Jonathan let him go with an awkward smile. His head was still occupied with Will. Albus wondered whether he should try talking to the kid. He watched the canary yellow Fiat carry on up the road, trundling out of sight, before he headed in to start his workday. Which would probably involve fetching more ice cream for the guys who were actually allowed to fix the cars.

He picked up a lot of stuff just from listening to them, though, and when old Bill was in a decent enough mood, he walked Albus through a lot of the stuff he was doing. Nice guy. Ancient. Dug trenches for a living when he was a young man, and was on a champion tug-of-war team. Age had decayed his muscles, but Albus could tell just from looking at him that he had once been very strong.

He didn't like the other guys so much, but he could live with that. He was sheltered from the stinging heat of the sun, occupied doing something he liked, and away from Thundercloud Lily for great swathes of the day.

Eventually, at around two o'clock, Bill called him over, handed him a list, and sent him off with a simple, "Get."

He didn't need to look at the list to know what it was; the daily ice cream order. With a suppressed sigh, he headed off up the dusty road towards Starcourt Mall.

The ancient trees of the Lake District rose up around the gaudy, modern structure and made for an odd overall image. Dodgy backroom deals were rumoured to have led to this place finally being finished. Ted had lectured to anyone who would listen about duffle bags of dirty cash.

Starcourt Mall was a cacophony of noise and colour. He didn’t know how the project had got picked back up after the last developer realised the futility of building such a grand structure on the outskirts of the Lake District’s least impressive towns, and once it had, the building was completed in record time. Whichever billionaire had signed off on the project must have been pretty fucking stupid.

In only a couple of years it had gone from an abandoned skeleton of steel to a gross celebration of all things capitalism, excess down to the glittering tiles his battered shoes were shamed by.

Slinking into the mall in his work clothes attracted him more than a few dirty looks from the squeaky clean mall-goers, in their bright summer finery. He was dusty, and more than a bit oily. Unbothered, he headed straight for Scoops Ahoy, and spied Robin Buckley, slumped over the front desk, looking half-asleep in her work uniform. Her eyes were puffy with sleep; the ice cream parlour had been empty for a while. Her uniform-mandated hat was nearly slipping off her head.

In a booth of blue, red and white, a gaggle of girls from school were lounging around, chatting over ice cream. A couple of them glanced up at him as he approached, and they smiled, but turned back to each other rather than say anything.

Robin's voice was raspier than ever when she was freshly-awoken, but just as irony-laden. Her lips curled at the edges. "Shame your ride didn't crash on your way up here,” she said.

"Shame you didn't inhale one of your cigarettes whole and choke on it," he said.

Robin smirked. "Ahoy, matey."

She tweaked the hat on his head. He was wearing a baseball cap with the words Gnomes Ate My Son stitched on in green thread, and sunglasses to keep the sun out of his eyes.

“You have a son?” she asked, the first time they met, looking him up and down.

“Not anymore,” he said, pointing to the text on the cap. “Insensitive.”

He'd left the house in a fluster that morning, because Lily had an outburst of temper and set all the dishes in the kitchen floating, then crashing to the floor. He didn't associate the house in Winsome with magic, and the commotion made his head spin. He'd put on the Gnome hat, a joke gift from Uncle George, by accident. But now he unironically liked it.

"Where's your list of demands?" Robin asked. "Old Bill will make you walk the plank."

"Got it right here, Sailor Mercury," he said.

"Shit." Robin took the list, considered the requests on it, then let it float to the desk. "I need a smoke."

"I might introduce you to Jonathan someday," he said, and wondered whether he and Robin had become friends or not.

She told him things about her life, which seemed like a friend thing. She said she was not paid enough, and the customers were all monsters in their own way, and the same three pop songs were blaring from the speakers on loop every single day. The soul-crushing aspects of working for a corporate ice cream parlour were made lesser only by the fact that Robin had similar ideas to him about sneaking scoops of ice cream for herself during the lulls.

Like now, when she offered him a disposable spoon (shaped like an ice cream cone) and asked him which flavours he wanted samples of.

"I mean, I don't get paid enough to not eat this," she said, her own spoon in her mouth. "I'm minimum wage."

"I'm pretty sure I'm on less than that," Albus said, around a mouthful of a flavour called Beach Day. It tasted like salty vanilla and additives. He scooped a load up, ate it, and threw the used spoon in the waste bin between he and Robin, which was already lined with many more used spoons.

"We probably need to stop soon though," she muttered, attacking the tub of Cherries Jubilee. "I'll lose my job."

He hummed, already starting in on his sample of Bananas Foster, when a small herd of kids headed by Lucas' sister, Erica, rounded the corner and came into the shop. He straightened his back. Went to nudge Robin and ended up elbowing her in the boob. She sent him a very unimpressed stare, gave him the middle finger, and turned to her new customers, leaving him to slide into a booth and take a load off in the air conditioned shop.

He could nearly fall asleep there.

It was a couple of minutes before Erica and her posse left, shooting him funny side-eyes that he struggled to read, until Robin threw herself into the booth across from him, smirking salaciously.

“I heard a rumour,” she said, drumming her fingers. “You punched Billy Hargrove in the face. On the beach. In front of everyone.”

He rolled his eyes, finished the last of his little sample tubs, and flicked it away skidding across the gleaming tabletop.

"And then I went to work," he said with a smile. "How was your day?"

"Aren't you scared they'll fire you for being a troublemaker? Bill's a pretty strict guy about that sort of thing."

He smiled flatly. "Billy knocked his wing mirror off screeching around town like a maniac," he said. "I think he'll find it in his heart to let it go. Besides, I think he's starting to like me."

A raised eyebrow. "Really?"

“Well. They like their guys to be old and bitter, and I,” he said, “am only one of those things…”

“But you’ll be old one day!” Robin said.

“Presumably,” he concurred.

One of the three irritating pop songs, Glad You Came by the Wanted, started up again and he thanked God he wasn't Robin. Even if she had this great air conditioning all day long. He needed to be getting back to the dusty shade of Mill's Garage soon with their orders, but it was hard to peel himself away from the vinyl seat and face the heatwave again.

It was tiring, but it was good. He liked to think that he was learning useful stuff. Stuff that made him useful. If he was busy and tired and useful, then he wasn’t thinking about Belinda Stookey, and her spiteful quill.

"Hey! Albus!"

He knew that voice.

Dustin Henderson.

He'd been on holiday, in Tenerife. He kept sending Albus pictures of the different tropical wildlife he was coming across, with attached fact files, and selfies with him holding up peace signs. Apparently he was home now.

Dustin lit up like a Christmas tree when Albus turned in his seat. He was tanned after weeks under the sun and and it looked from the way he was dressed like he had come straight to Starcourt after arriving at home.

"Henderson," he said.

"Potter!" Dustin beamed at him. "Fare thee well, good sire?"

"How was Tenerife?" he asked, inviting Dustin to sit down with them in the booth. "Would you fetch him a cone of something?" he asked Robin, who eyed the kid and then slunk away.

As Dustin settled in, Robin reached for her scoop and selected a flavour at random—Triple Mango—to give him a cone of.

"I got all your messages," Albus said, as she came back, handed it over, and sat down again. "Even the ones you sent at four am," he added, eyeing Dustin from the top of his head.

He didn't appear very sorry. "It was awesome. There was a centre like twenty minutes away from our hotel that had all information about the geological make-up of the area, and there was this sort of aquarium-type place, except there were no live fish inside it, it was like another centre with all facts about the local fish and wildlife, know what I mean? Oh, and also..."

Dustin could talk for England about his hobbies, Albus thought. But normally it wasn't Albus he talked about them to. Usually Mike or Lucas or Will was the recipient of his information avalances.

Albus crossed his arms, looking at the way Dustin stared at the ice cream cone rather than him, as he rambled on. Something was definitely up.

"...and before I knew it, we were packing to come home! Almost lost my pufferfish hat going through the airport," Dustin groused. "This shithead three-year-old had grabby hands."

"Is something the matter?" Albus asked.

There was a very small pause, then Dustin shook his head decisively. "Nah. Just Mike and Lucas, being all obsessed with their girlfriends." He scoffed and laughed, trying to convince Albus that he found the situation funny. "I go away for three weeks, and when I come back they've both been body-snatched. Seriously, I have a girlfriend and you don't see me acting like an idiot over it."

"You have a girlfriend, Dustin?"

"Oh? Yeah, we met online. She lives in the Hebrides! Where there's, like, almost no WiFi signal or anything, and they still use 3G data, and not even that in some places."

He squinted. "What's her name?"

"Suzie," Dustin said, oh-so-casually, then asked Robin, "Can I have another cone? Gimme some Beach Day this time, I like the look of it."

”Thank you, Robin,” Albus said, pointedly, shoving Dustin’s shoulder.

Thinking that it'd be kind of a dick move to suggest Dustin was making the girlfriend up—he still remembered Hugo's girlfriend who 'went to Beauxbatons'—he kept his mouth shut as she retrieved another cone, and fulfilled Dustin's request. He noticed, now that there was a lull in conversation, that Dustin had moved them on from talking about Mike and Lucas.

"How about Will?" he asked. "Have you seen him yet?"

"Sure. The guys ambushed me when I got home, but then Mike blew me off pretty fast, and so did Lucas, so I thought I'd come and see you, and check out Starcourt."

Every time he talked about Mike and Lucas his speech came faster, like he was trying to put them out of his head, and not succeeding. No matter how casually he said it, Albus could see very well that he was hurt. Not that Albus blamed Mike and Lucas. In the time since he had got together with Nancy, he had managed to completely neglect the issue of finding other friends for himself at all, and that was how this was ending up his most fulfilling conversation in days.

"With El not allowed out in public, Mike doesn't want to hang out anymore, he just wants to stay in that shitty cabin in the woods with her."

"So no more D&D?" He was trying not to frown but it was a close thing. The kids lived in the Wheeler basement. They planned their whole lives around their campaigns.

"I guess not. It was kind of cool, playing with El and Max. We'd written them into the storyline and everything."

Well, there was the answer to Jonathan's worry. Without really thinking it through, he said, "If it's an issue of El being allowed out in public, why don't you all just come over to my house again sometime?"

Dustin lit up. "Really? We can do that?"

"As long as Hopper says yes," he said, trying not to sigh too deeply.

Dustin jumped from his stool like it was on fire, but he was beaming again, holding the ice cream cone in his hand too tight. He'd smush it if he wasn't careful. He was nearly doing a jig on the spot.

"Alright, watch it," Albus said, uncomfortable with great displays of exuberance.

Robin, listening in on their whole conversation, said, "Are you going to pay for those ice creams, dingus?"

"Yeah, sure." Dustin then sent Robin a look Albus had never seen on his face before; it was distinctly scheming. "Hey, do you wanna come? To Albus' place. Hang out, you know?"

"Dustin, don't invite people to my house," Albus said, frowning incredulously.

"Do you wanna?" he asked Robin, completely ignoring Albus.

She cast Albus a strong side-eye and said, "I don't think so. I'll probably be hanging out with people my own age."

"Fucks sake," Albus muttered. "I have to get back to work. Can I get that order filled, Buckley?"

With a very flat smile, she dragged herself to her feet to do just that. While he waited, fishing the money from his wallet that he'd been given to pay for the order, and the coins needed to cover his samples, Dustin sidled up to him again.

"Albus, I came here with a very serious message," he whisper-yelled. He planted his hands on the counter. In a low tone, one Albus had to lean in closer to hear, he said, "I have intercepted a secret Russian message."

"You—What?"

"A message, Albus, a message!" He slapped an impatient hand against the countertop. "The fate of the country may rest in our hands."

"Are you sure? Because you forgot about it pretty quick when Robin started giving you ice cream."

"Just listen to this, jackass."

Dustin pulled out his phone, and played a recording from it that Albus couldn't made head nor tail of, and not just because this whole conversation was like a very bad case of whiplash.

"Is it Russian?" he asked. "That language. Where did you hear this?"

"I have a HAM radio. I built it. I went into painstaking detail with you for months about it."

Yes, he knew about the HAM radio, but he didn't say anything. He just kept listening to the message, over and over, trying to figure out what he was hearing. Just when he thought Dustin would be leaving in disappointment, someone unexpected intervened.

A Scoops-branded coolbag was plonked down on the front desk.

"Send that voice clip to me," Robin said, pulling out her phone. Dustin stared at her. "I have very good ears. Maybe I can decode it." Dustin did as she asked, gazing at her with a distinctly mooney-eyed look. "And you've still gotta pay for those ice creams, you know."

As Dustin hustled over to the till, digging around in his shorts pockets for change, she said to Albus, "You friends with many thirteen year olds?" and sent him a smirking look that had him swiping up the coolbag, distinctly not storming out of the ice cream parlour, and wondering why he had allowed Nancy to become the only friend he had who was his own age.

Fuck it, the next time Jonathan offered him a joint he was taking it. Being a dopehead was better than this.

Work was finished with, and at the height of summer, the sun would stick around for a few hours more, but the heat in the early evening was more bearable than it had been. He had chosen the driveway as his place to be for the next few hours, because Mum and Lily were fighting again.

It didn’t really surprise him. Lily was having a terrible summer. She was grounded, wandless, and separated from all of her cousins. Dad was furious and Mum was furious, so much so that they wouldn’t even tell Albus the details of what Lily had done to the Malfoy boy.

He had never seen his father so appalled. It must have been awful. And so Lily was in constant fight-mode, and the only time being in his own home was now bearable was when she was in her room, door firmly shut.

If he strained his ears, he would hear Ginny and Lily going at it in the kitchen. He turned up the volume on the car stereo anyway.

Max Mayfield found him out there, the hood of the CR-V popped, himself tinkering away in the guts of the engine. A headlight needed replacing and it was a bit of a fuss to access the bulb.

From the car stereo blared Layla, & Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos. Under the glare of the summer sun, the tarmac roads quivered with heat lines.

Max came and leant up against the car, folding her arms. “Will you teach me to drive?”

“Why?”

“So that I can drive. Duh.”

“I see,” he said. “No.”

Her expression, and her folded arms, dropped. “What? Why not?”

“Remember that time you took my car while I was unconscious and nearly crashed it a thousand times in one journey?”

“Okay—“

“Remember how you were twelve and you taped blocks to the pedals of my car so you could reach them?”

“Yes, fine, I’ve got it!”

“Because I remember, Maxine!” he cried, standing to his full height to impose on her as best he could. “No fucking way am I letting you in the driving seat of my car, dumbshit.”

“Lucas’ dad is teaching him.”

Albus went back to replacing his headlight. "Maybe he can teach you too."

"Who is going to teach me? Come on, please?”

”No.”

”Oh come on!” she barked. At his dry look, she reigned in the temper and started over. “Who do I have? My step-ass? Billy?"

His hands stilled in their ministrations. He sighed, big and deep and extra noisy, just so she knew he was pissed over being interrupted. He glanced around at her, which was a mistake; she had mastered the puppy-dog look that Dustin used on him.

He sniffed. "Take up the torch," he said to her. "Shine it down into the headlight socket so I can see what I'm doing."

She did as he asked, and it was instantly a thousand times better than when he tried to get one of the other kids to help him out. She could actually hold a light steady.

"Good lord," he said, looking at her in wonderment. "One of you isn't useless."

She grinned proudly, and he started talking her through what he was doing step by step, explaining, "Now, in a newer car, you couldn't do this. Everything's too compact, you'd have to take it to a garage..."

At one point they stopped to share a bottle of lemonade he'd had cooling in an ice box in the shade of the tree-line. The bottle was sweating in the dry heat. Max seemed to appreciate the company, chattering away to him about this and that. She'd snuck El into Starcourt yesterday, bought her a whole wardrobe of trendier clothes, and helped her start a record collection of her own.

"She really liked BTS. And Taylor Swift, and Olivia Rodrigo," Max said. "I wanna take her to see her in concert soon."

"Sounds like a plan," Albus said. He glanced past Max's shoulder and saw a different redhead watching them from the living room window.

Lily.

He went still when he saw her, and was going to invite her out to join them, when Lily's expression changed sharply.

She glared, stuck her middle finger up at him, and vanished from sight, the curtains swaying from the movement. He sighed, and turned his attention back to Max, who hadn’t noticed the exchange.

"Now lets put the headlight back together," he said, and she grinned.

"Man, you're gonna go apeshit in this thing when you get the keys back."

He grinned too and nodded, knowing she was right. The overlook was going to be so much easier to sneak off to with Nancy once he could just drive them up there. And speaking of his girlfriend...

"I told her I'd go over there tonight," he said. "Sorry, Mad Max. We've gotta wrap this up for now. But we’ll make it a summer project, yeah?”

It was useful of him to teach one of those kids to look after herself. It was more than her brother had ever done.

It was strange to go to the Wheeler's house and not hear the ruckus of Dungeons and Dragons streaming up from the basement, but Mike was still with El at Hopper's cabin, and so the rest of the Party were elsewhere.

He didn't have long to find the silence strange when he noticed the ashy pallor to Nancy's skin, the taut way she held her jaw, the way her hands kept clenching into fists.

She met him at the front door, and he saw Karen giving them a look from the doorway of the kitchen. Or rather, giving him a look. Her father, Ted, was also there, holding a struggling baby Holly in his lap as he read the paper, but he didn't notice them.

Billy's taunts about Karen re-entered his mind for not the first time that day, and he wondered just where they had come from. Was Mrs Wheeler dressed nicer than usual, or was he imagining things?

"Your mum's never liked me," he said to Nancy under his breath as they went upstairs to her room.

An unpleasant, warm breeze floated in through her open window, past the curtains. It made the already-hot room even more stifling. Her little desk fan hardly helped and he could see indents in the carpet from the path she had paced into it over the last year and a bit.

"You're too grumpy for her taste," she said, as she always did. Only now she said it without any of her usual humour.

Albus stopped and looked at Nancy for a long second. She was huffing and sighing over something. Clearly something very big was up, so he asked her what was wrong.

And that was when Nancy erupted.

"I thought I was going to have a great summer working at the Post," she said, flinging her hands in the air. "But it’s been terrible. I wanted to get some experience with journalism under my belt, but all I’m doing is helping them turn on their computers and making tea. And whenever I try to say something, or get a story to work on, this—cult of old fucking men and women just sit around and laugh at me and shit all over me because I’m young, and I don't know anything about the real world or the things that matter in it, even though they've all been collecting social security for ten years! They’re sexist and ageist and I fucking hate them!”

Her cheeks were rouged by her frustration, and she released a huff that was honestly, privately, sort of cute.

"Fuck 'em," he said, indignant on her behalf.

The Winsome Post was lucky to have someone as smart as Nancy working for them. But considering what he knew about the population of Winsome, the nursing home-cum-lakeside town, filled with arrogant, right-wing elderly fucks, he wasn't truly surprised by anything she was telling him.

"It’s such bullshit. Isn’t it?" she added, like she was seeking his affirmations, even though he was pretty sure she was off on one all on her own.

"Absolutely. They shouldn’t be treating you like that."

"I broke the story that got the Department of Energy shut down, and they’re there asking me if I know what byline is! And the rat!" she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "Something was wrong with that rat, and they treated me like a joke over it!"

"What rat?"

"The rat in the cage! It was convulsing! Throwing itself into the bars!"

What rat and what cage were questions that went unanswered. Completely blindsided, all Albus could do was stare at her, and try not to gape too much.

"God, it's—It's like my head is caught in this vice, and it's getting tighter, all the time!" Her hands braced over her head, trying to grip at her hair but held back by some force he couldn't see, and the more she went on, the more ragged her voice became. "I was trying and trying to get them to listen to me, and all they wanted to talk about was you!"

"Me?"

"Yes, you, Albus! You, getting into a big fight with Billy Hargrove in front of the entire town!"

"It wasn't the entire town—"

"You threw punches at a lifeguard!" Angry tears swam in her eyes. "And it was in front of the entire town, it was Billy Hargrove! Everyone saw you! One wrong punch is all it takes to kill someone! What if you’d killed him?”

”Well, so what if I did?” he cried. “He’s tried to kill me enough times!”

”Please, take these things more seriously. They matter! We got Barb killed by not taking what happened to Will seriously.”

”Is that what this is about?” he asked. “Barb, again?”

”Look," she went on hurriedly, "we've been with each other for so long. And you're good, and you're dependable—you've always there for me, but I'm sorry, I just—I can’t do this."

What—

"Hold on." He was beginning to get angry now. "We are not breaking up because of Billy fucking Hargrove."

"No, Albus, we're breaking up because of you! Seriously, couldn't you tell when you left that something was wrong?"

"I could, but I—I—"

His brain was stalling; he couldn't think of any way to keep that sentence going, and this seemed to incense Nancy even further.

"You weren't thinking when you punched him! You didn’t care that I was begging you to stop! I wasn't even in your periphery! It was like this red mist descended and you couldn't hear a word I was saying. I tried to stop you from fighting him, and you wouldn't listen. You were just the next in a long line of people not listening to me, and I can't—I can't take it!"

She was giving him the sad eyes, and he couldn't bear it, that look. "For god's sake, don't look at me like—Your eyes, do they inflate?"

"It's like there was this moment where I—I looked at you, and there was just nothing," she said, as if in confession. "All the things I felt—it was all gone."

Albus felt like someone had punched a hole through his stomach. "What?"

"It just—" Her shoulders rounded, her anger fled from her, and she said, breathlessly, "It just doesn't feel right to me anymore."

He opened his mouth, trying to say something, anything, that might give him some steady orientation, but all that happened was a fractured sort of sigh released from his lungs. Nancy's arms had gone around herself, in some self-soothing gesture, and she wouldn't look at him. Albus stared and waited for her to calm herself down, to realise that momentary upset was nothing to end a relationship over.

She never did. She cast him a hurt, sideways look, and said, "Albus, please, I'd like to be alone."

He left pretty quickly after that. The walk home was longer than it usually was. The tunnels felt closer than they had in months, or else it was his own despair spiralling, making him imagine the very worst.

When Albus arrived at home, passing into the house like a ghost, he couldn't think about anything but sneaking cans of cider from the mini-fridge in the shed outside and locking himself in his room for the night. He was half-paralysed by what had just happened. He wasn't even sure if it really had.

Nancy was the only real friend he had in this town. Did this mean she wanted nothing to do with him anymore? What was he meant to do with himself now?

He hadn't expected that in the dead silence of the house, he would hear someone sniffling; he looked to his right and his eyes fell upon the door of his sister's bedroom. Lily was crying.

Albus stared at the shut door. It would be easy to pretend he hadn't heard her. Slip out into the back garden before his mum came home, cadge a can or two of Thatchers, and head upstairs. But the thought of leaving Lily on her own when she was crying made him feel worse than he already did.

He knocked on her door, and called, "Lily?" through the wood.

A louder sniff. "Don't come in. I—Not yet. Give me a minute."

He did as she asked, stalking into the back garden after all, to fetch himself a drink from the shed. He didn't really like the taste of Thatchers, but he could drink it, and he really needed to right now.

Nancy hadn't left him. Her things were all over his bedroom.

She couldn't be finished with him.

When he went back to Lily's door, it opened for him slowly, and when he pushed it all the way, she was laid on the bed. He knew she had used magic to open it.

She stared gloomily up at him from her bed, pushed up against the wall and piled up with useless small pillows, all of them varying shades of fuschia. On the wall was a painting her friend Toby had done for her, of a butterfly he had seen by the Hogwarts greenhouses. The wings fluttered subtly and there was a notable overall shimmer.

He invited himself to sit down next to her. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"No," she said. After a bruised silence, she muttered, "Are you?" looking at the can in his hand.

He wasn’t sure what to say, so he drank to avoid it appearing so. He was the older brother here, and he wasn't sure whether it would help his sister for her to hear about his woes, when she was obviously weighed down by her own. But Lily had turned a knowing eye on him. She seemed to be waiting for something. Maybe for him to distract her.

Albus could have sat there for hours arguing with himself, so instead he just said, "Nancy broke up with me." Saying it aloud hurt about as much as he had expected. He took a much longer drink this time.

Lily frowned. None of his family had ever really met his friends, but they knew about Nancy. He had gone to her name like a refuge, in the moments when they had wanted to hear him talk, but he still hadn't been ready to do that. He had talked about Nancy a lot.

"Why? I thought you two were happy. You sounded like you were happy," she added, in a teenage bratty mutter.

They were. They were. Or at least, Albus had believed so.

"Yeah, well..."

Lily didn't pry. He was always immensely grateful for her. She was still so young and yet to experience the worst parts of being a teenager, like heartbreak, and getting broken up with, and girls ripping your heart out of your chest and throwing it across the floor. Albus wanted it to stay that way forever. Being a teenager changed you beyond recognition.

He stewed over this for a moment, then said, "I don't want you to turn out like me, Lily." He gazed down at the gold tin of the Thatchers can. "Getting in trouble. Making Mum upset. She deserves better than—She deserves better than that, yeah?"

"Are you saying you're some big law breaker?" she asked, mumbling a bit, and he could hear her smiling a bit. He was glad that someone found it funny.

Her nails, the yellow paint chipped but still slightly animated with little orange chick beaks, glinted under the pink lampshade above their heads. The walls were white and the floorboards old and creaking. Lily had fully invaded the space, made it her own, and it didn't suit such glumness. But Albus needed to know what she had done to Scorpius Malfoy, and whether he had deserved it, before he made too much effort to change things.

Maybe he should call James and ask if he knew. Since his brother left Hogwarts he'd started carrying his mobile everywhere with him like a normal, co-dependant person, and if Albus wanted, he was never more than a call away.

Lily sighed smally. "You want to know what happened at school, don't you?"

"I mean, yeah. But you should come to me, right?" He tapped his nails against the side of the can. "Just making sure you know that you can."

"Oh, Al," she said, her voice wobbly.

Using reflexes he'd honed in long hours comforting Nancy in the months after Barb disappeared, Albus had an arm around her quickly, then the other when he was sure he wasn't going to spill cider all over her, and she reciprocated by burying her face in his neck.

Good, old reliable Albus. Albus the utility belt.

"You're a really good brother," she muttered. "Nancy's an idiot to break up with you."

"If you say so."

They stayed like that for a while, until Lily’s breathing evened out, and they heard the fireplace woosh. Mum was home. She would have news about how Dad's search for the killer went. They would need to come out of hiding soon but for now, they both needed the shelter.

Chapter Text

His parents were increasingly consumed with trying to track this wizarding murderer—his mum had become roped into helping at some point—and he embraced the sudden loneliness wholeheartedly. Albus had always been a loner. Even as a small child he played alone, brushing off attempts from his cousins to make him join in their games.

He went about his days with the mind of keeping himself as busy as possible.

Maybe he was working a bit too hard—he was tired all the time now—but being kept busy was making him feel less shit. Or at least it distracted him from how shit he felt, because every time he was left standing around and wanting for tasks, his throat tightened and Nancy's face was projected onto his mind's eye, and he kept repeating those last few minutes with her over and over his his head.

"Fucking hell," he said, in one long quiet exhale.

He kept one of Nancy’s hair ties around his wrist. It was brown and sensible, and he wrapped it around his index finger. Nancy hadn't really needed them since she cut her hair short and started teasing even more of the length out of it, but he had enjoyed feeling like someone she could rely on, someone who could pull a tie off his wrist when needed, and say, "I've got you."

That reliability had been noted, apparently.

Someone was knocking ceaselessly at the front door, and he remembered that the kids had invited themselves over, because it had just been his birthday and they had it in their heads that the perfect way to celebrate was for them to cram themselves into his dining room and eat all his food. His mum thought Dustin was very sweet, inexplicably, and she had vacated the house so that he might invite a whole host of intruders over with him.

He went to answer the hammering at the front door, and it wasn't open for more than a second before Dustin was shouldering his was in past him, a D&D set in his arms.

"Albus, I saw—Wow, you look fucking terrible." Dustin stopped and looked him over. "What's been going on with you?"

"Nothing," Albus said irritably. "Why did you come in yelling?"

"Has something happened? Mike said Nancy was crying the other night, and she won't tell anyone what's wrong. Did you two have a fight?" Albus didn't answer. "Did you break up?"

"Dustin—"

"Jesus Christ, man, I can't believe this. What is going on this summer? You and Nancy, Lucas and Max..."

"What about Lucas and Max?"

"They're fighting. So are Mike and El." Dustin got lost in his own thoughts, and Albus used the silence as a chance to move him from the hallway to the dining room. "Everyone's being weird," he said, setting down his D&D things on the dining table. "If it wasn't your birthday, they probably wouldn't show. Happy birthday, by the way."

"Thanks. Why were you yelling when you came in the door?"

"Oh? Oh! Yeah, I saw Robin earlier." There was a weird, sneaky look on Dustin's face. "I asked her if she wanted to come over again. She said yes when I told her we were getting Chinese food. She wants vegetarian black bean."

"Don't invite people to my—Why would you want—You can't afford to order a load of food," he said.

"We can, you'll buy it!"

"Oh, will I?"

"I'm sorry, are you not Albus Potter, who just got a job? Or am I mistaking him for some unemployed person?"

"Don't give me lip, Henderson," he said. But he knew he was about to let him order on his card, spending a lot of money in the process, so Dustin still won. "You're doing the ordering, you hear? I'm not making the call."

A smile split Dustin's face. "Happy birthday, good sir!"

Over the next half an hour, the rest of the kids trickled into the house, drifting into the dining room with a particular disinterest. Dustin was oblivious to their lack of interest, or a very good actor, but when Will arrived he sensed it right away. Albus wished he didn't have to bear witness to this distilled brand of cringe; Will and Dustin trying so hard to make it work, and Mike and Lucas so not there for it.

"Hey Dustin, is it true you have a girlfriend now?" Lucas asked.

Will sighed; Mike said, "Yeah, man, what the hell? Is she real?"

"Yes she's real, you dick," Dustin snapped. “You know what? I’m going to throw a party! And I’m going to invite everyone who ever said I was never going to get a girlfriend!”

“How big do you think this house is?” Max asked, appearing from the kitchen.

She wore a very sharp smile on her face, and said, "I just want you to know, Albus, that El and I came here today because we promised we would for your birthday, and we're not rude like some people," she said, half-turning her her head to the doorway through which Lucas and Mike were watching her, with looks of misery and disdain respectively. She turned back to Albus. "Thanks for looking out for El in the past, even though she can take care of herself."

The add-on was again directed at Mike and Lucas. Mike double-flipped her off. Lucas looked like he wanted to self-emanate.

Albus didn't want to say anything that would make the tension worse, and was very glad when she joined El in the kitchen, where they stood chatting over cans of Dr Pepper.

He left them to play their games, and switched on the TV in the living room, unable to do anything more in the heat. He had been watching Gossip Girl with Nancy, but he guessed that was over. He went to delete the show from his list, but couldn't bring himself to do it.

After a while, drawn out perhaps by the noise the kids were making in the dining room, Lily emerged from her bedroom. Her eyes flicked curiously towards the rooms beyond the living room, where the kids her own age were, and he watched as she went into the kitchen and took a can of Dr Pepper for herself.

He thought for a moment that she was going to join them, introduce herself, but then she just cracked the can open and came and sat with him in the living room. Well, not with him. She curled up on the sofa in the corner and sipped at her can, watching the TV. He thought about saying something, but decided he didn't want to set her temper off with people in the house; he could sense it was simmering today.

It was early evening and he had nothing to do with the rest of his night except watch TV and listen to Mike and Lucas lose interest in playing D&D and dig themselves into deeper graves with El and Max.

"What a life," he muttered, ignoring the look he got from Lily.

His seventeenth birthday did not pass in a flash of glory.

"I'm sorry I'm not gonna be there, Al."

James had called him bright and early that morning—earlier than he thought James even woke up—with the news that he would not be at Albus' birthday celebration at the Burrow.

He sounded truly regretful. "It's complicated but I just, you know, it's best if I'm not around Mum right now."

"You got into a fight with her?" Albus mumbled, rubbling sleep from his eye. He'd been woken up by this call; he was still lying in bed.

Alone.

Don't think about that, dickhead.

"Yeah. But I'll see you soon," James said. "We should go out for drinks together, now that you're old enough. Lily might be mad that we're going without her though." When Albus didn't say anything, James sighed. "I really am sorry, Al. But it's better off if I'm not there today, like... choking up the atmosphere."

He was very confused, and tried a few times to get James to tell him what had happened, but James was steadfast and wouldn't say anything. They talked for a while about other things, but then James had to go, for reasons he wouldn't explain. Albus was left with his phone pressed against his ear, not so sleepy anymore.

He lay there moping for a few minutes more, and then finally sighed, and dragged himself out of bed. He did not feel seventeen.

His mum didn't talk about James when he went downstairs. "We're meeting Dad at home before we go to the Burrow," she said instead, with a prolonged kiss on the cheek.

It took Albus a few seconds to realise that she meant the family home. Lily had as good as thrown herself at the fireplace when Mum said she was ready to go, and Albus followed her through the green fire, rolling his eyes at her desperation. Really, she hadn't even gone cold turkey from magic and she was leaping away from the place of her atonement like a fish jumping back into the sea from a fisherman's hands.

Albus had gone next, and come out in the living room at the family home. He almost ran straight into his dad, who looked absolutely dead on his feet, but when his eyes met Albus', he brightened.

"It's the birthday boy! Well—man. Bloody hell."

His brows furrowed for half a second, before he shook his head and he came forwards to wrap Albus in a hug. Behind them, Mum had just come through the fireplace. Albus watched the little figurines on the mantelpiece bow to her.

"You're a bit early," Dad told her. "I've got a couple of people in the kitchen."

Mum frowned. "Who?"

"Well..."

Lily, who had wandered deeper into the house, came bolting back into the living room; the family photo on the wall cried out with shock. Alarm thrummed through Albus; she looked absolutely mortified.

"Dad," she hissed, "why is Scorpius Malfoy in the kitchen?"

"Malfoy?" Mum said, going to her daughter's side. "Harry, what—?"

"That would be my fault, I'm afraid."

Albus' spine stiffened; Draco Malfoy had swept into the room like a ghost, and his gaze was lingering on Albus for a few seconds too long, before he continued to speak.

"I wanted to talk to Potter about the future safety of my son. He returns to Hogwarts for his final year in a month, and I wanted assurances that he would be safe in doing so."

His eyes now grazed Lily, who seemed rooted to the spot, pale as death. That was when Albus realised someone had followed Malfoy Sr into the room. He'd gone so quietly that Albus hadn't realised at first.

Scorpius was tall and unassuming, with a softly pointed face. His eyes seemed to sit nervously in their sockets, and he was looking between the members of the Potter clan with apprehension.

Albus studied this skittish boy, and tried to see the killer that the population of Hogwarts did; that his own sister had. He couldn't. Maybe he had spent too much time up close and personal with real killers—the dead eyes of Billy Hargrove were a great example—but Albus knew instinctively that Scorpius had not killed anyone.

"Albus Potter." Draco Malfoy's gaze was difficult to discern. The views of someone like Draco Malfoy must have of squibs... "I understand it's your seventeenth birthday." Malfoy Sr gave him a stiff nod. "Many happy returns."

Still guarded, he said, "Cheers."

"This is my son, Scorpius."

Scorpius had sent him a wavering smile as his dad spoke, but didn't seem quite brave enough to say anything. He had been staring at Albus quite intensely for a few seconds. Maybe waiting for an in to the conversation.

Albus used to spend a lot of time hoping that people would include him in their conversations.

"Hi," he said, holding out a hand for Scorpius to shake. His curiosity demanded that he did so. "I'm Albus, I'll be your elephant in the room for today."

Scorpius looked incredibly hesitant—maybe he thought Squibness could catch—but took his hand and shook.

"I know. I'm sorry, I just—" Scorpius shook his head. "People at school talk about you a lot."

A lightning sharp bolt of anger went through him; it had been seven years, seven years, since the world found out about his condition, and they were still fucking talking about him?

"Really? I didn't think a bunch of magic users would get so easily bored." Actually acknowledging his Squibness out loud like that made some of the tension release from his shoulders. "Maybe they need hobbies."

Scorpius, realising that Albus was not mocking him in any way, slowly started to break a smile.

"Anyway, Potter," Malfoy Sr went on, talking to Albus' dad, eyeing Albus like a curio, "I'll leave you to it for the time being. We wouldn't want to disrupt the day for you."

He took Scorpius by the shoulder, sent Albus one final nod before they both vanished with a loud crack, and then it was just the Potters.

"Oh Merlin," Lily moaned. "I can't believe they were here!"

"Never mind that now," Mum said, already bustling around the place. "Fetch the giftbag from my office, will you dear? We should head straight to the Burrow."

Albus went up to his dad and said, quietly, "Scorpius hasn't killed anyone, has he?"

Harry gave him a searching look, before he shook his head slowly. "No, I don't think so."

When Albus fell out of the fireplace at the Burrow, he was swept into his Grandmother's arms before he could re-orient himself, into a mess of noise and chatter, and the potent thrum of magic in the air. Exactly the environment that old quack of a squib sensitivity expert, all those years ago, had told his parents he should be kept away from. Albus was glad to be there now.

"Oh, my birthday boy!" Grandma Weasley cried, squeezing him. "It's so good to see you."

What seemed like half his family was waiting for him behind her. His eyes flicked to the entrance of the kitchen, where dishes and plates were flying about, organising themselves on the table. A pygmy puff was bouncing about along the back of one of the old sofas.

Over Grandma's shoulder, he told the gathered Weasleys, "The Malfoys were in the house just now," as she continued to dust him off well past the point where there was any soot left on him.

"Don't worry," Uncle Ron said lazily. "We'll have it swept for explosives before we let you back in."

"Ron." Aunt Hermione swatted him on the chest, and then came to gather Albus into her arms. "Happy birthday, Al."

"Thanks, Aunt Hermione."

When she released him a second later, he was swarmed by his other gathered family members, all waiting to give him birthday wishes (or lucky punches on the arm). It had been a long time since they were all in one place together. That was, ignoring the absence of James, which everyone else seemed determined to do.

Teddy had his hands on Albus' shoulders for a good minute as he talked about Merlin-knew-what rather than acknowledge James' absence. Something to do with Witch Weekly and werewolves.

Finally, Rose met him with raised eyebrows and an inch of some golden liquid in a glass. She pressed the glass into his hand and said, "Well, happy birthday, then."

"Thanks, Pinga. Why the icy reception?"

"You make too many muggle references nowadays," Rose muttered. "I've been hearing about you getting into fist fights with lifeguards."

"Have you also been hearing about how the lifeguard deserved it?"

At last, Rose cracked a smile. "Grandma's been pestering the grown-ups to lecture you over it."

"They can't do that. I'm a man now." He took a drink from the glass—and choked. "Is this firewhiskey?"

"Well, you are a man now." She smiled at him properly and gave him a one-armed hug. "I'll give you your present when things have calmed down; I'm keeping an eye on the madness right now. Go and sit down. Everyone wants to see you."

He did as told, as the rest of his family Floo'd through the fireplace, and went to sit at the kitchen table. Various members of the family were gathered round it. Albus sipped at the firewhiskey, because it was so strong he couldn't do more than sip, and settled in to listen to the chatter.

It wasn't long before Rose was replaced by her younger brother, who dropped into the seat next to him with a sigh that belonged to a fifty-year-old man.

"Hey, Hugo," he said, and then gave his cousin a once-over. "Roadman phase is over, then?"

He went a bit pink-cheeked. "Fred kept taking the piss. I started to feel silly."

"No."

Hugo rolled his eyes. "You were talking about the Malfoys just now, yeah?" Albus nodded. "It was proper serious, you know. Last week of school it was all anyone could talk about. What Lily did to Scorpius, I mean." He sent Albus a hesitant look. "You uh, know about that, don't you?"

"No. I've told her I want to wait until she's ready to tell me herself," he said, quieter because Lily had just come back into the room. He watched her sit down next to Dominique, arms folded around her mid-section. Seeing Scorpius had really upset her.

"Big drama," Hugo said. "Real serious shit."

Before Hugo could continue, Uncle Ron came into the room and approached the table. "Ginny's been telling me all about your boxing credentials," Uncle Ron said to Albus.

"His what?" Aunt Hermione asked.

Grinning wide and proud, Ron said, "He smacked about the town bully, apparently."

"Albus!" she said, her hair flying about her as she whipped round to look at him.

"You did what?" Fred asked, leaning forwards.

"I'd do it again," Albus said, incensed every time he thought about that morning, and what had followed it. "Next time I see Billy Hargrove I'll take his head clean off his shoulders."

"Yeah!" Fred cheered, thrusting his arms up in the air, fists clenched. He sent a flying plate into the wall and Teddy repaired it with a roll of his eyes. Fred didn't seem to realise that Albus wasn't much joking.

Aunt Hermione did. "You shouldn't talk like that, Al. Violence is the last thing you should resort to."

"You've never met Billy Hargrove," he said.

"He stood up to a bully and put him in his place," Ron said. He was practically beaming. "Never let them get away with it, Al. They'll make your life hell unless you stop them."

"Oh, and you'd know all about that?" Hermione said.

"I cursed Malfoy for insulting you, if you'll remember."

"You cursed yourself, and spent the rest of the day throwing up slugs, Ron."

They started bickering back and forth, and Hugo screwed up his face, muttering, "Do they have to make us watch them flirt with each other?"

"You know, I heard someone else has been killed," Dominique was saying to Lily. Dom was big on crime; she had a fascination with this killer that some would call inappropriate. She was going to an auror one day. "No one will admit it, but some Ministry official was found in Diagon Alley in the early hours of the morning a week ago."

"They can't just not tell the public if someone else has been killed," Lily said.

"Wouldn't put it past them," Fred said. "What d'you reckon, Hugo? Wha' gwan?"

Hugo shot him a dark look. "Shut up, Fred."

His cousins all descended into bickering of their own from there. Albus took in the scene, prodded for ins to the conversation, and when he felt that familiar sense of estrangement come creeping into his veins, he removed himself from the situation.

Thinking that he'd find Granddad Weasley in his shed in the garden, Albus was a little surprised to find not only him, but also his dad. The men stopped talking when he appeared in the doorway.

He knocked on the doorframe and lingered in it.

"Am I intruding?"

"Impossible." His granddad gave him a beaming smile and stood to shake his hand has Albus walked up to them. "It's not every day a lad turns seventeen. Happy birthday, Al."

Granddad Weasley was perhaps the only person who could always call him Al without it getting under his skin.

"What are you doing out here?" his dad asked, smiling bemusedly.

He shrugged. "Just wanted to get away from... you know."

"The chaos," Granddad said knowingly. He was working on the family clock, Albus realised. He stared at his own little hand, pointed to Home, and felt a small shudder go through him. "I love my family, boys, but I often find I need to take breaks from them. Out here."

He smiled at them and resumed his work. Albus and his dad exchanged a familial glance; only Granddad Weasley would call them both boys.

"Well, while I have you..." His dad stared rummaging around in his jacket pockets for something, then withdrew a small, giftwrapped box. "For your seventeenth birthday."

Albus saw his dad shoot Granddad a strange little smile, that went unnoticed by the target, before he gestured for Albus to open the gift. He eased up the tape and moved aside the paper, and opened the box to find a golden pocket watch nestled inside on a bed of purple satin. He knew exactly what this was.

"I can't take that," he said, looking at the stars and the gold, and feeling his stomach clench.

His dad frowned. "Why not?"

"Because they're a traditional gift for wizards. I'm a squib," he said.

"You're my son." Albus almost jumped at the sharpness that entered his dad's voice. Harry took a breath, and repeated in a calmer voice, "You're my son, and a part of this family. A pocket watch for your seventeenth birthday is tradition."

Albus didn't know what to say. He ran the pad of his thumb over the gold front, and lifted it gently from the satin. It was deceptively lightweight, glinting softly in the sunlight coming through the skylights. His throat felt scratchy for reasons he didn't much fancy trying to dissect. He wrapped the chain around his hand and let the weight rest in his palm.

His dad, perhaps sensing that Albus was finding it difficult to speak, broke the silence for him. "Your mum and I have been talking. We thought we might give up the house at Winsome for a night. Whenever you like. Let you have some friends over to celebrate your turning seventeen."

"What a wonderful idea," Granddad said, lightly, holding a clockhand and poking around inside the face with a screwdriver. "Al's a responsible boy. I'm sure the house will still be standing by daybreak."

"You might even invite Nancy—"

"Probably not, because she broke up with me," he said before he could stop himself. His dad and Grandpa Weasley stared at him. "I'm not bitter," he added, bitterly.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Al," Granddad said, quite delicately. He turned back to his clock. "I know you liked Nancy a lot."

"Do you want to... talk about it?" Dad asked.

"Not really."

"But you know," Granddad said, "break-ups can be a good thing. It means you get to grow past the person you used to be with. You'll both become slightly newer versions of yourself now, won't you?"

"I appreciate the optimism," he muttered.

He was very aware that both of the men he was talking to had married their schooldyard sweethearts, and they probably didn't know much about break-ups. He looked back down at the pocket watch, and the delicate gold chain he was scared would snap between his fingers. The stars that moved mechanically on the clock face.

"Thank you."

The next day, he took his driving test, and he passed it on his first go. The keys of the CR-V were handed back to him by his dad, who was exhausted and beaming, his eyes shining behind his bottle top glasses in a way that Albus found uncomfortable to acknowledge. He was carrying the pass certificate in a plastic wallet in the glove compartment, until his proper licence arrived.

The car was turned into his possession after the long months since he stole it away in the night to go and fight demodogs.

"It should belong to someone who'll make use of it," his dad said, with a rueful smile. "Just be careful behind the wheel, Albus, always."

But now he had nowhere to go in it, and no one to drive with. That person would have been Nancy. The lack of other friends he had was made starker now they weren't together anymore.

The kids had drifted away from the dining room after half an hour or so, distracted by other things. Albus watched Will drift in after them, a glum look on his face, and sighed to himself. He jerked his head towards the sofa when Will looked at him, and he came to flop down next to him, so Albus was in the company of two very moody teenagers. Lily looked at Will, raised her eyebrows, and sat back, re-folding her arms.

"Didn't go well?" Albus asked him quietly, as Lucas claimed the TV remote and started searching for Sky Sports. Will shook his head. Albus, not knowing what he should do, jostled him in a way that was meant to be comforting.

"Got it!" Lucas exclaimed, and put on the Monacco Grand Prix.

"Since when do you watch racing?" Mike asked.

"Drive to Survive, Mike, I've been telling you to watch it."

El and Max had stayed in the dining room, talking about something pretty seriously with each other. He caught snatches of conversation, mention of someone called Heather, but nothing complete. Dustin bossed around the living room, looking for a pad to write their Chinese order down on, and sending Mike to find him a pen. The kid enjoyed being the boss too much. He needed to get his ego in check.

"Nancy's calling," Mike said, looking at his phone, before he answered. "What do you want?"

Dustin shouted, "Hey, guys, get over here! Albus is buying everyone Chinese!"

"What—Hey, I said I would buy you Chinese." But Dustin already had the phone at his ear and was writing down whatever Nancy was saying. Albus sighed and pretended it wasn't happening. He looked at Lily, sulking in the corner. "You wanna come with me?"

"Where?" she muttered.

"To the Golden Dragon, for the spin," he said, dangling the car keys. "Someone has to pick the food up."

She shook her head, silent, and turned to stare at the wall.

Albus suppressed a sigh, and gave Dustin her order for her, since she wasn't in the mood to co-operate. He fished out his debit card as Dustin made the call, and then was out of the door as soon as it was done.

If he was being extorted, it was at least going to be for hot food.

He brought Will in the end. Sometimes Will appreciated time away from the loudness of his friends. Albus was happy to provide it.

"No sneaking chips from the bag before we're home," he warned him. "You'll let the cold air in."

Will smiled a bit, and turned his head to watch the headlights of the CR-V light up the growing dark of twilight. It was a fifteen minute drive to the Golden Dragon, a five minute wait at the restaurant, and a fifteen minute drive back. He thought about his conversation with Jonathan from a week ago.

"You seem quiet," he said, hoping that Will wouldn't point out that he was often quiet. "Is something wrong?"

After a moment, Will said, "I—I'm not sure how I'm supposed to tell my mum or Jonathan."

"Tell them what?"

Another pause. "I felt him. I felt him in the back of my head. Like a presence."

"Felt who?"

"The Mind Flayer."

A buzzing sensation trickled into Albus' head and then, like a dam bursting, overwhelmed his senses. The tips of his fingers tingled like his arms had gone dead. He laid off the accelerator, even applied the break a bit, to give himself breathing space.

Will nodded like Albus had just made a great point. "I think Billy has something to do with it. I think the Mind Flayer might have taken him over." He spoke very carefully, choosing his words with great care.

Memories of the hollows beneath his eyes, the black veins spidering beneath paper-thin skin, the dead stare that signaled Will Byers wasn't at home.

The Mind Flayer was back, and if the Mind Flayer was back, then Will was in great danger again. They all were. Albus would bet that the Mind Flayer had one hell of a good memory.

"Fuck," he said. Will just nodded. "Okay listen..." Albus swallowed, and his fingers tightened around the steering wheel. He tried to pull himself together because Will was staring. "Don't panic. We'll find Hopper and Joyce and tell them what you felt. We'll tell Dustin and the rest, so they know to be careful. So Max knows to be careful. She can't be left alone with Billy if we can help it."

"But..."

"Now I know, I'll be on the look-out for anything wrong." He paused. "Dustin intercepted a weird Russian message. We've been trying to translate it with a girl I know through work. Robin. Maybe it's connected."

"Dustin's been intercepting messages from the Russians?"

"You're not the only one missing Mike and Lucas."

"But what do we do?" Will asked.

"We'll go home, and eat this take away, because I spent a lot of money on it, and we can talk this over as a group, and decide on what we do from here." He glanced at Will for a moment. "That sound good to you?"

He took a few moments to think about it, and then nodded, gripping the bags of food a bit tighter. Albus laid heavier on the accelerator until they were nearly flying, and Will looked out of the window again.

They pulled into the driveway a bit too sharply, and were met at the front door by the rabid animals he had taken in as his own, who put aside their differences to tear into the bags. Lucas took the two bottles of Pepsi from Will and they all disappeared into the kitchen.

"Hey, you know, not all of that's yours," Albus called, following them after a quick glance confirmed that Lily was still sulking in the corner of the living room. Maybe he could bribe the story of what happened out of her with salty food.

"Anything happen while I was gone?" he asked Dustin.

"Nah. Your sister's upset though. What's up?"

"I don't know exactly," he said.

He peered through the open doorway at Lily again. She was either ignoring him or really didn't notice the weight of his gaze. He didn't think she had moved in hours.

"Oh, son of a bitch," Dustin said. Albus turned quickly. Dustin was holding one of the brown bags open and peering in. He looked unhappy. "They mixed up my salt and pepper chips. They sent spicy chips!"

"Does it matter?" Albus sighed, looking for enough knives and forks.

"Yes, it matters," he said, dumping the bag unceremoniously onto the kitchen top. "I don't like spicy chips."

"I'll have them then. You have my plain chips and put your own salt and pepper on."

"Put my own salt and pepper on?" Dustin repeated, his pitch rising with his incredulity. "That is not the point of takeaways. I swear, when we're back at school, I'm gonna expose them for this. They'll never work in this town again!"

"I got salt and pepper chips too, we can share," Will said.

Lucas had hold of the Pepsi bottles and took them into the living room. "Can we hurry up? The race starts soon."

Albus placed down Lily's vegetable chow mein on the table in front of her. At some point, he assumed, she would unravel from the origami twists she had tangled herself up in. Any hope he had that their heart-to-heart would bring Lily out of her funk was dead after she had seen Scorpius again.

"There's something we need to talk about. Later," Albus told them. When Dustin's phone rang, he added, "Is that Robin? Tell her if she doesn't get here in the next ten minutes I'm eating her black bean, and she can't stop me."

Dustin didn't reply at first. He watched Lily slink out of the room, and the corners of his mouth downturned, but when he saw the look on Dustin's face, his heart skipped a beat, mind rerouted.

"What is it?"

Dustin turned glimmering eyes on him. "Robin says she's cracked the code."

Robin had no idea what she was walking into when she arrived at his house twenty minutes later. When she walked through the front door there was a look of disquiet on her face, and on top of that, Dustin was on her like a rash.

But rather than answer his stream of questions, she searched out Albus and said, "Can I talk to you?"

He brought her into the kitchen, where she told him, with a pale face, that she finally understood Dustin's Russian code.

"The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly," she said.

"Yes, I know what it means literally. But what does it mean?"

She played the recording to him, and then repeated her translation. He was still nonethewiser. But something in that recording was tugging at the edge of his mind.

"Is that song in the background familiar to you?" he muttered.

Robin played the message again. "Yes, exactly. I felt like I'd heard it before but I couldn't remember where for, like, three days. Eventually I realised it was the same song that place a couple of shops down from us plays all the time."

The same three songs had been playing all summer. "The code was coming from inside Starcourt?"

"I think so! What the hell sort of stuff is Dustin doing to be listening in on messages like that?" she cried.

"I'm looking out for the country!" a voice behind Albus said, and they turned to see Dustin snooping in the doorway.

Albus threw a dishtowel at him. "Don't listen in on my conversations!"

"The code was coming from inside Starcourt?"

Before Robin could reply, a ruckus kicked off in the living room; Nancy and Jonathan had rolled up. It seemed like they'd walked in arguing; Jonathan looked pissed.

"What's up with you?" Albus asked.

"We've been up at the newspaper," Jonathan said, as he threw his jacket over the back of Albus' mum's favourite armchair with what seemed like a disproportionate degree of violence. "Nancy just got us both fired for harassing an old woman."

"Oh, and what?" Nancy hissed. "I forced you to come with me? I said you didn't have to."

"After everything we've gone through, you thought I was going to let you investigate that weird shit alone?"

"I said I was sorry, Jonathan. I didn't think they would fire us, but you know I'm right. Something is seriously wrong with Mrs Driscoll, and if you don't want to help me get to the bottom of it, I'll do it by myself."

"Who's Mrs Driscoll?" Mike asked, disdainfully.

"Wrong with her how?" Albus asked, a funny feeling in his chest.

Nancy shook her head. "I don't know! Last week she showed me these rats in her basement, going absolutely crazy, and then tonight? From the way she was behaving, I—I'd almost want to say she was possessed."

"Possessed?" Max repeated. "Just like—" She turned a look on El, who nodded. "We think Billy's been possessed by something."

For two days, the girls explained, they had been trying to uncover what Billy had been up to; during a sleepover, Max had suggested El use her powers to do a bit of snooping. An elevated game of spin-the-bottle had told them to look in on Billy. To a backdrop of radio static, she entered the void, and found Billy with Heather Holloway, a fellow lifeguard.

When El heard Heather start to scream, the girls knew something was wrong, and they had been looking into it ever since.

"Did the same thing that happened to Mrs Driscoll happen to Billy?" Nancy asked.

He was trying not to look at her; his whole body was aching just being near her. "What happened to Mrs Driscoll?"

"And who is she?" Mike asked again.

"It's a long story," Jonathan said, and sighed. "But Nancy's convinced Driscoll is proof that the Mind Flayer is back."

There was a very long moment of silence after he said that.

Then the room exploded. Dustin was snatching at his hair; he knocked his pufferfish hat off his head and didn't notice, turning in circles as he looked to each of his friends to say something. Mike and Lucas weren't paying him any attention though, they were too busy shouting over each other. Max and El had their heads ducked towards each other, and they were talking in hushed tones.

"Will said he felt something," Albus said. "Like the Mind Flayer was in his head."

Jonathan turned to his brother. "You felt the Mind Flayer? When? Are you okay?"

Everyone started splintering off into smaller groups, and Robin was stood on the outside of them, looking more confused than anyone had ever been.

"We need a plan," Mike said. "Nancy was talking about this Driscoll woman, right?"

"You're not going to see Mrs Driscoll," Nancy said. Albus was too distracted to do more than flinch when she appeared at his side. "The woman's possessed, you didn't see what I did. I'm not letting you near her."

"Uh, excuse me, the Mind Flayer is back. We can't sleep on this," Mike said, all condescension as usual.

"Listen, Mr Sour-Power Vinegar Dick," Dustin said, and Lucas repeated the name incredulously under his breath, "we can't do anything hasty right now. We have to think about this logically. Right, Albus?"

Albus, also blindsided by the nickname, took a second to respond. "Right. Yeah, we need a plan. We uh, need to know where Hopper and Joyce are. Has anyone seen them?"

"Hop promised he'd be back soon," Eleven said.

"And you haven't heard from him since?"

When El shook her head, Nancy said, "We should send them a message."

"I'll do it," Lucas offered, taking out his phone. "What am I telling them?"

Nancy went to direct their missives over Lucas' shoulder and Albus, able to breathe a little easier as she moved away from him, started to think faster.

"What does the Mind Flayer want?" he asked.

"To kill me."

It was El, again, looking at him with that unnerving steadiness that she had no matter what she was talking about.

"We won't let that happen." Max had hold of El's hand protectively, but it was like a guard dog being the last line of defense before an unexploded nuclear bomb.

"For now, lets assume that Billy and this Driscoll woman are both being affected by the Mind Flayer," Albus said. "We'd need a way to prove it."

Nancy raised her eyebrows. "We can make that happen."

They needed proof of Billy's possession, and Nancy wanted to visit Mrs Driscoll at the hospital, so she would team up with Max and El. Jonathan and Will made it clear they were staying together, and Mike and Lucas couldn't choose between sticking with the girls or going with Will, so in the end they formed one big group. They would pursue Billy and Mrs Driscoll together.

That left Albus to check out the Russians alone, and predictably Dustin stuck to his side.

Albus was hoping that they would get this done in one night, when neither of his parents would be in the house and he didn't have to worry about awkward questions. When they were trying to decide who would go with who to do what, Albus initially offered to stay with Will. Talk of the Mind Flayer occupying his mind had set Albus on edge.

"I have Jonathan. We'll be okay together," Will said.

"Are you sure? I've been told I'm quite the utility belt," he said, with a black look at Nancy, who shot an identical look right back.

Perhaps his agitation was showing, because Robin asked, "Shall I offer you a cigarette again?" He shook his head. "Listen, I don't know what the hell is going on, but I saw those guns. You aren't going after them alone. And you really shouldn't even be thinking about going with Wheeler to the hospital. You two are more likely to kill each other than be killed by any Russian spies right now."

"It's a shame you didn’t get run off the road on the way over here."

"Shame your Chinese didn't give you fatal food poisoning," Robin said, then she went on, "Look, I just meant that you've been trapped in each others' orbits for so long. You need the chance to, like, grow outside of each other."

"When was I ever growing inside of her?" He broke off, looked at Nancy and said, "You're not pregnant are you?"

"Albus no! God, see, this is exactly why I broke up with you. When you get defensive, you're really bitchy. You don't listen to anybody."

Albus held his hands out. "I just thought I should check."

She looked like she was going to punch him. "Well don't."

While she and Jonathan filled the kids in on their part of the plan, Albus went upstairs to fetch the nailbat from under the platform in his room. He stuffed it into his school backpack and went back downstairs, yelling for quiet. No one heard him, so he started making noise, clapping his hands as loud as he could.

The sound broke through the buzz and one by one, they turned to him.

"Look, we know what we're doing and we have ways of keeping in touch with each other. None of you are going to take unnecessary risks, okay? Jonathan and Nancy are in charge. They tell you to run, and you run." Mike in particular looked victimised by this, but Albus ploughed on before he could interject. "When we're able, we reconvene here. Always be ready for the plan to go to shit, because remember, it's us." He raised his eyebrows. "When does anything we organise go to plan?"

"We had that barbeque at Mike's house last month..." Dustin said, trailing off when everyone looked at him.

"I organised that. It doesn't count," Nancy said.

Cold drinks. Laughter. Barbeque sauce on the corner of Nancy's mouth that he had kissed off before any of the kids could see.

Pretending it was someone else who had spoken, to make Nancy's voice in his ears hurt less, he finished by saying, "Now, if we're ready, we can go." He turned to the table where he had tossed the car keys when he came in, and Lily was standing there, holding them in a pincer grip.

She had followed him back into the room.

Fuck.

"Lily—"

"I can't believe you. You're a hypocrite, Albus! Going on and on and on to me the other night about how you didn't want me to get in trouble, Mum doesn't deserve that, and here you are with—with this lot!"

"Did you not hear the part about me not wanting you to turn out like me?" he asked hotly, hands bolted to his hips.

"Talking about breaking the law to go and do—I don't even know! None of you have been making sense! What the fuck is a Mind Flayer?" She leaned in close to him and muttered, "Does this have something do with the Ministry? Is it—" Her voice went even lower—"magical?"

"No, it's not." While she was up close, he used the moment to snatch the keys back from her. "Lily, please, just stay in the house. Stay away from the windows. Floo to Nan's if something breaks in."

He couldn't know that she wouldn't listen to him until it was already too late for him to stop her.

Chapter Text

Out the front door, they scattered to their cars. Robin hesitated, and Albus hoped she was just going to go home, but then she left her car parked at the edge of the driveway, and walked with him to the CR-V. Anxiety spiked in his chest, and he drew her to a stop with a hand on her arm. Behind them, car doors were slamming. An engine flared.

"Robin, this will be—"

"Dangerous?" She shot him a cutting smile. "Yeah, I kind of guessed. You and the kid aren't going on your own." She opened the passenger seat door, only to be stopped before she could get in.

"I'm sorry, I'm eternal shotgun," Dustin said, laying a hand over his own chest and smoothly manoeuvring his way between Robin and the car seat. He climbed in quite happily. She watched in disbelief, and shot Albus a gape-mouthed look.

He sighed. "I don't remember ever telling you that you could be eternal shotgun," he said to Dustin. "If anyone's eternal shotgun in this car, it's Will."

"Will?" Dustin cried, slamming the car door. "First with the salt and pepper chips, and now this?"

"Will never let Max Mayfield get behind the wheel," he said.

Dustin went to respond, then caught sight of the nailbat sticking out of his backpack. "I think the Mind Flayer is a bit bigger than that bat," he said scornfully.

"And if the Mind Flayer is flanked by demodogs, what then?"

Albus threw the bag with the nailbat into the footwell of the passenger seat and got behind the steering wheel, slamming the door with more force than necessary. Jonathan's shitty yellow car was starting to purr ahead of them.

He switched on the ignition, the headlights, and tore out of the driveway after Jonathan. Dustin waited maybe ten seconds before he started complaining about something else.

"The fuck is this music?" he asked, gesturing at the CR-V's antiquated media centre.

"It's the Police," he said, punching at the display to shut the music off. "Jonathan lent me a load of his cassettes."

"A load of his whats? Use proper words," Dustin said. "You need to get the stereo in this tin can changed so we can start playing music recorded after the Stone Age when we're going on missions."

“You think I'm listening to music right now? We aren’t playing carpool karaoke.”

“We could be! If you weren’t such a hardass!”

Albus worked very hard to ignore him, meeting Robin's eye in the rear-view mirror for lack of anyone else to commiserate with. She didn't have much to offer beyond a look of complete bemusement. Nancy would have known what he was saying.

Ahead of them, Jonathan's yellow Fiat was tearing down the road, but they were turning off first, and lost sight of it when they headed up the road in the direction of Starcourt.

As he rounded the turn and left behind the lakeside road, his mind went to his sister. Merlin, what a fucking cock up, mouthing off like that with her in the room. But Lily would be fine. She'd just fume in the house all night, and in the event that one of their parents happened to check in on things—what would she tell them? He didn't think she had half a whit about what she'd overheard in the living room.

Still, he cursed himself for letting his mouth run away with him like that. He should have—he didn't know, maybe dragged everyone else outside before they had their group-wide breakdown?

"Oh yes, she wouldn't have found that at all odd," he muttered.

"What?" Dustin asked.

"Nothing. Stop listening in on me. One of these days you'll hear something you'll wish you hadn't."

"Already have," Dustin muttered, concentrating on his phone. "I heard you and Nancy going at it more than once—"

"Eww," Robin cried from the backseat, and he remembered she was with them.

Face burning a bit, he shoved Dustin in the shoulder, and said, "Well then haven't you learnt your lesson?"

The car ride went by in a flash that consisted mostly of skimming the woods with his eyes, cursing himself over Lily, and wondering just when Dustin had been around to overhear him and Nancy. He'd said a lot of very romantic stuff, for one. He didn't want any of Dustin's little troupe repeating his lines back to him.

Starcourt rose ahead of them in the distance, a hulking behemoth against the skyline, thrown into shadow by the setting sun. A feeling of sickness settled into his stomach. Still, when they neared it, he flicked on his indicator and turned into the car park, which was still mostly full. He pulled into a space around the side of the building, near the employee entrance, and they all got out in a fluster of slamming doors.

They exchanged glances with each other. The night air was warm and pleasant, but there was an undercurrent there, growing by the second. A foreboding. The sense that something was on its way.

"So..." Robin said. "One of you want to explain that Mind Flayer shit to me?"

Albus and Dustin looked at each other. "I'm not sure you want to know," Dustin said, and shouldered Albus' backpack, which he had been dragging along the ground.

"Well I'm pretty sure it has something to do with that Russian message, so I'm sure I do. I mean, if they are doing something, why here? I mean, seriously? Of all places," Robin rattled on, and oh. The guilt slowly began to twist into something else. Something Albus was much more familiar with, yet never seemed to get used to.

He tilted his head and immediately caught Dustin’s wide-eyed look. There was only one thing that Albus could think would prompt the Russians to build a weapon at Lake Winsome, why they would ever even know of the small idyllic town that was Winsome, the lesser of the lakes. His gut twisted. Letting Robin keep walking, he came to a slow crawl and Dustin copied him, leaning closer.

"You think the Russians know?" Dustin murmured, face washed pale.

"About?"

"You know what about."

He took a moment to ponder. “They could.” None of them knew anything, not really. The Upside Down was bigger than any of them.

These Russians, the ones that built a fortress under Starcourt, knew about the Upside Down. That was the proposition. They probably knew about everything the Party had tried so hard to keep under wraps. They needed to warn the others. If the Russians knew about El there was no predicting what would happen.

Robin told them that she had it all figured out. He didn't know how Robin figured it out. She told them to look out for Imperial Panda boxes as they found an advantageous hiding spot and settled in to watch the loading bays.

"Imperial Panda? They're in on this?" Dustin sighed and shook his head. "Man, I can't call out Golden Dragon for the spicy chips if they're the only good Chinese in town."

"They're the 'trip to China'," Robin said.

Albus didn't much feel like wondering exactly how Robin had pieced this all together; he knew she was on the money as soon as he saw the armed goons accepting delivery boxes for the restaurant. Those were... big guns. Albus swallowed reflexively. He'd only ever seen like one gun before. It freaked him out a bit. They moved well out of sight of the loading bay.

"We have to get into that room," Dustin said.

Robin pouted to herself, thoughtfully. "So, how do we do that?"

"I'll knock out a Russian and take their keycard," Albus said, reaching into his backpack for the nailbat.

Dustin snorted. "You'll do what?"

"I beat up Billy Hargrove just the other week."

"Albus. You made his nose bleed a little."

"And the last time we got into a fight, he nearly killed me," he said, trying not to snap because he really couldn't keep getting into slap fights with a child. "Dustin, really, I've been prepping for just this situation for months now."

"Wow, you could've told us you were doing secret ninja training to fight Russians," Dustin said.

"I have been learning to protect myself so that if I ever had to again, I could protect you." Dustin seemed to deflate a bit. "I can do this." Probably.

When he went to seek out a Russian neither of his companions tried to stop him. There was one, alone now, pacing around in front of the door to the loading bay. Albus gave the gun in his hand a good, long look. It stilled him for longer than he would like to admit. He might have toughened up a bit in recent months but he wasn't any more bulletproof than the next person. He froze, like a deer trying to comprehend a speeding van, and then made his limbs move when his legs began to cramp.

Albus crept up on the agent, whose back was to him as the man smoked and watched the tree line. He raised the nailbat, and then struck down hard and fast on his head just as the man began to turn. His elbows jolted painfully in their sockets, but the agent dropped to the ground, and didn't get back up.

He felt a certain buoyancy as it sunk in. It was almost too easy. The keycard was warming in his palm and the Russian was on the ground. A feeling of power surged momentarily into his veins. Then Dustin appeared at his side, his eyes wide, and with a nod they agreed to hide the body. Robin left her hiding spot to help.

"Holy shit. Holy—shit," Dustin muttered, as they shuffled it towards the industrial-size bin a few feet away.

Albus' arms strained as he lifted the guy up and threw him in, but the point was that he was strong enough to do it. He resisted the urge to check himself out when Dustin and Robin, the two people most likely to give him shit for it, were both right there in front of him.

"Nice one," Robin said. She had pitched her voice lower to avoid detection.

"Yeah, nice one," Dustin said, at full volume, and he snatched for the keycard out of Albus' hand, saying, "Lets check it out."

"Fucks sake," Albus said, following the kid over to the secret door with perhaps less urgency than he should have done; what happened next was a bit of a disaster.

He shouldn't have let Dustin take the keycard, and he definitely shouldn't have let him keep it. But in the door he was distracted by the boxes the Russians had left behind, finding Merlin-knew-what—some kind of luminous green shit in tubes—that he was certain would burn a hole through him if it got on his skin.

"What the hell is going on?" Robin asked, in the same pitched-low tone, looking through a load of boxes opposite him. They froze, hearing voices from outside, preparing to run or hide—

When Dustin, in his infinite wisdom, scanned the keycard, and made the doors close.

"Dustin!" he snapped.

"It's just until whoever's outside goes away!" Dustin snapped back. "There's nowhere to hide in here, and we couldn't have run past them—"

The room was rumbling. Why was the room—

And then, with stomach-dropping intensity, it plunged down into the earth. Robin was screaming, and Dustin was screaming, and Albus registered a noise that it took him too long to realise was him screaming. Gravity had them pushed to the floor, held inescapably for what seemed like eternity, before they finally came to a stop with a bone-shattering thud.

They all lay still for a moment.

"Henderson, you little shit bag, I'm going to fucking kill you," Albus growled.

That set off the usual round of protestations and deflections, and honestly, Albus was in too foul a mood to listen. He pushed to his feet, stumbling at first, and halted at the horrible throb that went through his head. Robin was lying on the floor a few feet away.

"Robin?" She groaned, and rolled until she was on her side, and finally in a sitting position. "Are you okay?"

"What the fuck just happened?"

"Dustin," Albus said, with a dark look at the kid, who appeared completely unaffected—of course—and was at his side already, peering worriedly at Robin. Albus took the opportunity to finally snatch the keycard back.

Nice one, Albus.

They appeared to be stuck, wherever they were. The tunnel shaft above them disappeared into darkness, so he didn't want to imagine how deep underground they were, and the buttons that controlled the lift they had apparently strolled into were all unlabelled. Scanning the keycard again did nothing but open the doors, onto an obviously populated underground lair of some sort.

Shit. Fuck. "Dustin, I swear, they're never going to find the body," he growled.

"What body?'

"Your body."

"Do not threaten me right now!"

Eventually they decided that they had no choice but to go forwards. The tunnel they walked down was empty but also endless. The further down it they got, the more obvious it became that however they got out of there, they could not go back; for one, they couldn't operate the lift, and for two, it was just way too far away now.

All those weeks and months he had spent having nightmares about the tunnels of the Upside Down, and these were the ones giving him shit. Not for the first time in his life, he cursed his lack of magic, and that familiar self-loathing crept into the back of his head. It had been a while since that last happened.

They traipsed down the tunnel for what felt like an age, and in the meantime Robin asked Dustin question after question, which he failed to adequately answer, and which probably left her more confused than she had been to start with. Albus meant to intervene with answers of his own, but his stomach was wrapped up in knots and he couldn't stop staring ahead, sure that at any moment a load of Russians would appear on the horizon.

There weren't many places to run for cover.

At last he spotted something from the corner of his eye; a place where the tunnel turned off, and down it, a room of flashing lights. Drawing the others to a stop, he indicated it with a nod, and even Dustin knew to keep his voice down this time.

"What is that?"

Robin turned anticipatory eyes on him. "Communications room?"

He found a Russian inside, but the man had barely noticed Albus' presence before he hit him, sharp, with the but of the bat and the man was out like a light; crash, bang, his head collided off the side of his own control panel and he was down.

Shit, he was good at this!

Albus turned, beginning to grin, and came face to face with his sister, who was standing behind Dustin and Robin, and staring at him like she had seen Lord Voldemort resurrect.

His sister.

Lily.

His little sister.

There was a great blankness in his head. He blinked several times in quick succession. The angry redhead did not disappear.

"Lily?" There was a hollow ringing in his ears. It spilled over to fill his head and scramble his senses. Lily. Lily was— "What the fuck are you doing here?" He was well aware of how he sounded; all choked and raspy, like his voice box had imploded. "You can't—You can't—"

"You can't be here, what the fuck," Dustin cut in. "Where the hell'd you come from?"

"I was following from a distance," Lily said, though she had a look in her eyes of a cornered animal. "Not my fault you didn't notice."

"No, no, you definitely weren't with us coming down here. We would have seen you," Robin insisted.

"Where did you come from?"

Albus knew what had happened. She had disguised herself with magic. Rose had talked about some quack professor at Hogwarts telling Hugo's class about this charm or enchantment that made a person unnoticeable. Lily and Hugo shared a class; she had learnt the enchantment and used it to follow them down here. Why she had chosen now to reveal herself was beyond him.

"You can't be here," he repeated, uselessly. He was having a panic attack. He was definitely having a panic attack. His vision was inflating and contracting at the same time. His heart was going to spontaneously stop beating. "You have to leave."

"I can't leave, the way back's miles behind us." A strangled noise escaped his throat. "You should be thanking me, I mean, without me you never would have got past that guard outside!" Thunderbolt. He'd known deep inside that he had beaten the first Russian too easily. Her lips formed unspoken syllables, before she finally breathed, "Oh, our parents are going to kill you."

"They're not, because you're not going to tell them a word of this," he said, advancing on her with a threatening tread before he could stop himself; Lily took a half-step back, eyes going wild. He caught himself, stopped sharp.

God, couldn't the Russians come in and kill him already?

"Guys."

Giving a minute shake of the head to Dustin, who was obviously on the brink of asking a million questions, he forgot their surroundings, and the circumstance and danger, and concentrated on trying to get Lily to leave. Surely she could just—Couldn't she apparate? Or re-conceal herself, just to stay out of sight? For all the good it would do now.

One way or another, Lily was mixed up in his mess. The one thing he had been trying to avoid.

"Guys!"

He startled, and it took him a few seconds to realise Robin had vanished. She was calling to them. A few seconds later she was back in the room, eyes alight with curiosity.

"There's something up here!" she said, gesturing for them to follow her. Albus was still rooted to the spot, eyes continually cutting to Lily, but when Dustin went marching off he came unstuck.

"Henderson!" he hissed, snagging Lily by the wrist to tug her along. "Wait for me!"

They went up a short set of stairs and at the top, found a pair of windows. Robin already had her face glued to one, Dustin cramming in at her side.

"Holy shit," he said, as Albus stalked up to the next window, his grip on Lily's wrist rock solid.

Dread curdled in his stomach. There was a gate on the other side of the glass, and an enormous beam of energy being shot into it by a machine the size of a small car. Pulsating with heat and decay, electric and seeping, it was set firm into the wall opposite them. Agents swarmed around it, going about their jobs, as if it weren't there. The Russians had built themselves a gate.

"Albus," Lily said, from his side, "what is that?"

He didn't answer her. He instead turned his head to Dustin instead, who met his eyes with open fear. The thing they had been holding their breaths for had come to pass.

The Upside Down had oozed back into Lake Winsome's orbit.

The Russian in the comms room had vanished in the time they were gone from the room; something else he should have been faster on the uptake with that night.

It only hit home when alarms started to blare around their heads and his vision turned red. The Russians swarmed and their escape routes dried up in a matter of seconds, and before he could stop to think, they were surrounded.

He was very, painfully aware of Lily and Dustin. He and Robin could only hold this door shut, then the kids could run.

It was chaos. He was trying to hold fast, and Robin was as well, and Merlin-knew what Lily was trying to do, but whatever it was, it wasn't working. Dustin just screamed.

"Take the keycard, you can escape!" he shouted over the alarms. He strained to hold the door shut but he didn't have nearly the strength for it. "Go. GO!"

To be honest, he didn't know whether Dustin ran; he needed him to have run, and taken Lily with him. His memory was ropey for a time after this. Probably for the best. He remembered the sound of Robin screaming for him, to wake up, or talk to her, or something.

Pain. Weightlessness.

He opened his eyes and a Russian scowled down at him.

They asked him questions he refused to answer. Injected him with something. The agent kept on hitting him, and he felt Robin's back pressed against his.

Lily and Dustin weren't there. The ceiling was impossibly high and the floor beneath his feet as solid as the grave. Robin was at his back, screaming.

“I. Work. For. Scoops. Ahoy,” she spat. “He’s just a junior mechanic! You want to know how a couple of kids broke your super secret code? Your code is shit! We didn't break into your secret base, moron! Your stupid elevator brought us down here and we strolled in because your security is even shittier than your code!"

"Robin, stop," he mumbled. "They'll hurt you."

Restraints pressed into his arms, his legs, as his mind floated away from him. Sweat plastered his hair to his skin, sticky and itchy and mingling with blood from a cut he couldn't remember receiving. Shivers wracked his body, pulsing in irregular time with his thundering heart.

"You're the biggest shithead of all, beating up a couple of kids because you're too incompetent—!” Robin screamed, and he thrashed, trying desperately to reach her—

"Hey! Hey, dumb shit," he yelled, when the Russian cussed Robin out for refusing to tell him what he wanted to hear. "You fuck your mother with that mouth?"

The man had a gun, and Albus remembered that well because it was such a heartstopper to see one up close, when the barrel of it was pointed in his face a second later.

"Guess you had to," he drawled, voice thick. "No one else would fuck her." The man hissed like a viper.

"Albus, shut up," Robin breathed, half-laughing with delirium.

His cheekbone throbbed; if the prick hit him there even once more he would need more than just a simple potion to fix it. Not that he wished he'd kept his mouth closed. He was so deep under the guy's skin he could see his internal organs. It wasn't much a surprise to see him raise the gun in his hand.

"You try to seem brave, boy, but your voice betrays your fear. I could shoot you, and your friend. No one knows you are here, you would just vanish."

He grimaced. If the Russian did decide to shoot him, then Robin wouldn't be spared. They had been there for a long time. The clock was ticking, counting down the final minutes of the hour. Midnight was almost upon them.

"Think on it, little-Englanders. We will give you some time to think on your position. Maybe then we will see if you are in a mood to make threats, yes?"

They were left alone, tied to chairs in the middle of a secret Russian base in fucking Lake Winsome, the lesser of the District Lakes.

Neither of them spoke for a long time. His face hurt badly enough that talking with no one to taunt was too much effort. Robin just soaked in the silence with him. It was a lot easier to be play up the act of cocky and irreverent when there was an audience to provoke. But now it was just him and Robin, it was almost impossible not to well up. His nose stung with each exhale, his shoulders ached where they had been wrenched backwards and his hands tied, and his chest was a steel band of pain.

If he had the breath in his lungs, he'd scream, just for the relief.

"I'm only here with you because it was your birthday," Robin slurred eventually. "Dustin said your girlfriend had just broken up with you and I—I felt bad."

What the fuck. What kind of a kick-in-the-teeth moment was this supposed to be? There was a pounding in his head and a deep ache set in the back of his throat. A familiar pain made the skin of his face pulsate and his stomach was beginning to roil. This wasn't a concussion though, of that he felt certain.

He blinked and when his eyes opened again, his head was cushioned on Robin's warm shoulder and he was staring at the ceiling grates.

There was an unknown drug pulsing through his system, dulling his senses and keeping him from movement. Even if he had control of his limbs though, he didn't think he would be able to move.

He was supposed to be going to the cinema tomorrow. Him and Lily. A ploy to get her out of the house, to see this film Harry Styles was in. Lily fawned over Harry Styles, and Albus would be lying to say that the man wasn't nice to look at, and Florence Pugh was in it as well, which sweetened the pot. Wait. What was—His train of thought had derailed.

This wasn't the time to be thinking about Harry Styles.

The pain in his head was beginning to recede, and so great was his relief that a bubble of laughter floated up through his system and out of his mouth, into the sterile air. The lights looked brighter, almost glimmering, and he was starting to hover.

"Fucking lights," he said. "Stupid fucking lights."

Robin's head was resting on his shoulder. "You say ‘fuck’ a lot."

"Fuck. FUUUCK." He lapsed into silence, then said into it, "It's because I compensate for my inadequacy issues with verbal aggression."

"I think they messed up the drugs," she said. After a long second, during which time Albus considered this idea and all of its implications, their shoulders began to shake.

"Those fucking idiots," he cackled. Robin's voice was bouncing off of his. Bouncing off the walls. "Idiots! You're fucking idiots, you messed up the fucking drugs!"

"They messed up the drugs!"

When the Russians came back, Albus had to eat his own lips to stop himself from calling them idiots to their faces, because he was still aware enough to know that would get him killed. He rolled up his amusement like a sleeping bag and tucked it away. They asked him questions and he answered them. It was a bad idea but he also didn't much care.

All but one of them left very suddenly, the Outlast character in the rubber apron remaining behind. Albus tried to sit up straight like Grandma Weasley taught him, but failed because of the ropes.

These Russians were fucking idiots.

The drugs they had put him on were rooting deeper into his brain.

That was when Dustin broke into the torture room wielding the nailbat and yelling incoherently. When he jammed it into the crotch of the chief torturer, the man's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he dropped like a stone. Albus kicked him and the man didn't move.

"I think he's dead," he declared. Then he saw Lily stood behind Dustin, and her face was very white, which made his pulse thud less sluggishly in his veins for a moment, his vision sharpen. Albus squinted. "What's up with her?" Dustin just sighed and shook his head. The nailbat hung from his hand. Had it always looked so gross and rusty?

"We have to get out of here," Dustin told them. "You two are fucked up."

"I'd take being fucked up right now over what I was like last year after Billy Hargrove beat me to death," he said. His eyes were rolling in his skull, so he shut up for a moment to concentrate on stopping them. The room re-focused, and Lily was standing in front of him. "I don't know what drugs they've put us on, but I'd take them on prescription," he told her.

"What's he talking about?" she asked Dustin, who didn't answer.

"Who's their dealer?" Robin muttered. He could feel her giggling. "D'you think it's Smelly Dan who lives next door to Chrissy Cunningham?"

Red lights were flashing over their heads and all around them. Dustin succeeded in removing the ties binding he and Robin to their interrogation chairs. Albus cast his eyes around for more of the drugs they were on but couldn't find anything that looked right, and next thing he knew he was being dragged out of the room, and they were running.

The sensation made him want to start laughing again, so he did.

Then he couldn't stop. He was riding the waves of the ocean, feeling all of his nerve endings at once, the floor under his feet was undulating to the distant pop of gunfire. Good word, undulating. He would have to remember to teach it to El later.

Maybe this was what it felt like to be magic, and to have power run through your veins like blood. That thought made the floor rush up to meet him, and Dustin crouched down, asking him what was wrong.

"It was never my fault that I was born like this," he told him, and Dustin's face screwed up with confusion.

"What the hell?"

Then the doors of the lift sprung open and they were free, and Robin had started banging on about how the open air tasted great. Curious, and feeling experimental, Albus stuck his tongue out. The moonbeams did taste different, like salt and diamonds, and they smelt of roses.

Not Rose Weasley, just normal roses, like the neglected ones in Karen Wheeler's garden.

He could hear Lily arguing with Dustin about something, and then he was dumped into a cinema seat, and her hand was latched onto his arm insistently, and she and Dustin were still arguing, in hushed tones, until someone behind them snapped at the kids to shut up and get out.

Lily tried to make him go somewhere with her, but Albus was glued to the seat and getting drawn into the film, some Marvel flick, and he didn't really buy into the Marvel hype but the colours were bombastic and hypnotising, and Lily had finally left.

His arm tingled with magic where her hand had been, or maybe that was just the drugs, or maybe it was that she had held onto him so hard.

Albus leant against Robin and stared at the screen, wondering about aliens and science, and science that was so advanced that it looked like magic, and whether the Ministry of Magic ever used advanced muggle sciences to explain away public use of magic to muggles who saw it, now that it was so much harder to keep magic a secret.

Then Robin was thirsty, so they went looking for water, and they found a fountain outside the cinema, and he thought he could taste Nancy's lipgloss in the half-mouthful he scooped up. She used Nyx Butter Gloss and the water was laced with it. He stumbled away to stare at the ceiling, which was black and glittering like diamonds. Some of the diamonds shone bigger and brighter than the others, and those ones made his eyes hurt.

His stomach lurched.

He found the toilets and emptied his stomach into them, and to no one's surprise he found less stars down there than he had up in the ceiling, and the longer he stayed there the less his head span. Maybe because it hurt so fucking much. It pounded like a too-large lorry being squeezed through a concrete tunnel.

He could hear Robin in the stall next to him.

"Sweet Merlin," he moaned, leaning his forehead against the plastic seat.

"Merlin, Arthur, the whole Camelot crew," Robin concurred from the stall next door.

Reality slowly pulled him back into its arms, in drips and lurches. He fell backwards until he was sitting against the stall's plastic wall. He could see the legs of Robin's folded form on the tile floor.

"Gaius wouldn't have let this happen," she went on, sounding exhausted.

Albus frowned. "I don't remember a Gaius in the stories."

"He was from the show," she said. "The BBC show."

Albus didn't say anything because he had never watched it. The repeats used to be on TV all the time, but that was at the time when Albus was angry and sullen, and any mention of magic, fictional or otherwise, made him fume.

"I crushed on Morgana so hard..." she muttered, and it seemed like a statement meant more for herself than for him, so Albus still kept his mouth shut. "She was so beautiful, you know?"

"I think there are wiser choices of crush, when one of your options is Morgan le Faye," he said.

"Shut up, Potter," she said. He watched her shift until she was sitting against the wall, and following two simultaneous toilet flushes, a weird sort of quiet fell.

"When I said I agreed to go to your house because I felt sorry for you," Robin murmured, "I didn't really mean it. I'd kind of started to think of you as a sort of friend, and I don't really have a lot of those myself."

He nodded, even though she couldn't see him. "You're sort of my friend too then, I guess. Do you think the drugs have left our systems?"

"I don't know," she said. "I feel better now, but you always do after you throw up, don't you?"

He retched, and surged for the toilet bowl, and his stomach began to evacuate again. His ears rang and there were hands on his back, his neck, a smallish hand on his forehead, brushing his hair back. Once he was finished with all the heaving he looked up, and balked at the sight of Lily, crouched on the floor next to him. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

"Al, what's going on?" she asked. Her hands were trembling. "I've been trying to get answers, but no one's speaking straight."

Nancy's voice floated to him from Robin's stall, where the grim noise of coughing added up to an unpleasant backdrop, and Albus' overwhelming feeling was one of confusion.

His day had been bad enough already without Nancy fussing over him. They were not together anymore, and he could learn to live with that, but not if she started turning those dinner plate-eyes on him on the regular again, and putting her hands on him...

He couldn't do that.

"Why is Nancy here?" he asked.

Lily, who had been worrying her lip as he sat in silence, glanced at the stall wall. "Dustin called her, and she said they were close by, so I went and met her. I didn't want to leave you on your own, but Dustin wouldn't listen, he wouldn't tell me anything that made sense. I knew we'd find you somewhere... I had to—Albus, just tell me what's going on!"

"It's the Russians," Robin slurred from the other side of the wall.

"It's complicated," he told Lily, choosing to pretend he couldn't hear Robin's interventions.

"I'm not stupid," she said after a quiet, angry moment. "Albus, tell me the truth."

Wow, what a request. He didn't think of himself as a liar, but he had to admit that his first thought had been Well, I don't do that very often. Not about this. Not about the Upside Down.

"If I swear down that I'll tell you later, will you let me off for now?" he asked. "Just do what I do, or at least what I say, and it'll be fine." The tired sigh that follow this sentence up might have told anyone else to be worried, but Lily just clenched her jaw. "I promise I know what I'm doing."

"I asked you to tell me the truth." But she nodded. "I'll hold you to that."

"Oh god, Albus?" Robin groaned.

"How are you feeling?" he called.

"Like hell. Can't believe I followed you into this," she mumbled. He quietly agreed, and thought they were going to drift off into silence, when she said, "Shame you didn’t drive into the lake."

"Shame you didn’t die in an underground bunker."

"Hey," she said emphatically. "That, like, actually almost happened. It’s less funny when it’s something that almost happened."

Nancy's voice intoned, "Oh, are those things supposed to be funny? I wasn’t aware."

Robin went quiet again for a minute. "Hey, Albus, why is Nancy Wheeler covered in blood and rubbing my back?"

"Lily fetched her," he said, thinking, Why is Nancy covered in blood? "What did you find out with Driscoll, Nance?"

"Exact same thing as happened to Will the last time," Nancy said. "Body temperatures, everything. I'm convinced, it has to be the Mind Flayer. And then—Well, it's a long story. The pricks at work won't bother me again."

"That's something."

"Oh god." Robin was groaning again. "Do you—Do you think that drug is out of our systems now?"

"Maybe," he said. "Ask me something I'd lie about."

"Ever been in love?"

He tried to bite back the answer, to hold the truth in, but he could feel it tugging at his lips. "Yeah," he said quietly. "With—Shit. Looks like it's still in my system," he added, angry with himself, wincing at the intake of breath from the other side of the wall.

A few seconds later, Nancy's dinner plate eyes and teased hair appeared around the side of the stall. He cringed at the look on her face.

"Was it me?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

He would have liked to say no, but the fucking Russians had fucked that up as well, hadn't they?

Lily looked absolutely horrified to have found herself in the middle of their domestic. Perhaps she would remember this the next time she fancied ganging up on a student at Hogwarts. Maybe the rush of mortification would still her.

It certainly would him.

"Well?" he said after a moment, perhaps tetchier than necessary. "Anyone going to say anything?"

"I never..." Nancy trailed off. Robin's head slowly appeared from under the stall divide, and her pupils were blown so wide that Albus' heart jolted; she looked like a jumpscare.

"What I said to you when we broke up," Nancy breathed. "It was wrong. I didn't mean it. I just felt so trapped, and it felt like you were coping and I wasn't. And I was stressed from the guys at work and I wanted to hurt you, and I'm sorry."

He closed his eyes. His heart wasn't hammering, it was constricting, painfully, and he couldn't look at her.

That was the moment Dustin chose to burst into the room.

"We've got a problem," he said. "They've got people guarding all the exits. The Russians, I mean. They're checking everyone as they leave."

Chapter Text

They reconvened on the glittering tile of the mall’s central court, when El threw a car from one side of the room to the other to save them from the pursuing Russians. There was no time for conversing; only moments later, the piece of Mind Flayer in her leg caused her to collapse.

"Why is there a piece of the Mind Flayer in her leg?" Albus asked, lifting her head so Jonathan could stuff a jumper under it for cushioning. It wasn't really the time to ask questions but he had to know.

"Yeah, and how? Like, physically how?" Dustin asked. He and the boys were gathered at El's feet, stopping Mike from glomping onto her in a panic.

"I don't know, it like, grabbed hold of her, and when we got it off—" Nancy broke off with a helpless shrug. "It's after us. We have to get this bit out."

"The Mind Flayer chased you? It has a body now?"

"Yes, it made a body for itself by enslaving people around the town and melting them down. That's what it used Billy for, to be the bodysnatcher," Mike said, condescendingly. "Try to keep up."

"That's why we were so close by when Dustin called. We were getting supplies to treat—it," Jonathan said.

El was screaming, and his head was ringing, but Jonathan was mercifully clear-minded. He conducted the removal of the thing in El's leg. Albus just held her hand through the ordeal. And held her down. Nancy was holding the other hand, and El squeezed down on them hard enough to make their bones crack, but that hardly mattered.

The thing in her leg was at last wrenched free by El herself, and flung across the Starcourt courtyard, a pitifully small screech cutting the air—

And it was snuffed out under the sole of Hopper's boot. Albus stared; Mrs Byers was with him, and so was crazy Murray Bauman, for some reason.

"Where the fuck have you been?" he rasped.

If looks could kill, Hopper would have Albus six feet under. "Really kid? Really? This is the time for you to demand answers of us? You look like you've gone ten rounds with a brick wall. And the brick wall won."

Then he dropped his attention to El, and everyone scattered to make room for the three newcomers, and the grand re-convening continued.

The theory Lucas had was that the Mind Flayer was not occupying the giant fleshy monster it had created, but that it was only piloting it. The real Mind Flayer remained in the Upside Down, so closing the gate would sever the connection and kill the puppet.

"We know where the gate is!" Dustin said, eyes glimmering excitedly.

"Right. It's deep in the guts of this place and teeming with hostiles," Albus said.

"Right," he said, excitement dying.

They were treated to the sight of Dustin and Murray Bauman teaming up to plot a route back to the gate, which Hopper and Joyce insisted they would take. They weren't interested in Albus' help in carrying out the task. Hopper's rejection included one too many uses of the word kid.

"You know, where I come from, seventeen means you're a grown adult."

"That's funny, because where I come from, seventeen means you're a dumb kid." Hopper's smile was mirthless. "You're staying up here. You too, Henderson," he added before Dustin could offer himself up. "You're as bad as each other. But you, Potter, you're supposed to be someone I can rely on when it comes to this stuff. All summer long you've been screwing around with Wheeler; get your head on straight and take some responsibility!"

Then he went onto cussing out Albus for bringing the kids to the into the Russian lair, instead of getting the hell away from Starcourt as fast as he could when they realised something was wrong. But Albus' blood was up, Hopper kept bringing up Nancy, and he wasn't in the mood to be shouted at.

“We had no idea where you were! They were going to run into danger anyway, and I didn’t want to lose track of them!” he said, yelling over the noise of the others all exchanging frantic information. He was made all the more irate at the look of quiet amusement growing on Lily's face at him getting chewed out.

“It was reckless!" Hopper said. "You could have been killed. How did you think you were going to stop them? You, versus a hoard of Russian soldiers? I thought you were smarter than that!"

Overwhelmed with frustration, Albus turned away, pinching the bridge of his nose. That Lily was obviously starting to have quite a good time watching this interaction unfold only made it worse. His head was pounding.

Hopper turned to Lily. "And you, what were you thinking, following your brother down there?"

"What was I thinking?" It was the first time in a long time that she had spoken, and her voice wrapped up in all his Upside Down drama made Albus' brain malfunction all the way. "I was thinking 'what the hell is my idiot brother doing?'"

"So you decided you'd join the idiots club?"

She wasn't very happy with that, but even Lily, at her first meeting with Hopper, knew better than to answer back any more.

They divvied up into smaller groups, all trying to decide who was doing what or going where, or trying to piece together last spotty pieces of the puzzle. As usual, they'd all ended up looking into seemingly separate things which ended up actually being the same thing. Hopper and Mrs Byers had been with Murray Bauman tracking the Russians for days, which he guessed explained why none of them had been in touch.

Hopper was cosied up to El now, talking to her in low tones. Albus couldn't help but catch some of what was said.

"I can fight," El insisted.

"I know you can. Better than any of us." The tenderness in Hopper's voice made Albus distinctly uncomfortable. "But that thing is after you, not me, and I need you safe."

He knew the feeling. Lily was standing opposite him, trying to pick a fight, and all he could think about was moving her to safety. Albus' arms were crossed stubbornly over his chest and he was bouncing his knee. Breathing heavy, head pounding as bad as it had been when Dustin and Lily first rescued him and Robin from the Russians. This was exactly why he didn't want to tell Lily anything more about the Upside Down.

If she knew the full story he'd never hear the end of it.

”I don’t want any of my friends to die,” El said, and Albus couldn’t help but cut in then, to jest, “Don’t worry, El. There’s a waiting list for that. And Hopper’s first on it,” he added, with a half-joking, half-scathing look at the man. Hopper met it flatly, and told him to fuck off, but Max found the humour in it.

"Nice burn," she said.

He snared Nancy’s hair tie from his wrist and dangled it in her face. “Tie the hair back, Rapunzel, or you’ll get got.” Rolling her eyes, she did so.

"We have to tell Mum and Dad," Lily said, shoving herself into his field of vision abruptly. "They'll sort this out. They'll send Ministry people here to shut this whole thing down and stop whatever dark magic is causing—Whatever it is that's coming after us. And that Eleven girl you're all protecting. They'll sort her out too."

"Lily, no—"

"What exactly is Eleven's deal? With her powers? If she's not magic then where did they come from?"

Albus didn't know, but he didn't want to admit that, so he just said, "The less you know about this whole mess, the better."

"Stop trying to gatekeep the Upside Down," Dustin said, as he came over to join them.

"Yeah, Albus."

"This is not about gatekeeping!"

"Now that she's seen what she's seen, she probably needs to know."

"She needs to know now? Right this moment. I see." His hands snapped to his hips, a sharp, sarcastic smile sliding to his face. "We should give the Mind Flayer a bell, and see if it'd mind waiting for us to have a heart-to-heart."

"Obviously not—"

"Billy then! I bet he'd be more receptive when he's possessed than when he isn't." That wasn't totally sarcastic.

"Okay, Albus, point made." Dustin put his hands on his hips. "God, you're such a dick." Lily nodded, and he was sardonically pleased to see that she and Dustin could find one thing they agreed over.

A plan was set. Hopper, Mrs Byers and Murray would go after the Russians, aiming to close the gate and kill the Mind Flater. The kids—he rankled to be included in this category—were sent away from Starcourt, for their own safety. They were to go as far away as they could and stay away; the dual threats of the Russians and the Mind Flayer were too great to gamble with.

Dustin wasn't that happy either. "How am I meant to guide you if I'm away from Starcourt?"

"A phone call will reach me whether you're here or a thousand miles away," Hopper said. "Potter, Wheeler, you're in charge. Don't cock it up."

Albus took the keys to the CR-V from the backpack still on Dustin's back and shot twin finger guns at Hopper, then set off with Dustin, Robin and Lily via the staff corridors. Nancy and Jonathan were in charge of the other kids, and left via the front doors of Starcourt for Jonathan's car.

Albus' charge had been faster setting off because Mrs Byers wanted a last minute go-through of the rules with Will and Jonathan, but he assumed that they would be joined by the other car soon enough. They weren't five minutes up the road to the agreed point of safety, when he realised that Jonathan's car still wasn't following them, and then as if by providence his phone rang.

He threw it at Robin and told her to put it on speaker.

"Scoop Troop, do you copy?" It was Mike, and the panic in his voice made Albus' spine shudder. "Billy has found us and we're in need of emergency transportation. We are trapped in Starcourt. I repeat, we are trapped in Starcourt."

"Holy sh—it!" Dustin's exclamation turned midway into a shriek as Albus threw on the breaks and turned in the middle of the road, righted the CR-V, and tore back the way they had come.

"Call Hopper!" Robin cried, twisting in her seat to look back at him. "Call Hopper and tell him. They need to know."

It was a good thing that the roads of Lake Winsome had no speed cameras, for he had not once driven at the limit that night. They were back at Starcourt in record time, screeching into the car park so dangerously that it was a miracle his tyres didn't burst, and when he saw Jonathan's car abandoned, the bonnet popped and no one else in sight, he gunned right for it.

"Watch out!"

His eyes followed where Robin was pointing and saw Billy, behind the wheel of his Subaru, waiting like a predator. Were it not for her, he would have set himself up for a fall. Or more accurately, a crash.

"Wait here," he told them, and got out.

His old enemy looked anything but well. Black veins stood out stark against his tan skin and he was plastered in sweat. The eyes staring him down through the window of the Subaru was dead-set and focused. He revved his engine like thunder and grew visibly more agitated as Albus drew closer.

Albus was stalking towards the car. He stopped when he felt something move through the air—someone whisper, "Stupefy!"—something intangible and awfully like what he felt at the Burrow all the time. Magic. Lily had left the car and had her wand pointed at Billy through the windscreen.

”Get back in the car!” he roared.

But her spell had failed to affect it's intended target, and her forehead screwed up.

Billy's eyes flooded rapidly with venom.

"You brought your wand?" Albus hissed. The car revved again, louder than at any other moment.

"Of course I brought my bloody wand!" She turned to face the car, this time, and held it out again, all of this before Albus could do anything, and barked, "Incendio!"

With a great flare of heat Billy's Subaru burst into flames. They consumed the vehicle in no time and they watched Billy struggle in the driver's seat. His stomach turned once again but adrenaline stopped the horror from fully hitting his system.

“Get back in the car now!”

“Fuck off!” she screamed back at him, and there was so little time to do anything but appeal to Robin because Billy was out of the flaming Subaru and already advancing on them.

“Robin, take her!” he shouted, voice ragged, marching to meet Billy before he could get anywhere near them.

“Albus!” Lily screamed, wand abandoned on the ground in her struggle against Robin. “Albus!”

It was Billy’s body at least. The longer Albus looked the less he could see the person who used to occupy those eyes.

They came together in a clash of fists, as they always did. Only this time one of them was fortified by the power of the Mind Flayer. It was like throwing his fists at a brick wall. Billy didn’t flinch, black eyes unblinking and fists clenched into weapons that had always been far more deadly than his.

Billy knocked Albus flat, and his poor abused skull cracked against the tarmac with a noise so loud it reached Lily, whose screaming intensified.

The first punch knocked him silly. The second he dodged, trying to flip Billy onto his back or at least off Albus.

He could hear Lily screaming bloody murder, saw in a flash her struggling against Robin’s full body grip with all her might before he was back on Billy, and they were scrapping like they never had before. It was a flurry of violence, unable to be recalled to mind later in any detail. Just fists and strength and an intent to kill on both sides.

Albus did flip him then, grappled blindly for purchase of something—

From somewhere, the nailbat had appeared. Albus didn’t stop to question it. He took grip of it and swung at Billy’s chest, then his head, and the Mind Flayer’s chosen puppet was strong, but not that strong.

He only swung with it twice. Enough to stop Billy long enough that Albus could gain advantage. He punched him across the face once, twice, three times. He thought about it for a heartbeat, and then kept going, again, again, again, against a backdrop of fire and screaming and encroaching danger.

Billy’s face was a mess when he finally stilled his raised fist, breathing like a wounded bull, and Albus could have kept going until Billy was stopped for good. He knew this was the moment. But there was his sister, watching him with abject horror. She had even stopped screaming; she hung in Robin’s grip like a puppet. Staring at him like he would turn on her next.

He could feel Billy’s blood wetting his fists. No wonder.

Albus considered it, for half a second, fist poised, ready to strike again. Billy watched blearily, waiting with something approaching anticipation.

Albus drew back, pushed himself to his feet. Staggering, he recollected the bat, went to walk away.

”Get back here,” Billy’s familiar voice gargled. “Get back here and finish this.”

”No,” he said, turning to face him again. Billy was struggling to his knees. “I’m done.”

”Finish it!” Billy screamed. “Get here and fight me like a man, Potter!”

”Oh, would you SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

Dustin, who had appeared from somewhere, was blabbering in a panic, as he tended to, and he pulled Albus away from Billy, who was bloody and growling, already stirring to his feet again.

Seconds later he registered the creaking, the cracking, of metal contracting and glass breaking, and turned to see some great, shadowed form struggling up through the roof of Starcourt into the night air.

Then, whiplash struck again; Nancy's group, sans Mike, Max and El, running towards the CR-V. Jonathan's car stayed abandoned with it's bonnet up as they flooded outside, all shouting, to clamber into the CR-V.

They should just about all fit. If they broke a few road laws.

"Albus, come on!" Nancy cried.

"Coming!" he called back, but he wasn't moving; he was staring, transfixed, at the great hulking monstrosity aserting itself on the roof of Starcourt. It was the size of the roof of Starcourt.

The Mind Flayer made flesh.

"I'll stop it." Before he could blink Lily had broken free of Robin’s grip and retrieved her wand. She flew to his side and pointed at the Mind Flayer, and chanted, "Incendio Maxima!"

The air warped and bubbled and burned, and Lily cried out—

Black smoke plumed from the tip of her wand, crackling like an electrical storm, and then it clattered to the tarmac. Lily grasped at her arm like it was on fire. The cries were sharp to his ear but he didn't have time for questions of any sort.

The Mind Flayer was gaining on them dangerously, and now it was angrier than ever. He swooped to snatch up her wand and grabbed her by the arm, and he dragged her to the CR-V, idling in front of them. The boot was open, the rumble seats empty. Albus pushed Lily in and followed her as he heard crashing glass and knew the Mind Flayer was on their tail.

He pulled the boot shut, screaming, "Drive!" to Jonathan, who occupied the driver's seat.

He needn't have bothered; even before the back door was shut, the tyres were screeching against the tarmac, and the car was flying away from Starcourt. He looked behind them. The Mind Flayer was crashing through the front of Starcourt in pursuit of them.

The car was alive with panic as the rest of their group, all crowded in, tried to talk over each other.

As they raced down the road, he asked Lily, "What happened?" under his breath. He was still holding her wand.

She snatched it back, bringing it up close to study it. "I don't know," she said, visibly distraught. "It was like this horrible feeling moved through my wand and my fingers, then through my hand and up my arm. It made the muscles of my shoulder go all—all painful and tight. I've never felt anything like that before, Albus, what the hell happened?"

How was he supposed to know?

"It hasn't worked for me properly since we went into that Russian lair. My Disillusionment charm failed, and I couldn't stun Billy or hurt the—the—" She stared out the rear window, at the monster rampaging after them, and asked, in a voice soft with fear, "What the hell is it?"

He didn't know how to answer that in only a few sentences, but what she had said set his mind racing.

Why would her magic fail in the face of the Russians, or Billy, or the Mind Flayer? She was an accomplished witch, and he didn't think fear would make her magic fail. She had bravery enough to face the Mind Flayer and curse it. Or try to. The only thing linking the lair and Billy and the Mind Flayer together was—

"The Upside Down," he murmured.

"What?"

Albus had a theory crash suddenly and forcefully into his mind; Lily's spells had failed because she had tried to cast them both on various forms of the Mind Flayer. The Subaru had gone up in flames easy enough. Her disguise failed in the lair because that was where the gate was. The commonality seemed obvious.

Magic didn't work against the Upside Down.

They fought the Mind Flayer nonetheless, with fireworks and anything else at their disposal. They never had much beyond sheer dumb luck on their side.

It was the shutting of the gate that actually killed it, but not before it killed Billy.

The Mind Flayer's grotesque puppet dropped like several tonnes of bricks to the floor of Starcourt, where it had raced back to when it sensed itself in danger, and it never moved again.

It took some time for things to make sense again after that. People arrived in government garb, the same people who always turned up that bit too late to deal with this stuff for them, and began ushering everyone outside before the whole building came down on their heads.

The quiet seemed otherworldy as the smoke began to settle, drifting down from the upper echelons of Starcourt to settle over the ground floor in a smothering blanket. A soft coating of ash left behind by the fireworks. Nancy, in a stand-off with a government agent. And then, in the middle of it all, the Mind Flayer's mortal remains, and those of Billy Hargrove's.

He and Lily looked down on the scene as they descended the stairs.

"Stay here," he told her when they reached the bottom, then he was off stalking over to Nancy. She had planted herself firmly between the man and Max, who had flung herself over Billy's body, and wasn't moving.
 
"Miss, we need to get everyone out of here," the agent was saying.

"I don't give a shit," she said, like she was incredulous that he would even say such a thing. "You needed to get everyone out of here hours ago, and because you didn't, Max just watched her brother get impaled through the chest, and he was ten feet away from her when it happened, so you can wait for a minute while she says goodbye, do you understand me?"

Albus reached them in time to stop the agent from taking a threatening step forwards, sliding himself into the space instead, and nudging Nancy a step backwards.

"Nance, why are you getting into a fight with a man who has a gun?"

She treated him to one of her very pointed looks. "Albus."

"Yes?"

"He was manhandling Max."

He span on his heel to face the agent. "You put your hands on her?"

"We need everyone out of this building," the man said, already bored of repeating himself.

"You don't put your hands on her," he said, pointing back to Max.

"She refused to move, and we have to evacuate this building."

Albus' smile was mirthless. "You lot were nowhere to be seen while Merlin-knows how many people died, and you're trying to tell me that Max, who just did your job for you at the age of fourteen, doesn't get one minute with her brother's body before it's taken away? No. Leave her alone."

"I'm going to Max," Nancy said. She had moved to his side as he was speaking, and it was a familiar position for them to be in. "We will be out when she is ready, and not a minute sooner. Any time constraints aren't Max's problem," she added as an afterthought.

Albus nudged her past the agent, still staring at the man. "You lot want to start getting out of the gate faster," he said, and then followed her.

There was a lot more he could say but one thing was currently taking precedence; Max was sobbing like somebody had reached into her chest and yanked the valves of her heart loose. Nancy dropped to her knees at the girl's side and placed her hands, gently, on her shoulders. Max's head shot up at the contact, and the look of sheer fright, the shock and horror, on that usually cocksure face made his chest constrict.

He had been no fan of Billy Hargrove's, but there was not one part of this scene that he would not undo if he could.

"They're telling me to leave him, but they can't make me leave him! What am I supposed to do?" She was speaking at near-lightspeed, words tumbling from her mouth so panicked that it was a miracle she was coherent. There was blood everywhere, pooling on the tiles beneath his body, staining the skin of Max's hands, smeared across her cheek from where she had pressed her ear to his chest. "They can't take him away from me!"

Nancy edged closer to her. "Hey, it's okay, Max," she said, voice low and soothing. "We don't have to leave until you're ready. Albus and I will stay with you until you want to go, you hear me?"

He didn't know whether her message had reached it's intended target; Max just laid her arms over Billy's prone body, like she could protect it retroactively. He surveyed the scene, the grimmest he had been witness to yet, and he had the vague thought in his head that later, when the adrenaline had worn off, he was probably going to throw up. 

He shifted his weight from one foot to another, ready to dig in and wait with the body for as long as needed. A lot of government agents drifted into their area over the next few minutes but they must have deemed it a bad idea to confront a blood-covered teenager with a nailbat, because they were left alone.

The heart wrenching noises being pulled from Max's throat might have helped repel them.

"I have to leave him here, don't I?" Max said, eventually.

Nancy fingers carded through her shock of red hair, and she murmured, "It's okay, honey."

He looked around for his sister, and found her quickly. Lily was still standing where he had left her. She was staring at them and tears had started to well in her eyes. Nancy, seeing what he saw seeing, nudged him with her foot.

"You can go back to her," she said, hand stroking rhythmically up and down Max's back. "I'll stay here."

"I won't go far," he said, with a dark look at the soldiers positioning themselves around the courtyard. Useless fucking pricks, they were never fast enough to stop this shit from happening...

When he reached Lily, she didn't even wait for him to speak; she just put her arms around him and let all her weight fall against his.

"Hey," he said, voice low and as close to soothing as he could get. "What's the matter?" She shook her head, and flicked it in the general direction of Max and Billy. A red-headed sister and her older brother. "We're both okay," he told her.

He released her when he saw Nancy stand up at last, and Max struggling after her. He went over to steady her, and then return to Lily's side, but she was right behind him when he turned around. He grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her after Nancy and Max before she could get a better look at Billy's body. They went out into the flashing lights and sirens of the night. The air was warm and cloying, and it made the blood on his skin stickier.

A paramedic prised Lily away from his side to look her over. He followed after her, sitting in the back of an ambulance, and allowed himself to be poked and prodded as well.

The members of their group were scattered about on other trolleys. He saw Will and Jonathan squeezed together, heads bowed low, murmuring to each other. Robin hovering, alone, looking uncertain and out of joint. El, Dustin, Mike and Lucas were at another. All of them were bathed in flashing blue lights. The ambulance workers filled up the gaps.

He didn't know where Hopper, Joyce and Murray were. He would notice when they appeared though. He kept doing head counts. Just to make sure they were all still there. This was their third time dealing with this bullshit and they were all still there.

"Al? Are you okay?" Lily heaved herself onto the back of the ambulance with him, her movements a bit uncoordinated. He looked her over. There was a smattering of firework ash over her red hair and a couple of blooming bruises, but she seemed unharmed. "The paramedics said I was okay," she said. "Not a scratch. How about you?"

"Oh, y'know. Got a concussion. Some bruising. But I'll be fine."

Lily stared somberly at him. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"Well, the Russians were new," he said, and this made her laugh.

"Our parents. What do I tell them?"

"Nothing you don't have to," he said. "We'll go over it at home."

"How are we going to get home when you can't drive?"

"I've driven concussed before." But he didn't think the ambulance people would let him get away with the same shit tonight. "I'll get us home, Lils."

He winced against the flashing lights. The adults had just appeared from the depths of Starcourt. And on the other side of the police line, the parents of the kids had started to arrive.

Mrs Wheeler embraced Mike and Nancy, one arm for each child. Max fell, boneless, into the arms of her mother. Murray was harrassing government agents very loudly, and Mrs Byers sobbed into Jonathan's shoulder. He stared at them all, beginning to frown. Something was wrong.

It dawned on Albus, with a sickening jolt, that Hopper was nowhere to be seen.

The pieces slotted together on their own, with alarming rapidity.

Hopper had been the one to threaten the government on Albus' behalf, years ago, when this mess started. He thought sometimes about that exchange. Or else we'll kill you. A hand, landing steady on Albus' shoulder. Well that's not going to be a problem, because nothing happened. He wondered, childishly, if Hopper's loss would leave Albus vulnerable again.

No one was looking El's way, he realised. Mrs Byers had embraced her initially, but now she stood alone, away from everyone.

He managed to slide off the back of the ambulance painlessly. "Stay here," he grunted, at Lily, who had half-jolted from her perched place next to him.

He took a few, slow steps forward. It was like he had forgotten how to walk. Or maybe the past twenty-four hours had finally caught up to him. El was tired and grief-stricken when he reached her, tears tracking rivets down her cheeks.

"Hey," he said, reaching out a hand and placing it tentatively on her shoulder. When she didn't shake him off his hand rested more comfortably.

Her injured leg was wrapped in white gauze and she favoured the other heavily. Her arms wrapped around her middle like she was holding her innards in. He very well understood that El didn't want words, or distraction. He just didn't want her to continue being alone. And after a few moments, the tears worsened. Her face screwed up, and he pulled her into his arms. The action made his ribs bark.

Another moment passed, and he felt a wet patch grow on the front of his shirt; El's shoulders were shaking, and then her entire body. One hand was stretched uselessly outward, reaching for something that wasn’t there. Be it person or power, he couldn’t guess at.

"It's been a long night, hasn't it?" he murmured, in a tone that didn't expect or even want for an answer.

Moments later, the most gut-wrenching howl of grief he had ever heard ripped from her child’s throat, and all of her body’s weight collapsed into his. He sent them both down to the tarmac as slowly as he could, and kept her pressed against him as she screamed and howled and her body tried to curl in on itself. His knees screamed from the pressure, but he made himself stay frozen in place.

People were staring, but none of them dared to approach El.

He regretted not knowing Hopper better. Regretted that their relationship consisted of the occasionally-exchanged barb and a silent acknowledgement of shared history. One or two mortifying occassions on which Hopper had interrupted himself and Nancy, out in the woods. But Albus wasn't the type who stopped to chat, and neither was Hopper, and so they simply never spoke unless one of them needed something.

Watch the kids for me tonight; El's feeling jumpy.

Don't tell my parents you found me out at midnight. I'm just clearing my head.

Mike got into a scrap with a kid in his class. Talk to him for me?

He was startled from his depressing reverie by Mrs Byers, returning somewhat to her senses, calling for El. He wanted her to ask if he was okay. To ask how his face was feeling. How he was feeling. But it didn't matter. Everyone was past the point of exhaustion, Albus included.

Jonathan came up behind them and slid his hand onto Albus' shoulder, and offered to drive he and Lily home in the CR-V.

"Tell Dustin to come with us. His mum's away for the night," he said, relinquishing El into Mrs Byers' superior embrace. He observed them for a moment. "I told her I'd look after him."

When they arrived back in the darkened house, Jonathan hung around long enough to make sure no one needed his help, before he asked Albus where he could sleep.

"Kind of feel like I should have a drink or something, you know, in Hopper's—memory." His voice was stilted and unsure; he sounded dazed. "But I'm just too fucking tired. You know?"

"Yeah," Albus said, when Jonathan met his eyes with an almost rhuemy stare. There wasn't anything else to be said or done now. Jonathan was directed up the stairs to James' room. They watched him go in silence. Everything was very numb.

"I wanna call my mum," Dustin said slowly, like he was testing the words in his mouth. "If the government guys called her she's probably freaking out. I should let her know I'm okay and I'm here..."

"We'll leave you alone," Albus said, putting a hand on Lily's shoulder to tow her upstairs.

He led her into the bathroom and closed the door behind them; James' room wasn't far away, and he doubted Jonathan would be asleep that quickly. He retrieved the key to the cabinet and took from it what he wanted.

Lily unstoppered one of the vials and gave it a sniff. "Ugh—What is this?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.

"Right-side-up juice," he said, shuffling through the spill of bottles for what he was looking for. "It'll take care of the bruising," he added when she sent him a doubtful look. "I've used it before. Just need to remember to restock the cabinet again..."

His knuckles were swelling and sore, and it felt like his brain was trying to squeeze through cracks in his skull. There was no need for ceremony. He held his nose and downed the first vial, the second, then took the third off Lily and drank that too. Merlin, it really tasted like shit, didn't it?

He took ten seconds out to stop himself from gagging.

"You got anything that needs taking care of?" he groaned at last.

"No. I'm fine," Lily said. She kept flicking her eyes over him, like she was trying to riddle something out.

"Alright, well, I'll let you use the shower first." He stopped at the door to add, "I'll be downstairs if you need anything."

She looked suddenly vulnerable, and he wondered if he should offer to sit outside the bathroom, as he knew Nancy sometimes did for Mike, on the worse nights. As he himself had done more than once for one of the kids. But then she gave herself a good strong shake.

"I'll be okay," she said, steely-toned, and he knew better than to question her.

Following a slow and shaky descent downstairs, he found Dustin languishing around in the living room, picking things up and putting them back down, walking around in slow circles. Albus cleared his throat gently; Dustin startled.

"Oh. Hey."

"You can use the shower next," he said. "Lily won't be—Well, actually, she might be a while. She likes to take her time."

"That's fine."

"You... want anything from the kitchen?" He was thinking about rummaging for cans from the shed, himself.

But Dustin shook his head. "I'm fine."

Okay. If he didn't want to talk Albus wouldn't make him. He made a slow procession over to the sofa where he had begun the night—all of their take away was half-abandoned on the coffee table—and collapsed back against it with an enormous sigh.

For a while, down in the guts of Starcourt, he'd thought he wouldn't make it back here. The Russian bunker would surely have acted as his crypt eventually; he would not have been let go. His eyes slid closed and he might have fallen asleep, if not for the little bump as Dustin came and sat next to him, heaving a funnily similar sigh to the one Albus had released.

"I'm really sorry I got us trapped in the Russian lair," Dustin said eventually. Albus' breathing stilled. This sounded... from the heart. "I know I'm reckless sometimes, but that was some next level shit. And your sister—If your sister or Robin had got hurt I'd probably be crying right now, honestly."

"But it was just me," he said, "so no tears needed."

"No! That's not what I—Ugh, look, I—"

"I was just teasing," Albus said, with a gentleness that he didn't usually use. "Sorry. Shouldn't have interrupted."

"I'm just really glad that you're okay, Albus."

Okay was relative. He could feel the potions knitting him back together slowly, but movement was not advised; his ribs still protested, his face was swollen and throbbing. He'd know in the morning who had beaten him worse between Billy and the Russians by how much healing the potions had managed to lend him.

Billy...

He hissed air in through his teeth. He didn't know how he felt about that. When the red mist was lifted from his vision, he knew he did not want Billy Hargrove dead, but there was a part of Albus that was relieved. He wouldn't mourn for Billy, but he would for Max, or for the version of Max who was dead now herself.

The Max who hadn't watched her brother die.

"I'm really glad you're okay too, Dustin."

"Thanks." He could hear Dustin thinking. "How do you feel about your sister knowing about the Upside Down?"

"Like shit, thanks for asking."

"Yeah, it's not great. You think she'll tell anyone?"

"I don't know. It's a mess. I can't handle her being wrapped up in our shit. I'll have a heart attack before the Mind Flayer gets me."

Dustin was quiet for a minute. "And do you... regret getting involved with us? That night Nancy called you to look after us because she was chasing down the Demogorgon, do you wish you'd like, ignored her?"

"No, never." He was frowning. "I hate the thought of Lily being involved, but me... I'll never regret answering Nancy's call that night. It's a lot of responsibility but—I don't know, it's kind of..." He knew the word he wanted to say, but it felt highly inappropriate, and he cast about for a solid minute in search of another before he gave up and just said it. "It's kind of freeing."

"Freeing?" Dustin was looking at him incredulously.

"Yeah. It's hard to explain." Especially around the lump in his throat. "I don't even understand. Maybe it's just the sense of... having purpose. A place in the world."

Dustin rocked his knee back and forth. "You have a place with me, you know. It's like having a big brother, or something." Albus' eyes closed. They sat in silence for a while. "Can I ask you something? How did Lily follow us into Starcourt? Because you didn't seem as surprised as me and Robin. You were upset, sure, but not surprised."

"You would not believe me if I told you," he said. The Statute of Secrecy loomed large over his head all of a sudden.

"Really? You're saying that to me?"

"Fairs." He bit down on the inside of his lip, hard enough to draw blood. "With everything that's happened in the last few years you're probably used to the idea that the world's full of secrets that most people don't know about, right? Secret government departments, parallel dimensions, parallel—societies."

"Sure."

He waited a moment to see if some higher function of his brain would intervene. "Me and Lily come from a parallel society. Or, Lily is. I never really belonged there." He took a deep breath, before just spitting it out. "She's a witch. We come from a family of magic users."

There was a long, heavy silence. "Oh. You—You mean she's like El?"

He was finding it hard to speak around the lump in his throat. "I don't think so. I don't think El's magic. I don't know what she is, in truth. I've wondered about it before."

"Oh. So can you—"

"No. Like I said, I don't belong in that world."

There was a heavy silence before Dustin asked, "Is that how Lily followed us then? Using... magic?"

"I think she disguised herself, or made herself unnoticeable, but then—I don't know. We haven't had the chance to talk about it, but it seemed like her closeness to the gate made her magic stop working. Like the disguise failed and that's why we could see her."

"That's a thing?"

"Not a thing I've ever heard of, but when we were running from the Mind Flayer, she tried to cast something on it, and there was this response like nothing I've ever seen. Like the Mind Flayer made her magic turn bad. Like it had expired."

"Oh."

Albus could tell that Dustin was retreating into his own head to think all this over, and he left him to it, needing a moment of quiet to let sink in what he had just confessed. At some point in the next few days, Dustin would come to him with a laundry list of questions. For now he was glad for the silence.

"I can't believe Hopper's fucking dead," Dustin said quietly.

Neither could he. It would take a while to even register as fact. The sense of loss was creeping and insidious; his stomach felt like a cavity and his sense of gravity a lot looser than usual.

A phone beeping made his eyes open again. It took them a few seconds to readjust. He saw the name Suzie on Dustin's phone screen.

"Who's Suzie?"

"My girlfriend. The one who lives in the Hebrides." Dustin shot him a pointed look, and stood up to leave the room. "Hey, Suzie..."

The girlfriend who lived in the Hebrides with no wifi or signal was real. It was a night of shocks. He suspected that they would all just pile up, and he would have to work through them all one at a time. Hopper loomed largest, and he probably always would.

His eyes fell shut again, and for a couple of minutes, he thought he had drifted to sleep, when he was jostled again, and a sweet-smelling head of slightly damp hair pressed against his shoulder.

"Hey Lils," he mumbled through sleep-adled lips.

She sniffled and shifted closer to him. "Can we talk?"

"About?"

"They wanted to make him confess, and I said I'd help..."

It took him a moment to realise. "You ready to tell me about Scorpius Malfoy?"

He felt her nod against his shoulder, and waited. "You need to know how scared everyone at school was at the time. Two people in my year had family killed and—I mean, I suppose it was coincidence that they were people who Scorpius Malfoy had fought with before. One of my friends suggested we do something to stop him.

"There were four of us," she breathed after a pause. "We cornered him in the courtyard, at midnight." She cut frightened eyes at him. "At the time I thought we were doing the right thing, Al, but ever since then—It's all I've thought about all summer. Polly Chapman disarmed him and then I petrified him. One of the boys is a potions master and he'd tried brewing veritaserum—he had to steal the ingredients—but it even didn't work. Scorpius started to choke instead—" She cut off with a sob.

"Jesus Christ, Lily," Albus said.

"I know, I know! By the time we fetched a professor he was turning blue—"

"You haven't been expelled. Dad said you haven't been expelled."

"I haven't been!"

"How?"

"McGonagall said because I've never—I've never acted out before, they were going to let me off." She wilted even further. "On conditions."

"What kinds of conditions? Have you met them yet?"

Lily was playing with her fingers. "It depends on the Malfoys. If Mr Malfoy and Scorpius accept my apology, I'll be let back, with a load of detentions," she added more quietly.

"And you've given it, right? Lily, tell me you've apologised."

"I—I've been working up the courage..."

"You have to get it done!"

"I know I do!"

"I can't believe this."

"You're one to talk! What you've done is a thousand times worse!"

"Wha—How, in any way, is what I've done worse than nearly murdering a kid?"

"You've been lying to Mum and Dad for years! All this time they've thought you were nice and safe in boring Lake Winsome, and this whole time you've been fighting monsters! You—You nearly beat that guy to death earlier! I thought you were killing him."

"Not worse than what you did, Lils."

"Don't be so bloody sharp with me! You know I'm right!"

"Well maybe we're a pair of fuck-ups and Mum and Dad deserve better than us both!" Albus said. "You still have to apologise to Scorpius Malfoy before the school decides you've waited too long, and expels you."

But Lily didn't give in, not that he ever really expected her to, and somehow he ended up spilling to her the whole sorry story, starting from the day that Will Byers vanished in the middle of the night from his home, and going right through to Dustin's intercepted Russian message. She blanched when he admitted to his and Nancy's part in Barb's death, but she didn't rebuke him for it.

At some point Dustin himself drifted back into the room, showered and mellowed out by the hot water. He backed up several of Albus' talking points, even stopping once or twice to I-told-you-so Lily, who sneered at him and rolled her eyes. But she didn't do much otherwise, than fold and unfold her arms, and worry her lip between her teeth.

When it was over, he tried to send them both off to bed, but Lily said she didn't feel safe falling asleep on her own, in the downstairs bedroom, when Albus said that creatures of the Upside Down were immune to magic. So Albus offered to let her sleep next to him, which is when Dustin decided he didn't want to be left on his own either.

"We can't all sleep in my bed, it's barely a double," he said.

They ended up staying where they were, on the sofa. Albus fished blankets out of the cupboard, and shut all the curtains without protest when Lily asked him to. Then with Dustin on one side of him, and Lily on the other, he tried to convince himself he was perfectly comfortable in the middle. If neither of them wanted to be left alone then they would just sleep in the living room.

He fell asleep thinking about his sister, and Scorpius Malfoy, turning blue.

He was woken with a start when the earliest sunlight was breaking through the curtains by a creaking floorboard. He jolted upright, turned around, with the thought in his head that his parents’ enchantments did not keep the house safe after all, only to see Jonathan in the doorway.

He was managing a sheepish expression. “Sorry. I wanted water…”

Lily and Dustin were still fast asleep on either side of him, beneath their blankets. He eased himself up and walked Jonathan into the kitchen. The sun was just rising outside. They stood together by the sink for a minute, watching.

”Will called at three o’clock,” Jonathan said. “Just to see how I was. He’s okay. This time. Considering.”

Albus stared out the kitchen window at the back garden, fenced in by forest. “You fancy that drink now?”

A grim smile met him. “I have just the joint for the occasion.”

They took a bottle of beer each from the cooler in the shed, and sat in the old lawn chairs his parents had set facing the trees at the start of the summer, two summers ago, plans in mind to relax together. That hadn't come off so much. He and Jonathan took in the view instead, passing the spliff back and forth between themselves.

It slowed his reflexes but didn’t bring much joy. Everything seemed duller in the wake of Hopper dying.

"I should get home soon," Jonathan mumbled after a few minutes, blowing out a slow stream of smoke. "I don't want to be gone when Mum wakes up."

"I'll drive you."

"On a concussion and a joint? I'll walk. I could do with clearing my head, anyway."

It was still early enough that the heat of the day had yet to arrive, and it was like a balm against his abused skin, making his eyes slip shut. When they did he saw Billy Hargrove standing up to the Mind Flayer, and watched him fall, again.

"How's your sister?"

"Lily's okay. Considering everything. She'll be fine. And how was Will, last night?"

Jonathan nodded to himself. "Same, for once. I hate to say it—I'm not glad that El got hurt—I'm just so relieved that it wasn't him for once. You know? Only reason I offered to drive you home was because nothing happened to Will. But I've gotta get back to them now. Don't want to be away for long."

"Don't let me keep you."

"I won't." He took another swing from his bottle, and looked at it. "This is good beer."

"Hopper gave it to my parents as a gift, a year or so ago," he realised, with a strong sting behind his eyes.

Jonathan huffed a half-hearted laugh. "Huh. Thanks, Hop."

They clinked the necks of their bottles together and raised them up to the sky, and watched a dark wisp of smoke make a lonely trail overhead. The final, dying embers of Starcourt drifting away on the wind.

"Yeah," he said, studying the label. "Thanks, Hopper."

A while after Jonathan had finished and set off for home, once he had taken time to himself to wander the halls of his house and confirm that all of its wall still stood, that none kept safe inside it were hurt, Albus heeded Lily's last wish of the night, and called his dad.

It was early in the morning and when his dad answered, he was speaking under his breath; he was on a raid.

"Al, what's wrong? Why are you calling at a time like this?"

Hearing his dad's voice made something in his chest expand with want. His fear in that Russian base had been so... stark. He'd never have seen his parents again if not for Lily and Dustin's heroics.

He unstuck his throat, and he made up a story. As he spoke a great guilt settled over him. He heard himself lie to his father, and sensed Lily’s unreadable face drilling into his brain, and thought to himself that the great Harry Potter had never lowered himself to levels such as these.

”There was a fire at Starcourt last night. We’re all okay, all safe. Starcourt’s done for though. They’ll probably just leave the shell to gather dust…”

Chapter Text

Albus Severus Potter was a liar.

He always had been. Nearly everything about him was a practice in concealment. From the story of his family’s move to Lake Winsome when he was eleven, to the languid smile that slid onto his face when he told his family that he was up to not much in that sleepy little muggle village.

Albus was a liar, but it was out of necessity. All for the greater good, though whose greater good it was meant to be he didn't know exactly. It was always about protecting someone. Protecting his friends and everyone in Lake Winsome from the truth about what had been born in the Department of Energy building just over the mountainside. Protecting his family from the truth about the place they had chosen to keep him safe.

Then it was about protecting himself from what would happen if anyone ever unravelled the truth.

But then Lily went and found out the truth, and in the most explosive manner possible. Those hours he spent coked up on Russian truth serum were truly some of the most humbling of his life. But it was just a matter of time before she made it into a problem. Albus lay in bed at night thinking about it frequently in the days after Starcourt was destroyed.

She would not give him a guarantee that she would keep her silence and he could tell, every time their family were all gathered in a room together, that she was thinking about it constantly, that his great and terrible truth was on the tip of her tongue.

The morning after, not so long after Albus called his dad to tell him of the Starcourt "fire", their parents Floo'd back into the house, and much fuss had been made over the state of Albus' face—imagine if they saw the state of his body—and what had caused the fire? and had anyone been hurt? They'd gone quiet when he told them Hopper was dead. Without intending it to be so, the news bought him some silence on the subject, though he knew they had gone into town later that day and asked around for the full story from friends around town.

He assumed that his parents were feeling particularly sorry for him because they didn't talk about Hopper and the fire very much in front of either him or Lily. He frequently saw his mum giving him long, searching looks in the days after.

He’d felt that hand of oblivion close around his heart once, over the dinner table, three empty potion vials between him and his mum as they waited for Lily and Aunt Hermione to join them.

"I found these in the bathroom the night after Starcourt caught fire," she said. There was an undercurrent of steel in her tone. "Did you self-medicate that night, Al? I can't imagine that you'd have been hurt seriously and not told anyone."

"I'm an adult now, aren't I?"

"These were not your potions to take!"

He fell into mullish silence, unable to look her in the eye, glaring at the empty potion vials. It was bound to happen that eventually he would forget to replace them. He'd been so consumed with Hopper's passing that he hadn't thought to do it.

The ensuing days and weeks gave him more time to stew over Lily, her uneasy silence, and the fragile alliance between them. They didn't talk about Scorpius Malfoy again—or rather, Lily didn't. Albus peppered her with reminders to get herself back into Hogwarts by any means necessary over breakfast often, and she just sank lower into her chair and glowered. When he brought the subject up in front of their parents, she made clear threats to tell the truth about Starcourt.

A couple of weeks had passed since Hopper died, and the end of August was on them. It was midnight, and there was a steady silence in the old house. A silence that was as chilling as it was easy on his brain. Everything was so loud these days. Even his own thoughts. The rememberance of El's face when they realised Hopper was not going home.

The loss of his ambient presence in everyday life was a bitter pill to swallow. If Albus had any illusions about them being immune to the Upside Down after all this time, they had been taken out back and shot.

Will said his mother was still crying at night, most every night, but when daylight came she refused to speak on it. What had happened in the bowels of Starcourt. As far as anyone else knew, he was a hero who had responded to the fire which broke out in the cinema, and had been unable to escape.

The creaking frame of the building was being disassembled bit by bit every day.

Even now Albus half-expected that one day Hopper would simply emerge from the wreckage, bitching and complaining that they had left him down there.

Blue moonlight pooled onto his bedsheets. His window was cracked open, Nancy's voile curtains fluttering imperceptably, in a barely-there breeze. Summer was drawing to a close, and the nights were gaining their telltale cool edge. But he liked the cold, needed it after the white-hot skies of summer and the burn of fireworks whizzing past his face.

He thought about texting Robin, to see if she was awake as well, and if she felt like sneaking out to go on a drive.

But then, creaks, coming from downstairs; the floorboards in the entryway.

Footsteps.

Thudding.

He was out of bed in a second, nailbat pulled out from under the bed and raised over his head. It might just be Lily, but he didn't like to take the chance. If magic did not protect their house from the Upside Down then they were never truly safe inside it.

At the bottom of the stairs were twin faces, pale and stark against the darkness; Lily, still in her sleep clothes, and their mum, whose face was drawn and upset. He dropped the bat in a heartbeat, hoping she hadn't made note of the nails.

"Mum?" he said. "What's the matter?"

"We have to go to St. Mungo's," she said, and her voice was a brittle, fragile thing. "It's your dad."

He was sleepless and feeling it, wretchedness etched deep into his bones, but for the first time in a long time, Albus was alone with his father.

He couldn't remember the last time he and his father had shared a space together for so long, going on several hours now, although these weren't the circumstances he would have chosen for his first hours alone with Dad in months. He had never envisioned a scenario in which Dad lay unconscious before him, his return to consciousness left an unanswerable doubt.

Despite the fact that he hadn't left the hospital room since the moment they'd been allowed inside, Albus was having a great deal of difficulty looking directly at his father's sleeping form where it lay on the hospital bed. It had been sixteen hours since he'd been roused from slumber by his mum.

When they had arrived at the hospital, James was already there. The mediwitches and wizards were gone, and their family was alone.

He didn't know much, but he understood this; their dad had come to a surprise confrontation with the killer who had plagued the Wizarding world for so many months, and been critically hurt in his pursuit.

Albus was short of breath and couldn't fix it. James cried onto Mum's shoulder, his speech indecipherable. Dimly, Albus registered that his brother must have actually been there when Dad was attacked; he was covered in grime and dirt.

"It was a second! Just a second and he—he was like—He collapsed!"

In that moment, considering the thought that he might never wake up, it hit Albus just how hard his dad had tried to protect him. But over a handful of nights, across a span of months and years, all that work had been thrown into jeopardy, and Albus knew he had never once thought about his dad's feelings when he ran headlong into certain danger.

There had always been good reason to keep it to himself—threats like because we'll kill you from shady government officials sprang to mind—but still.

He had liked it. He knew he liked it, secretly, the feeling that while his family occupied a world he could never be a part of, so too was he part of one that would lock them out.

"Al?"

He jumped, turning around to see James standing at the door to the hospital room. He had been sent to the Burrow to rest, and was back, coming to sit, heavy, beside him. For a long moment, he just stared down at Dad's sleeping face, his expression inscrutable. Then, swallowing, he turned back to Albus.

"Have you gone home yet? I can stay with him, if you want to—"

"No," Albus said, too quickly, and James startled. "I can stay, at least until Mum or Lily comes back." James didn't argue beyond that. "What happened?"

"I was there," James said, in a breathless voice. "We were arguing about something in Diagon Alley. I didn't—I couldn't have known anything was going to happen."

"'Course not," Albus said, but he was still confused. "Did you see who did it?"

"The Aurors have already interrogated me once," he said irritably. "I didn't think you were gonna join in."

"I'm just trying to find out what happened. My dad's in a hospital bed—"

"I know that!" James said. "Sorry. I didn't mean—No, I didn't get a good look at them. They moved too fast. It happened in a second."

Frustration zipped through him. How hard would it have been for an alley of grown witches and wizards to stop the killer from getting away? All the immobilising and stunnings spells in the world apparently hadn't been enough. And here they were.

"Why were you arguing?" he asked.

James' smile was sardonic. "Because I'm a screw-up with no idea how he wants to live his life."

"Oh."

"Dad said he didn't want me wasting away just hanging around the family home. Doing nothing day after day." James' Adam's apple bobbed. "But I'm not very good at holding onto jobs. I wasn't doing nothing happily, I just—The night before your birthday, I got sacked. Again. Mum wasn't happy."

"I had no idea you were having such a hard time finding work."

"Well, the job market's not great. Plus, I'm a terrible employee. Apparently I can't listen to orders and always think I know what's best."

"A broken clock's right twice a day," Albus said. "Maybe they should have just waited a bit longer."

"Shut up, you little shit."

"Sorry."

"It all just happened so fast, you know? Like I blinked and dad was falling, and—I don't know. One minute he was there and the next minute it was like he was a world away from me, and he couldn't hear anything I was saying, and the Aurors were holding me back." The brothers gazed at the comatose form of their father. "I thought he was dead. I thought he was dead for an hour."

James retreated into his mind; Albus left him to it. He was trying to imagine what he would have done in the same situation. Probably even less than James. What could the squib son have done in the face of dark magic like that?

"Are you gonna be okay getting home?" James asked after a while. "Ask someone to go back with you, to make sure the fireplace hasn't been—I dunno, like, hijacked, or something."

"Don't be silly," Albus said, getting slowly to his feet and sending his father one more look. "I don't need an escort."

"They could go after you next! Al, please, take this seriously. What if they want to kill the rest of us?"

He stared at his brother, whose eyes were weirdly fanatic under the sterile hospital light. "I'll be fine," he said, and left before James could argue with him further.

Mediwitches and wizards openly stared as he wound through the corridors, away from the private room his dad had been put in, and their looks bounced off him for once. He didn't much care how much they gaped tonight. If his dad never woke up, then none of it mattered at all.

In the grand scheme of everything, he supposed he was fine.

He had not been possessed by a monster or killed in the fighting of it. It wasn't him who had been caught in a firefight in pursuit of a wizarding serial killer and sent into a magically-induced coma. And what was a few hours of interrogation by Russians—really stupid Russians—in comparison to losing a key piece of oneself forever? A power, a person, it was all the same.

Really, Albus was fine.

When he awoke in a sweat in the days and weeks following, he told himself it was the oppressive heat of summer, and that was fine. If the thin sheet he slept under got tangled around his legs, the momentary feeling of restraint and subsequent stuttering of his heart, was just because he had dreamed he was falling.

He Floo'd home just in time to hear someone knock on the front door, and sighed; he really didn't think he had it in him to have any more heart-to-hearts at the moment. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. But when the knock sounded again he decided to at least see who was there.

It was Max, loitering on his doorstep in the dead of night. She was pulling at the skin of her fingers and looked tired. Like she hadn't slept. There was a silent pleading in her eyes, for some kind of help, but he knew she wouldn't ask.

He hesitated, and then reached for his car keys and shut the front door, locking it.

"Lets take a drive," he told her. "We both need it."

He thought about asking her if her parents knew where she was, but he'd picked up enough context clues from observing her and Billy over the years to know that wasn't a wise idea. There was a place, just outside town, on the way up the mountainside, where the rocky road looked over Lake Winsome, and that was where he drove them.

Max ejected his copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall and instead played Kate Bush over the car stereo from an old cassette. He let that eat the silence up. She stared out the car window, her fist propping up her head.

When he pulled the car to a stop, she was out before he'd shut off the engine, and gone to get a better look of the view. It was a good view; every star in the sky seemed to be out tonight, and remnant smoke from Starcourt had long since dispersed. Albus followed her out, and climbed up on the bonnet of the CR-V, his legs left swinging.

"How're you doing?"

She shrugged, as she often did since Starcourt. She spent a lot of time in her own head, watching the world go past. He watched her fiddle with the sleeves of the overlarge shirt she was wearing. It still smelled of Billy.

The stars were out in force, a breathtaking blanket of midnight blue and diamond, and he thought that it would be hard for anyone not to be distracted by it. He and Nancy had walked up here sometimes, when they wanted actual privacy, just to dangle their feet over the edge of the cliffside and talk about anything that came to mind.

"It's really nice up here," she murmured, gently kicking her feet against the grill of the car.

"Just don't tell the other shits you hang out with about it, or I'll never have a minute here alone again."

Max nearly smiled at that. "It's really weird without him around. I—Billy wasn't—nice. To me. Or anyone... But he'd kind of always been there and now he's not, and there was this part of me—“ She choked slightly. “There was this part of me that always hoped he’d change. Like, sometimes, there'd be a glimpse of this guy who was a good big brother, and I really wanted to know him."

Albus wasn't actually sure whether she knew that it had been he and Lily who blew up his car, so now no one in Max's family could claim it for themselves, or that he didn't feel all that much guilt for his hand in Billy's death.

"I've been, like, in a daze. It's like I don't know my own mind." He could feel something coming, the thing she was holding inside herself, on the tip of her tongue. "I think I'm glad he's dead," she confessed, a hoarse whisper expelled into the night air. The wind carried her secret on up to the heavens, where it mixed with the stardust floating around high, high above their heads.

It was only when Max turned haunted eyes on him, looking perhaps for consolation, that he spoke. "He tormented you, Max. He tormented your friends... You aren't at fault for how you feel."

"But it's awful of me, isn't it? To say that I'm glad."

He stopped himself before he could dismissively say, Nah. What Max needed was reassurance, not something unthinking and half-hearted from the mouth of someone who was concerned more with his own relationship with Billy than hers.

"I think... you can mourn the loss of a person, while not missing them at all. And Billy's temper, and any fall out that developed because of it, was not your responsibility."

"I wish you were my big brother," she admitted, still whispering, and that drew him up short.

"I'm not a good brother to the sister I do have," he said, heart twisting.

She nudged her foot against his. "You're nice to me."

"It's not about being nice, it's about being responsible."

It brought him back to dazzling lights in Starcourt Mall, the Mind Flayer's lumbering pursuit, the heat of flares and his sister's face. If his mum had lost her husband and her daughter all in the space of weeks, it might have killed her as well.

Albus' carelessness had nearly wrought that upon her. Hopper had been right about him; he'd gone steadily off the rails since finding out about that Belinda Stookey book and his sister nearly paid the price.

"I'd still take you over Billy," Max murmured.

"Well, you have the hair for the job," he said.

"I think I'm a terrible person for saying that."

"You're not a terrible person."

Max turned her face to the stars, and leant back against the bonnet of the CR-V, which creaked under their weight. Albus leant back as well, and let his mind wander between the place where Billy and Hopper had died, and the place where now, his father lay dying as well. The mediwitches said he would wake, but to Albus it did not feel that way, and in his head, his father would be dying until he woke up.

"Your grief does not have to make sense," he said quietly, and that sentiment too was carried away on the wind.

He went back to what Max had said a day later, as he sat a vigil at his father's bedside. Lily was pestering him about some get-together with their cousins on the night before they all went back to Hogwarts. They held this get-together every year but for obvious reasons he hadn't attended in a long time. She was taking advantage of his silence, he thought, of the pliance that was emerging in his personality in the wake of their father's attack.

"Why don't you want to come along?" she asked, rolling her eyes. The shock of red hair could have belonged to Max if it were longer, but Lily kept hers in a neat, shoulder-length bob.

"Because I'm tired and sick,” he said, “and besides, I barely know them these days."

"That is not true. Of course it's not true, what a thing to say." She crossed her arms and cut off any crude responses he might have scrounged up. "Besides, you are my brother and I want you to be there."

It was not that he had been intentionally avoiding his family. At first, when the future was uncertain and he wasn't sure if he would ever get to look his dad in the eye again, they were a comfort. But as soon as the immediate aftermath was over and he was no longer high on the horror of it all, he just wanted to rest, and spending time with his family was not restful.

(And maybe more so he avoided them because seeing them reminded him of the inadequacies and the lies, and the different worlds that they occupied; one with wizards and curses and unfathomable power, the other with interdimensional monsters and goverment conspiracies, and a life lived under the shadow of death.)

He spent a lot of time in his childhood bedroom at the Burrow. There were faded, old moving posters on the walls but he blanked them out. It was better than being in the family home. Plus, Grandma got a bit tetchy when he suggested that he was going to Floo back to Lake Winsome at night.

"If he can't spend time with his grandparents now, of all times, then when can he?" she muttered, placing down a pot of mashed potato at the centre of the kitchen table with enough force to make the glasses wobble, and a set of small plates to walk themselves further away from the edge.

Albus, Lily and Granddad Weasley sat at the table, and the siblings resorted to copying Granddad, who was blissfully pretending nothing was happening, and reading the newspaper.

As he had predicted, Dustin had questions. Albus got five messages an hour about the wizards for the first five days after it had finally sunk in for him. Then, one day, as he sat at his father's bedside, alone, his phone rang. Rain was pattering against the window outside, and he had been zoned out for nearly ten minutes, hypnotised by the sound, and the rhythmic rise and fall of his dad's chest. His phone buzzing nearly made him fall off his chair.

Dustin must be bursting with questions if he was willing to call.

"What is the extent of a wizard's power? Are the depicitons in Dungeons and Dragons accurate? Is Will the Wise an offensive stereotype? Should I tell him if it is?"

"Hello to you too," he said, staring at the watery cup of coffee the mediwitch assistant had brought him. "The extent of a wizard's power depends on the wizard. D&D's depicitons aren't the greatest. No, Will the Wise isn't offensive. How long is your list of questions? You know I can't tell you much."

"Awesome. I have more questions but I guess they can wait until you're home." There was a long pause. "How's your dad?"

Albus stared at the unmoving figure on the bed, and said, "The same as he was. No change. But that's better than him getting worse, right?"

"Yeah." He could sense Dustin biting his lip. "Are your family being cool?"

"Pretty much. I mean, they're a bit much, they always have been, it's how they are. But it's nice to see them. I guess. How's home?"

"We're all doing okay, mostly. Mrs Byers is looking after El now, and we're at Mirkwood all the time. It's pretty depressing, honestly." It would be; they hadn't lost members of their collective like this before. "And Max is... really sad. All the time. We were gonna go round to hers and sneak out anything of Billy's that she wants to keep before their dickhead dad throws it all out. You want in? It's gonna be a cover of night operation."

"Sure." He drained the dregs of the awful coffee and winced as it went down. "Let me know when you're going."

"Oh, we will. We want to use your car to move everything."

He rolled his eyes in his dad's direction, like they were commiserating over the state of his friendships together. "Of course."

Despite his Grandma's insistance on keeping him within arms reach, he was still finding the time to go home as often as he could. It felt almost perverse to leave everyone else to deal with the fall out of Starcourt while he left. Even if he wasn't exactly on holiday. His mum had vouched for his need to go when Grandma Weasley seemed sceptical.

"Someone we know just died, Mum. He's just going to make sure the man's daughter is okay."

That made Grandma Weasley melt. "Oh, my poor boy," she cried, and make him take pastries back for El.

They didn't do much good when El had locked herself in the room at Mirkwood that she was now sharing with Will, the day after Starcourt, and had not opened the door to anyone but Mike. Occassionally Mrs Byers was allowed in, if she could offer out the bribe of Eggos.

But other than that, they hadn't seen El in days. It was everyone else he needed to keep checking in on.

Will was an insomniac in the wake of Hopper's death, and on the nights when he didn't want to bother Jonathan he called Albus. Please can I talk about the dreams? Please can we talk about the Upside Down? I need to tell someone what it's like to have the Mind Flayer inside your head so I can justify my weird grief over Billy Hargrove. Albus had been told so much about the experience that he almost felt as if had been he who was possessed.

Then, when he wasn't concerning himself with the worries of the boys, or trying and failing to reach out to El, Max was there, going back and forth between wanting nothing to do with anyone, and desperately trying to communicate her newfound loneliness.

He'd told her she didn't want him for a brother, and he meant it, but he started watching out for her nonetheless.

"You should try using fire."

He looked around; Lily was hovering in the doorway to their dad's room. "What?"

"If you ever see the Mind Flayer again. Fire does damage to it, doesn't it?"

"I mean, sure. But we tend not to have flame throwers lying around."

She rolled her eyes. "I thought muggles were supposed to be ingenious. Invent something. Come up with a way. I'm sure you could do it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he said.

Their relations had been strained ever since Starcourt, because Albus had no idea how to properly react to what she had done to Scorpius other than to try and make her make amends, and she had no idea how to speak to him at all, now that he had come clean about the years of secrecy.

She still looked at him like he was someone she had never met before, but she had listened to him about Scorpius. Done whatever she had to get herself back into Hogwarts. She was to board the Hogwarts Express tomorrow morning.

"You'll keep me updated on what's happening, won't you? Actually write back to me proper letters when I send ones to you. Tell me if anything happens. I couldn't bear to be kept in the dark, knowing what I know."

"Yeah, it's not a nice feeling..."

She came and sat at Dad's other side, taking one of his hands in hers. "You know I never meant to make you feel unwelcome, Al, don't you?"

"What?" He blinked at Lily, who was looking gravely at him. "Pardon?"

"In the Wizarding world. I always thought I was being really good about—it. We all thought that. But now I'm not so sure."

He could feel his shoulders tensing. "You were loads better than the families who disowned their squibs. Or killed them. Or kept them locked away under their houses forever." Lily looked to be wilting with every word he said. "But no, it never felt good."

"I'm sorry, Al. I really didn't mean it."

"I know you didn't."

"But now I see you," she went on. "I really, really see you. So in the future, when stuff's happening, I can help."

Thunderbolt. "What?"

"We'll look into the whole magic thing—I've never heard of any thing or place that makes magic react like mine did that night at Starcourt, but we can get Rose to look into it. Or Aunt Hermione. Or maybe even Uncle Percy! He probably has access to all kinds of Ministry records, I bet he could dig something useful up—"

"Lily—"

"And if the Upside Down comes back, you'll need the back-up of people who can fight—it was way too close that night against the Mind Flayer—so maybe we can recruit from the Auror ranks. If they only understand the kind of threat—"

"Lily, no, that's not going to happen."

"Well why not? You can't do this alone!"

"I have been doing this alone for years now, and you aren't getting involved. Have you forgotten that you tried to curse the Mind Flayer and all that happened was that you were incapacitated?” he asked severely.

Lily let go of their dad's hand and straightened in her seat. "I don’t care about the magic thing!”

”Well I do!”

”But I have to help you!"

"You can't, Lily!" He shocked himself with his volume; Lily jolted. "I don't belong in your world and you don't belong in mine. You'd be as useless in the Upside Down as I am in the Wizarding world."

He swept away before she could stop him. He passed the mediwitches and their mutters of squib passed clear over his head, so great was his agitation, and ultimately ended up being kind of very late for the night-before-Hogwarts get-together at the Burrow, because he’d been busy stewing.

It was really more of a family gathering, Albus having to pick his way through a swarm of family members to reach the den where his cousins were. When he walked in, Lily, who had been mid-conversation with Rose, went silent. Their cousin, not picking up on the change in vibes, invited him to sit with them, over-eager to please him since her slip on Aunt Audrey's birthday.

"Hello, Rose of Ravenclaw Tower," he said, releasing a pent up sigh as he sat down beside her.

"Has Lily said anything to you about her redemption with the Malfoys?" Rose asked. "She's being awfully tight-lipped with me, but she isn't very good at keeping her mouth shut, so I thought she might have told you something."

"Oh, thanks."

"Sorry, I'm as clueless as you," he said.

"Oh, well then what are you here for?" she sighed, but the smile on her lips and the hand she laid on his arm signalled that she was joking.

Rose was there in her Ministry robes. She had taken a summer internship in the Auror department, and was only out of the office when she had to be. She had found her calling, she said, and she was really ever so lucky to have found it so young. It was all desk work now, she said, but she hoped to upgrade one day.

James, she said, was having hard time holding down a job because he didn't know what he wanted from life.

"He's restless and miserable in most jobs, and he always will be. It's his disposition," she said primly. "I told him he should work towards a career in the Department of Mysteries, but I'm not sure he has the patience for something like that. He needs adrenaline."

James would be a good Auror, because Dad was a good Auror, and the two of them were very alike in Albus' eyes. He didn't know why James hadn't thought about trying it out like Rose and Dominique.

"Besides," Rose added, carrying on the conversation  on her own, "I think he's upset over what happened to Uncle Harry. He was there when it happened. Of course, James couldn't have stopped him from going chasing after the psycho." For some reason, it only hit Albus then that his dad would have pursued the killer. "James couldn't have prevented what happened. None of us could have, I'm sure."

Not long after this, when Rose's attention had been snatched away by Roxy, and Lily went to brood next to Hugo and Dom, who were talking about the Quidditch, Ginny appeared in the doorway to the den. She sighted him, narrowed her eyes, and walked away. Realising that he hadn't announced his arrival to her, he went after her.

"Mum?" He caught her in the cramped little corridor leading from the den to the living room, latching onto her arm to pull her to a stop. "Are you alright?"

Her stare in the darkness was excoriating. "If I ask you a question, will you answer it honestly?"

That sent him off-kilter. "What?"

"I let you off at first because of the fire, and the fact that Jim Hopper had just died, and I knew you were upset. But you obviously did not pick up those bruises by stumbling around in the fire." Ginny's eyes were hard. "Did you get into another fight with that Hargrove boy?"

Technically, no. The injuries she'd seen on his face hadn't been Billy's fault. But he'd been getting himself into fights for years now, and after so long spent beating himself up for the secrecy and the danger, he was only just realising where he got the urge to seek it out from.

"Yes. I was in a fight on the night of the Starcourt fire." And I got this meanstreak of mine from Dad, he thought. "They started it."

"I don't care who started it," she said on one long exhale. What she said next, or rather, the way in which she said it—worn down and lacking in lustre—made his spine straighten. "You can't carry on like this anymore, Al. You just can't."

The gathering had been in full swing when he tumbled out of the fireplace at gone ten o'clock, and it went on beyond the time he left it; he needed to get somewhere apart from everyone. He went looking for Granddad Weasley.

Following the floating lanterns down the garden path, Albus looked for the shed in the dark. It was tucked away in a little cove at the back of the Burrow property, underneath an old maple tree. Honey-coloured leaves drifted down past the windows in autumn, and birds perched on the battered blue roof in spring. It was a place of consistency for Albus. Whatever changed, this place stayed the same.

Albus knocked on the doorframe and said, "Granddad?"

"Come in, Al."

He walked into the shed, which always smelt of paint stain, and sat down on the stool next to his granddad's. He had a set of screwdrivers out, and an oily cloth. Low lamps lit the space.

"What are you fixing?"

"The old family clock," he said. "Fell off the wall the other day, so I need to do a bit of work on it. And, it's been showing a few hands at the wrong positions for a few months now. On occassion." Albus felt a spike of panic, thinking Granddad must be talking about his hand, when he continued, softly, "It's told us once or twice that Fred's at school."

He started to say, Of course Fred would be at school, when he realised which handle Granddad was holding. It was Fred Fred. Older Fred. Uncle George's brother. He felt a pang in his chest.

"That must have been awful," he said.

Granddad hummed. "Your grandmother was very upset when it happened."

He'd had nightmares before about his hand turning to point at Mortal Peril, and his whole family seeing it, and rushing to Lake Winsome, only to find him dead, or the town destroyed. Whether it was the Demogorgon, or the Demodogs, or the various forms of the Mind Flayer that killed him depended on which monster had most recently tried to kill him. Once, it had been Billy Hargrove.

Granddad handed him two of the smaller clock hands, Rose's and one that was blank, and he studied them while Granddad dug about in the innards of the clock. He couldn't bear to take it apart completely. When it broke, he took carefully took apart what bits he had to, and knitted it back together with screws and polish.

The muggle way.

He tried to give back the clockhands, but Granddad took just Rose's, and pushed the blank one back towards him. Albus almost dropped it, but then held it close to his chest, a bewildered look on his face.

"You keep that one," Arthur said, simply, getting back on with his work. "We all need an anchor to home sometimes."

Back in the house, he found Uncle Ron and Uncle George sitting around the kitchen table, with a cup of steaming tea each. They invited him to join them. Up close, he saw the strain in Uncle Ron's face, the way he tapped his fingers against his mug. Agitation written all over. He guessed there hadn't been any change in his father.

"What were you talking about when I came in?" Albus asked, letting Grandma's teapot pour him a cup even though it made him twitch.

"Ciaran Nyugen—he plays for the Ballycastle Bats—he crashed off his broom at the weekend," Uncle George said. "Big accident. Messy. Lives ruined. They're still plucking twigs out of the Glenshesk river."

"George." Uncle Ron rolled his eyes. "Nyugen's fine, Al. He doesn't want to hear about messy accidents," he then hissed, in a voice he probably thought Albus couldn't pick up on, to his brother.

Albus knew he was on the edge of confronting something in himself; that he had grown to enjoy the thrill of blood pumping through his veins, fright in his heart—when it was for him and him alone—and the feeling of his blood thundering through him as he sped towards or away from danger. The feeling of control. Of power. And the smell of fresh air that followed the ashy choke of the Upside Down.

"No, I want to hear about Nyugen. Tell me about the crash. Who were the Bats playing?" he asked.

Uncle George raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think you cared about sports."

"I—care about—Quidditch," he said, falteringly.

"It's hereditary, the love of Quidditch," Uncle Ron said.

Albus offered up a grin but said nothing. He thought of James with the slow, uncertain future itching under his skin; of Lily, who had been confronting suspected murderers in her spare him with no rhyme, reason or plan. Dad, chasing after the killer and getting cursed for his troubles. What was hereditary was the addiction they all experienced, to the adrenaline and fervour.

The family legacy. Fire and brimstone.

He was his father's son after all.

Chapter Text

Mirkwood was a lonely little area off in the corner of Winsome, by itself, not nearly so picturesque as the rest of the town. The Byers house too was similarly dilapidated, despite Mrs Byers’ best efforts to keep her home nice. She kept a roof over her sons’ heads, and plenty of food in their stomachs, and they were warm in the winter. So it didn’t matter if the house was run down.

The kids had named it so; Mirkwood wasn’t written on any map, but all of them, the Party, knew its boundary lines well. Through the thin, wirey tree branches overhanging his crawl up to the Byers house, Albus tried to settle his mind.

The rain that began on the morning of Billy Hargrove's funeral continued all through the rest of Sunday and throughout Monday, not in a steady, hard pound but in varying amounts at varying intensities, and Albus, to pass the time, between one funeral and the next, found himself trying to come up with as many different words to describe it as he could.

Spitting. Dripping. Misting, at its lightest. Soaking. Pounding, of course, and hammering. Sheeting, when the rain was at its heaviest and a sudden gust of wind pushed a line of it down the street like an enormous wet curtain. Drumming. Hissing. It rattled on windowpanes. Tapped on black umbrellas gathered around a gravesite.

Now that the empty coffin had been buried under a tombstone bearing Hopper's name, the rain had eased up, the world it left behind fresh and warm.

"It's called petrichor," Dustin said, in that curious, irritating know-it-all manner of his. "The smell of the earth after rainfall. Petrichor."

Albus could have snapped back, told him to mind his tone or something, but he didn't. "That's good to know," he murmured, instead. The engine was switched off and they sat looking at the Byers house together.

In comparison to other houses found around Lake Winsome, the Byers' house was much smaller. It had one floor with three bedrooms, a shed and a dog house. Kitchen, living room, bathroom. The overhanging porch seemed to be drooping under the weight of the rain but Albus knew it had been like that for a while, and even if it was about to collapse, he wouldn't know how to fix it.

The panel walls peeled off old, white paint to reveal the stained wood beneath. The driveway they sat on was less a proper drive and more a dirt track ground into the earth after years of wear.

Lucas and Max, in the backseat, leaned forwards. "What are we staring at?" Lucas asked, after a moment.

"Come on," Albus said, opening his car door. "Lets see what Mrs Byers needs from us."

They found her, still in her funeral garb as well, sitting on the sofa, alone. At Hopper's graveside she had El pressed tight into her breastbone, combing shaking fingers through El's hair. They had both been inconsolable. Inseperable. His mum, taking a brief break from his father's bedside to honour Hopper, had tried reaching out to Mrs Byers, but her words hadn't been heard.

Before Albus went to pick up the kids from the arcade where they had retreated after the wake was finished, Ginny had pressed a small stack of dishes into his arms and told him to take them over.

"You're a good boy, Al," she said, purple rings beneath her eyes, red hair more frazzled than usual. She kissed his cheek and sent him on his way. "Go on, now. Don't worry about me."

He didn't know where El had gone, but he could hear Mike's voice coming from the end of the house, pleading with someone to be allowed inside, so he could make an educated guess.

Dustin, who was carrying Ginny's stack of meals, took them wordlessly into the kitchen while Max and Lucas approached Mrs Byers. Albus looked between them, then set off for the kitchen himself. They pottered about for a few minutes in complete silence. Max, he was keeping an especially close eye on, ever since Billy's funeral. Her parents were fighting terribly, according to Lucas, and she was finding any excuse to be away from them. She was quieter than she used to be, not that he expected cartwheels from her at the moment.

His eyes slid over her, where she and Lucas were silently tidying things away, as he crossed the living room to the sofa's sole occupant. “Mrs Byers? I made you a cup of tea.”

“Oh, thank you—" She took a sip, made a face— “for the thought, dear.” Albus, noticing, pulled a face also. “And call me Joyce. We know each other well enough.”

“I might not do that,” he said, slowly. “But… thanks."

He went deeper into the house then, seeking the bathroom. El had let Mike into the room she was barricaded inside since they arrived, maybe because she had heard them and didn't want anyone else trying to barge into her little cave of grief.

He flipped on lights as he went, because the dark clouds outside were darkening the halls, and watched them carefully for any buzzing or flickering, and then watched the semi-shadowed corners just as closely. In the bathroom he caught sight of his reflection and frowned at the haggard look in his eyes. Suddenly restless, he wrestled the black tie from around his neck and threw it to the floor. The bruises he had sustained in Starcourt were long gone but he could still feel them, ghosting along his cheekbone, under the white pressed shirt, phantom tendrils stinging up and down his arms.

He had already undone the top button of his shirt, as soon as they left the graveyard, but now he undid another two, trying to get breath into his lungs. As he ran his hands through his hair, breaking the set of the gel and letting loose the wild Potter locks, he let his mind wander over their next steps. With Hopper gone and Mrs Byers totally checked out, Murray was probably the only adult they could rightly say was in charge, which was a mortifying prospect.

He turned on the tap, washing the day from his hands, splashing it from his face. Well, he wasn't going to ever come that close to losing any of the shitheads ever again, he swore, knowing that the others would be right there with him. So that was settled at least. He glanced down, taking in the clean water running into the drain with faint surprise. He half-expected to see blood running into the plughole. His mind was getting dragged down into Starcourt again.

Leaving the bathroom, he headed towards the sounds of discord coming from the living room. The boards beneath his feet, a thin, cheap wood beneath worn carpet, creaked and groaned with every step. He remembered Hopper saying something about the house being infested with wormwood. Hopefully this crappy day wouldn't end with the ceiling falling in on their heads.

"...were supposed to be back by now! Where is he?"

"What's wrong?" he asked, coming into the living room. The kids were gathered in a loose circle, and each turned a grimace on him as he announced himself. Robin had arrived while he was gone.

Mrs Byers was distressed. "Do you have any idea where Will is? He was stopping off at Hopper's cabin before he came home but he still hasn't got back." Her voice cracked on Hopper's name but concern for her sons overrode the breakdown that could have ensued.

“We’ll go looking for him!” Robin said, who still hadn't taken her rain mac off. Her funeral attire was beneath it.

Mrs Byers’ tense form seemed to crumple. “Oh my god, are you sure? You’ve had such a long day already. No, no, I can't let you.”

“We’ve had longer days,” Albus said, quickly, because Robin was shooting him a prompting look. “We can find him, easy. He can't have gone far.”

“I’ll go too! I know the places Will likes to hide, I can be the navigator,” Dustin said.

“Really?” he asked with a sarcastic smile. “Can you? Because sometimes you get lost going back to your own house.”

“Only when it’s dark outside,” he said, hurt.

The argument was silenced when the front door opened, and Will came slinking into the house like a shadow, tailed by his ashen brother.

“Oh my God, Will, are you alright? Did anyone hurt you?” Mrs Byers added, a little crazed in tone, “Because if they did, we will just send Albus down there right now to show them what pain really is.”

"I'm fine," Will said, avoiding everyones eyes, trying to pull away from his mother's grip.

"Found him at Castle Byers," Jonathan said, and then the subject was abruptly dropped; Will yanked himself free and Mrs Byers pressed the heels of her hands onto her eyesockets. She stood trembling in the middle of the room. All the fight had left her in a blink.

She was the only person around with the authority to organise Hopper's funeral, and she'd held herself together through most of it with remarkable strength, although when it came to things like deciding on a venue for the wake, she hadn't had the wherewithal to do anything other than shrug—what did a wake matter, held for people who didn't really know Hopper, or care?—and the funeral home had stepped in for her.

The Royal Gilpin Hotel, up in the hills, had hosted the wake. Albus had been to a couple of weddings there over the years, but that had been his first wake. It was an opulent place, old-Hollywood-glamour-meets-the-Lake-District; fancier than Hopper would have liked.

His tie choked him and his shoes were too tight; he took more care of his appearance these days, but the brogues his mother had bought him for the funerals of Barb and Bob Newby were a step above, and only worn twice before that day. A couple of people came up to him to ask if he was okay—Karen Wheeler one of them—but he wasn't in the mood to pretend with anyone. He'd ghosted around the edge of the event.

"You bond a lot with the chief that time he picked you and Wheeler up for doing it in the woods?" Aiden Kusacabe had asked him, following his own question with a boisterous laugh; he failed to notice how Albus didn't laugh, and in fact levelled at him a significantly caustic look.

His mum was holding hands with Mrs Byers, and he heard Mrs Byers say, “I’m so sorry about Harry,” just before he could get out of hearing range. Mike and Jonathan were arguing about Star Wars, but even that was better than anything else this damned event hall had to offer.

Just as he started to feel his composure fraying at the edges, his mum came up to him and quietly announced that it was probably time for them to leave; he was driving, of course. He followed Ginny from the event hall, his heart in his shoes; a small gaggle of kids noticed his retreating back and hastily chased after them, begging to escape as well.

"What did your parents say?" he asked with a sigh.

"What do you think?" Dustin asked, his short emotional bandwidth stretched thin by the day. He was already past Albus and on Ginny's tail.

"It's fine," Lucas and Max chorused, Max adding, "Come on, my parents aren't even here."

Robin, drifting to his side also, asked if there was room for her. "Just a ride back into town is all I need," she said, subdued. "Got stuff to do today, I guess. The world really doesn't stop, huh?"

He nodded his assent, as Mike appeared with Will and called at his friends’ backs, “Get Albus to bring you to Mirkwood later!” He watched Lucas and Max stop to organise this meet-up in finer detail, the four kids forming a little huddle. Ahead, Dustin was gesturing for Albus to hurry up.

“Why does everybody go everywhere with us?" he complained. "Look at all these damn kids.”

As Lucas and Max then trailed after Dustin and his mum, who hadn't noticed yet that they had company, Robin linked their arms together and towed him towards the exit. "I think it's cute," she mused, resting her head on his shoulder. "They're like little ducklings following their mama."

"Oh, fantastic," he groused, but didn't complain any further.

The rain was sheeting outside, but he'd parked close to the entrance; the summer storm rinsed the gold, faded paint of the CR-V, and they were safe inside.

He was digging through the medicine cabinet, looking for paracetamol, because Will had a headache. Most likely it was caused by the high simmer of tension thrumming through the house's occupants, and aided by the humidity encroaching from outside.

That week in the Lake District, from the time stretching between Billy’s funeral to Hopper’s, thunderstorms came every single evening; the air turned sepia at six, and before the first drops of rain sent dust up in puffs from the ground, Albus would push open the sliding door and sit on the floor of his living room with a record playing, volume low so he could hear the encroaching thunder through the thick air. In the mornings, dots of storm-blown blossom covered the paving surrounding his house, as he rose to go about his business like there wasn't a huge fucking absence all of a sudden.

The destructive power of the storms, sandwiched between two funerals, forced him to dwell on the vulnerabilities of his human frame, and all the limits, safeties and certainties of his everyday world. Unplug the television. Do not shower. Stand away from windows.

Dustin, two days out from Hopper’s funeral, had been at his house awaiting that evening's approaching storm and while they sat by the open sliding door, feeling the air outside bubble and charge, he explained how to count the seconds it took between lightning and thunder—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—to work out how far away the storm was.

"Five seconds is a mile," Dustin said. "So you can calculate how far away it is from you by counting the seconds."

Everything Harmony by the Lemon Twigs rotated gently on his turntable, the white vinyl stained cream by the sepia sky outside, and thunder vibrated lowly in his eardrums. Nine seconds later—he counted—a flash of purple light tore the sky, and Dustin gave him a smug told-ya look.

Summer storms conjured distance and time, but also all the things that thundered towards him, over which he had no control.

In the living room, he pressed the box of tablets into Will's hand and addressed the bickering kids; just one of those things he didn't have the control over that he would like.

"I hate to break this up, but we have to have a real talk about sleeping arrangements for the night,” he said, surveying the mess of pillows and blankets that was sprawled across the floor.

His words had the unfortunate effect of cutting through the small bit of levity that had managed to take root, and as he watched them all shrink back into themselves he had to fight back the urge to kick himself.

"This is the best you could do? This is what you call a pillow fort?” he scoffed, just as Robin came back through the front door, and it seemed to have some galvanising effect on the kids, who took immediate and disproportionate umbrage. "This looks like shit."

“Shut up, dumbass, what do you know anyway!” Dustin cried, throwing a pillow at him.

He looked at Max, arching a brow. "I thought you were supposed to be in charge."

"I was," she said disdainfully, kicking at a pillow. "It's not my fault they don't know how to listen."

"Hey," Lucas, scowling at her, a pillow held threateningly in his hand.

“You cannot be planning to spend the night in this.”

“I can’t believe I have to say this, but Albus is right," Robin said, holding her hands up against the onslaught of boos her statement received. "I know, I know, I hate it too,” she said, smirking at his disgruntled face. "This is shit. Let me fix it, I'm the sleepover queen. I mean, I was, until Carol found out about the lesbo thing and everyone dropped me like I had the plague.”

Robin dove right into pillow fort building, sending the imps to gather bedsheets and extra blankets. Albus didn’t have much to do other than watch her take charge of the situation.

Will was staring at Mike, who was crowded in close to El, holding both of her hands with his. Despite the I-dump-your-ass saga that summer, Hopper's loss had drawn the young couple back together.

"I'm fine," he mumbled, unconvincingly, when Albus asked. "I just wish there was a pill I could take for that. A forget-about-Mike pill."

"Hell, if they made that pill, I’d take it," he said brusquely, and Will laughed a bit at that.

Robin, who was being interrogated by Lucas and Mike as she worked on their fort, stammered, "Uh, I dunno?" to whatever question Mike had, rudely, Albus knew, asked of her. "I like movies and karaoke?"

"Karaoke?" Lucas frowned at her. "Seriously?"

"It's a lot of fun!"

"She's right," Dustin said. "Frankly, we don't sing enough."

"Aw, Dustin, I'll sing with you!" Robin said.

Mike shot her a look and said, "Don't encourage him. You haven't had to listen to him sing Neverending Story."

This sparked off another bitch-off between the kids, and he didn't have the bandwidth to listen to it, or to try and stop it. He sat down, knee joints creaking the way joints did when the body was running low on sleep, and Will joined him, watching his friends bicker. He was well used to this, Albus thought, but still nudged Will with his elbow; he shot him a wirery smile. They slumped against the cushions, sinking into silence and jointly staring up at the ceiling.

The mediwitches thought his dad could wake up at any moment. It was hard to say, they explained, when he had been hit with such a rare and dark magic. But he could wake at any moment. Or not wake at all, went unsaid, but was still felt. For all Albus knew, he might be slipping into his brogues again soon.

Dustin's face loomed suddenly over his vision. "Me and El are hungry," he said.

Albus sighed, dragging his mind back to Mirkwood. "There are multiple meals sitting in the fridge."

"No there's not, we finished them all while you in the bathroom."

A longer, deeper sigh. "So what do you want me to do?"

A moment of sheepish silence. "Will you make something?"

"Oh, my god," he said, snapping his head around to finally look at Dustin. "You're fourteen."

"Yeah? So?" he cried, ultra-defensive. "Ovens are dangerous equipment to handle!" Albus surged to his feet after a third, deepest sigh, to gather strength, and he went into the kitchen.

While Robin built the fort and Albus surveyed the damage done to the meals his mum had sent for the Byers household, Jonathan reappeared from his bedroom, with a pair of headphones that he took over to Max, who had sunk back into that new, worrying silence while her male friends argued.

"I'm sorry about your brother," he said to her, in quiet tones that Albus only picked up because he was listening in. Jonathan shuffled his feet, and then held out his headphones to Max. "I heard your headphones got broken, so I thought you could borrow these, 'cause I know how much you like listening to music that sucks."

A small smile twitched the corners of her mouth. "Thanks," she said, taking them.

When Jonathan met Albus' eyes as he walked away, he initially froze, then tried to shrug his act of kindness off, saying, "Means I don't have to hear any k-pop while she's staying." Albus said nothing; they were all handling Hopper's death in different ways.

In the days following Starcourt, Albus had laid awake at night, listening to the old house settle around him, and trying to settle his bones in the same way. The potions he stole from the medicine cabinet might have mended the wounds inflicted by the Russians, but their ghosts lingered, and sometimes at night he snapped suddenly awake, sweaty, and fearing that one of them would be standing over him when he opened his eyes.

So, he'd started calling Robin, who was often awake herself, chatting to her in low tones until he found that his muscles had not atrophied, and he was able to turn onto his side and stare out of the open window at the stars glittering the sky.

If Robin called him, gripped in a panic, sobbing down the line to him, he told her he would be there soon; it's easier to sleep when you aren't alone.

Easier to banish the thoughts, the memories; white hot fireworks whizzing right past his ear, the human slurry the Mind Flayer had created to build itself a body, Heather Holloway never going home again, alongside so many others. The moment in the Russian bunker when his sister had run and the doors burst open. Staring down the barrels of what felt like one hundred rifles.

Who do you work for? Tell us the truth and the pain will stop.

Tell us the truth—Tell us the truth—

”…is that the truth?”

He sucked in a jagged, shaking breath, forcing his head up, asked, “Sorry? What did you say?” as he tried not to visibly tremble.

Robin had popped her head into the Byers' kitchen, a grin lighting her face. He focused on it like moth to flame. “Dustin said you took the kids trick or treating last Halloween," she said, her voice verging on mockery.

It was true; they had been mere days out from Will's ordeal against the Mind Flayer and despite Mike's insistence that they didn't need a babysitter, Mrs Byers hadn't been happy to let them go out alone. He and Nancy had tailed the kids around town all night.

"I have never collected so many abandoned Halloween hauls off the ground before in my life." He patted Lucas on the back. "It was all thanks to this man here."

Lucas grinned. "Yep, nothing scares the shit out of a bunch of mouthy little white kids like Nick Fury chasing them down the street."

Robin's pout was definitely sarcastic. "You're so cute," she said, and easily dodged the tea towel he threw at her head.

When they had gone back to their fort, Albus turned to the sink and busied himself washing the things Mrs Byers had left in there, so no one would notice the tremble in his shoulders.

By the time Nancy Wheeler came slipping in through the front door, Robin had completed her project. Using rope, blankets, and a few strategically-placed slits made with a knife from the kitchen, it was the coolest blanket fort ever constructed.

The kids pulled in sheets and pillows which they dumped on top of the sofas used to prop the fortress up, wading across the camping mattresses to set up multiple light sources. The blankets Robin rigged up reached high enough that the kids were able to stand beneath them without crouching; they promptly kicked Albus and Robin, who did have to crouch, out.

"Don't go starting shit," he warned, as hands pushed the small of his back. "Mrs Byers is resting."

"We know," six voices chorused.

When they stepped into the air of the living room, Nancy was standing in the front door, pulling a rain mac off. She had been sent with a casserole. Sweat was plastering strands of fringe to her forehead. She stared at Albus like a deer in headlights, then promptly looked away, and began searching for tasks to accomplish. His throat had gone too dry for him to attempt speaking.

A fresh rainfall was pattering against the window panes outside. The air inside had become exponentially harder to breathe. From the fort, the sounds of bickering were predictably ramping up.

“Quit kicking me.”

“I’m not kicking you!”

Albus raised his voice again. “Did I stutter? Did I?”

A sullen beat passed. “No,” Dustin said in a duh tone.

“Good. So shut it. Hey.”

It took Nancy a long minute to realise he was addressing her. “Me?”

“Who else? Stop looking for jobs to do and sit down. You’re making me nervous.” She did try to stop herself, but it didn’t work. “Nance,” he said, exasperated, voice not soft as it used to be with her. “You got nothing to worry about.”

“We don’t know that.” Hers came out sharp and cutting, but that never bothered him; Nancy Wheeler was nobody’s fool.

“There’s nothing we can do about that. Is there?” he asked. She glared at him. “Nancy. Is there?” Rather than say anything, she left to pace uselessly around the kitchen instead.

They were used to Hopper filling these silences with instruction. Do this, blockade that, find something to cover the giant hole in that window, and one of you scrounge up some duct tape…

Now there was no one to do these things, and they couldn’t slip off into sleep as they once would, because Hopper wasn’t there to instruct them to, and he wasn’t there to watch over them while they did either.

They were all that was left.

When Mrs Byers had vanished like a ghost down the hall for the final time that night—the boards didn’t creak beneath her footfalls, so slight had she become—the teens stood looking at each other from opposing sides of the kitchen. The wall clock, faded plastic and glow-in-the-dark hands, showed that it was half past midnight.

Albus, hands in his trouser pockets, didn’t know where to look, and kept going back to Robin who was safest. Robin, still settling into their group dynamic, was unable to keep still, shifting from foot to foot. Conversely, Nancy's eyes went to Jonathan over and over.

The ticking of the clock was all they heard; then they snapped to life simultaneously.

Jonathan was fishing the batteries out of the smoke alarm. “I’ve got some really good pot and it’s been a while since I smoked,” he said, as Robin went fishing through the fridge for drinks. "We'll only do a bit, just to take the edge off," he added, for the benefit of Nancy, who stood between the kitchen and the living room, like she didn't know if she should be there, but had presence enough to scoff judgementally at his suggestion.

"The kids are right there," she hissed.

"Just a hit or two each."

"Well not for me," she said. "It's a terrible idea. You three can do what you like."

Albus thought about it for a second, then remembered how bad he'd choked the first time Jonathan passed him a blunt, and decided to pass on the offer. He hadn't felt very well after his first attempt. But that could have been caused by any number of factors. Robin was more interested in the bottom of her glass, and so Jonathan was left choosing between smoking alone or not at all.

Robin had found a bottle of half-drunk Glenfiddich and put it on the kitchen table along with four glasses. She sat with her back to the window, which was how she showed her inexperience. None of them would have sat like that when only a month ago the Upside Down had been extending its rotten fingers into the town.

They joined her nonetheless, Nancy sitting opposite Robin so she could keep an eye on the darkness outside, Albus and Jonathan facing each other. Robin's glasses were passed out and Jonathan had put away his blunt, sending shifty looks at Nancy every few seconds that Albus didn't want to try decoding.

The clock ticked, the rain pattered gently on the roof, the tap was dripping into the sink. They sipped in silence for a while, all avoiding each others' eyes. At last, to fill the noise, Jonathan fished out his phone and a Bluetooth speaker from a kitchen drawer, and started one of his playlists. Ben E King quietly filled in the spaces.

A mirthless smile took his lips. Appropriate, he supposed, and winced down a sip of Glenfiddich. Drinking was probably a bad idea, but just in that moment he didn't care.

"This is pretty sweet," Robin mused at last, tapping her nails against her glass. "It's one in the morning and I'm not alone."

"I'm gonna have to find a way of letting Aiden and his mates go," Albus muttered, frowning at the grain of the wood on the tabletop.

Nancy faked a gasp. "You're breaking up with Aiden? He'll be crushed."

"They're dickheads."

"I think there's a commonality there," she said.

"They were doing jager bombs right next to the pool that children were playing in," he said. "Billy was too busy making sex eyes at Heather Holloway to notice. Or, I mean, I guess it was more I'm-gonna-kill-you eyes, but for some men that seems to mean the same thing..."

"Billy, man. Shit," Jonathan said.

"I nearly killed him that night," Albus admitted, knowing these guys were safe to speak to. A certain silence bounced off the cupboards around them. "There was this moment where I was like... I had him, and I could have done it, but I couldn't bring myself to—Not in front of my sister, y'know? And with Dustin there as well..."

"Well." Jonathan cleared his throat. "Good thing you didn't. El needed a meat shield at the end there, with the Mind Flayer."

"Jesus, Jonathan," Nancy muttered, curling her lip.

He reached for the Glenfiddich and topped his glass up. "Would only have been one of us instead," he said, shrugging.

She hissed, "Keep your voice down," tipping her head back towards the den, where the kids were hopefully asleep in their sheet castle. It was one am; they should be sleeping.

“He's right," Albus said. "One of us would have had to—the kids, they’re supposed to—get tall and stuff. Well, maybe not Will, a growth spurt there seems like a lost cause, but… They have to. They have to live long enough to get tall. It’s us before them, right? That’s how this works?”

They each seemed to be swallowed by the statement, but none more so than Jonathan, who sunk low in his chair, eyeing the unlit blunt on the tabletop without blinking. They sank into an uneasy silence, and Albus couldn't help but think, wasn't drink meant to make stuff funny? He was just depressed.

Mirkwood hummed and buzzed and groaned around them. He could hear the old pipes behind the walls and skimmed the sole of his shoe along the worn linoleum floor. Time dragged onwards, a seemingly endless night.

Freddie Mercury sang about going mad, but only slightly.

"Do you think Hopper—Do you think it was at least quick?" Nancy asked, voice breaking on the last word.

Jonathan shrugged. "From what I've been told, it had to have been."

"I just—El's already lost so many people," she whispered.

He thought about El admitting to Hopper that she was scared her friends would die, and what Albus had told her in consolation.

"Yeah..." He turned the glass around in his hand several times, the amber liquid coating the sides. “I told Hop—I said that he was the first of the Party on Death’s waiting list, and I think he took it to heart, because he was dead, like, two hours later.”

He was met with three faces of gape-mouthed mortification, the silence that went with them nearly comical it was so horrified. That was about right. He was lucky El hadn't pounded her fists into his face when he hugged her to him that night.

Then after a few seconds, a loud snort ripped the silence; Nancy burst out laughing, covering her mouth with her hands desperately, mortified with herself.

“Oh my god, that’s s-so awful,” she said, still trying to stifle the noise, unsuccessfully. “But Albus—oh—that could only happen to you.”

Robin and Jonathan stayed silent, staring at him like if they were still he wouldn't be able to see them. “It could, couldn’t it,” he agreed, after a beat, and suddenly found himself laughing too. Robin and Jonathan weren’t far behind once he was gone, and the four of them in time found they couldn’t stop.

They just kept laughing; at Albus, for always saying the wrong thing, then at anything that crossed their minds and made it as far as their mouths, no matter how nonsense.

The alcohol probably didn't help.

“You’re lecturing me about modernity, Potter?” said Jonathan, who normally existed above the dregs of human emotions like sadness or offence, but who wouldn't be ragged on for his music snobbery. “You, who drives a car so old the cousins of the stuff that fuels it still walked the earth when it was made?”

“Chickens?” Robin asked, cluelessly, and laughter spilled over Albus’ lips until he couldn’t keep it in. Robin got giggly when she was drunk; giggled at the pattern on the curtains, and when she made up excuses for mouthing off to her Russian torturers.

"To be fair to the guy, Albus did accuse him of orally pleasuring his own mother."

"Only because you wouldn't shut your trap!" he said, pointing at her accusingly as guffaws made Jonathan's shoulders heave.

"You're absolutely insane, man."

“I only said he ate his own mother out because I had to get his attention off you, Buckley! You kept hollering at him, telling him his code was shit!" He threw his hands up. "Make better life choices!”

“I won’t have that from you,” Robin said. “Take it back and let Wheeler say it.”

Nancy was staring at him, appalled. "You called the man torturing you a mother fucker?"

"I was out of my mind. They had me coked up! A bit of drink is nothing next to whatever that was!"

"This is a great idea next to whatever that was. I think it made my piss blue," Robin said, and the others cried, "Eww!" in chorus and Nancy threw Pringles at her head until she caught one with her mouth and went quiet to eat it.

When Hopper told Albus he was supposed to be someone Hopper could rely on, he didn't think he had ever envisioned a scene like this, but then Hopper went and died and his dad might also be dying, and the Upside Down had fucked off again so it wasn't like there was this great looming crisis he needed to have his head screwed on for right that second, was it?

The mental image of his head turning on his neck like the Exorcist girl made his stomach turn, and when Robin offered to top his glass up he passed, so Robin went on drinking alone.

In the morning. In the morning, he was straight as an arrow. If Max wanted to pretend he was her brother he'd let her, it wasn't like she wouldn't slide right into a family picture, not with that hair of hers, and—and it was his job to look out for the losers, right? And...

Something.

With the smack of a drum, Every Breath You Take started playing, and startled the thoughts straight out of his brain—and nearly him out of his chair.

Every breath you take, and every move you make. Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you.

"Plenty of people shipped Luke and Leia when Star Wars first came out, right?" Jonathan said, out of nowhere. "I mean, they never told us at first that they were brother and sister, so the people who shipped them weren't that weird. Leia kissed Luke on the bridge! I'm not a freak for thinking they were good together the first time I saw that film. Mike's just a stupid little judgemental bastard.”

“How nasty was Darth Vader's head?” Albus asked disgustedly. “Man, keep the helmet on.” It was a shame Voldemort didn’t have a helmet too, then the history books wouldn’t have to be filled with his nasty fucking snake face.

“Where does Mike even get off calling me a cousin fucker?” Jonathan went on. “Just because I wanted Leia to get with Luke back when I was four and I didn’t know they were siblings yet?”

"Oh, will you SHUT UP!" Nancy snapped. "It's two in the morning, I don’t want to hear any more of this argument! Han was always going to win over Luke because he's hot and Luke's not. Get over it."

Robin didn't hear any of this, slumped back in her seat and singing dreamily at the ceiling, "This hell is better with you. We're burning up together, baby, that makes two!" entirely to the beat of her own drum, because the Police was still floating out from the speaker on the table.

Albus looked around at his friends, grimacing. "Nancy was right, smoking would have been a bad idea. Jonathan, you're a degenerate."

“Chill out, Ferris Bueller," Jonathan said. "There’s no one here for you to fool.”

He held out his half empty glass like a collection tin. “Save Ferris?” Jonathan threw a Pringle at his head.

"Smoking is a bad idea!" Nancy said. "Do you want to know something, Jonathan? When the smoke hits the brain, the cells start dying."

Jonathan nodded impatiently. "I know, I know. Smoking impairs judgement, causes hallucinations... Lots of other wonderful things."

Robin, pulling her fringe out as far as she could and plaiting it, suddenly gasped. "Star Wars. We should go watch Star Wars! That's two good ideas in one night! Man, we are on a ROLL!"

The bickering continued far later into the night than he would ever remember. What he would remember, of what proceeded the Star Wars debacle, sitting by the kitchen table at Mirkwood, was the music, and his friends' faces, and the creeping sensation in his brain, likely fuelled by paranoia from the music, that the Mind Flayer was hovering over their heads, over Mirkwood itself, and waiting, watching, every step each of them took from thereon out.

Every move you make, and every vow you break. Every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I'll be watching you. Every move you make, every step you take, I'll be watching you.

I'll be watching you.

Chapter Text

Walking through the darkened halls of his home was like having a vice slowly unwinch itself from around his brain. Like the rush of relief after a terrible headache had passed. Dad, and Hopper, and Billy fucking Hargrove. He couldn't even tell if he was actually processing what had happened over the summer.

How did you know if you were actually dealing with your grief?

Was there a Buzzfeed quiz he could take that could tell him either yes or no? Because Albus could not say with any certainty. Sometimes he felt like the days were getting easier to wake up to but then most days, the way he easily went about his tasks made him suspect himself of psycopathy or sociopathy, or just plain denial.

His cousins had returned to Hogwarts two days ago. He hadn't seen any of them before they went; Lily hadn't wanted to see him and the others were too preoccupied with their school friends and preparations to give him a second thought.

Apparently Harry Potter's coma had turned the whole clan into an even bigger gravitational pull for attention than usual.

It was nearing midnight. His mum was at the hospital with Dad. He had been invited to join her, but the days stagnating in that hospital room were beginning to get to him, and she hadn't fought when he said no, thank you.

He was alone in the house, and blasting Pink Floyd from the stereo in the living room. Restlessness had him stalking the empty rooms like a ghost. His car keys were glinting at him from the bowl by the front door.

Nice night for a drive, he thought, a minute later, staring up at the silver shield of the moon.

His car had been vandalised at some point in recent days; there was a small colony of post-it notes stuck across the dashboard, in bright green, orange and fuchsia. Some had cat paws on them. They had been left by the kids.

Text me when you’re properly home and drive safe or else and many other messages of less relevance. One said ewwww, clean out your cup holders! Albus thought he knew which kid had left that one.

Another, which he found in the footwell, screwed up into a little ball, read I ♡ you too.

He swallowed, and flattened it out, and stuck it up alongside the others.

A pad of the cat paw notes was left in the coin tray along with the marker used to write him these missives. Rather than spend time taking the notes down, or obsessing over the meanings behind a certain note or two, he struck up the engine, listened to it sputter and then growl to life, switched on his headlights. Rolled slowly out of the driveway, listening to the tyres compress the flint beneath them.

He was driving just for the sake of it, watching the moon reflect upon the lake. He saw a couple, disguised by shadow, getting fresh on the beach where Barb died. The sight made him want to peel off his own fingernails.

He drove on until he came upon the Buckley house, and spied through the darkness a familiar face sitting on the front stoop. She spotted him at about the same time. She had a cigarette between her fingers, and a threadbare cardigan on over leggings and a t-shirt. When he rolled to a stop, she came over to his window.

“Good morning,” Albus said.

Robin blew smoke into his face. “Goodnight,” she said.

He hummed noncommittally. He was never one to argue. “What are you doing, loitering at this time?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Her eyes flickered, taking him in, the car, the fleece pulled over his pyjama top. “You going somewhere?”

“Just driving around."

She bit her lip. "Alone?"

"Me and the voices."

Robin nodded. "And are you—How are you? I heard your dad was in some kind of accident."

He turned back to face the road. Panic swelled in his chest. He was just about to call it quits and find some abandoned country track to race down at 150 miles per hour, when Robin latched onto his arm.

"You okay? Jesus, I didn't mean to disturb you."

He took several steadying breaths. "I'm good. I'm good."

Robin surveyed him. "Mind if I drive around with you?" At his questioning look, she said, "I'd feel better to think you weren't alone on the road right now, after Hopper, and—and your dad."

Albus supposed, as Robin put out her cigarette and clambered into the passenger seat of the CR-V, that they had pretty much become friends. If anything was going to unite two people, he supposed getting kidnapped by stupid fucking Russians was either a make or a break.

"So, you really aren't going anywhere in particular?"

"In life, or...?"

A smile was overtaking Robin's face. Her eyes glimmered. "Lets just start driving and not stop until morning."

“What if we end up in the Hebrides?” he asked.

“So what if we end up in the Hebrides? I—Oh my god. Albus, let’s go pet a cow!”

“Robin…”

“Come on, we can fit a baby one in your backseat!" At his disapproving look, her eyes glimmered. "Just crank up the tunes then, the louder the better, and let’s drive! To wherever. For however long.”

She flung herself back into the passenger seat and waited for him to answer her. He had probably been awake for fourteen hours but Robin was grinning a mega-watt smile at him and he was beginning to feel like he could do anything. Not so much in a life-or-death sort of way but in more of a... teenage way.

"Really?"

“Hell yes! It's only midnight. I could drive if you want. Just tell me where to go."

“You’re not driving my car.” He paused to ruminate. “If we're staying out all night, we need food," he said at last.

“Perfect, we can find a place on the way.”

"On the way where?" he asked, peeling away from the curbside back onto the abandoned road.

Robin tucked herself up into a comfy position and peered eagerly out of the window. "Anywhere," she said.

His car, despite the reviews left posted to the dashboard, was relatively clean, save for the empty KFC bucket in the passenger footwell that the cup-holder-critic himself had left behind, and the sticky notes on the control panel.

He refused to remove the empty takeaway coffee cups, or the crumpled crisp bags stuffed into them, because it would be too much work that he didn’t have in him at the moment. Perhaps the post-its could stay for now as well.

His eyes glided over the one Nancy had left for him. As they passed the Wheeler’s house he slowed involuntarily, and Robin caught on to it instantly.

“You wanna bring Wheeler along?” she asked.

He swallowed. Realised he had rolled to a stop. The light in her bedroom window was the sole patch of brightness in the overwhelming dark of night.

“Nah,” he rasped. “We’ll leave her be.”

The lights were off in every house they passed, every car locked up tight and sitting in its driveway. The tree branches were still, the lawns muted from jewel green tones into an off-putting emerald under the moonlight. This town was quaint during the day, but that story was different in the night. An upside down copy of the postcard tranquility. Humanity tucked away, just out of sight, and the world left just on the cusp of eerie. Preternatural, almost.

But Albus sometimes preferred the town at night, despite the things he always half-suspected lurked in it. It was familiar. His world. His version of the town, that only a select few were acquainted with.

I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown, the dream is gone.

"I-I have become comfortably numb," Robin sang, along with the cassette, and looked over at him with a grin. "You know the words. Sing along!"

"Absolutely fucking not," he said, and rather than look at him with disapproval, she threw her head back and laughed.

He was not driving particularly fast, but it felt as if he had shifted gears into warp-speed as they passed under each streetlamp dotted along the roadside with less and less time between each spot of light. Each bauble of light bled into the next with increasing intensity, like an asteroid shower only just beginning.

Robin visibly tensed as he picked up speed to send them flying through a yellow light right as it went red. Past the closed grocery shop where Mrs Byers worked. The traffic lights all behind them, he eased his foot off the pedal, and relaxed back into his seat.

His headlights ate up the darkness as they progressed out of town, travelling down the long road that led to Starcourt and passing it, and not breaking speed, even when being so close to the dead mall made him break into a sweat. Made him think of Hopper. He tensed his neck muscles to stop himself from looking back, to check for signs of the policeman having survived.

When they reached the slip road that joined them to the A591, he indicated, sped up, and merged into the scant, late night traffic. He shifted into sixth gear. Then they were flying.

He tried to focus on the music and not the way Robin was side-eyeing him, trying to read his mind. It was a disquieting thought. It shouldn’t be. After all, wasn’t that what he had always wanted? To be known? Understood? Wasn’t that in part why he spent countless nights entangled in the problems of the Upside Down? So that the others who were would take him in as their own?

Robin was there. Robin was seeing him.

Maybe that wasn't actually for the best. "So, your sister." Robin was squinting at him. "She's uh, magic?"

He sucked his teeth. Ruminated over how he could get out of this conversation. "Is she?" he said at last.

"Albus."

He sighed. Reached a speed of eighty. Waited until he was cruising. "We're not supposed to tell anyone."

"Like those government guys who made me sign all those papers after Starcourt?"

"Kind of." His mouth was as dry as Ghandi's flip flop. "Except imagine a whole society stringing you up if you spilled to anyone."

"Jesus."

"Not that this would condemn me. I've already told Dustin."

"That kid can bug literally anything out of you, can't he?"

A mirthless smile stretched his lips. "Guantanamo Bay wishes they had Henderson on payroll."

"So... magic is real?"

"Yes," he breathed, the walls of his car keeping the secret safely cradled.

Robin fell into silence for a few minutes, mulling the revelation over. He couldn't have admitted the secrets of the Upside Down so easily to any of his family, but while there was always, always, the underlaying panic that went with violating the Statute of Secrecy, it was somehow different to what he was doing now, with Robin. Maybe because of all the time he had spent away from the Wizarding world. He had essentially left it at ten years old.

Maybe it was the cruel newspaper headlines. The way he knew people talked about him that he could glean from verbal slips when he talked to his cousins, or even on occassion his aunts and uncles.

Betraying Lake Winsome carried more weight. The prospect of losing the place in the world he had shed literal blood to carve out for himself carried more weight.

Even so, his heart stayed in his mouth until Robin spoke again, further down the road.

"Are we stopping for food somewhere? We've passed a service station already."

"There's another coming up in a few miles," he said, reading the signpost in the dark, illuminated by his headlights as they flashed past.

“Nope, not a McDonalds, keep driving.”

He nodded. “Perfect services combo is a McDonalds, Starbucks drive-thru, M&S and a WH Smith," he said. "Let’s just keep driving until we find that.”

"So like, there's this whole society of wizard-people?" she asked, getting straight back into the meat.

"Yes, like lizard-people but with a W."

She shoved the arm that was resting on the gearstick. "I'm serious."

"They call themselves Wizarding society. Women are witches but the collective noun is Wizard. My whole family are wizards except for me because—" He broke off, suddenly jarred. "I'm an abberation in Wizarding society. A person born to magical parents, who has no magic themselves. A squib."

"Squib?" Robin's lips formed the word softly, so much so that it nearly brought him to tears. "That's what they call you?" He nodded, not daring himself to speak. "I'm sorry."

"Is what it is."

"Even so, Albus..."

She was lost for words. He didn't particularly feel like scrounging up any himself, so he let their silence permeate. Turned the stereo up after a few seconds, even though the volume left the doors of the car vibrating slightly. It was too loud. The police would pull him over for it. But he needed to block out the thoughts for even just a minute.

With your empty smile and your hungry heart, feel the bile rising from your guilty past. With your nerves in tatters as the cockleshell shatters, and the hammers batter down your door.

You'd better run!

The Wall was officially Divorced Dad rock, but everyone kept joking about how he was a single father of six, and his girlfriend had left him, so why not? Another album Jonathan put him onto. The man was a walking catalogue of the Seventies and Eighties music scenes and Albus would miss him if Mrs Byers decided to move her family to Ireland.

They'd been looking after Hopper's abandoned cabin together. He probably wouldn't continue if Jonathan left; it had been his idea.

The streetlamps strobed seemingly in time with the music and the movement set his nerves at ease somewhat.

"Does anyone else know?" Robin asked, voice still softened, just for him.

"Dustin." He bothered his bottom lip. "Nancy knows—something. She's spent too much time at my house, and she's too smart, not to know that something's up. We've never talked about it though."

"Maybe you should."

"Even for us this might be a bit much."

"Nah. Wheeler can take it." She took her hand back and tucked it into her lap. "Is that why your family are never around? There are pictures in your house filled with so many people who all look like you, but other than your parents and sister, I've never seen any of them. Even your sister only just appeared this summer."

"Wizards in Britain have a special school they go to most of the year," he said, and an old part of his heart, long suppressed, cried out all at once for those hallways he would never walk. The common rooms where he would never sit with friends, and warm his bones beside magical fires. The spells he would never cast. "That's where Lily is most of the time. I would have gone there if I hadn't been—the way I am."

You better run all day and run all night, and keep your dirty feelings deep inside. And if you're taking your girlfriend out tonight, you better park the car well out of sight.

"Good thing you're an abberation, then," Robin said, injecting false jovality into her tone. He noted that she was refusing to use the S-word. "Or this town would have been overrun with monsters years ago."

'Cause if they catch you in the backseat trying to pick her locks—

"Hardly. I was just there. I've never stopped the Upside Down."

"Stop it, you have."

He tried to think of a way to respond, but couldn't find anything that he thought she would accept.

—they're gonna send you back to Mother in a cardboard box.

You'd better run!

“Services twelve miles?" he said instead, spying another roadsign up ahead. He clicked his fingers and pointed. "Right, onwards.”

“What is that, a Shell garage? We’re not stopping at a Shell.”

"You're so picky over your services," he noted.

“Sorry, but a Shell garage and a Budgens is not services in my book.”

He had never spoken to anyone about his squibness. Not like this. Not to his parents. Not that quack sensitivity therapist. Not Nancy. It felt awful. He was officially having the worst time ever, since the last time he had the worst time ever, which was about a month ago. But Robin was a surprisingly symapthetic ear for someone he had only really spoken to for the first time earlier that summer. The fact that he didn't know her quite as well as he knew, say, Nancy, actually helped a bit.

There was less to lose if he said anything that put her off him forever.

"Onwards," he said, "for the perfect service station."

"Woo!" Robin punched the air, actually punched the roof of the CR-V, and put her fist down quickly, rubbing her knuckles. "Ow. Do magic cars have no rooftops?"

"There's not really such thing as a magic car," he said. "I mean, there are illegal ones that people have enchanted in secret, but wizards tend to prefer their own modes of transport. They sort of teleport everywhere."

"That's sick," she said, then caught herself, and added, "But cars are sicker. Especially this one."

"Okay, cool," he said. "I guess I won't throw you out after all."

"You'd better not, mister."

For a while, Robin allowed real silence to fall between them. The tape went on playing at too high a volume, but he eventually found it in him to lower it enough that the doors stopped vibrating. He felt some tension drain from his muscles. Flexed his fingers when he realised how tightly he had been gripping the wheel.

He could tell she was thinking of other things that she wanted to ask him, but for the first time since she had got into his car, they weren't all on the tip of her tongue, pushing and shoving to be the first question to get asked.

He was beginning to mull over the sorts of conversations he would inevitably have to hold with certain people one day if he planned to keep them in his life in a longterm capacity. His parents were the most obvious, but what those talks looked like, he couldn't even visualise. Perhaps a couple of death bed confessions would do the job.

Knowing his mum, she would still find the strength to curse him to hell and back before she actually croaked it.

Then there was Nancy. He knew Robin was right about him having to tell her, but again, what did that look like? Disbelief? A fundamental change in their relationship, he was sure of that much.

He had never tried to lie to Nancy. He hadn't. When she asked where his parents were at nine o'clock on a Wednesday night, he honestly told her work issues. When she wondered why his brother was never around, he honestly told her James has issues. He doesn't like being here. When they first started dating, he hadn't told her because—well, Statute of Secrecy, hello.

But he had also been deep in denial back then. He hadn't wanted to think about the Wizarding world. Hadn't wanted to acknowledge it if he didn't have to.

He omitted mention of it to Nancy because that was the reality he had been trying to build back then. One where it didn't exist. But would she see things the same way?

“I’m starting to need a wee, but I want to buy a phone case on the way in, and a Krispy Kreme on the way out. Can we make that happen?”

He glanced around at Robin again. She was scrolling through service stations on Google Maps, biting her lip.

"Thanks for the information," he said.

"Shut up. What do you think?"

"I don't know, I don't have God-like knowledge of every service station along this stretch of motorway."

"Damn, we should have brought Wheeler after all."

"What would Nancy do to help?"

"Use logic and reasoning to figure out how far we probably are from the ideal service station."

He nodded sagely. "Ah. Logic and reasoning. That's something this car is sorely missing right now."

“Sorry, what is that." Robin squinted. They were approaching another services sign. "Burger King, WH Smith and Costa? Ugh. Honestly, bring back Little Chef.”

“What’s Little Chef?” he asked.

Robin nearly broke her neck turning to look at him. “What’s Little Chef?” she repeated, outraged.

Albus sighed, and turned the volume back up again, just as Robin started in on a rant that would last the next fifteen minutes.

I don't need no arms around me, and I don't need no drugs to calm me. I have seen the writing on the wall. Don't think I need anything at all. All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.

All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.

It was another half an hour before they came upon Robin's water in the desert.

The time on the dashboard clock read 00:39, and the further he drew, the more his limbs loosened up. He felt like he was beginning to breathe after a lifetime living underwater.

Robin sat up suddenly in her seat. “Wait wait, what's that—Yes, a Welcome Break! Finally, a bit of class.”

Taking that as the cue that they had finally found the optimal sign twenty-four hour services station, Albus indicated and pulled off the motorway.

There was nothing in the car park except for a shiny Range Rover and a lorry parked in the lorry bay. Lights from the petrol station and the sliding doors of the Welcome Break lit the otherwise total darkness.

Albus followed Robin inside and they struck out immediately for the McDonalds. Their only company was the lorry's driver stopping in for his last meal before he bunked up for the night. They placed their order and put out the placard for table service, then sank into their booth seats.

Robin’s foot brushed his under the table and neither of them said anything. He watched her open her new phone case and slip her Samsung into it.

"Happy?"

"Yes." She put the phone face down on the table and sent him another incoming question look. “Can I say something that you’re probably going to make fun of?”

“Sure.”

“The whole point of The Wall is that it was a bad thing Pink built it, you know. In the end he’s forced to tear it down.”

Albus raised his eyebrows. “And?”

“I just don’t think you should build one of your own," she said, with a gentleness he hadn't prepared himself for. He turned his face to the tabletop instead. "How are you feeling about Hopper?"

"I don't know," he mumbled, chin in hand. "I'm worried that I'm not actually feeling anything. Like I've just suppressed it instantly because there's so much going on and I don't have time to be feeling shit right now.”

"Like your dad?" He nodded wordlessly. "I guess it is a lot to be dealing with all at once..."

"I mean what are the chances?" He flung his hands up—

And nearly knocked the food tray out of the hands of the poor minimum wage teenager bringing them their food.

"Shit. Sorry—"

"Doesn't matter," the guy said tonelessly, and dropped the tray onto the table, then turned and sloped away.

Still grimacing guiltily under Robin's judgemental stare, he unwrapped his burger and bit into it. Robin ravenously tore into her fries. Merlin, he was starving. He hadn't realised until now.

"Oh my god, I could eat that little baby cow right now I'm so hungry," Robin muttered, pausing eating just long enough to confess this.

He frowned. "What baby cow?"

"The one we're going to the Hebrides to steal."

"Ah."

The lorry man had started looking at them like they were talking about nicking Nessie from the Loch, and Albus' pacifying smile was more of a grimace, which didn't help.

"You know you can talk to me if you need to, right?" Robin was staring at him as she stuffed fries in her mouth. She finished chewing, had some of her drink, and went on, "Like, I didn't know Hopper the way any of you guys did, but I was down there as well, you know? In the Russian base. I don't know everything, but I know enough."

Of course she did. They had been in the bowels of Starcourt together.

"Are you sleeping any better?" he asked.

Robin swallowed. Averted her eyes. "I guess."

"You know I’ll always come when you call—"

"I don't want you to be at my beck and call though." She was shaking her head at him, and it sounded like an insult when she said, "You've got enough problems. I can handle this."

"You can honestly call me any time you need to," he said. "I don't sleep much. I'll answer."

Robin nodded slowly, frowning. "I think you need to focus on yourself more," she muttered. "You spend all your time worrying about Henderson and his friends to begin with. You don't need to add anyone to that list."

"I will anyway. It's how I am. I worry all the time."

Even more now that Hopper was gone. As Albus crept closer to proper adulthood—not just became of age, but actually turned into an adult—he felt more like responsibility for keeping the Upside Down in hand was up to him. With Hopper gone, who else would do that? Mrs Byers, sure, but she couldn't be expected to shoulder it all alone.

Especially if she decided she was leaving town.

There had to be a grown up in charge, and Albus didn't feel like a grown up at all, if he was being honest, but he was close enough. Closer than any of the kids were. Jonathan had his family to worry for and Nancy—

He didn't want to think about Nancy. If he started, he would fall into a black hole that he would struggle to climb out of. Then he had Robin.

She was blinking at him and loudly sucking up the last dregs of her drink. Albus still had most of his left. The paper cup was sweating onto the table, so he picked it up and took a cursory sip.

"I'm going to the bathroom," Robin said, standing up. "Then I'm getting us coffee and we can keep going."

"We need petrol anyway," he agreed, getting up and deciding to take his drink at the last minute. "I'll see you back at the car."

The night air was cold as he stood beside the car. Staring off into the darkness from beneath the flourescence of the petrol station, his mind raced so quickly that he couldn't actually pinpoint any coherent thoughts. So much had happened. So much continued to happen. He wondered how long it would be before the Russians came looking for him and Robin, because surely they couldn't be allowed to escape with their lives like that?

Or maybe after Hopper they were considered fair game.

Fuelled up, he sat waiting in the drivers seat for Robin to get back with their coffees, engine idling. He turned down the volume on the mixtape again, incrementally. Then in the distance he saw his friend appear from the Welcome Break, holding their two coffees in the air like a game hunter with her prey.

A smile crept onto his lips.

Albus shifted into first gear, released the handbrake, and began to creep away. He went slowly enough that he caught the exact moment the dopey grin dropped from Robin's face—then he burst to life, tearing across the abandoned car park, tyres screeching.

It took everything in him not to cackle at the way her increasingly diminishing figure went from trailing after the CR-V like a lost puppy to sprinting like a vengeful demon.

Just as he reached the exit, he slammed the breaks on and jolted to a stop; Robin, panting, caught up at last a few seconds later.

"You're a fucking bastard, Potter," she said, falling back onto her seat. "You're evil!"

"What's up?" he asked innocently, taking his coffee and having a sip before he started driving properly. "Something wrong?"

"Gaslighting prick," she said, shoving him repeatedly in the arm and then graduating to punches.

"Robin—Robstar—" He cut himself off, laughing. "I'm going to crash."

"No less than you deserve, you absolute bastard!"

"It's a shame I didn't leave you behind!" he cackled, trying to bat her away and still maintain his speed.

"It's a shame you didn't crash when you tried to!"

The CR-V was a meteor of light and sound and motion. It zipped through the blackness like a shooting star. They cut through the night like a sharpened blade.

He was laughing properly, in a manner he hadn't in—Oh, so long. Without the assistance of some mind-altering substance? In longer than he could honestly say. Robin eventually eased up on her punches but Albus was still giggling right up until he spontaneously took the exit for the first city they came across. The name didn't matter. He just needed to find them somewhere to go, something to do with this endless night they had given themselves.

"Why here?" Robin asked, but moodily, because she was still mad at him.

"Why not here?" he asked in turn. "Lets just see what we find."

She pulled a noncommital sort of face and turned to look out the window at the roadsigns they were passing. She played with the ends of her hair, rubbing them together in a way that Nancy would have said causes breakage, but Robin clearly didn't mind.

They were on a smaller road now, but it was just as empty. They crossed paths with an Audi at one point, but met no other traffic. The gaps between street lamps were greater and they spent longer plunged into darkness as they sped on towards the city. Soon they were once again lit by nothing more than his murky headlights.

They really needed a clean.

When he felt the quiet between them had gone on for long enough, he tried to extend an olive branch by offering something out to her that she hadn't had to dig for.

"My dad was attacked by a serial killer," he said, when cover of darkness overtook completely. He felt Robin go still in the passenger seat. "He's kind of well known in the Wizarding community, and he was targeted. That's how he got hurt."

"I'm sorry," she said eventually.

He nodded. "Me too."

"And is he—Will he wake up?"

"They don't know."

He might never speak to him again. Might never find a way to actually look him in the eye and admit everything, and while the prospect of doing that galled him, while it was a mortifying prospect in most ways, the thought that he would never find a way, would never have the opportunity for honesty, made the bottom of his stomach drop out.

Harry Potter had lived his lfe in adversity. He had felt the cold hand of death close around his throat several times before adulthood. At some point, didn't Death have to stop trying? At least until you were proper old?

"Do you want to talk about it?" Robin asked, and he gave himself a minute to think it over.

Albus liked to think that if his dad woke up right that instant, that he could go to his bedside and confess everything. But he knew that he wouldn't. While they had the same propensity for finding danger, Albus did not have the strength to admit it to him. Part of him feared that the truth would kill Harry stone dead.

"Not yet," he said. "I still need to sit with it."

"What's he well known for?"

"Saving the world," Albus said quietly.

Then they rounded a bend in the road, and a city burst into being before their eyes. The lights and the colour blinded him at first, but as they adjusted to the change, he felt a gust of cold air suddenly press down on his head.

His head whipped round, all in a panic, but it was only Robin, pushing back the skylight and climbing up through it. He nearly slammed on the breaks, but then she didn't lose her balance.

The wind was whipping her hair all around her head and she was whooping and laughing, arms up in the air and yelling into the wind even though it swallowed up her voice. The tape and changed and the song now playing over the stereo was Dreams by the Cranberries, and Albus knew that no force on Earth could have stopped Robin from having her moment.

Then they were taken into the vacuum of the city and she lowered herself back into the car, laughing. Her face was scorched red by the wind but she was almost high on her own adrenaline, pulling strands of hair from her face with disbelieving laughs. She caught his eye, and Albus started laughing too for some reason.

"You're fucking nuts, Buckley," he said, laying heavy on the breaks to meet the new speed limit.

"You're fucking nuts, Potter!"

She was still laughing, and so was he.

They were in the city, lights on buildings all around them, every which way they looked, and a river running alongside the CR-V. The colour was blinding. The people were partying. The city was living.

At first they just drove, taking in the sights, bickering over which late night activities they would do first; catch a film, a matinee play, find a club that would let them in!

Their plans were swerved by a congestion charge sign that sent them turning off into a quieter part of the city.

Here it was more red brick and run down buildings. He didn't feel unsafe though. They rounded several streets, sparcely populated by the late night clubbers stumbling either home from or out to the bars in the city centre. But these streets were calmer than the ones they had first been introduced to.

A pocket of garish technicolour made itself known and Albus tried not to look too affronted, because Robin had made fun of him for being an old man enough since their friendship began. He studied the offence to his eyes.

Down the street, and on the right side of the road, was a karaoke bar. The building was of mid-century design, with modern lights making it glow rainbows into the night. It was all chromatic and glossy, piped with fluorescents and neon signs in the shape of martini glasses and disco balls. With his snazzy, one-handed steering, he piloted them to the roadside parking and slid into a spot right by the door.

He went before Robin, took the chrome door handle in hand, and opened it for her with a theatric whoosh.

Everything in the bar was a harsh contrast of bright and dark. The tiled floor was dark but colourful; speckled with flecks of sparkling pink when the light hits it just right. The amalgam of style and pigment was beginning to give him a headache.

Robin was vibrating with excitement. He could do little more than watch as she finessed them each a drink from the bar. He didn't even ask her what she had picked for him; he just drank it. Paused.

"There's no alcohol in here," he shouted over the noise.

"Duh, you're driving!" Robin toasted her own drink into the air; it was cherry pink. "I'm not though!"

Further into the bar, they found a stage, and a drunk man on it making an absolute oaf of himself. Maybe it was for the best that he'd been given a mocktail.

"We're going up," Robin said, shaking his arm and beaming.

"We? I need a drink with more of a kick to get me up there!" he said, using his mocktail—which was good, to be fair—to point at the man who had fallen over and was continuing his butchering of Careless Whisper from a prone position on the floor of the stage.

Robin pouted at him, but she didn't try to twist his arm for once. They found a table near the stage and he watched Robin throw back two cocktails in a row before she was grinning like an oaf herself and managing to argue with him over bestiality of all things.

"It is not bestiality if you're both fucking crocodiles!" she slurred, jabbing her fingertip on the sticky table top clumsily. "Two crocs is just the animal kingdom!"

"But you would still have the consciousness of a human—" he rebutted, before she gasped, cutting him off, and jumped to her feet.

"It's finally my turn!" she cried, throwing her arms up into the air.

The stage had emptied, and the guy in charge of the mic was holding it out to her.

"Ah, great," Albus said to her already-retreating back. He slipped his phone from his pocket and set the camera to record.

To be fair to her, she was far from the only drunk in the place. He thought that apart from the man in charge of the microphone, he was the only sober man in the building. As Robin was stumbling to the stage, a guy on the other side of the room leapt to his feet, cried, "First time is free, ladies!" to a group of women at a table next to his, stripped off his shirt, and then passed out on the floor.

Horrible, screeching feedback was the first thing to hit his ears. He winced, and watched Robin struggle to lower the mic stand. He waited with bated breath to see which song she had chosen to sing.

Then he felt part of himself flop over and die as the opening parps of Fireball by Pitbull tore through the speakers. Robin was trying to do the dance. Albus sipped his mocktail, and zoomed in the camera.

Time sped by them. Robin performed several songs before she was finally thrown off the stage; her final performance was a repeat of Fireball that she managed to lure several members of the audience up onto the stage dancing for. Without even realising, Albus spent the whole time laughing, properly, full chest-heaving laughter. His phone memory was filled up with videos, by the time Robin was expelled from the stage by the man with the mic, whose name was Mike, actually, he found out.

They didn't stay for long afterwards.

Robin seemed to be coming down, and it was half four in the morning. He'd drifted off into sleep once or twice as Robin struggled to get songs to play, but he really needed to actually sleep. His companion was too tired herself to argue.

He helped her out to the CR-V, waiting faithfully where he had left it, and still grinning, Albus climbed back into the drivers seat.

The drive back the way they had come was much quieter than it had been coming. Robin turned the mixtape down to one of the lowest volumes just as the tracklist approached the slower tracks.

Storms by Fleetwood Mac accompanied them back into the dark of night, the lights of the city growing smaller and smaller, the windows turning to pinpricks, before they turned the same corner and it was gone from sight. Albus' head was empty, the traffic that usually clogged it up gone. He relaxed back into his seat and sped them home towards the Lakes.

They saw the signposts for Lake Winsome about ten minutes after the sun began its ascent into the sky, and he followed them, drinking deep from his second coffee of the night.

"God, I wish I had that sunrise on a t-shirt," Robin murmured, blinking at it through bleary eyes. "I'd wear it a lot."

His lips twitched into a smile. "I think you're still drunk, Robin."

"Excuse you, I'm sober as a platypus."

"Really? That's not how it appeared in the karaoke bar."

She snorted. "I wasn't that bad."

“You told the crowd, ‘I’m a big fat lesbian, and this is Gimme Gimme Gimme Wo-man After Midnight.”

“I did not.”

“You did. I filmed it. You were very keen that the audience understood the subtle humour of wo-man replacing a man.”

“Ohhh, my god.” Her hands cupped over her mouth in horror, and by the time he had played the video for her in full, they had migrated to cover her eyes as well. “I am a failed experiment,” she said in a muffled voice.

"Maybe you should go back to sleep," he suggested, beaming at her. "See if it turns back time."

Cars glided down the roads alongside them, keeping them company until they took the turn off for the Lake District, and were soon ensconced in the hills, trees and mountains of home.

It was nearing five in the morning, and the world was still largely stagnant, but he saw burgeoning signs of life as the sun began its ascent. Half-asleep business men locking up their houses, briefcases in hand as they started for their cars. Two old cars puttered down the road ahead of them; unwilling to slow to a crawl, Albus overtook them both. Birds were starting to sing, winged bodies outlined in shadows against the lavender hue of dawn.

The smell of pine and forest flumed in through the open skylight.

He took Robin right back to the place he had picked her up from seven hours ago. She stumbled wordlessly from the passenger seat, and he watched her into the house until the front door had shut behind her. Then he went to drive himself home—and stopped.

There was a new neon pink sticky note slapped onto the dashboard. Slow down sometimes, prick!!! Under the burnishing sunlight, the fluorescent stationary could almost be glowing.

The tape deck had gone silent, allowing the chirps of awakening songbirds to permeate through the windows, and Albus could have cried; he was alive to listen to them.

Chapter Text

The first one to die was Chrissy Cunningham, but the day on which she died dawned blue and bright, sun high in the sky, and not a hint in the air of what was to come.

It was April and lovely; the world was reborn.

The Aurors had still yet to catch the killer stalking the Wizarding world, and the public were febrile, ready to go off at the slightest hint that they knew who was responsible. Even his dad, only back at work very tentatively, was beginning to catch shit for his part in the lack of progress. But no one had been killed since his dad was attacked, which was something, Albus supposed. And Lily was back at Hogwarts and serving her detentions with minimal complaints, so he counted the Wizarding world as fully functioning and un-needing of his attention.

Most of it, therefore, was split between his poor, fucked up kids; Will had made a grand total of two friends at his new school; he described the friendships as tentative; El had been nearly completely mute for the first month after they left, but had recently started opening up, and had in fact called him earlier that morning, rather than the other way around, with one of her reports, as she called them, about the Byers’ new life in Ireland.

Will talked more than El, but he found generally said less. El said quite a lot without meaning to, on the other hand. Generally he found that if he could talk to each kid separate of the other, he could get a complete picture of things from them.

"Will has been painting a lot, but he won’t show me what he’s working on. Maybe it's for a boy? There's one in our class who he stares at sometimes, when he thinks no one is looking. I'm sure there's someone he likes, because he has been acting…weird."

"Weird how?" he asked, pitching his voice low, as he went around the room throwing a few things he needed into his backpack. It was the last day of school before the Easter holiday started.

Across the hall, the shower was running.

"Like... secretive," she said, after pondering for a moment. "Something is going on with him, but he doesn't want anyone to know, and Jonathan doesn't notice things anymore. He's been acting weird too. I think he's just nervous about university, but I don’t know how he’ll get to university, because his car is still broken."

"Well yes, the Fiat Panda was never much of a trooper…"

"He drives around after college with his funny friend Argyle now. He and Jonathan like to smoke smelly plants together."

He grinned. "Ah, the smelly plants. I know them well."

"Jonathan says the plants are super safe because they come from the earth, but to not tell Joyce."

He’d had to work very hard to keep himself from laughing. "And how about you? How are you getting on?"

It had been months since Starcourt, and sometimes he still woke up in the night hearing her guttural screams, collapsing in his grip, as Hopper failed to emerge from the smoldering wreck of Starcourt.

She had struggled not only with that, but with the loss of her powers. Mrs Byers, apparently, had struggled to find a therapist who could adequately help her. Albus knew he wasn't the only one who called her to talk; El had let slip twice now that Nancy did as well, but two teenagers were in no way equipped to act as therapists.

"Me?" The slightest pause, before El declared, "I am twice as happy now."

The breeze fluttering his curtains was shut out abruptly as he swung his window shut and shuffled into his shoes impatiently. The diffuser Nancy had given him a year ago was running on its last dregs; the scent was Morning Coffee but it had always run more vanilla to him. He needed to find out where she had got it from and replace it.

He traipsed down the aged, winding stairs at quarter past six—because he couldn't even sleep in anymore, he just woke up at the time he used to set his alarm for—to find Robin sitting on his sofa, wearing a pair of Lily's pyjamas. They were short in the leg.

He stopped dead.

"Why are you here?"

Robin raised her brows. "I stayed over last night. Your mum let me in." She took a long sip of coffee.

"My mum—"

It was then that Ginny walked out from the kitchen. "Morning, dear." She brushed her hands off and slipped into her jacket. Albus could only stare as she smiled at Robin, and said, "It was nice to see you again, Robin. You have to let me know when you’re free for a Bridgerton night. I haven’t started season two yet.”

"I will, Mrs Potter," Robin said, grinning like a gremlin.

"Excuse me?"

"I have to go. Lots to get on with." She patted him on the head and kissed his cheek. "I'll see you tonight, darling."

Rather than leave via the Floo, considerate of the company, she walked out the front door, and after a few moments, he heard the distant crack of apparition. He didn't fancy telling her that Robin knew.

"What," he said, "the fuck. You can’t have movie nights with people who aren’t me. Especially when they’re my mum.”

"I lost my door key and couldn't climb in my bedroom window," Robin said. "I didn't want to wake up my parents so I came here. They're early sleepers," she added.

He went into the kitchen and made himself a coffee, and took a slightly stale croissant as breakfast. When he went back into the living room, Robin was waiting for him.

"You should probably leave soon, unless you've moved in," he said, sitting back heavily on the sofa and switching on the TV.

"Why's that?" Robin asked, stealing half his croissant as she joined him. There was a pause while he brought up Netflix.

"No reason," he said, putting on an episode of Gilmore Girls. "Is this where we left off?"

"Yeah," Robin said, curling up next to him. "Ugh. I'm so mad at Emily I can't even talk right now."

The episode played, and Robin sang the theme song like she always did. Birds sang in the pine trees outside and yellow sunlight floated in through the sliding doors. Albus listened out for the shower shutting off, and shifted slightly in place. Robin's quizzical look went ignored.

He was only a few months away from being done with school forever, the Byers had been gone from Lake Winsome since last November, and his dad had only been let back into the Auror office in January.

It had been busy nonstop since Starcourt blew up last August. Early mornings to see his dad in St. Mungo's before he drove himself and Robin up to Winsome Comp, late nights as he tried to get all his homework done, in between calls with Will, who was always somewhere on the scale of melancholy to sheepish and never any better than that.

They had earned this rest.

Then footsteps on the stairs sounded to signal the interruption of it. He felt himself tense up, and cursed internally, and hoped that his houseguest would just slip out the front door unannounced.

Steve Harrington appeared in the doorway to the living room, pulling on his stupid yellow jumper. Albus closed his eyes at the sharp intake of breath from beside him.

"Jesus, you wake up early... Hey, Albus, can I get a cup of coffee?"

Eyes still squeezed shut—as if he might wake from this nightmare that way—he said, "The coffee shop in the town square opens at seven."

Steve frowned at him. "Come on, you know that's not what I mean. I can smell it from here."

"Oh, my god," Robin said.

"Okay, fine!" He launched himself up from the sofa and hurried into the kitchen. Whipped up a hasty coffee in one of the chipped mugs that they wouldn't miss. Steve was trying to make conversation with a starstruck Robin when he got back. "Shouldn't poison you."

Steve's smile was very smug. "Thanks, amigo. I'm assuming you're going to call me at some point, and not leave me hanging again." Robin started choking.

"You're as subtle as a hurricane," he said, thinking that his thing with Steve was way too casual for him to invest in seriously.

He had the audacity to wink. "And as charming as a golden retriever. I can see why you like me so much."

"Who said I like you?"

Steve took a long drink. Puckered his lips like he was thinking. "You did. Last night. More than once."

"You need to leave."

"At the very least you implied it."

"Robin's going to asphyxiate."

"Oh, well, we wouldn't want to kill poor Robin." He leant around Albus and called, "Hey, Robin."

"Hi, King Steve!"

Steve's smug face was back in his, and way too close for comfort, considering current company. "I'll see you around, yeah?" And with one kiss left on Albus' lips, obnoxious, again, considering the company, he let himself out the front door.

"Bye, Steve Harrington!" Robin crowed, smiling wide enough to split her face in two. Albus wished it would, when the front door closed and she turned on him. "Okay. Spill the tea."

"No," he grumbled, walking away from her, to the kitchen.

She followed him in there. "That was Steve Harrington."

"I love it when I can actually watch the lightbulb go on over your head."

"Steve Harrington. Steve 'the Hair' Harrington? King Steve?"

"Yeah, nice job calling him that to his face, Buckley."

"You can't quip your way out of this one, Potter. Since when are you sleeping with Steve Harrington? Are you sleeping with him? Is that what that was?"

He didn't really know what to tell her. He didn't think it was anything so remarkable; that he had pulled Steve Harrington was more noteworthy than him pulling a guy, and obviously, Robin wasn't bothered about the bi thing, but other than Will and Teddy, he had never really talked to anyone about this stuff.

He thought about not answering, but she wouldn't leave him alone if he didn't. "Since New Years," he admitted. "It's just casual, when we're both bored. It's only happened a few times, and never here before.”

"Wow. This has rocked my world, man."

Honestly, he wasn't that much of a grouch that no one would believe this of him, was he? On his last check-in with Will it was more of the same.

“You and Steve Harrington?”

“Yep,” he said. He forced himself to sound as laidback as he did when he talked about girls, because Will was so anxious about this that he didn’t dare let it show that he was a bit nervous saying it out loud for the first time.

“Really?”

“What? You think I couldn’t pull Steve Harrington?”

"Does he make you call him King when you—?"

"No, I do not call him King Steve, ever, William."

Will had laughed, and talked with more freedom about the secret boy he fancied. Never gave a name, though. Refused, steadfast, to give a name. Albus didn't like to make assumptions, but he thought he could possibly intuit the identity, if he cared to.

"I’m going to school in fifteen minutes." He dumped his mug in the sink. "If you’re not ready I’m leaving you here."

She was ready, and waiting beside the CR-V when he got out there, and still going on about Steve, hopping from foot to foot with frenetic energy. She was momentarily sidetracked by the pack of cigarettes in his coin tray.

"Can I steal one?"

"Go for it. Steal the pack," he said, striking the engine. "Can't stand the things." He revved her up, then pulled down the gentle slope of the driveway onto the lakeside road.

"Oh, you don't?" She was holding up the pack he had bought with his own money, which to be fair was a good refutation. Her eyebrows couldn't have risen higher into her hairline. "Like how you're not getting with King Steve?"

"You know, when you were going out with that weird hippie girl from Windermere, I didn’t say anything. I could have. I could have told people." Robin was nodding solicitously to all of this, peering into her travel mug to see how much coffee she’d poured for herself in her haste to be ready. "But I didn’t. I chose not to."

"Right," she said. "Maybe you should have told some people!"

He pressed down on the accelerator to conceal his annoyance, speeding past the lake, which was reflecting a blue sky patchy with clouds, and glittering under the morning sun. The trees shaded the road and the breeze through the open windows was sweet, and he was cranky.

"Why drive so fast? Hurrying up to get back to Steve faster?" She started cackling again. "God, Albus, how do you keep these things under wraps?"

He didn’t say anything, but he was approaching that one big bump in the road, so he was sure to speed up at just the right time, and Robin’s coffee sloshed out of her travel mug and all over her beige corduroys. When the five seconds of stunned silence had passed and she started swearing, he smirked to himself.

He parked up in one of the handful of Sixth Form spaces and they ran almost straight into the kids, scruffy in their uniforms, loitering around the side of the main building. Dustin, Lucas and Mike. No Will, no El—no Max.

His stomach tightened a bit, but then Dustin spotted them, and came stalking over. He launched straight into one of his catastrophising stories, this one about some crackhead on a bus who told Dustin about this secret unexplored World War Two bunker buried out in the woods, and we have to go looking for it, Albus! History stands right below our feet! He'd been on about this for a week now, and Albus was sick of hearing it.

He sighed long and heavy. "Would you shut up about that stupid fucking story?"

"No I won't! It's the truth and I'll prove it!" Dustin cried. "Lets go after school to talk to Smelly Dan and he'll tell you himself!"

"Fine!" Albus said.

"You'll have to drive us though, he lives far out from here!"

"Fine, but I need to stop for petrol first!"

"Fine! Can we stop on the way for McDonalds?"

"NO!"

"Fine! Shotgun!"

"There's only two of us, you moron!"

"Fine!"

With Dustin having ranted himself into silence, Albus asked Lucas where Max was. He didn't like her absence. It set his nose out of joint, given the slow descent into silence from a girl he'd once characterised as being like a pint-sized atom bomb.

"I don't know," Lucas admitted. "Since we broke up, she hasn't opened up to me about anything."

"She always has her headphones on," Dustin said. "She's spending so much time listening to music that her phone's dead before lunchtime."

"Well, can you blame her?" Mike said, incredulously. "Her brother's dead, her dad's left, and she and her mum are stuck living on a shitty caravan park outside town!"

"She's seemed especially down the last few weeks," Lucas said, leaning in to Albus conspiratorially. "I'm kind of worried she might be depressed. I've tried talking to her but she won't hear it. Maybe you and Robin can go see her?"

"Why would she listen to us?"

"Duh, you're senior figures of authority," Dustin said, rolling his eyes.

"Senior?"

"Duh, Hopper left you in charge of us, didn't he?"

"She said you helped her out when Billy died," Lucas said.

Uncomfortable, he said, "I don't know. I think she needs her friends right now. Or her therapist."

"You are her friend, and we are your only friends now Jonathan's gone and you and Nancy have broken up," Lucas said, raising his eyebrows. "So you can't afford to alienate us by not doing this."

"I have Robin," he said, pointing in the direction of the girls bathroom, where Robin was changing out of her coffee-soaked corduroys and into a pair of leggings.

"Do you and Nancy really never talk anymore?" Dustin asked, screwing his face up. "You two used to do everything together, it's so weird now that you don't. You guys were joined at the freaking hip."

"We see each other sometimes. I mean—Sometimes, when people go through something traumatic together, and your relationship changes—Look, me and Nancy, we—When you go through something traumatic with a person, your relationship changes in ways it wouldn't have done otherwise." They were staring at him blankly. He sighed. "I'm trying to tell you that me and Nancy are still friends, and we always will be. We're just... not together now."

"I know it's not how you were before," Mike muttered, glaring at him. "I haven't had to hear that in a long time."

"What's that?" Dustin asked, and Lucas rolled his eyes.

"Like, it, man." When Dustin still didn't get it, he said, "It, you know! IT."

"What the fuck is It?"

Since his mortifying admittance of love under Russian truth drug, and he then found the discarded post-it note in his car, they had been studiously avoiding each other whenever possible. He knew she and Jonathan had spent a lot of time together before the Byers left town, but he never worked up the nerve to ask her what the two of them were now.

Since Jonathan was currently spiralling in Ireland, if they had been anything, he didn't know if it was on-going.

"Dude, you had sex with Nancy in Ted's house?" said Robin, who had re-joined them without his noticing.

"Shut up, Buckley."

"Someone should neuter you."

They left the kids and headed off to their first class of the day.

In the corridor, straight ahead, Steve Harrington was talking to Chrissy. She was smiling all wide, eyes creasing at the corners, reddish hair being tugged at by absent-minded fingers. It was pretty common knowledge that Chrissy fancied Steve, to everyone, it seemed, but Steve, who was smiling back at her so obliviously that Albus wanted to march over there and give him a shake.

"We should get to PSE. We'll be late," he said.

Robin was still staring at the boy she accused him of being obsessed with. "Harrington's turned into such a nice guy since Billy Hargrove beat the tar out of him," she said. "And so did you! Ohmygod, maybe violence is the answer after all!"

"I'm going!" he called over his shoulder, and he left her to catch up.

It was busy work, co-parenting a gaggle of traumatised children with the girl he used to go out with, and Robin Buckley.

Mike left for the train station after school; he was catching the train to the port of Liverpool, where he would get on a ferry and make his first big boy journey across the sea to visit the Byers. Nancy was seeing him off, so Albus had stayed away, he and Robin taking Dustin down to see the World War Two crackhead, which had been as much a waste of time as he knew it would be.

Albus and Robin were meant to be watching Lucas play for the local youth football team, Winsome Rovers, but Dustin's sidequest mean they arrived just as he was subbed on. Albus didn't pretend to know what was happening, but Robin watched women's football, so he used her to get a grasp of the rules.

They screamed their heads off when Lucas scored at the death to win the match, and he beamed when he saw them in the crowd, but his smile dimmed when he realised that Max wasn't there.

Things had been this way for a while now. Hopper and Billy were laid to rest a week apart from each other, in the middle of September, one month on from Starcourt, and from that day forwards, Max had begun retreating from everyone. She didn't even take enjoyment from her usual simple pleasures, like baiting Dustin or getting into slapfights with Dustin or calling Dustin a dumbass.

He and Robin stopped off at the drive-thru coffee shop, Jimmy's, on the way out to Primrose Hill, and he even promised not to make Robin spill her flat white all over herself this time. The Weeknd played over the radio. Warm lights blinked at them from the houses dotted around across the lake, through the trees.

It was seven o'clock by the time they rolled up to the caravan park that Max and her mother now lived in.

"What are we going to say to her?" Robin muttered, sipping at her coffee as they crawled up the gritty road, Love Lane, each turn they took shittier than the last. Primrose Hill was located halfway up the winding track. His headlights swallowed up the dark and overgrown branches from the brambles either side scratched at the windscreen.

It took Albus a few moments to respond. He wasn't built for stuff like this. When the kids were throwing themselves at otherworldly monsters, he could just throw himself between them. Helping a kid whose brother had died and step-father had left was... beyond his pay grade.

"Tell her not to kill herself with drugs?" he said, snidely.

"Okay, you're not helping."

"Oh, sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to be helping."

At first, Max didn't want to let them in, but Robin had a funny way of worming past peoples' defences. They found themselves perched in her cramped, unheated living room, holding milky cups of tea. Albus had taken one sip, while Max was watching him through hostile, suspicious eyes, and then left his cup alone once she turned away. The carpet beneath their feet looked about twenty years old, the rest of the decor just as dated, and the lights flickered in their brackets.

That had his hand stilling, as he lifted the cup to take a fake sip of the awful tea. But then the lights levelled out, and he reasoned that the electricity in a place like Primrose Hill was going to be patchy.

He turned his attentions on Max, who was scoffing disdainfully and flopping back in her seat, arms folded, scowl in place. "God, is Lucas getting the whole parent patrol to stalk me?"

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"Nancy keeps trying to pretend she's my therapist as well," she grumbled.

Since the night he had driven Max to the overlook, she had entirely closed down, and any attempts to reach out to her were met with hostility. But he supposed it wasn't in Nancy's nature to give up. Hopper had told the two of them that they were in charge, in Starcourt. He had probably just meant, You're in charge of getting all these dumbass kids out of here alive! but he should have known that both Albus and Nancy would take such a statement entirely to heart.

It was the last thing he had ever asked of them.

"We went to watch Lucas play Bootle AFC tonight. He came on at sixty minutes and scored the winner," Robin offered.

Max's look was sardonic, and as close to light as any he'd seen on her face in months. "Neither of you know the first thing about football."

"Not true! I played on a co-ed team when I was a kid, until I aged out of it at ten, and found out the Lake District didn't have any girls teams," she said, finishing on a mutter.

Max's face twitched. "That sucks."

A shoulder lifted with a hey-ho air. "I was no Ellen White anyway."

"So, Lucas did good." Max nibbled on her lip, and looked down into her glass of water. "That's... good for him, I guess."

He went to suggest that she go to watch him one week, but Robin must have sensed this, because she drove the heel of her shoe over the toe of his. He kept his mouth shut. Robin's smile was over-bright and promised death if he screwed this up.

There was a little orange bottle poking out of the pocket of Max's hoodie. It was a pill bottle, with a prescription label posted around its middle, and suddenly his snide remark to Robin in the car felt like one of those things he deserved to get punched in the face over. He was trying to be better with that kind of thing.

He strived to ignore the sting of hurt he felt when he suggested he get out of Max's hair, and relief seeped into her posture. Robin didn't join him though.

"I want to stay. You don't have to worry about me getting home," she said, when Albus pointed out that she had come with him. "I'll stay over here. We'll have a girls night! Ooh! We can watch Sleepaway Camp!"

Max huffed an aggrieved sigh, but didn't try to dissuade her, just rolling her eyes at the wall instead. Max's mother was nowhere to be seen, he supposed, and he would rather Max not be left alone. As he left, he saw Chrissy hanging around one of the static homes opposite, but he didn't call out to her; she was pacing, anxious, dialling someone on her phone. Tugging at her ponytail with painted fingernails.

It was eight o'clock by the time he actually made it home from school.

As he was called from the entryway into the dining room for dinner, it became quickly obvious that something was going on. His mum's voice was tense, he thought, as he threw his jacket over the bannister, the aged wood creaking gently beneath the disturbance. He breathed in the earthy, old-house smell for a moment, letting himself unwind a smidgen, before he introduced himself to whatever his parents' drama was.

Neither of his parents were talking when he walked in, but his dad was attacking his plate with a particular viciousness that made Albus squint his eyes, especially when his mum didn't even scold him for his knife scraping along the ceramic, which he knew pissed her off.

Only after the potatoes had met very grim ends in rapid succession, did Albus say, "Hey, this is just a punt out of the blue, but has something happened?" His dad paused in his merciless attack for a brief glance up at him, and then resumed as if he hadn't said anything.

Harry Potter didn't look great, and hadn't since he had first woken up in that St. Mungo's hospital bed. At first it was all great relief, thank Merlin that you aren't dead! but then he had to rehabilitate, and then the Auror office said he wasn't going back into the field for the foreseeable future, that he was only allowed into the offices, on review.

It had been months and he wasn't considered fully fit, and Harry Potter was not taking it well.

Eyebrows raised, Albus turned the same question on him mum.

Ginny sighed, and put down her knife and fork. "There's been another murder, and the main suspect is now on the run. Everything's been thrown into chaos, Hogwarts is in lockdown, and the Auror office won't let your father go in." She shot her husband a dark look. "Hence the amateur dramatics."

He took a moment to absorb everything she had said, then asked, "Why's Hogwarts in lockdown?"

"Because the victim was a Hogwarts student," his dad said, voice leaping rough out of his throat, and making both Albus and his mum jolt with surprise. "A child is dead, and they won't let me near it. I'm the best Auror they have," he added, pointing his fork at Ginny. "That's not conceitedness, it's a fact, and the killer is on the run and I'm sat here!"

"Harry, we both know you aren't physically fit to be doing fieldwork," she sighed.

"How do you know the killer is on the run?" Albus asked. "Do you know who it is?" A pause. His parents looked at each other. His dad shook his head, sighed, and stabbed a hunk of chicken.

"It was Scorpius Malfoy," Ginny said. "Somebody found him alone at the scene."

The dinner table lapsed into the most horrible silence, broken only by the occasional screech of silverware against ceramic from the unhappiest diner at the table. Albus stewed over the thought that Scorpius Malfoy had been caught killing somebody. He'd been so certain that the boy he met, admittedly only once, wasn't capable of something like that.

Lily had spent weeks sucking up to a murderer for—Well, for how she confronted him, to be fair, but still.

He didn't dare bring it up again; his dad had never been in such a foul mood and his mum, usually unafraid to poke the sleeping dragon, was not bringing it up herself. So dinner went on under the oppressive silence of a funeral parlour. Even the screech of his dad's knife against his plate was silenced by the pronouncement of Scorpius Malfoy as killer.

A Hogwarts student, dead. Merlin, how fucking horrendous.

When they were cleaning up afterwards, piling the plates to take them to the dishwasher, Albus tracked his dad's progress across the room. His mobility wasn't right, though the Mediwitches insisted that it would be again in time, and his right arm seemed to be bothering him. He winced when he moved it too much, and last week, he'd heard his dad complain to his mum that he hadn't needed this much time to recover from the war.

"Yes, dear, but you were seventeen then, weren't you?"

Albus picked up the stack of plates. "Dad, are you—" Then his phone started buzzing in his pocket. "Sorry." He put the plates down and checked it. Robin. "I should probably answer this." He one-handed lifted the plates again and carried them through to the kitchen, putting the phone to his ear. "What's up?"

"Albus, we might have a problem."

"What makes you say that?" he asked, stacking the plates in the dishwasher one by one and kicking the door shut. "Is Max okay? Her mum turned up?" He reached around his mum and plucked an apple from the fruit bowl, and headed upstairs to his bedroom.

"It's not Max. It's her house. Out of nowhere the lights started flicking on and off like crazy."

"That's all?" Something hit his bedroom window. He ignored it. "Robin, you can't cry Upside Down because some lights started flickering." Something else plinked off the glass. "You're in a caravan park, it's a miracle they have fire."

"Don't be fucking rude. I'm being serious, it freaked me out."

A third something hit his window. Finally, he went over to it and flung it open. "What are you going to do about it, then?" He was kneeling on his desk to lean all the way outside. His knee was digging painfully into the spiral spine of his planner. Squinting, searching through the darkness, a pebble smacked straight off his forehead. "Hey—No, not you, Rob. Who's out there?" he called, forehead smarting.

And then, as if his evening wasn't going wonderfully enough, Lily emerged from the trees, and gestured for him to go down to her.

He stared, not completely sure that he was actually seeing things right. When she didn't vanish, and in fact made to throw a fifth stone at him, he told Robin to let him call her back, and focused full attention on his sister.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he hissed, leaning out the window as far as he dared.

"Come outside!" Lily said.

He had no choice but to do so, just to stop her from throwing any more stones or drawing the attention of their parents, who could not know she was away from Hogwarts. His parents were talking in low tones behind the closed living room door. He slipped outside and found his sister waiting right by the front door.

"Jesus, Lily." He closed the front door behind him as quietly as he could. "Do you know mum and dad are in there? What the hell are you doing? How did you get away? And—why are you in such a state?"

There were leaves in her hair and gumming up the soles of her shoes, also muddy. Small scratches, like those of tree branches, adorned her face. She was breathing like she had run a marathon.

"Are you okay?" he asked, heart thudding hard in his chest.

"I need your help, Albus," she said, gripping onto his arm with surprising strength. "It's Scorpius Malfoy."

His spine straightened. "What about him?"

"He's here," she hissed. "I need you to hide him for me. He's wanted for the murder of Craig Bowker Jr."

Life was just shit on top of shit on top of shit sometimes, he thought, speeding down the lakeside road towards the random shack in the woods where Lily had mistakenly apparated with wanted fugitive Scorpius Malfoy. The wanted man who she insisted was innocent, the victim of a framing, who needed their help if he was to stay free.

He was to pick the criminal up, see Lily off safely, and then he had to call Robin back, because two calls from her had gone ignored since he set off from the house, and she'd just left a panicky voicemail insisting she needed to see him, now.

And then, to top it all off, Will chose this moment, as his headlights raked through the darkness along the roadside, to call him. With a stab of guilt, he let the call ring out.

"How did you get off Hogwarts grounds?" he asked Lily, again.

"There's a secret tunnel leading into Hogsmeade. We apparated from there," she said, eyes scanning the darkness anxiously. "Can you hurry up? I'm scared someone's going to find him. The house has all those anti-apparition wards. I'd meant to apparate just outside, but, well..."

"Never mind. Just tell me where I'm going."

He only slowed when he got near to the marker Lily had told him to watch for; a scarf in Gryffindor colours, red and gold, tried around the trunk of a tree. When his headlights brought this into view, he rolled to a stop. If he'd been a bit less tense he might have heard Lily haphazardly inundating him with information, but too much of his energy was gone on looking for a pathway through the trees.

"Can you go any faster? McGonagall's going to kill me if she catches me out," Lily said. "I need to get back to Hogsmeade. I barely escaped with my life after I nearly got Scorpius killed."

"Won't she let it go now that you're just harbouring him from the law?"

"Shut up, you prick."

"How do you know that he's innocent?" Branches were thwacking against the windshield and he'd had to slow to a painful crawl. "This is important, Lily. Are you setting yourself up for Azkaban if you get caught hiding him? Am I?"

"Of course he's innocent! I was with him, I saw him! He's been framed, Al, and it's my duty to help him, and it's your duty to help me help him! Or I'll tell Dad about Starcourt."

"Okay, lower your pitch," he said. "Only dogs can hear you right now."

She guided him onwards for a couple of minutes, saying at one point, "This is where we apparated to," and then a ramshackle old shed, half-fallen apart, appeared in his headlights.

He was pretty sure this was the place Tommy claimed to have seen two hobos kill each other once.

"He's in there."

Albus shut off the engine, and they sat looking at the shack for a minute, suddenly not sure how to proceed. After a few seconds, a pale face under a blond head appeared in one of the broken windows, then ducked back down in a sharp motion. This jerked Lily back to life, and she unbuckled her seatbelt.

"That's him."

"Obviously," Albus said, and he followed Lily out of the car, slamming the door to get a bit of his pent up frustration out.

Scorpius Malfoy had seen better days. He'd scratched his hair into a veritable birds nest; his eyes were bugged out, and darting about erratically; he couldn't stop trembling; to be frank, he looked like a shitting chihuahua.

But there was no blood on his hands, not physically at least, and Albus really didn't think that someone who was guilty of murder would look like, well, such a mess. Unless he was psychotic, and Uncle Ron had said that Malfoy family inbreeding had sent a few of them loopy in the past.

"Okay, you're still here," Lily said. "Good. Albus is going to take you back to our house, and hide you for a few days while we wait for Delphi to be caught."

"Are you sure—"

"I haven't got time, Scorpius, and if you want to stay hidden successfully, neither do you."

"It's a bit of a gambit to hide him in Harry Potter's house, don't you think?" Albus intoned dolefully.

Lily rolled her eyes at him. "I think you should know a thing or two about hiding things from Mum and Dad." He wanted to point out that he'd never invited the Demogorgon to move into James' bedroom before, but he held off when Scorpius started talking again.

"I just don't want to get you in trouble as well, Lily."

"You shouldn't lose much sleep over that," she said briskly. "I've caused you enough trouble, this is simple retribution."

"Lily—"

"I want to help, Scorpius." Albus was taken aback at the way her tone softened, but a second later she was all business again. "I really can't stay any longer, so I'm trusting you to tell Albus everything he needs to know, okay?"

Scorpius' shoulders drooped. "Merlin, if only Craig hadn't gone out to the bloody Quidditch pitch. Wasn't it obvious something was happening?" he implored. Lily didn't reply, just gave him a very sad look, and that made Scorpius look even more depressed.

So that was when Albus said, as lightly as possible, "Bit rude to blame Craig for this mess, isn't it?"

After a moment of long silence, a bubble of high-pitched laughter, half-hysterical, tumbled out of Scorpius' mouth. He clapped a hand over it a second later. "I shouldn't laugh at something like that. You shouldn't be making jokes like that, Potter, Merlin's beard."

"Scorpius, it's going to be okay. I promise." Lily turned to face him and clasped her hands. "Albus, thank you."

"Wow, I didn't know you knew that word," he said, and she shot him a loathsome look before, with a deep breath, she squeezed her eyes shut and disapparated. The room seemed to close in on him once she was gone. He could hear Scorpius' breathing; shaky, almost a death rattle.

Albus sucked his teeth. "So who is this—Delphini person?"

"Delphi," he said, snapping to attention. "And I don't really know. Turns out she's been stalking a few prominent families for a while now. Families whose names were tied to the war. Yours, mine, the Longbottoms. Her plan was to make people believe I was the one going around killing people."

"And I'm sure when Harry Potter was nearly killed, that finished the speculation right off."

Scorpius' answering smile was self-depreciating. "Exactly. When your name is Malfoy, the public don't need persuading about your nature."

"I'm going to move you back to my house," Albus said, after thinking it over for a minute. "We can hide you in the back seat, or the boot, or something."

"I can cast a Disillusionment charm on myself, don't bother with all that fuss. Not over me," he added, with a self-depreciating little smile. "I'll just follow you. Or—Or stay here! I don't want to be in the way."

"You—might find that won't work properly here. Right now. Magic," he added, ignoring Scorpius' suggestion that he stay in the murder shack out of hand. Knowing their luck, Scorpius would hunker down in here and get eaten by a demodog tomorrow.

"I am a perfectly adept wizard," Scorpius said, stiffly. "I am moderately talented in several areas, including potions, charm casting and defensive spellwork. Any attempts to attack us would fail, I swear to you."

"You're not the problem. Just, please, Scorpius, believe me when I say resting on your magic in this town will not do you any favours." Albus turned on the spot, hands on hips, looking around as if the answer would write itself in thin air. His head was throbbing. "Follow me back to my car, and be quiet."

It would be fine. They could keep Scorpius hidden in the house for a few days. Just until the killer was caught, whoever she was. Delphi. What a stupid name.

He hid Scorpius in the back of the car, getting him to lie down across the rumble seats and throwing a blanket over him for safety. "I have to pick someone else up on the way back," he called, as he started the engine. A sluggish throb in his head cut him off, made him wince. With all the head trauma he'd suffered down the years, it was a miracle he didn't suffer tension headaches more often. "We won't be long getting home, though."

Scorpius was too frightened to reply.

When one particularly sharp throb passed over his crown, he opened his glove box, took out a cigarette, and fished for his lighter. He opened his window, lit it, and inhaled as far as he could in one breath. Some of the tension drained away on release.

No rogue wizards appeared, and Scorpius kept the silence of the dead, and soon the silence was broken by his phone lighting up, again; Robin was calling again.

When the call connected, before he could say anything, Robin barked, "Why haven't you been answering your phone?"

He knew that panic. He'd felt that panic. That panic was Albus, please go down to the school and look after the kids, I don't have time to explain. It was mysterious Russian operations in Starcourt Mall. It was a panic only the Upside Down could induce in a person.

"I've been busy," he said. "I'm sorry. What's the matter?"

"Chrissy Cunningham is dead."

Cold air tore into the car through the drivers side window and roared in his ears. The fingers holding his cigarette twitched; he nearly dropped it on the road. What Robin said, and the way she had said it; like there was a hidden meaning that she was trying to make him pick up on urgently. A familiar feeling seeped into his bones.

"Chrissy's what? Dead?"

Robin had heard smashing plates and a raised female voice, screaming, she explained. At first Max told Robin to ignore it, because the people who lived in Primrose Hill could be rough like that and you just had to get used to it, but then there had been one, sharp, ghoulish scream, and Robin ran to intervene, locking Max inside.

"It was so grim, Albus, you wouldn't believe—" Robin cut herself off. "I think I'm gonna throw up. Her body, it was all mangled."

"Fucking hell..."

"And she was pinned to the ceiling."

A few seconds of silence passed between them. "Excuse me, what?"

"Pinned to the ceiling, I said. Pinned. To the ceiling," she emphasised, half-yelling. "By nothing! It was supernatural as shit. I'm not going to get that image out of my head as long as I fucking live."

They were talking about a murder scene, and now the entire caravan park was under police surveillance. Robin had only got out by making up some sob story about a dying grandmother in a hospital far, far away, and even then she had run at full sprint before the patrolling policemen could change their minds and call her back. Max was locked in the static home with her mother, just in from a late shift at work.

His vision was beginning to spin. "Where are you? Do you want me to come and get you?"

"Uh, yes? Fucking obviously, I'm out here in the woods since I ran from those cops!"

"Go down to the lakeside road. I'm almost on it now, I'll see you."

"Hurry up," she hissed, and hung up before he could say anything else.

Shit on top of shit on top of shit.

The silence after that was of a different breed; he smoked his cigarette down to the filter so that he had something to distract from it; he turned onto a narrow track that cut through the hem of the forest. His pulse was jittering and uneven. The facts had yet to register but his arms trembled with the shock nonetheless.

He just hoped that whatever had killed Chrissy would wait until he'd had a few hours sleep to come and try it on with him.

Chapter Text

He ended up awake all night trying to set things straight.

To start, sneaking Scorpius into the house was a headache, aided only by the distraction of Robin, who didn't know she was being used as a distraction, because he hadn't thought of a way to tell her about Scorpius yet.

His dad seemed to think he and Robin were sleeping together, judging by the way he shifted about in his chair, avoiding looking at her and getting more sheepish by the second. It took Robin dropping a clanger of a hint about Tammy Thompson for him to realise his notion was incorrect.

In the time this had happened, Albus had snuck out to the car, roused Scorpius from his petrified state in the back of the CR-V, and ushered him, Disillusioned, into the house and up the stairs. Telling Robin was a must. Figuring out how to do that without causing a scene even more so.

He didn't have the mental capacity to think about it very deeply. He pushed Scorpius into his bedroom and shut the door, then hurried downstairs to make sure his absence hadn't been noted.

Robin, on the verge of a mental breakdown, was keeping his parents' attention occupied with increasingly unhinged odd statements, until he arrived and snagged her by the arm.

"Tea, anyone?" He pulled her into the kitchen without waiting for any replies. Closed the rarely-shut kitchen door. When he turned to face Robin, she was holding her face in her hands and leaning her elbows on the kitchen countertop. "Are you okay?"

"Oh my god, Albus, no!"

"You found Chrissy?"

"Yes, I found her." She was driving the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. The kettle was starting to hiss, and cover up the sound of them talking. "It was awful. God, the screaming..."

He joined her, resting his elbows on the countertop too. "Stay here tonight. You can borrow Lily's pyjamas again." After a hesitant pause, he added, "I just need you to keep a secret for me."

Weary, she lifted her eyes, until their faces were right up next to each others'. He could feel her breath on his face.

"What is it?"

"I'm hiding a fugitive in the house." He clapped her on the back. "Don't tell my parents?"

She blinked. "What?"

He'd already turned away and started pouring the boiling water into four separate mugs with teabags in them.

"We'll need caffeine in our systems to get through everything that's happened in the last, like, hour." He considered this, then took a fifth mug from the cupboard, and started preparing that one as well. "Don't let Mum and Dad see this one," he told Robin, who'd come up beside him and was trying to scry into his soul.

In a daze, she followed him into the living room with their mugs, the third held carefully between the first two so it wasn't visible, as he took the two he'd made for his parents and placed one down on the little coffee table between their arm chairs.

"Thanks, Al," his mum said without looking up from her notepad, where she was drafting an article about the Quidditch league's treatment of female players.

His dad payed a bit more attention; Albus felt like he was being cross-examined as he handed the second mug straight into his dad's waiting hand.

"Cheers," he said, still staring.

"No problem," Albus muttered, following Robin from the room before he got too freaked out.

His dad had been around much more than usual since release from the hospital, and Albus had only recently realised how much he used to consider the house to be his when suddenly it was occupied most of the time by another person. It wasn't like the kids, letting themselves in to play D&D around the dining table, it was more permanent.

And his dad was watching him until he was gone from the room.

"What the fuck is going on?" Robin hissed to him when they met at the top of the stairs. "Who's the blond guy in your bedroom?"

"The third tea's for him," Albus said, taking two mugs from Robin and leaving her with her own; two sugars and a splash of milk. He'd made Scorpius' like he made his own; no sugar and a bit more milk than Robin. Before he opened the door, he said, "Kid gloves, please; he's just been framed for murder."

He pushed open the door before she could say anything. Scorpius, who'd been sat on his bed, leapt to his feet like someone had just shot at him. Suddenly, in the artificial light of his bedroom, the weight of the night really landed on his shoulders, and all he actually wanted to do was push Scorpius out of the way and flop onto his bed and go to sleep.

He cast a weary look at Scorpius, who was willing the floor to open up and swallow him whole. "I thought you might have fallen asleep."

"I couldn't just go to sleep in someone else's bed. It would have been rude."

Robin looked fit to faint.

"I've made you tea," Albus said, handing one of the mugs over. Scorpius held it like it would break apart under his hands, and studied the Disneyland print stamped on the ceramic; he was studiously avoiding Albus and Robin.

"Uh." Someone was jabbing him violently in the shoulder. "Explanation, Albus. Now. Please?"

"Believe me, that's something all three of us want." They looked at each other for a few seconds. He took a seat in his desk chair, and after some hesitation, Robin sat on the other end of his bed to Scorpius. Albus sipped at his tea, and Robin and then Scorpius copied him. "So, who wants to go first?"

Robin let out a rattling sigh and shook her head. He looked to Scorpius instead.

Earlier that night, Scorpius Malfoy had thought to himself that he might just take a stroll around the Hogwarts grounds before he locked himself away in the library all night to study, and as he made his ambling progress around the perimeter of the Quidditch pitch, he found himself sidetracked, quite significantly, by the sudden appearance of a blonde-haired madwoman, who took hostage a nearby student practicing his flying—this being Craig Bowker Jr—and announced herself to him as his tormentor of recent months.

It was at this point that Robin interrupted to ask, one, what the fuck a Quidditch pitch was, and two, what the fuck did he say this kid was practicing? So they had to detour as Albus went into the intricacies of the sport of Quidditch, and Scorpius nearly passed out with shock because he was brEaKinG tHe StaTUte oF sEcreCy!

Scorpius went on to explain that a woman called Delphi had been committing killings across the Wizarding world for months, trying to get him thrown in Azkaban, because she wanted revenge on the Malfoy family lineage for their betraying the Dark Lord, and while she was at it, she thought she may as well kill off as many people linked to the resistance as she could, just to really shit things up.

When her attempt on the life of Harry Potter failed, she thought at last that she would stop pussyfooting around and just go for it, and so there she was, declaring herself to Scorpius, her sworn enemy, who hadn't even known until then that she existed—

And that was when she pulled out her wand, and turned it on Craig Bowker Jr, and killed him on the spot.

Scorpius went quiet after that, and Albus couldn't blame him.

With a few moments given over to let the room digest the news, he turned to Robin and suggested that she get anything off her chest that she may need to. Scorpius was still staring at his shoes, cup of tea forgotten between the palms of his hands.

"I don't know what else to say," Robin sighed, draining her mug like downing a shot of whiskey. "The lights started flickering, which Max says is always the first sign of the Upside Down—"

"It is."

"Right, so then I heard the smashing plates and the yelling, but I didn't—I didn't go over there until the screaming started. Oh god, what if I'd gone in sooner?"

"You'd both be dead," he said, instantly, though he had no way of knowing whether or not that was true.

"So I barge in there, and all the lights are going haywire, and Chrissy's pinned to the ceiling, by—I don't know, she's just pinned there. And then—" To his alarm, she cut off with a dry sob, and his hand shot out awkwardly, when she said, "Then her limbs started snapping, and then her eyes exploded."

"They what?" he cried.

"Exploded! In her skull!" Her sobs were no longer dry, and he'd gone over to her side and put his arms around her. "Oh god, Albus, she's dead, she's fucking dead!"

Scorpius had been, unsurprisingly, drawn out of his own state of horror by Robin's tale, and he was staring at them like they'd been the ones who killed Craig, and Albus was struggling to juggle handling two traumatised witnesses to murder, because of all the things he'd done in his life before, he didn't think this was one of them.

Robin looked exhausted as she peeled herself away from him, swiping at her under-eyes, batting at him to get away from her.

"You can use the shower if you want to wash the day off," he said.

She nodded and muddled up to her feet, even as she said, "Won't I wake your parents up?" It was nearing midnight by then.

"Mum sleeps like the dead and Dad won't be in bed yet," he said.

Harry had been staying awake longer at night since his release from St. Mungo's. Albus thought he just wasn't burning energy like he usually did.

They didn't speak again until Robin had shuffled out of the room, pulling the door shut gently behind her.

"You can sleep in here tonight—"

"What in the name of Merlin was she talking about, Potter?"

His mouth snapped shut. He swallowed reflexively. "It's a long story, and not one you need to worry about."

"It sounds like something I need to worry about."

But Albus didn't have much left in his tank, and he couldn't bring himself to launch into the Grand Story of the Upside Down, so he just sat there and thought about how much he wished he was asleep.

After a while he noticed that Scorpius looked to be on the verge of tears, and he started talking aimlessly.

"So what's the Wizarding grapevine been saying recently?"

"Uh—About what? About you? Not much specific. It's normally more general chatter..."

"I'm amazed they manage that, considering I haven't set foot in the Wizarding world since I was eleven years old."

The memory of that day in the Mediwizard's office remained determined to stalk him.

"They talk about me too," Scorpius confessed. "That's how I've ended up in this position. Because of people who don't know me talking about me as if they do."

Just hearing talk about the gossipers of the Wizarding population made his blood pressure rise incrementally.

"Honestly, have you ever just tried glassing one of them?"

His lips twitched. "I think that could only make things worse."

The last of his energy ran out; he felt it, the moment it happened, like the tank of the CR-V using up the last droplets of petrol. He stood, expelling an enormous gust of air, and started shuffling across the room.

"So... do you want to, like, borrow a change of clothes, or something?" Without waiting for an answer, he rifled through a drawer and pulled out a pair of fresh pyjamas. "You can change out of that stupid uniform now," he added, chucking them at Scorpius, who failed to catch them and was instead hit in the face. "I'll talk to you in the morning, when the house is empty."

He left before Scorpius could reply, shutting the door with a quiet snick. The shower was running in the bathroom and when he peered across the bannister top, he saw his parents' door was closed; his mum was in bed.

He clomped downstairs, before he realised the only free bed was going to be James', and was about to make the eternal slog back upstairs, when his dad's voice called out to him from the living room.

With a strange churning in his stomach, he followed it, his head full of ideas about the wizards who still talked about him, all these years later. The squib son, the Potter family defect, supposed to be THE Harry Potter's son, eh?

Still, being an abberation wasn't the worst of fates.

"You look tense," his dad commented, and before Albus even knew what he was doing, he was snapping back, "What's it to you?"

There were a few very long, painful seconds of silence. "Sorry." He dry-swallowed. He'd never snapped at his dad like that before. "Really, I don't know where that came from." He went and dropped onto the sofa. "Sorry," he said, again, when his dad kept staring.

"You're up late, Al."

"So are you."

He wrinkled his nose. "I've found that irritation makes me more extreme. Tonight, hypothetically, I would be pro-imprisonment for people who keep switching on the light in my bedroom at—" He checked his pocketwatch, "midnight, so they can keep adding new ideas to their Quidditch articles."

"Ah."

"Purely hypothetically."

"Just murder them," Albus said, and Harry looked at him over the rim of his glasses. "If the wizard killer finds us we'll all be dead anyway, and if not, well, there's mandatory lights off in prison."

"You have a very strange sense of humour, Al."

"Sense of humour?"

Bored and tired, he slumped against the sofa cushions, holding the glass to his temple as Harry yammered away about something or other. Robin appeared in the doorway, all steamed from the shower, and he glanced at her over his dad's shoulder. He didn't call out to her and she didn't rescue him. She jerked her head back towards Lily's door; she was going to bed.

He nodded, and she disappeared.

”You look tired, son.” Albus startled; his dad was looking at him. “Do me a favour. Once summer rolls around, just take some time for yourself, okay? Before you burn yourself out.”

Albus, with no idea how to respond, simply chose not to.

He and his dad sat together in silence for a while longer, until eventually, Albus' head dropped onto the back of the sofa, and he passed out.

Albus managed to fit in four hours of uneasy sleep, waking with the birds and the arrival of dawn.

Scorpius slept right through until the early afternoon, face down in the pillow, a comfortable dead-man’s float. Albus let him, for one thing not sure what he would even do when he awoke, and also because Dustin and Max came barging through his front door bright and early, in full panic mode.

"Oh, so Max told you what's gone on, then?"

They occupied his living room and filled up the sofas—three, set up cosily around a coffee table—not even bothering to throw aside the blankets he had woken up under.

"The house she died in belonged to one of the school druggies," Max said.

"Don't call him a druggie," Dustin said peevishly.

"This Eddie Munson guy," she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "I mean, he wasn't there, he's out of town right now, but what was Chrissy doing at Primrose Hill anyway?"

He thought of Chrissy as he had last seen her, the last time he would see her, all bright smile and sparkling eyes. Pretty and sweet and underlined with sadness. His hands clenched around thin air. He thought she'd answered her own question with her proclamation on Eddie Munson.

"Hey, guys," said Robin, coming out from the kitchen. "Have you heard anything else yet? I've just been busy with... Did I tell you guys about Albus' fugitive?"

For a few seconds, neither of them reacted. Then, almost simultaneously, they turned their eyes back on Albus, who sighed, and resigned himself to yet more storytelling before they could get on with what needed to be done.

He still skirted the issue of wizards for Max's sake, but he wasn't particularly surprised when an additional figure appeared in the doorway, from the kitchen.

Scorpius.

He was dressed in his Hogwarts uniform, half-dead and so painfully formal in comparison to the rest of them that even Albus was taken aback.

"I want to go with you," Scorpius said, when Albus said nothing. "I'll be in the way to start with, and I'm—scared, of being found here by either of Albus' parents. If I went with you I would feel..." His eyes caught Albus' again, "safer."

Max sighed aggressively. "Look, Scorpius," she said, like she wasn't sure if she was being set up, with a name like that, "What's going on with us, trust me, you don't want to be involved with. It's dangerous."

"She's right," Albus said. "The point of you being here is to keep you away from danger. Coming with us would be like dropping you out of a crashing plane straight into a house on fire."

As Scorpius objected, the others started to get in on the act, and soon a full-blown argument had erupted. Max blatantly and loudly thought the idea of involving him was fucking ridiculous.

"Okay, listen!" Dustin called over the hubbub. "Look, I know it seems pretty sketchy, but Scorpius—Killer name by the way," he added, turning to Scorpius as he said it, "Scorpius is an extra body. Mike’s not here, Will’s not here, and neither are El or Jonathan. Plus, Hopper and Joyce, and if you count Murray?" He huffed. "We’re down seven men. Seven, people, but we can reduce the deficit to six." He put his hands on his hips. "I say we induct Scorpius into the fold. Temporarily."

"You’re just saying that because you like his name," Max said.

"You didn't see Chrissy, trust me, we can't involve some random guy in this," Robin added.

When the arguing threatened to break out again, Scorpius said, "I want to help!" finally raising his voice.

Uneasy silence fell. Dustin was shooting Albus looks that were meant to be subtly coercive, and were in reality very blatant. To be honest, he thought the idea of involving Scorpius in any way was fucking mental.

He turned away from them. "Robin, tell us again what happened. Maybe you missed something in the panic."

She smiled flatly. "I didn't. I tried to snap her out of it. She was already too far gone. Couldn't move, couldn't have known I was there. She was in a trance or something."

"Or under a spell?" Dustin asked.

"Or a curse," intoned a new voice; Scorpius, who had been following this whole exchange very closely, and was obvously trying to decode what they were saying, turn it into something he could understand.

"Vecna," Dustin said.

Albus' eyebrows raised a jot. "That one of your D&D characters? Who's Vecna?"

"An undead creature of immense power," Dustin murmured, and that made Scorpius' eyes latch onto the kid with intensity. "A spellcaster."

Scorpius' throat bobbed. "A dark wizard," he suggested, in a low and desperate croak. He looked at Albus accusingly. "How does this boy know about spellcasters?" he asked, hissing the last part. "Have you told him—"

"No I have not," he said, though indeed, he had.

"It's from D&D," Dustin said, obliviously. "Dungeons and Dragons?"

"I'm unfamiliar with your reference," he said.

Robin interrupted. "Look, when I left they hadn't decided who was responsible. Eddie Munson's name got brought up pretty quick, but being out of town at some nerd convention's a pretty solid alibi." Robin clapped her hands together in a prayer-like motion, looking at Scorpius. "Problem is, if anyone sees you, well, you might get dragged into it."

"Me?"

"Stranger, new in town, seeming to be hiding out in someone's house. Of a nervous disposition," she added, raising an eyebrow and shooting Albus a look when Scorpius started to quake again.

"And then before you know it, they're knocking down the front door and arresting you, and you're already on the run, for whatever," Dustin said.

"He's innocent," Albus felt the need to say.

"Bloody hell," Scorpius muttered.

"Which is why," Dustin went on, "before that happens, we have to find Vecna and kill him!"

"Oh, is it that simple?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Dustin said, missing the sarcastic drawl.

Robin, who hadn't missed it, sighed. "Look, Scorpius, I know this all looks and sounds completely insane, but we've done this whole dance before. These two more so than me. There was this whole thing with a giant flesh monster, and—Look, the point is, we've got a handle on this, okay?"

"Right, I swear, it'll all be over in two, maybe three days, tops," Dustin said. His overconfidence was killer. Scorpius did not look reassured.

Albus took a breath in. "Normally one of our friends does the heavy lifting with a lot of this stuff. But since she lost her... superpowers, we're sort of on our own."

"But there's—there's nothing to worry about!" Dustin stammered. Seconds later, sirens rent the air; police squad cars, squealing down the lakeside road outside at sixty miles per hour. "Shit."

"Scorpius, stay here," Albus said to Scorpius. "Don't let anyone see you, and stay away from the windows. We'll try to be back by nightfall," he added, as he followed the others to the front door. His charge stood stranded in the middle of the living room, watching them go. "Away from the windows!" he repeated, before he slammed the front door.

Following the sirens was a bit tricky, but he could have guessed in advance that they were heading towards Primrose Hill, and once he adjusted to the acoustics of the sirens bouncing off the trees and echoeing all around, the noise led him to a road not far outside the caravan park.

His stomach clenched when he rolled to a stop outside the police barricade, and saw Nancy surrounded by police.

She looked spooked, but was mostly looking to get away from the police who were questioning her. Something human-sized and misshapen lay in the middle of the road, covered over by a white sheet. From the way Robin's breath caught, she was flashing back to the night before.

"Is it Chrissy?" he asked.

"Someone else must have died."

They spirited Nancy away, allowed to escort her back to her car, which was parked near the entrance to Primrose Hill, and she explained that she had started investigating Chrissy's death that morning, with the skinny boy who was in charge of coffee and printers at the local paper with her. After she spoke to the owner of the desecrated static home, Eddie Munson's uncle, Fred had wandered off, and vanished.

"He's dead," she finished, tersely. "Obviously."

"Killed like Chrissy?" Robin murmured. Nancy nodded. "Shit."

Their working theory was that Vecna was using a spell or curse to kill his victims, whether on the bidding of the Mind Flayer or just for his own personal amusement. He was from the Upside Down, though, of that they were all unanimous. Something else they soon came to agree on was that Primrose Hill itself seemed to be cursed. There was something weird about the place.

"It gets into your head," Nancy added. "Fred was acting weird from the moment we arrived."

"In what way?" Albus asked.

"Just, upset and on edge. He was freaking out."

"So was Chrissy," Robin said, pointing at Max, who shook her head.

"Hours earlier, at school."

"Serial killers like to stalk their prey before they strike," Albus said, thinking about how Deplhi had been tormenting Scorpius for months before she tried anything direct. "So maybe Chrissy and Fred both saw Vecna... But how could we prove it?"

Then Max had a lightbulb moment.

They split up from there; Nancy and Robin to look into this Victor Creel guy who Nancy was convinced was involved because of some murders back in the Sixties she had dug up; Albus, Max and Dustin to Winsome Comp, where Max was after finding Chrissy and Fred's school files. Completely illegal, he thought, driving them down, but that won't stop me, will it?

Sometimes he did rue the day he answered that call from Nancy.

While Max went in to talk around the counsellor, and Dustin trailed after her, his phone started buzzing.

It was Will; Albus was quick to answer.

"What's up?" he said, putting the phone on speaker.

Tinny music was thumping over Will's voice, who, sensing that something was up, said, "Is this a bad moment? I can call you back—"

"No, don't." He sighed; tension was ramping up in his skull. "How are you, mate? Did Mike arrive?"

"Yeah, he arrived early this morning." A few seconds passed in silence. "He's with El now. We've gone to the roller rink."

"I see." Mike was kind of pig-headed. Definitely the most challenging of his kids to love consistently. "And let me guess, he's being dumb about it. Not paying any mind to you? I'm sorry, Will."

"It's okay. It's not even why I called you. I don't know."

"So why did you call?" Just up ahead, he saw two loitering figures, arguing over something. He gently honked the horn to get their attention. "You want to talk about it?"

"El's lying to him. She's telling him all this crap about these fancy friends she's pretending she has," Will said. "Making up parties she's gone to, sleepovers she's had with them, and he's believing it all, he's eating it up!"

Dustin clambered into the passenger seat, and Max into the back. He took the phone off speaker and put it to his ear instead.

"She's making up friends?" he repeated, waving away Dustin, who was trying to get his attention. "What do you mean? What, Dustin?" he snapped when the kid started punching him on the arm.

"It didn't work," he said. "Max's plan failed."

"But I have a back-up," she interjected quickly.

He scoffed. "Yeah, one we'll have to wait ages to action."

"Not ages."

"I'll call you back later," Will said, over the phone. "Something's obviously going on with you guys."

"Yeah. There's been a—" But Will had gone; the screen was black. "Murder."

Thoughts of El telling lies to them would have to wait until later. They were at a roller rink, they were having a nice time. They were in Ireland, and a whole day's travel away from home.

He sighed. "So, what's your plan, Max?"

She had lifted the keys from the counsellor's desk, and then when the woman left for the day, they broke into her office to look for clues that might tell them whether Chrissy and Fred had been having strange visions before they died. Of all the ways to try getting himself expelled, months before he was due to leave, this really took the cake.

But Dustin was dead-set, and there was an odd fervency to the way Max was searching, and something stopped him from making comments.

She hadn't been truly well since Billy died, and the whole night that went with it.

As they searched for the correct files to pilfer, Nancy texted  him; "VICTOR CREEL CLAIMS DEMON KILLED FAMILY," along with a photo of the same headline, followed with the by-line, The murder that shocked a small community.

Okay, he thought, so maybe Nance is onto something. He sent her a thumbs up, and Dustin leaned over, muttering, "Lemme see." He enlarged the article Nancy had sent and let Dustin read it. "His first victims date all the way back to the Sixties. So, Nance is a genius. What's new?"

"Holy shit."

Max was leaning over a file and had gone stock still.

"You found something?" Dustin asked, and hurried over to look for himself. "Oh shit. You found Fred."

But Max was looking back over her shoulder now. There was a tense, chilling set to her face that made alarm bells ring in his head. That was when Albus felt it, again; that feeling that something really awful was on their backs, waiting for the right moment to sink its fangs in and suck them dry.

He was right.

Because Max, Max was the next victim, and she collapsed into resignation far too fast, before they'd done or thought of anything. It was a grandfather clock, she insisted, running her hands over the wall where she claimed to have seen it. A grandfather clock ticking down the minutes until Vecna would come to kill her.

Albus' heart was beating like a steam hammer in his chest. He was half shaking with it. She had been in a trance. That was definitely what it was, a trance, just like Robin claimed had happened to Chrissy. It signalled the declaration of Vecna's intent.

The headaches that wouldn't go away. The nightmares. The trouble sleeping.

The nights when she'd asked him to keep her company and he hadn't asked any questions deep enough to know that this was coming.

And then started the visions.

"Fred and Chrissy both died less than a day after seeing their first vision," Max said. "And I just saw that fucking clock, didn't I? So..."

He rejected it. He rejected the premise. There had to be something else, perhaps some blank that Nancy and Robin could fill in for them.

His heart thumping in his chest, he led the charge back to the CR-V, which waited for them in the late afternoon sun. They found Lucas, who was in the midst of his own crisis, and brought him along as they fled the scene of their crime, and the ice in the air left behind by Vecna.

Chapter Text

The graveyard had been a bad idea, and Albus said so from the start.

Max was insistent, though, she and her letters that no one wanted to accept. When she demanded he drive her to the graveyard, he at first said an emphatic no. He didn't want her out of his sight, though, and she knew it.

She twisted his arm until he caved, and he watched in the foulest of moods as she walked off between the trees and through the rows of pale headstones; Billy was buried in the new half of the graveyard, away from the mossy tombs of centurions and the odd millennium.

She nestled herself down on the dewy spring grass, opened up her letter, and began to read. He watched her throat bob as she spoke.

His fingernails were digging into the palms of his hands and Lucas and Dustin were staying away from him to avoid becoming victims of his temper. He gave her five minutes, and then decided she'd had long enough.

But he'd been a minute too late, or two minutes, or maybe he should have stuck to his guns and never let her go off alone like that, because he went stalking across the leaf-strewn ground and seized her by the shoulder, and he knew in the seconds before he reached her that he'd massively fucked up.

She never startled, never budged, frozen solid like her muscles were calcifying, like that disease, turning to bone. He forced her around; eyes rolled back in her skull, Vecna taking his moment in a flash of melodrama that they really should have predicted.

He shouted for them—"Guys!"—without daring to take his eyes from Max's prone form. Lucas and Dustin were beside him in a heartbeat; Lucas pushed him aside, taking Max's in his hands, trying with ferocity to make her hear him.

But he couldn't stop the cold sheen of sweat coating her pallid skin. He couldn't stop her eyes, rolled back in her skull, from jittering in the grip of possession. He couldn't stop the voice in her head from trying to claim her life.

None of them could do that but Max.

"We need to help her!" Dustin cried, shaking Albus, who gaped at his charge, useless.

"Dustin, call Nancy!" Lucas howled. He was still trying in vain to reach Max. Haul her mind back to Earth.

Dustin ran. Lucas reached out for the girl he loved. Albus drank the scene in, paralysed, brain whirring but not moving. Nothing was coming to him. No ideas popped into view. Time hung suspended and rushed by him in a blur. He had nothing.

He had nothing.

He had nothing.

"IT'S MUSIC!"

Dustin was back, out of breath from the sprint, voice wrecked from screaming.

"Music—We need music!"

He got it. Music didn't stop her body from rising into the air, like a doll lifted into the inquisitive hands of a sociopathic child, or from hanging far above their heads, suspended.

Lucas was screaming, incoherent, and Dustin, on the edge of tears. Albus was oddly calm. He just stood and watched, still as a statue, mouth dry as a desert. If Lucas, in his hysteria, bumped into him, he would topple straight to the grass and shatter. But he didn't ever take his eyes from Max. Not even to blink.

Time stretched on for infinity.

When her eyes snapped open—he heard her rasping gasp like it was breathed right into his ear—he lunged forwards to catch her as she dropped back to Earth.

She was shuddering violently, grasping, blind, for the touch of another human, and Lucas was there already, lowering her slowly to the grassy floor, both of them sobbing, curling in on each other tight enough to hurt.

All Albus and Dustin could do was watch.

"I thought I'd lost you," Lucas sobbed.

"I'm still here," she breathed, trembling fingers curling around the back of his neck. "I'm still here…"

The silence in the car afterwards was lethal. His hands flexed around the steering wheel and he felt the encroaching darkness swallow him. His brain was overheating. The headphones were still placed over Max's ears and some sound was seeping out into the car. A tether to reality. Dustin sat beside him in the front, for once silent the entire way home.

Scorpius knew to be silent as they moved into the house, watching from the staircase. Lucas and Dustin had Max in between them; she would not accept assistance inside, having taken it from the graveyard back to the car already, but they walked as close by her as they dared.

Albus followed them, and met Scorpius' eyes over top of their heads. (They were getting taller every day, but they weren't done growing, and if he had his way then all of them would grow to be as tall as him, if not taller. They would all have the life in them to grow.)

Scorpius somehow looked even worse now than he had when Lily first turned up with him. Just a day of waiting around inside the house had nearly done him in. Bringing Scorpius to Lake Winsome had been Lily's idea, so this whole thing was her fault, really. But he understood that it had been her way of making up for what she had done to him.

Still. Didn't mean Albus had to be happy about getting dragged into it. This wasn't a house of convalescence.

Scorpius could tell that something had gone on, but didn't demand to know what, and even if he did Albus wasn't sure he would know what to tell him.

At first Max tried walking to the kitchen to fetch herself a drink, but just watching her do that, stumbling and uncertain in her steps, was too painful to abide, and Albus went to fetch a glass of water while the boys convinced her to sit down. His hands didn't shake but his breath did as he finally released it in the privacy of the kitchen.

He held still for a few seconds before he went back in to them.

"We need to find out where Vecna is," he said, looking down on the trio of teenagers. Only Dustin was paying any mind; Lucas was far too focused on Max to hear him. But Max herself did. She raised her eyes to try and lock them with his. "And keep him away from Max. Charge your phones, have Kate Bush on download. If you have any powerbanks charge them," he added. "Don't let the music stop for a second. Not for anything."

The kids stayed huddled in Lily's room while he moved back into the living room. Outside, Nancy's car was just pulling up behind his in the driveway. She and Robin must have broken several road safety laws to make it back so soon.

"What happened to that girl?" Scorpius asked in a scratching whisper.

Albus didn't answer, drifting over to the sound system and rifling through his parents' CD collection until he came across Hounds of Love. He set it to play through the speakers mounted either side of the fireplace. As Running Up That Hill started to play, a shudder ripped through him, and when Nancy and Robin came into the room it took him a moment to face them.

"The kids are lying down," he said to the stereo.

"Is Max okay?" Robin asked.

"By some miracle," he muttered, and finally tore himself away from the corner, lifting his head.

Nancy and Robin were staring at him. Scorpius stood off to the side, wanting to go unnoticed. Albus' eyes grazed over them all and then his eyes went to the rug beneath his feet.

"We're the adults now," he said at last, horrified. He managed to meet Nancy's eyes; she looked as frightened as he felt. "Mrs Byers is gone. Hopper is gone. Fucking hell, even Murray. It's down to us to fix this."

The last thing Hopper ever told he and Nancy was that they were in charge.

Her lips parted, quivering, and his eyes caught on them for a heartbeat before she said, "We spoke to Victor Creel," and they snapped up to meet hers.

"He said his family was murdered by a demon," Robin said, and then rolled her eyes when Albus and Nancy kept staring at each other. "Maybe the demon will murder me too, and you guys will still be making sheep eyes at each other."

"The demon just tried to murder Max," Albus said, flushing because he didn't think there was any room left for jokes, because he was angry at being caught staring. "I say we return the favour."

Brows slightly raised, Robin said, "Then lets sit down and think of a plan."

He and Nancy didn't look at each other again. Consciously. Scorpius eventually excused himself when it became clear that none of them were of a mindset to explain things to him. Albus might have felt bad for that, but he had no room in his body for anything that wasn't find the demon kill the demon. Kate Bush played on loop from the living room as he, Nancy and Robin retired to the dining room.

They talked for hours, until the last of the daylight had slipped away and the world was swallowed by darkness, and once they were set on what they were doing, Robin excused herself to tell the kids to ready themselves.

Albus and Nancy trailed after her, falling back onto the sofa in the living room, both staring at the ceiling. The weight of responsibility had never felt heavier. Every time he closed his eyes the image of Max floating feet above their heads flashed before him. God, what a disaster.

"It's a good thing I didn't let you come with us after all," Nancy said. "What was your plan again? To seduce the asylum director?"

"You think I couldn't have done it?"

"Well, what would you have done post-seduction?"

"Uh, we'd have run for it," he said, like duh. "You were meant to get at Creel while I was working my charms."

She huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh. "It's a good thing you went with Max. I wouldn't have been able to concentrate if you were with me."

"Ooh la la, Wheeler. I'm flattered."

"Can it, Potter, you know that's not what I meant. It's how we've always worked. I do one thing, you do something else, everyone gets to live in the end."

He supposed that was true, in a sense. Nancy and Jonathan rerouted the Demogorgon, while Albus saved the kids. Nancy and Jonathan saved Will, while Albus stayed behind and ended up in the tunnels. Nancy and Jonathan stayed with the kids as Albus and Robin took Dustin and Lily, and escaped from Starcourt.

"Max barely lived today," he hissed.

"But she lived," Nancy said. "And she's going to. We'll make sure of it..."

Nancy trailed off as Max entered the room and slunk over to stand by them. Her hair was plaited in twin braids and she was wearing his mum’s bath robe.

"What’s wrong?" Nancy asked her. Max went to say something, then her eyes shifted to Albus, who instinctively knew she wanted Nancy alone.

"I’ll give you two a minute," he said, leveraging himself up, until Max stopped him.

"No, it’s okay. It’s…" She broke off, looking frustrated and embarrassed. "I can’t use the shower," she said eventually.

"Are you hurt?" Albus asked her, scanning her for physical injury. Had he caught her wrong when she fell from the sky?

But again, she shook her head. "I can’t—I can’t stand with my head under the shower. I can’t close my eyes because—" She was unable to finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to.

"Well, why don't I sit outside the bathroom?" Nancy suggested, already rising to go with her. "And if you’re worried, even for a moment, just scream and I’ll be there…"

She went on talking as she led Max from the living room up the stairs. Running Up That Hill continued to play from the stereo. Albus tried not to give in to the rising tide of hysteria in his chest.

While Nancy was gone he stayed exactly where he was. He didn't move a muscle. His stomach was empty but he couldn't think about eating. He knew nothing would stay down. Robin's voice drifted to him from Lily's room; she was soothing their fears and still explaining the plan to Dustin and Lucas. He heard Dustin say something about having a compass, Lucas harass about whether "this one really worked, it matters today, jackass."

Ten minutes later, Nancy was back, easing herself down beside him again.

"She's okay. I think the shower helped," Nancy breathed.

He didn't say anything. His eyes lingered on the inactive fireplace and he bit down on the inside of his cheek. Then they flicked up and noted the time on the clock; it was half-past ten. Nearly time to go.

His stomach gave a violent churn.

"I’m going to be sick," he said, calmly, and he got up from the sofa and was heading for the toilet before Nancy had time to do anything.

She stood a moment later, brushing off her trousers, and said to the empty room, "I’ll fetch you a glass of water," before heading into the kitchen.

Albus and Robin stood on the water's edge at Lake Winsome, hours after nightfall. Dustin's compass had led them there, and was pointing out across the water.

Concealed by branches and the dark of night, they watched the police lights on the other edge of the water flash, and wondered exactly what had happened. Well, Vecna had got someone else nearby, clearly. Albus hoped he didn't know the victim.

"At some point, you know, when all of this is a little less insane," Robin said quietly, "I'm going to make you go over the Scorpius thing again, because I know you said he's, like, not guilty of murder, but I'm going to need you to qualify that."

"We're wasting time," he muttered, reaching down to push their little wooden boat out.

"Why won't you look me in the eye?" Robin asked him as she reached down to help.

The dark of night had long since swallowed them whole, and under its cover, they were going in search of the third gate to the Upside Down. Nancy and the kids were checking that the way was clear behind them, that no one was going to sneak up and, in a fit of Chrissy-related hysteria, attack them.

They'd found Vecna's headquarters, the old Creel House where according to Nancy and Robin, Vecna had grown up. Or rather, where young Henry Creel had murdered his family, got his father, Victor, pinned for it, and then disappeared into the system forever.

Albus didn't say anything. It had been one day since the graveyard. Mentally he was still there. He'd been there the entire time, as they discovered the Creel house and investigated it, looking for clues. Their investigation had led them here.

He let out a slow, trembling exhale, and with a surge of strenth, pushed the boat out onto the water.

"I've never seen you like this," she said, not even looking at the boat, looking at him. "Albus, why won't you look at me? Is it because of what happened with Max?"

"It happened just like you said it did with Chrissy. Her eyes rolled back into her head," he said. "And then Dustin ran over screaming about playing music, and she was still just sitting there. We found the right song but nothing happened. And then—" His voice gave way and he had to stop, staring with more intensity at the water as if that would get rid of the rock in his throat or the sting in his eyes.

"Then she started levitating," he said heavily. "And—God, I genuinely thought she was dead. Dustin and Lucas were screaming and Lucas was crying, and Dustin looked like he was gonna be sick. There wasn't anything I could do. And then out of nowhere, she snapped out of it on her own."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"If you're a minute slower, or Lucas is getting those headphones on her, then she's dead right now. And I did fuck all to stop it from happening."

"Albus," she breathed, a slow shake of her head, eyes glittering and earnest. "When have you ever not been there for them?"

"In that graveyard," he said, and before Robin could say anything else Nancy and her companions were back, and she had to stop.

He unclenched his jaw, with no small effort, and turned to look at them. To look at Scorpius to be more precise. He wasn't happy about this either.

"You're going where?" Scorpius asked, following him into his bedroom, several hours earlier.

Scorpius hadn't said much of anything in front of the others, but when it was agreed that they would go in search of the next gate, he seemed to come to life somewhat, and followed Albus out of the room to pester him at the first opportunity.

"That Maxine girl looks half-dead, and you're going back to find the creature that did it to her? Are you insane?"

"I don't see how it's any of your business," Albus said, throwing a few emergency supplies into a backpack that also contained the nailbat.

"You haven't though this through. Just think of your father! Think how devestated he'd be if something—" His intruder cut himself short, almost gagging at the sight of it. "Sweet Merlin, Potter, what is that?"

"A weapon," he said, hackles raised. "What does it look like?"

"I wouldn't like to say."

Now that he thought about it, the nailbat, faithful as it was, was not aging well; the wood was splintering all over the place and whatever parts of the hammered nails weren't covered in rust were gunked up with old, coagulated blood. The wood was worn and stained and he hated to admit it, but sometimes he feared that it would break upon impact with the next demogorgon it faced.

But they needed it still, so it stayed with them.

"It's never let us down," he said.

Scorpius looked absolutely appalled. "It's repulsive."

"You're repulsive," he muttered, childishly, he knew. He felt a bit wrong saying it, because Scorpius was, as far as he could tell, in all ways the opposite of repulsive. "And this is none of your business," he went on, to return to the point at hand. "You have no idea what's going on. We need to go back out there. We don't have much time left."

"Until what? This Vecna creature, this spellcaster, kills another person?"

"Until he kills Max," he said. "And understand, Malfoy, that there is nothing I could do that would be worse—No greater a failure possible—than to let something happen to those kids."

Scorpius fell silent. Albus could hear him mulling this over. "I can be of help," he said at last. "Albus. Please. I want to be."

"Magic won't work in the Upside Down, or against anything that comes from it. I don't know why, but the Upside Down's energy nullifies it. You'd be defenseless." He wasn't sure why he didn't protest more vehemently. Maybe the thought of an additional person made him feel irrationally safer. Maybe he was just too tired, lack of sleep and pounding head making him sloppy. "I can't tell Lily I'll keep you safe and then lead you into far worse a danger than the one you ran from."

"Albus, please." There was a quiet dignity in Scorpius' voice, a plea given on a level that Albus understood, that made him look up to meet Scorpius' eyes. "Take me with you. Magic or no magic, I can be of help."

"I can't."

"Please."

Scorpius had taken advantage of his distraction to slip into the side, he would later maintain.

All of that had led them here; Lake Winsome, the water stagnant and forboding and all around them.

He was sure Scorpius was glad he had insisted on coming.

“So, any major regrets in life?” Robin asked him, as they floated together on the lake.

“I think we’re participating in one," he muttered back.

They had rowed out to the middle of the lake, and now he peered over the side of the boat, squinting, searching for some sign of an underwater gate. Dustin's compass had gone haywire a few moments ago, and they were trying to find the reason why, without much success.

"I'm not on that boat with you Albus, so I don't know what's wrong with it," Dustin said over the phone.

He sounded worried, and that had Albus on edge as well. He peered over the edge as Dustin blathered on, and then at last thrust his phone at Robin and started stripping off his jumper.

"What the fuck are you doing," Robin said.

"My nan knitted me that jumper, I'm not getting lake water on it."

There was no point arguing and discussing when they were so out of ideas. He was going to dive into the lake and see what he could find, and then at least something was being done. He was ever-aware of time ticking away from them.

"Albus are you—Is he—" Scorpius started tugging on Nancy's sleeve. "Is he going down there? Potter, are you mad?" He left his phone in the care of Robin. "At least let us help you. I can—Potter, stop—I can help you! Let me cast a bubblehead charm!" He stood at the edge of the boat, one foot half-over the ledge. "This is madness!"

"Someone's gotta have a look," he said, bracing himself to jump into the solid darkness.

Only Nancy's hand lighting on his ankle stilled him temporarily. He looked down at her. Her eyes were hard.

"Don't do anything stupid," she said. "Come back in one piece."

He dove in a moment later. The cold water swallowed him, and it took a moment to overcome the shock, but his legs started propelling him downwards before his brain had kicked back into gear.

Torch in hand, he swam down deep enough that it stopped being much of a help, the light it shone touching nothing, until, lungs beginning to feel the strain, he reached the lake bed.

And he saw the red light. It filled his vision, made his corneas burn.

Against his better judgement, he swam towards it, and then reaching out a hand, to the gaping red wound in the silt, he touched his skin to it.

Instantaneously came the feelings that he should not have done that, and that he needed to get the fuck away from the gate.

Lungs burning, legs flailing in his haste, he swam back towards the surface, kicking until he couldn't feel his legs anymore and the moon first appeared as a vague glow in the far distance, and then started to take shimmering shape.

He sensed that he was being pursued, and knowing what they were up against, he probably was. He burst at last above the surface of the water, gasping, and hands clasped his and started pulling him back into the boat. Nancy and Scorpius.

Chest heaving, he locked wild eyes with Nancy and told her, "I did something stupid."

There wasn't even time for her to ask him what he meant; the sense of being pursued turned into the rock solid feeling of it; something twisted around his ankle, and dragged him back down into the depths of the lake, so fast that he never even heard Robin scream.

Pulled into the darkness, light was lost to him for an eternity, lungs contracting painfully, before he was ejected onto a rocky surface, his whole body protesting.

The sudden light was wrong; dim and gray and red. The atmosphere was toxic, one of stagnation; dim, ashy and rotten. It seemed to be neither night nor day, but a red storm raged overhead. Lightning flashed and in the long distance, creatures shrieked. He forced himself up to his knees and dragged air into his lungs.

It took far too long to realise he was in a dustbowl. The vines carpeting the ground must be the ones that pulled him in. He squinted. They looked pretty much lifeless now.

His heart was beating in doubletime. He was on his own. He had no idea where. The shrieking was getting louder. Closer. And rapidly so. Shapes flashed past him in the distance, then in his periphery. A wing scraped his bare side.

The first set of fangs sunk in a heartbeat later.

By the time his friends had followed him into the Upside Down and leapt to his defense, he was on the brink of asphyxiating; the vine around his neck had been squeezing the life out of him and his throat was raw inside and out; his screams quickly turned rough. He bashed the thing around his neck to death, and the strength momentarily left him in the aftermath.

Another creature shot straight at his face and he didn't even stop to think—unfortunately. His mouth opened, he caught it between his teeth, he tore it in half and spat it out. Blood gushed into his mouth but the bat thing was dead. The creatures, whatever they were, were finally fought off, screeching, by Nancy, Robin, and—Scorpius?

Fuck, Lily was going to murder him.

Before he could confront the fugitive, the bat creatures reswarmed and they were running for their lives, towards the skeletal woods ahead. The gate in the lakebed was cut off from them. They ran until the bats lost interest, and Albus' legs failed him abruptly.

The Malfoy turned quickly to take in his new surroundings, jaw effectively on the floor, as the girls dropped to Albus' side, leaning over him.

"Jesus, Albus, those little vampire guys really took chunks out of you," Robin said, surveying him all over.

"Yeah, thanks Buckley." He was trying to talk without letting blood trickle down his throat. "I couldn't feel the gaping wounds in my side until you pointed them out to me."

"I'll fix it," Nancy said before Robin could come back with a retort of her own. “And cover your mouths with something. We shouldn’t breathe this place in.”

Robin eyed them up, and then nudged Scorpius in the side; he spooked like a horse who'd been kicked with spurs. She rolled her eyes. "Lets scout the area, give these two a moment to patch things up."

With a pointed look, she left them, dragging Scorpius with her. Albus heard him start to chew her ear off as they walked away.

He felt like he shouldn't let them go off like that, but the screaming pain in his sides stilled him. They left, and it was just him and Nancy, who was already tearing into the bottom of her shirt for strips of fabric. So much for his supplies; the backpack with them in was still in the hands of Henderson and co.

She made two mouth coverings first, flimsy though they were, and then started in on his wounds.

Nancy's hands were shaking yet everything about her screamed resolution. When her throat had bobbed twice in quick succession, and her eyes buzzed nervously in her skull, he asked, "Are you okay?"

"I keep thinking about Barb," she admitted quietly. "Being here. Alone. I think about her all the time but being here like this… It’s all so much worse.”

He bit his lip. Barb was a subject that, selfishly, he tried not to linger on. Life was easier to get on with when he could pretend he'd had nothing to do with how she died. He knew Nancy was different in that way. He knew Barb lingered for her.

"If it helps at all, she probably... didn't live for long," he muttered.

She retorted with a particularly vicious tug of the bandages; he winced. She gave him a look from the top of her head that told him to shut up. She didn't break pace, wrapping him up tight, hopefully enough to get him back home-side alive.

They didn't say anything else to each other, and soon Scorpius came creeping back into view.

"Everything okay?" Albus asked.

"Robin thinks we need to find shelter," he said.

Nancy nodded. "If we can find my house, I have weapons stashed around the place that we can use. A gun."

Albus struggled to his feet, as tremors shook the ground, and Robin asked, "A gun?"

"My dad got a licence."

A snort. "Ted has a gun licence?"

"You'd be surprised," Albus said, finding a steady footing. "Everyone and their Mums is packing around here."

"Like who?"

"Farmers."

"And?" Robin asked, turning back with a playful eyebrow raise.

He smiled. "Farmers' Mums."

He let the girls lead the way. He wasn't sure where Nancy was going, but she was walking with purpose, and he couldn't be arsed to bother her for a plan. They crossed the dustbowl, relied on frightening, mirror-landmarks of their home to find their way around this frightening, mirror-Lake Winsome.

After a while, Scorpius struck up a very one-sided conversation.

"This place is like something from a nightmare. And those monsters attacking you... Like bats, I want to say, but not quite. They seemed almost demonic. Robin thought they might be under the control of this Vecna creature."

"Probably."

"You saved Max using music. Does it work the same way for everyone? What's the song to save you from Vecna?" he asked, and Albus didn't know what to tell him.

"I don't have one," he said, then corrected himself to, "Don't need one."

He could nearly hear Scorpius thinking up his next thought. "When we were in the boat, Nancy told me that you enjoy it. This." He gestured around them at the dead landscape and Albus didn't know whether Nancy was trying to insult him. "She said you like the rush, but you pretend not to. Should I worry that you aren't being careful enough?"

"I've been doing this for long enough to know how not to get anyone killed, thanks," he muttered. "Besides, you could have stayed in the boat and looked after my jumper. You didn't have to follow us."

Ahead, Nancy and Robin were in deep discussion about something. They glanced back at him once or twice, and the second time, he pulled a face at them and Nancy rolled her eyes, and they didn't look back again.

Scorpius shrugged out of his ridiculous Hogwarts blazer, and Albus was about to tell him to keep his clothes on down here, for Godsake, when the blazer was draped over his shoudlers.

"You'll catch your death," Scorpius said, when Albus stared at him. "Put your arms through the sleeves."

Not sure he knew exactly what was happening, he did, and he had to admit the warmth was nice. He glanced down at himself; the threads of the Hogwarts crest glinted dully up from his breastbone.

Many a time when he was younger, he had imagined that he would wear this badge with pride, over a pressed white shirt and a robe over top. Wand of some variety perhaps strapped to his arm, pulsing with a magic only he was atuned to.

Beneath the Hogwarts blazer he saw his bare chest, dirtied with the ash and filth of the Upside Down, and the makeshift bandages Nancy had made out of her top.

"Explain something to me." Albus heaved a sigh, but didn't stop Scorpius from going on. "First, Vecna's victim experiences sleeplessness, or alternately, nightmares, and headaches. Then they start to have the visions. They see the grandfather clock. Seven days on from then, they die. Am I right in all of that?"

"The seven days thing is arbitrary," he said. "Vecna could kill whenever he wanted, I'm sure. He just likes to play with his victims, like all serial killers, with their patterns and calling cards. Otherwise, yes, you're right."

Scorpius nodded, then he said, "Can I ask something else, Potter? Have you seen the grandfather clock?"

He went cold, and actually stopped in his tracks; Scorpius met his eyes. "Why would I have seen it?"

"Just curious."

Then he carried on walking, leaving Albus to keep up.

Nancy led them to the mirror-Wheeler house. They found the place in an identical state of decay to the rest of the Upside Down, but each of them noticed little oddities; a magazine here, a ready meal carton there, all of which seemed dated from some years ago.

It wasn't until they made it to Nancy's old bedroom that they realised what was going on. Or rather, Nancy did.

She found her old diary, the entries coming to an abrupt halt on the night Will first disappeared, but none of her hidden weapons, which had started to be stashed around the place only days after Will's vanishing.

Looking around with wild eyes, she took in the rest of her rotting possessions, and declared, "This room's not changed since that night. The entire house is the same as it was then."

"Do you think time maybe doesn't move here?" Robin asked, perking up. "Can we check that? Does anyone have a watch?"

"I carry a pocketwatch," Scorpius said, withdrawing one similar in nature—though more elaborate—to Albus'. He flipped open the cover and peered at the face. "Stopped."

But was that the magic in the watch breaking down, or a confirmation of Nancy's theory?

While Robin leant over Scorpius' pocketwatch and Oohed at the intricate design, something made Albus and Nancy both look up; a noise, a murmuring of some sort, seeming to pass across their heads.

"What was that?" she asked.

The noise was still reverberating very quietly. Albus, frowning, strained his ears. "It—sounds like—" By now Robin and Scorpius were looking too. A swell of noise confirmed his thought. "Dustin."

"Dustin?" Nancy repeated, as incredulous as he was.

"Why can you hear Dustin?" Robin asked.

"I don't know." He stared at the ceiling like it was going to drop him on their heads. "He's not here. Right? He can't be here."

"The voice is definitely disembodied," Scorpius said, and he sounded so confident that Albus had to believe him.

Albus strained his ears again, to pick out some actual words. "...not simply killing them. He's forging psychic connec—" Dustin's voice faded out, then back in. "Every kill rips a hole in the fabric of reality." Albus' eyebrows raised.

"Uh," Robin's had shot up into her fringe. "You don't think he means Vecna, do you?"

Nancy was the recipient of the question, but she didn't answer, too busy staring at a point above all of their heads. Albus' eyes followed hers. Golden particles were shimmering around the light fixture in the ceiling.

"Those weren't there before," Robin said, after a few seconds of communal silence.

They were biking across the Upside Down towards the location of the first gate; the place where Chrissy died. That was Dustin's theory, that a gate opened at the location of every murder.

They had used the particles around the light fixture to write messages out in the air, in the hopes that the kids would notice, then that they would be able to read them, and from that, their escape plan had sprung; go through Chrissy's gate, and hope no police officers were staking the static home out when they fell through the ceiling.

The kids were waiting for them when they arrived. A sheet rope was tossed through the gate, suspended by some trick of physics, and Robin went through first. They tried to send Scorpius second, but he refused to make Nancy wait, and they didn't have time to argue. Nancy shot a desperate look at the door, against which more demobats flung their bodies, trying to break through, and then threw herself at the rope and climbed as fast as she could.

Albus could feel himself growing faint in spells, as they waited, almost like Vecna was leeching from his reserves directly.

"That seems like magic," Scorpius said, nodding at the waiting kids and the static home above their heads.

"It's just physics," he said.

"Right. Physics."

He'd said the same thing earlier. The golden light had glimmered and danced beneath their fingers, and the dual looks of delight and wonder on Scorpius' face made Albus want to smile. Granddad Weasley would love this guy. But for them to ever have the chance of meeting, they needed to get out of the Upside Down alive.

Nancy was climbing, and then she was falling, landing on a mattress the kids had pulled from somewhere.

"Go, Scorpius," he said, giving him a shove in the back, looking back at the door. Scorpius didn't move. "I said, GO—"

He turned and his voice died in his throat; the whites of Scorpius' eyes gleamed wetly at him, his limbs locked like a statue's.

The Party were calling down, asking him what was wrong in a chorus of tense voices, and Dustin's rose above the rest. "Has Vecna got him?"

"Yeah," he called. "What do I do?"

"Fuck. Shit. He needs music!" Dustin screeched, before their voices all melded into one, and Albus was on his own again.

He tried. He tried to snap Scorpius out of it. He had no idea of Scorpius' music tastes, he hadn't a candidate for the song to save him from Vecna, didn't even know what musicians were popular in the Wizarding world right now, apart from E.L.F., who Lily and Hugo listened to endlessly.

As the argument raged on overhead he tried humming an old Celestina Warbeck tune, then singing another. He wanted to wince at his tunelessness. Scorpius' eyeballs moved in their sockets; the whites of his eyes twitched.

For the second time in as many hours he was stunned, useless, watching as someone he cared about died. His hands latched onto Scorpius' shoulders and he shook him until his head flopped backwards; his hands leapt away as if burned.

"ALBUS!" Dustin screamed. "WHO DOES HE LIKE?"

"I DON'T FUCKING KNOW!" he roared, vocal chords vibrating against his throat at the sheer volume.

The Party overhead panicked, Scorpius remained beyond his reach, a storm raged in Albus' head. Then as fast as it had started, so did it end; Scorpius' eyes rolled forwards, pupils dilated, the blues of his irises thin bands. He sucked in a huge lungful of Upside Down, and then, shuddering, fell into laboured breathing. He locked eyes with Albus.

"Get me out of here."

He pushed Scorpius to the rope and held him until he was out of reach. Whatever had just happened, he had no way of riddling it out. They just needed to get out of the Upside Down. Everything else could wait.

Scorpius reached the ceiling, passed through the gate, and fell the short drop to the mattress on the other side. Dustin and Lucas helped him aside, and started leaning over him.

With the rest of their group watching he became acutely aware of how tired he was. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving behind a painful throbbing that was most prominent down his left side, but honestly, his entire body hurt. He could well see his immediate future being spent hunched, retching, over a toilet bowl, and every time he shut his eyes, he saw Scorpius, eyes rolled back in his head, in Vecna's trance.

That initial moment of horror—that feeling of gravity abandoning him, perhaps forever—as he realised something was wrong, that Scorpius wasn't making any moves to follow his friends through to safety...

He wrapped his leg around the rope and hoisted himself up, and climbed until he was falling.

Now, he was sure he didn't pass out completely. His vision blacked out and events around him seeemed to have progressed somewhat, but that didn't mean he blacked out. It just meant he was phasing.

A face hovered over his, and he squinted up at it.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Dustin asked, then barked, "No, stay down!" in that horrible screech of his when Albus tried to sit up. "You look fucking awful."

He tried to struggle up onto his elbows, and Dustin was there again to thwart him. That time he stayed put, drained of the last of his reserves, and floating dizzily across a blurred mental plane.

"What are these marks? Were you fucking strangled?" When Dustin poked aside Scorpius' school jacket, his eyes landed on the bandages wrapped around his torso. "What happened down there?"

Albus grunted. "Doesn't matter now. Where's Scorpius? How's he doing?"

"He's—fine."

The over-casual tone and the catch in Dustin's voice made him suspicious, and he cracked his eyes open a slit. Scorpius was propped up against Robin, and conscious, but his expression was stunned. He looked like he was in shock.

"He's fine!" Dustin repeated, having not seen Albus look. "He's all good—No! Stay the fuck down!"

Everyone talked over each other, an increasingly mind-numbing hum of sound, while Scorpius stared at a spot beyond them all. Albus shouted them down when his arms went around himself in what was obviously a self-soothing gesture; he'd made the same one the night he arrived.

The effort it took to shout was staggering.

A terrible trembling had started by that point, shakes taking hold of him. Dustin began to pick at Nancy's bandages, made filthy by their time in the Upside Down, and worryingly, he suspected that even if he'd wanted to stop Dustin from doing what he was doing, he wouldn't be able to.

There was a sharp intake of breath from above. "Jesus Christ, Albus."

"What is it?" called a voice from the other side of the room; Nancy, anxious.

Dustin huffed. "These puncture wounds look pretty deep. I think we've gotta wash them out. Someone come give me a hand."

"Essence of ditany should do it," Scorpius muttered distantly, though no more distant than Albus felt in that moment, being poked and prodded, the continual waves of pain, some sharper than the rest.

Flurries of movement from above, and then, Dustin telling him, "This is probably going to sting."

"Just do it," he said.

And Dustin was right. It did sting. His back arched; he howled towards the ceiling. Their ministrations didn't cease.

When the ordeal was over and his wounds re-wrapped, he opened his eyes to see Nancy leaning over him. Her eyes glinted with something sharp, but she offered him a smile.

"Next time I tell you not to do anything stupid, you'd better listen to me."

"Oh, I will, Nance," he said, slurring his words a bit because the pain made his tongue so heavy.

Dustin's head poked onto the scene. "We should probably get out of here in case Mr Munson comes back and thinks we're breaking and entering or something." As Nancy nodded her agreement, preparing to stand, he added, "Also, we might wanna find somewhere to hide out, ‘cause we’re kinda on the lam right now.”

“The lam?” Nancy repeated, deeply unimpressed.

"From who?" Albus managed to ask.

"Our parents." Dustin carefully replaced all the things he had used from the first aid kit. "And the police."

"Right," Nancy said, sighing. "Of course you are."

"We can hide out at my house," Albus said, thinking about going to bed. "Unless you've got them chasing me as well."

Dustin cracked a nervous smile. "No. Nothing like that."

He and Nancy shared a look. "Lets go then," she said, preparing to herd everyone outside. "Back to the Potters, and hope we can somehow sneak you all past Albus' dad."

If they were very, very lucky, Harry would not be at home, for once. Perhaps he was still too busy making a nuisance of himself at the Auror office. Though after the night he'd just had, Albus wasn't holding out much hope that his luck would come through.

Dustin said he had a theory for closing the gate in the roof, and indeed, Albus watched with passive interest as he gathered the rope and hoofed it straight up towards the gate; the moment the entire rope had passed through, the gravity of the Upside Down took hold, and it fell to pool on the floor of the Munson's trailer in the Upside Down.

The gate started to shrink, like a wound healing with the removal of the splinter.

After so much time, Albus had come to think of himself as something of an expert, when it came to dealing with the aftermath of world-ending threats.

He'd identified a pattern, a routine. Usually, when most of the blood had been scrubbed from the carpets and the shattered glass was all swept away, he crashed in whatever bed was available to him. In the immediate following days, it would be hard to let the others out of his sight, but he also struggled to let outsiders in. Even with all the fear and relief, after the first time with the Demogorgon, he'd barely spoken to his family almost a week.

He found it too difficult when his mind was never set on anyone outside their circle.

Since that first night, it had always been the Party against the World, and that never felt more true than when they were recuperating after another brush with the other side. Before they reintegrated with the normal people, they shut themselves up and bandaged each others' wounds. Traded stories until a full picture of the night was complete.

It was a profoundly intimate experience.

But it was different this time, for one glaring reason; Scorpius Malfoy was standing in his hallway. Well—standing might be generous. He was barely holding himself upright, leant against the wall, clenching his clammy fists over and over, like he was uncomfortable to occupy the physical space that he did, and he was trying to figure out how to merge with the shadows instead.

Who knew, maybe that was a spell they taught at Hogwarts.

"I keep reflecting on how I got to this point," he mumbled. "Craig, and the mob that's after me, and your monsters, which seem like the sorts of things the teachers at Hogwarts invent to keep the children out of the Forbidden Forest, except these ones are real and right here. Merlin." He violently scrubbed a hand through his once-perfect hair. "And those bloody kids didn't even flinch. Like this is all normal."

"Well..." He scrounged around for something comforting to say. "Normal is relative."

Scorpius shot him a remarkably scathing look. "Oh, yes, thank you. I mean for bloody hell's sake, I just watched the squib son of Harry Potter almost get ripped apart by monster bats. Now you're wrapped up like a mummy to stop your internal organs from falling out!"

"They aren't going to fall out," he said, coolly, standing from the squat he had gone into to talk to Scorpius. The squib son of Harry Potter. Please. He'd thought Scorpius was better than that. "Don't they teach you any biology at Hogwarts?"

"And apparently this has been going on for years and the whole entire Wizarding world has just been totally ignorant!" Scorpius went on, waving his arms madly. Clearly Albus was not needed for this rant. It was self-sustaining. "How could none of us have known? The Department of Mysteries, surely! How did we not know?"

"Maybe because the squib son of Harry Potter stopped it from ever reaching you," he muttered, very sarcastically, to himself.

He was poking around in the first aid kit Nancy had left behind for some more painkillers, because Mum had emptied the potions cabinet in the bathroom.

His parents were gone, which was a small mercy after the night they'd had. He supposed that with a Hogwarts student dead, and the main suspect, missing, things might be a bit hectic.

Max was taking Lily's room, and he wasn't going to stop Lucas and Dustin from keeping watch over her. Under normal cirumstances he might be a bit hesitant, but after what they'd just been though, he knew they would do nothing untoward.

Last he checked, Dustin was making a nest for himself on the floor out of all Lily's decorative pillows and Lucas was curling around Max like a protective barrier. Her headphones remained plastered to her ears.

Albus led Scorpius up the stairs to James' bedroom—he didn't know why it was still James', the kids had slept in there more than his brother ever had—staying close  to catch him if necessary. He was out of breath by the time had made the short trip up the stairs. Deathly pale, standing dazed in the middle of the room until Albus led him to the bed by his arm.

He tried to think of something to say, failed, and went to his own room to fetch the pyjamas he had given Scorpius last night. He realised they had not been worn when he picked them up.

Scorpius was exactly where Albus left him, only now, holding his hand up in front of his face and staring at it. He took that hand and scrubbed it over his face, then hissed in pain when he brushed a scrape.

"Ouch," he muttered, quietly. Sweet Merlin, the man was a Care Bear.

Albus put down the pyjamas and nudged Scorpius with his foot. "You can have this room while you're—in hiding, I guess. Kitchen's joined to the living room, if you're hungry."

He left before Scorpius could scrounge up a response from his tired little head, shutting the door behind him. He needed a shower, and it wasn't until he shut the bathroom door behind him, that he realised just how mental the last couple of days had been.

A haze of pain and cascading water led him eventually back to his bedroom, where Nancy untaped the shopping bags keeping his bandages dry. She and Robin were staying in his room, though Robin insisted on a sleeping bag on the floor. The state he was in, he wouldn't say no; the lure of his mattress was too strong.

Lying prostrated on his back, Nancy's slow breath in his ear, he listened to the minutes tick by on the clock face. The rest of the house else seemed to have fallen asleep. The silence was so great that he couldn't focus on anything but the ache in his side. This was the worst pain he could remember experiencing. He felt sick with it.

Hauling his body up carefully into a sitting position, stabbing pains shot through his entire side, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Then, by the light of the moon streaming through the windows, he could see that he wasn’t the only one awake. Scorpius sat on a hollow log outside, staring into the trees.

"Oh Merlin..."

Painstakingly, he dragged himself down the stairs and out the front door, careful to lock it behind him just in case one of the kids got wandering legs or something like that, and went around to the patch of garden that sat beneath his bedroom window. There wasn't a fence around the side; the garden and the forest had at some point grown into each other. Hence the hollowed out tree trunk that Scorpius had made a seat of.

Scorpius jumped and turned frightened eyes on him. It took a few seconds for him to realise it was just Albus. He turned back to face the forest.

"Oh. Hello Potter."

He sat down, grimacing at the cold and wishing he'd been smart enough to bring a jacket. "Why are you out here?"

"Couldn't sleep." Scorpius was holding a tall glass of water, and the moon was reflecting on the surface of it, rippling gently. "Nothing's helping."

"I'm sorry."

He tried to look nonchalant. "I made you take me."

"Will you come back inside? Can we talk?" Albus tried when Scorpius shook his head.

"I'm not ready to do that," he whispered. "In the morning. I'll talk in the morning. But I can't... He showed me things that I can't—Awful things are going to happen, Potter." Worse than had happened already? Like he knew what Albus was thinking, he said, "Vecna alluded to some similarity between the two of us."

"In what way?" Albus asked, brow furrowed. When Scorpius didn't answer, he said, "It's over for now, whatever he meant. Please come inside."

Scorpius sent him a long, dolorous look. "It's far from over, Potter. It hasn't even begun."

But Albus didn't need Scorpius to tell him that the worst was yet to come; when he looked out into the creep of forest ahead of him, he saw it; a ticking grandfather clock wedged in the hollow of a lightning-struck tree.

Chapter Text

When Albus was a kid, he and James would build tottering towers out of Exploding Snap cards. Inevitably, at some point, no matter how steady their hands, there would always be a single spark from one of the cards that would blow the whole enterprise sky high.

He'd spent the last four years waiting for that spark to ignite, and blow a hole through the centre of his life. Though he wouldn't admit it, he could feel it coming now, closer than he ever had before. The cold hand of oblivion closing over his heart. It would take a degree of scheming and plans that even he might not have in him, to keep a second member of the Wizarding community quiet on the Upside Down.

It took half an hour to get Scorpius back into the house, and then when he was finally asleep, Albus paced quietly down to the living room and just… stood there. Behind the sofa, staring at the fireplace that might flare green at any moment, but that he knew, deep down, would not.

He’d come to imprint this living room, it's knick-knacks, this house, on his psyche over the last seven years. It was not his first home but it was the one he felt the most safe in. If he were to stop dancing around the subject, it was the one he loved the most.

It was full of things put there by the people he loved. A blanket Nancy had brought over once and forgotten to take home. A couple of Mike's forgotten D&D books squeezed into the bookshelf. A mark on the wall put there by Dustin and Will when they were running unsupervised science experiments from his living room. Lily had caught them. She nearly blew her top.

In this house he had become the person he was now, and he shuddered to imagine who he might have become if he had been a wizard, and lived every day of his life under the shadow of his parents.

In this house he was entirely his own man. For better or for worse.

When they left, in a few hours time, he might not come back to it again.

Sleep didn’t find him that night, which was what he expected, and when he heard the first stirrings of life from upstairs, he tried to shake some feeling into his sleep-deprived limbs and get ready for what was to come.

He, Nancy and Robin went out at first light to fetch breakfast from town, and other much needed supplies. Stereos from the dusty little tech shop tucked away down a side alley near the Kinema. Heavy-duty clothing from the army surplus shop that was kept in business by the middle class game hunters of the area who weren't quite rich enough to shop around Lake Windemere.

The town around them was at a standstill after the third death, last night. Tommy Hagan, as it turned out.  He'd seen the family cars of both Fred Benson and Tommy parked outside the police station as they drove past. Frightened people stopped in doorways to glance around themselves and take the risk of chatting for a moment. It was a town under seige.

Their last stop was the bakery. Doughnuts and take away coffees. Albus left the girls to go in alone; he wanted to call Will back while he still had the chance.

He rolled the window right the way down so he could smoke out of it, tossed his lighter into the coin tray, and waited to see if Will would answer. As the call rang out he stared at the bloody sunrise, and tried to remember the old sailor's rhyme; was a red sky in the morning the bad omen?

His call went to voicemail.

But then a few moments later, before he even had time for disappointment, Will rang him back.

A breathless, "You're in danger," met him before he'd begun to say hello.

"I—What?"

"All of you, you're in danger," Will said. "We got away, but—" He broke off, speaking to someone at his side as Albus' pulse began to throb. "El—Shit, I didn't want to say anything. El got arrested, and then her envoy got intercepted, and the guys who made her like this, the guys from the lab, they took her."

"What—"

"We're going to rescue her. Me and Mike, and—Jonathan and Argyle."

"Who the fuck is Argyle?"

"Don't yell, Albus," Will said. "Come on, I wasn't even sure if I should call you back. We know where they're keeping her. We're going to break in and break her out. But that's not why I called. If they're after El then you guys might be next."

"Well I—"

"We're almost there. They took her up to this place in Antrim, we've been driving all night. But I wanted to call while—Just in case."

"I know the feeling," he said, head dropping, held up at the bridge of his nose by his fingertips. "Wait—You said you were with Mike and Jonathan—"

"And Argyle."

"So where's your mum?"

There was a small pause as Will's line of thought redirected. "Gone! I don't know where she is, she left with Murray days ago and we haven't heard from her since."

Where would Mrs Byers disappear off to with Murray? He couldn't think of anywhere she would go without informing her children. A chilling thought entered his head; that the same guys who had taken El had done something to them, but he didn't voice the thought. Maybe Will was right to try and warn them off, as useless a task as that might prove.

"As soon as we have El back, I'll call you again. Promise. But I have to go now. We're pretty much there, so—"

"Will, wait." He paused, to make sure Will hadn't hung up, and then said, "Listen, Will, you might not be able to uh, call me later. Might be out of reach, you know?"

A confused silence. "No, I don't know. What does that mean?"

"Just—don't be surprised if you call and I don't pick up, alright?"

"You're freaking me out now, Albus, this isn't funny. What's going on?"

His eyes trailed over the window of the post office next to the bakery; the grandfather clock, intensely out of place next to the rest of the window fodder, was ticking loud enough for him to hear through two panes of glass. But it was for no one's eyes but his.

"You know what? Just—I'll see you when I can, okay? Be careful rescuing El, don't even think about putting yourself in the path of any guns that might appear, you little dickhead, remember to be smart about this."

"We will," he said, bewildered. "Why are you talking like this is the last time we'll ever speak?"

The ticking of the clock seemed to increase in volume. Albus didn't say anything at first. He could see the girls paying at the counter of the bakery and prepared to end the call.

"You'll be fine. It's all going to be fine. Don't worry about us here, okay?" Will maintained a stony silence. "Didn't mean to piss you off. I just don't want you panicking if you try to call us later and no one picks up. We've got a lot on as well. You know about Chrissy, right? But don't worry," he repeated.

After a couple of seconds, Will said, "I have to go now anyway." There was a slightly audible gulp. "We're here, and El needs our help. Talk to you when I can, I guess."

"Yeah. Bye, Will," he said, voice almost cracking because his throat was so dry.

Then the connection severed, and a second later, Nancy was climbing into the passenger seat and passing him a coffee, which he drank from even though it was absolutely scalding. His eyes remained fixed on the grandfather clock, and he ignored the girls, jabbering away to him about something, as he struck the engine up again.

Eleven kidnapped. The kids charging in to rescue her. His sole comfort was that Jonathan was in charge. He wouldn't let them get hurt. Albus had upset Will with what he said, which he hadn't intended, obviously, but people always said intent was meaningless in the face of hurt.

Pulled in a million directions at once, he didn’t have time to be very upset with himself. Someone flicking his face broke him from his reverie; Robin was leaning between the front seats and giving him an identical look of concern to Nancy. A doughnut held out to him from her hand.

"I'll wait 'til we're home, thanks," he said, and started driving. He'd upset Will big time. If he was lucky he'd live long enough to feel his wrath in person. A question resurfaced to him. "Have either of you heard the Ireland lot mention a guy called Argyle before?"

An omen played over the radio as they made their way home; The Worst Is Done, a song by Weyes Blood. He tried not to let the lyrics worm into his head as they passed Steve Harrington, surrounded by his peers, his expression one of shock. They never noticed Albus' car passing them by.

Home, in the front door, they found Scorpius combing through his parents' record collection in the living room, looking perhaps a bit more rested than Albus, and the rest of the Party gathered around the dining table. He threw the box of doughnuts in the middle of them as Scorpius retook a previously abandoned seat next to Dustin, giving Albus an unreadable look from the top of his head.

"There. Eat."

"I'm not hungry," Max muttered, one headphone pulled away from her ear for a moment.

"Even so, eat. Robin spent her life savings on them."

"Shut up, dick."

"There's no telling when we'll get the chance again, " Nancy said. "Eat, drink, and then we'll get on with what has to be done."

Scorpius cleared his throat, ignoring the expectant looks from Nancy and Robin. "Dustin has been introducing me to the finer details of the Upside Down, while you were out. He's told me about Eleven, and the laboratory."

"Oh yeah?" Albus muttered, passing the doughnuts out himself because Lucas and Max were just sitting there.

"We were just getting onto Starcourt," Dustin said, who didn't need to be handed food. He already had three quarters of a glazed doughnut in his mouth, and was speaking around it.

"Nancy's parents came to the house, knocking on the door," Max said, ignoring him. "While you were gone."

"Really?" Albus frowned. "How did you hide?"

"Yeah, about that." They turned to Lucas. "Scorpius did—something." The man in question didn't look up from his orcs-chat with Dustin, but Albus thought he knew he was being talked about. He held himself more stiffly. Lucas had turned an incredulous look on Albus, who didn't think he had the whole explaining thing in him. "After a while, they went away. No one else has been by."

"We need to get on before more people come here looking for you. Scorpius, you have to tell us what you know." He sat down at the table and took out the copy of the Winsome Times that he had bought with the doughnuts and coffees. He opened it to the second page, avoiding the first, on which Chrissy's face beamed out at him in black and white. "They say the worst is done," he muttered, the apt lyric drumming away in his frontal lobe.

When their sad little breakfast was finished, they turned to Scorpius for his story. He looked as though all the time in the world would not have prepared him for repeating it.

"Vecna showed me things. Things from the past and the future," he clarified. "I saw his childhood."

"Childhood?" Dustin repeated. "That creepy flesh monster fuck used to be a kid?"

Scorpius nodded. "Oh, he was a child, alright. Henry Creel knew he was different from the start, and he thought that it made him better than everyone else. He used his powers to manipulate the people around him, make them see things that weren't really there. He tortured his family. Psychologically." Scorpius' throat bobbed. "One day, he used his powers to kill his mother and his sister, and collapsed into a coma from the effort. His father, Victor, was blamed for the crime. He was only twelve.

"But Henry couldn't see the future, not yet at least." A grim smile, unbefitting of Scorpius' soft features, slid onto his face. "He'd caught the attention of a man called Martin Brenner. A doctor."

"Jesus," Robin muttered, a chill passing through her. "I think you guys are familiar with him."

Albus wasn't thinking much about Brenner though; his mind went straight to Eleven, and the lab over the mountainside.

"He became Brenner's first experiment. Brenner wanted to know how Henry could do the things he could." Scorpius' eyes twitched in their sockets. "He was brought underground and given a new name. He was called One."

"Oh my god," Nancy said, immediately. "Vecna is—"

"And years passed by, until One met a girl with immense power of her own," Scorpius said, powering forward. "A girl I think you all know as Eleven."

A stunned silence swallowed the room for the first few moments after he was finished.

"Vecna knows Eleven," Albus mumbled.

"I need to fit my plans around this," Nancy said, bouncing her hands against her knees with frenetic energy. "This changes things, if he knows Eleven then he might be planning to use her—"

Robin was already on her feet, swiping through her phone, and saying, "I'll call Ireland. Someone's bound to pick up—"

"You call El, I'll call Will," Dustin said, joining in. "Lucas, get onto Jonathan—"

"I'm not finished." Scorpius was the only one who hadn't moved. "There was something else. He showed me a vision of the future."

Albus sat down across from him. "And what does the future look like, then?"

"Fire and blood. Vecna wins. Lake Winsome falls."

Moved by a deep unease, everyone scattered, so they could rush to be ready. Nancy's brain was going at such a speed that he was surprised steam wasn't coming out of her ears. The last to leave was Scorpius, who hung back to speak with Albus in low tones over the last of the breakfast things.

"I can't believe we're getting away with this," he confided. "I'd have thought your father would have come home at some point."

"Life of an auror, isn't it?" He shrugged, swallowed the dregs of his coffee. Their used things were left abandoned on the dining table. "Murder keeps him away. No one would ever think to look—"

"—for me here. I know." Scorpius looked hesitant, then deeply serious. "Albus, we're looking at a man who at the age of twelve, murdered his mother and sister and got his father locked away for the crime. Remind you of anyone?" Of course it did. There wasn't enough room in his head for everything he should be considering at the moment, but even so, the comparisons to a certain dark wizard permeated. At his terse nod, Scorpius asked, "What's your plan for this?"

"Nancy's been coming up with something." He was lingering on a line in the paper; that the Creel House had come back into the minds of the public in recent days. They weren't the only ones paying attention. "I want to listen to you both before I make any announcements."

"Announcements of what?"

"Just go and get dressed." He gave Scorpius a look from the top of his head, and drawled, "You can't save the world in your pyjamas, Malfoy."

Their group re-gathered in what had to be record time, and when the last of them reappeared in the living room, he said, "There's something else you all need to know before we make any final decisions on what we're doing."

Albus knew they had to be brought in on what Will had shared, but that didn't make sharing the news fun, especially when he was already getting so much closer to the moment when he had to tell them about the grandfather clock at the edge of his vision. Everyone was staring at him, obviously wondering why his voice had gone all funny and dread-filled.

Copying Scorpius by speaking over the shouts of alarm over the news of El's kidnapping, he told them what Will had told him; that he, Mike, Jonathan, and some guy called Argyle, were going to rescue her, and might already have succeeded as they spoke. Or failed. He stumbled over his tongue at that. It hadn't occurred to him that Will was supposed to call him again once El was safe.

As Nancy processed this, he checked his phone to make sure he hadn't missed a call from anyone, forgetting that there was one last thing they all needed to know.

By the time he'd checked his messages and his voicemail, and made sure that his phone wasn't on Do Not Disturb, the room had descended into squabbles over what they should do next. Head pounding, ears starting to ring, he struggled to make his voice heard.

The members of their collective stood in a half-hearted circle, in the main floor space of his living room, playing the role of reluctant audience to the argument raging across the coffee table; Max, Nancy and Lucas were at each other's throats. Eyes blown wide and voices hoarse, they were feuding over The Plan, the one Nancy had formulated, the one that, should it go off without a hitch, would rid them of Vecna's curse forever. Nancy was standing in defence of her plan, whereas Max and Lucas were concentrating very hard on one particular piece of the minutia.

"Forget it, Max. You aren't going to act as some sort of meat bait for Vecna!" Lucas cried.

"Oh, aren't I?"

"You can't! We can't let him get near you again! We spent all night playing Kate Bush on loop, my phone was red-hot from playing it so many times. We can't throw this away!"

"Well, Nancy's right, we have to bait him somehow."

"Oh, don't be a hero," Robin sighed.

"I'll do it," Albus said.

"What? No, he'd never go for that, it's me he wants to kill." Max tossed her hair over her shoulder, staring around at their gaggle of friends, making it very obvious by her facial tics that this was the part where they were supposed to back her up. Not that they would, because no matter how much they might like Albus, they would never suggest sacrificing her over him. "God, this is stupid. He can see into our minds."

Hands finding his hips, he finally declared, "I've seen the grandfather clock now, Max. I've been seeing it since I came back from the Upside Down."

The room went quiet. Then it exploded with noise.

"You've seen the what?" Scorpius asked faintly.

"Oh, fuck," Dustin said, hands pulling through his hair.

Max's face had gone a curdled-milk sort of colour, caught between lingering fury and shock. He tried not to look at Nancy, but he heard her intake of breath and it made him want to take it back, pretend that he'd only been making a badly-judged joke, but that would be irresponsible. If Vecna had marked him, then everyone needed to know, so that they could plan around him.

The bystanders become considerably less passive; speaking over one another in a variety of complaints, most of them being No, and Dustin in particular had a few choice words that he was directing towards both God and Merlin.

Nancy tried to convince him he was mistaken. "That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he switch targets?"

He couldn't do this part, didn't have the patience for it; the bit where everyone tried to deny the reality he'd laid out for them, making up excuses and inventing theories. They were wasting time that Max didn't have. Albus snuffed out their protests with insistent hand gestures, and when he had silenced the last of them—Dustin, unsurprisingly—he talked them down the way he did whenever the kids were trying convince him to let them go running headlong into danger.

"I don't know why he's focused on me now." Lie. "But he's done it, which means we need to rethink how we handle things from now on." He paused, waiting for more arguments, which didn't come. "I'll go to the Creel House to bait Vecna, and hold him off for long enough to let Nancy and Robin find him in the Upside Down, and kill him. Lucas and Max can take the stereos into the Upside Down and blast music to distract the bats. Scorpius and Dustin, you come with me to the Creel House. If I start floating, you're going to wake me up."

The ensuing silence stretched on for a very long moment, before Max looked at him with a defeated sort of disdain. "That's fucking stupid."

"It's not stupid, it's the smartest thing we can do, actually," he said, and then to the group at large, "Think about it. Vecna breaks someone down by finding the things that make them the most vulnerable and creating scenarios to terrify them with, which makes them weaker. Well he's been inside Max's head, he's figured her out. If he got into her head a second time, he wouldn't need to figure out how to break her down, because he already has. If it's me, he has to work out how to kill me first."

"You think you can hold him off for longer?"

"I do."

Robin tried to smile but produced more of an uneasy grimace. "Sure thing, Potter. We've got your back, plus, Nance is a total badass. Vecna will be the one running from us once she whips out that shotgun she took from Ted's house."

"This is still stupid," Max muttered. "You realise that if any step in this plan goes wrong, Albus dies? Like, he'll fucking die. If you can't reach Vecna or we can't keep the bats distracted, he's going to fucking die."

Every time she said the word die, Nancy flinched.

Lucas stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "Lets just be glad that you're not in the direct line of fire anymore. I doubt Vecna would let you escape him twice. Plus, Albus is—well."

Nancy, eyes glassy with a certain brand of determination, said, "Are you all done?"

She pushed past them to the outside, went over to the CR-V, and shot him a sharp, expectant look when she tugged on the door handle and it didn't open.

Obligingly, he unlocked it for her, and she threw herself onto the passenger seat. That was a lot of information to process in less than an hour, and he felt defeated already, but they hadn't even started yet. Nancy was a wonder to have produced a workable plan so quickly, and with so many new factors, and so much riding on whether or not the plan succeeded. But he'd always known she was brilliant, and he trusted her implicitly.

Before he could follow Nancy to the car, a weight flung itself around his midsection, and he looked down to find Dustin, clinging to him like he was still a scared eleven year old kid.

"You alright, mate?"

"No, I'm not alright." Dustin's voice was muffled by Albus' shirt, before he looked up at him. "I swear to fucking God, Albus, you'd better not die. I'll kill you myself if you do something as stupid as die."

He thought about what to say for a second. Robin and Scorpius, loading things that would be needed into the boot of the CR-V, each gave him a look as they passed.

"Nancy has a plan," he said at last, "and it's a good one. It's a really good one, Dustin, and if it weren't me going to the Creel House, it would be Max. We don't want her getting up close and personal with Vecna again, do we?"

"Obviously not. But even so." He released Albus then, so that he could shove him. "I mean it. I'll kill you if you die."

"Oh, I believe you."

"I just... wanted to get that out now. Don't want to risk any unexpressed thoughts."

"I wouldn't have worried about that. When's the last time you had an unexpressed thought?"

Dustin's face dropped. "I'm having one now, shithead."

He almost grinned. "Get in the car, Henderson. And don't forget your seatbelt!" he barked at Dustin's retreating back. He tried not to linger on that interaction once it was over. Didn't need the distraction, he told himself.

While everyone gathered themselves together and started to trickle out to the car, he sat down beside Nancy, in the driver's seat. Scorpius had vacated the seat moments before, and was getting comfortable in the back. His heart was beginning to thud very heavily in his chest. He thought about having one more cigarette, to steady his nerves, and decided against it. The kids would only moan.

"Nance." Her face was turned down towards her lap and she wouldn't look at him. "It's a good plan," he said.

"Is it?" she asked, mirthlessly. "I can't believe I'm sending you into this."

"Because..." he said, "it would be so much easier to send Max?"

"Because it's you, you dick." Chastened, he kept silent. "I kind of think this was all my fault to start with."

He squinted up at the clouds. "Wait. Give me a minute. I can put this together by myself."

She shoved his arm. "On that night when all this started, when we were still dating and Barb had died because I kept her waiting for me, and the Demogorgon was after us, I should never have called you. I shouldn't have left the kids to you like that. It was wrong of me to expect that of you."

"If there's anything I'll never regret about all of this, it's answering that call," he said.

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes. Everyone needs to be needed." His heart gave one, irregular and chest-shuddering thump. He struck the engine, and held his hand out, palm-up, over the gearstick. He gazed at Nancy's face intently. "I'll see you on the other side."

She stared into his eyes like she was committing to memory what they looked like with life in them. Placed her hand in his; he squeezed it tight until he felt her squeeze back.

"On the other side," she breathed, and they parted only when the kids began piling in.

Harry Potter seemed to have copped that something was very wrong with his youngest son. All it took was a few weeks living with Albus full-time for him to realise that there was something deeply pathalogical about him. Lily just wondered how she was supposed to handle this.

"I should talk to him... right?" Harry asked, turning to Hermione for her to either agree or disagree. Her aunt, consumed by some report on Craig Bowker Jr's death, gave a non-commital shrug, that did nothing to shore up Harry's confidence. "I've been watching him ever since I was released from hospital. He's always out of the house—"

"He's seventeen," Hermione said, and Lily realised that she had been listening all along.

"He's secretive, and bad at hiding that he's got a secret—"

"He's seventeen," she said, again.

"I'm worried about him. I don't know whether something happened around the time I was attacked—" Lily successfully stifled a snort, but it was a near thing, "but I've paid special attention to him since I've been spending more time in the Lake District, and I just think something's going on. He seems so tired."

"And again, he's seventeen." Hermione huffed, and at last looked up from her files. "Harry, Albus is not you. He's not doing what we were at seventeen, lets just be glad of that. He’s finishing school. He probably has a girlfriend he doesn't want anyone to know about, or he's down the pub every night, or something innocuous like that."

Her dad shook his head. "It's not that, Hermione. I know it isn't. Maybe he needs a better support system." After a deliberating pause, he added, "While things are quiet here, I might go and check in for a bit—"

Heart leaping into her mouth, Lily cried, "He's a grown man! He's seventeen!" When her dad turned a raised-eyebrow look on her, she blushed a bit, and said, in a steadier voice, "I just don't think you need to fuss over Albus when he's hanging around the house at Lake Winsome. The danger is here. It's happening here. Here is where you need to be."

And if he took one step too many into the house at Lake Winsome, he would probably realise pretty quickly that there was someone being harboured there. Harry hesitated, cloak half-shrugged on, and his nostrils flared. Lily held her breath, barely daring to blink, and when he acquiesced, her legs almost gave out with relief.

That had been late last night, and as far as she knew, he hadn't attempted another trip home. Too consumed with the chase to find Scorpius Malfoy. She hadn't thought much further than getting him somewhere safe, but at some point, she knew, Dad was going to go back to that house. When he did, she wanted to have some idea of where the real killer was.

She had the room to manouver from the Burrow, she supposed. She was one of a handful of students who, after Hogwarts' defenses were penetrated by Delphi, had been sent home for her own safety.

It had been days—she having been sent away from school mere hours after she returned from smuggling Scorpius—and she hadn't been alone for a minute. Even now, as the family went out to aid the Aurors in the search for Scorpius, she was left under the supervision of Grandma Weasley.

But she had been working on that. All morning, as Grandma bustled about her homestead, Lily dropped little hints into their conversation about the Lovegood house, just over the hill. "Maybe Lorcan could use some of your special cough remedy, he sounded rough last night," or, "Aunt Luna’s planning another Samhain excursion to the Scandinavian mountains, don’t you think it’s ridiculous?"

Just small tidbits to whet Grandma’s appetite, to get her out of the house for ten minutes, because Lily was going bonkers. Watching Albus bullshit his way through death-defying escapades one after the other had inspired her, and her work paid off in the mid-afternoon.

"I'm going to see Luna, dear," she said, bustling about the kitchen. "Have a little chat about her travel plans. Don't answer the door to anyone if they come knocking."

"I know. I won't."

She stayed sitting at the table until Grandma's short figure had vanished over the crest of the hill, before restlessness took her and she stood, beginning to pace around quietly. When she first sent Scorpius to Lake Winsome, she hadn't really thought as far as this. In the moment all she thought about was getting him away from persecution, but now Mr Malfoy was going crazy looking for his son, and half the Wizarding world thought his absence was a confession of guilt.

Lily bit down on her lip, guilt bubbling up in her chest. Maybe she should bring him back, if she could get her dad to promise that they wouldn't hand Scorpius over to the Aurors. Or maybe she should get a message to Mr Malfoy, somehow, letting him know his son was safe.

As she paced about, the beams above her head creaked; James, pacing also, in his bedroom one floor up. She slowed to a stop near the stairs, listening, and picked up on him muttering to himself.

"James? Are you okay?" she called.

He didn't answer at first. In fact, she gave up on receiving an answer at all, and had gone back to pacing the kitchen, when footsteps sounded on the stairs. Her oldest brother's head appeared around the corner. He did not look well.

"Do you think they're all okay?"

"Of course they are."

"Malfoy almost killed Dad once, Lils, I wouldn't put it past him to do it again." He launched himself with aggravation from the turn of the stairs to the ground floor, hair even more messed up than usual. Albus used Sleak-Eazy on his hair, she was sure. It was always way too neatly coiffed. "And Mum's out there as well. Everyone's gone looking for this little shit, but we don't know how much he's capable of!"

"It wasn't Malfoy."

"We should tell Al to come home. What if Malfoy finds out where he is and goes after him? Who'd keep him safe?"

Lily would consider a wager on Albus being able to take care of himself, regardless of his attacker, but she was more concentrated on James' complete tunnelvision about Scorpius. Years of poisonous rumours about the young man had obviously taken deeper root than she thought they had. The fact that she had never started a rumour herself, or even participated in the spreading of them, was of little comfort.

"I hate it as much as you do, Jamie, but right now the safest place Al can be is away from the Wizarding world, and the only thing we can do to help is to stay away from him ourselves. Here, come play some Exploding Snap with me, take my mind off it," she said, proffering the cards, but he didn't hear her.

Bitterness rose up in her chest; she wondered how much she had contributed to this. She and her paranoia, her buying into the same rumours that her classmates did. If she had made greater efforts to rebuff the rumours once she understood the malice behind them, might she have caught James before this all-encompassing misery clouded his judgement?

Turning from the kitchen window, her back to him, she said, "James, please—"

But he was already gone, she just hadn't seen him leave. She heard him thumping his way down the hall to the den, and sighed tiredly. He needed to find an outlet. But that wasn't Lily's responsibility.

As she leant against the sink, and soaked in the creaking, familiar silence of the Burrow, she heard one of the hands on the Weasley family clock move. Curious, she had a look. Something she said to her dad the night before echoed back to her as she did.

"The danger is here. It's happening here. Here is where you need to be."

Albus' clock hand was pointing to Mortal Peril.

"Oh, Merlin's bollocks," she said.

Chapter Text

Albus, Dustin and Scorpius spanned out across the vast, disconcerting sprawl of the Creel House, their torches the only light available. They were looking for Vecna.

Albus had no luck on the second floor, dipping in and out of crumbling bedrooms to no avail, and was considering abandoning the space entirely, when a floorboard creaked nearby—

Scorpius pressed a hand over his mouth, miming shush. He glanced down at the paper note Scorpius lifted to eye-level a second later, written in a looping scrawl: Found Vecna.

Albus raised an eyebrow; Oh?

They crept downstairs as quietly as they could, until they came to Dustin, already waiting in the entryway. In his hands he too held a notepad and he held it up to them after a moment of uncertainty.

Phase one?

Albus jerked his head in a nod, and shot Dustin a double thumbs up, which perked the kid up. Albus nudged him in the back until he was almost out of the house. He watched him hurry down the front steps and across the road, to the playground where he would signal to the girls in the Upside Down, letting them know they were ready.

So, he and Scorpius were left waiting in the decaying old crypt for Dustin's next signal. He really left them waiting for it as well, so to stop Scorpius' knees from knocking together, they sat down, more colliding than sinking onto a decrepit sofa that was probably more mould than cushion. He tried not to curl his lip at the thought.

Here goes another perfectly good set of clothes, he thought, realising that he was going to burn them when this was over.

After a while, Scorpius nudged him in the side, and held up his notepad, on it written two words: What's wrong?

He stared, then wrote back, Thinking bout Vecna

Elaborate?

Albus hesitated significantly before writing, Wizard?

Def. no magic in UD, Scorpius wrote with haste. Albus just wondered what Vecna could possibly mean about he and Scorpius being similar. He'd wondered about Eleven in the past. Where those powers of hers came from. If Vecna had once been magical, that might explain something about Brenner's experiments. Maybe he had tried to crack the magic code.

The idea was unsettling.

Scorpius managed a smile, after that, and quickly turned to doodle a stick-figure replica of himself surrounded by music notes, accompanied by the words, I won't let you get hurt, promise!

The corners of his eyes crinkling, Albus took his pen and drew a stick replica of himself, clapping madly. A ghost passed over Scorpius' face when he saw it, a thought, or a want, perhaps, but before Albus could push to know what it was, they were blinded by a sudden blue light.

Dustin.

Taking his torch to the window, he flickered it back, and swallowed the dread that was building in the back of his throat, creating pressure on his oesophagus. Then he turned a smile on Scorpius which was meant to signal confidence, I-do-this-all-the-time.

Scorpius just continued to look upset by the whole ordeal. Albus tilted his head; What's wrong? and after a few seconds, in which he didn't make any signals of his own, Scorpius rose up from the sofa, walked over to Albus, took both of his hands into his own and squeezed them.

Albus' brain stuttered. At first, he thought this must be some mind trick of Vecna's. Then, pulling his hands up to his mouth, Scorpius kissed their joined knuckles, and gazed at him sombrely. Albus gaped.

Scorpius managed to hold his gaze for another ten seconds before he dropped it, and his hands, the tops of his ears burning red.

There was no time to process what this might have meant, and his brain was beginning to spark, so he just took the nailbat from his backpack and picked up the lamp again, turning his back on Scorpius so he could concentrate on what he was meant to be doing; catching Vecna's undivided attention. After a fortifying breath, he started to smash the but of the nailbat into the wall, caving in the wood boards, over and over, shouting bloody murder.

"Hey, Henry, come out here and pick on someone your own size!" Crash, crash, crash. "You want to fuck things up that bad? Come and get me, you piece of shit!" Scorpius almost laughed at that, but Albus barely noticed, and didn't find much amusement in anything he was saying. "I won't let you hurt Max ever again. If it kills me, I'll fucking kill you. COME ONNN, THEN! KILL ME!”

With an almost silent zap, the lamp dimmed. He could have rolled his eyes, if he were feeling braver, but instead he turned to Scorpius, nodded his head towards the stairs, and then followed them up to the attic, chasing the thrumming of the light.

It peaked amidst a collection of displaced furniture, damp and moth-eaten. He knelt down like it was an altar.

For a while he thought the plan had fallen at the first hurdle, because Vecna did nothing for the longest time, not even when he crossed the line into blaspheming the entire Creel bloodline.

"Oh, come on, are you too coward to attack someone who might stand a chance at fighting you off?" He held his arms out and turned his face to the rotting ceiling beams, imploring the termites eating through the woodwork. "Really, I'm right here. I've seen your stupid clock, so I know you know who I am, and those kids, they're my kids. I look after them, they're my family." His chest heaved like a metal band was restricting it. "And I won't let you hurt them anymore.

"You need four deaths for four gates, Henry. So if you want your fourth gate, then you have to use me to make it, because Max is going keep playing her music, and you won't find her. But me? I'm offering. I'm waiting for you with open arms, mate, so come on! Come and get it!"

The only answer was from the minuscule scuttling of the termites, a subtle yet constant background noise, as they chewed through the beams of the house.

Lily Luna Potter was stubborn, determined, and good at keeping secrets. When at last she had a moment, Flooing into the house at Lake Winsome, she came into an empty home. There were abandoned coffee cups and doughnut boxes in the dining room. A Dungeons and Dragons book signified the presence of those stupid boys at some point. But her brother was gone, and perhaps more importantly, Scorpius was.

Her rarely used mobile wasn't being answered to when she called him. The only other number that might help was Max's; they'd swapped numbers during one of Lily's outburst of sentiment, when Max and Billy made her think Lily and Albus.

But Max didn't answer either. After a few seconds, the call was declined. Now, Lily didn't know all that much about phones, but she knew what it looked like when a call was declined, and she knew when something was wrong.

She left the house in search of someone she knew, so they could tell her what, in the name of magic, was going on.

(She never heard the Floo go again, just a moment after she left, and James Potter, who was angry and confused, and frightened by the things he had seen, used his house key for only the third time ever to go and look for his brother.)

No one in the town centre knew where Albus might be, and they didn't much care either; she knew something had been going on when she first left Scorpius here, but apparently she had no idea just what. Murders, three of them in as many days, and as soon as she heard that, her heart sank to the bottom of her chest.

Someone had seen Albus' car, the gold Honda, heading up to Primrose Hill, the site of the first murder, and dread sunk into her bones when she came upon the caravan park, saw the police tape fluttering in the wind, and then her brother's friends crowding around an old static home. Nancy was among them. Nancy, Robin, Lucas and Max, with armfuls of stuff in bags. The car was nowhere in sight, which wasn't a good sign.

As Lily marched over, she watched Lucas and Max hefting huge carrier bags of stuff over their shoulders. Robin held a bag with bottles sticking out of the top. The bottles had rags twisted into their necks. All of them were dressed strangely, and there was definitely no sign of her brother.

Nancy and Robin vanished into the static home before she could reach them, and she shouted, "Hey! Wait!" before Lucas and Max could follow. "Max! Where the hell is my brother?"

"Ugh." Max slammed one bag to the ground and looked at Lily like she wanted her to evaporate. "Sorry, Lily, we don't have time to talk right now."

"I know Albus is in danger. Tell me where he is."

"He's busy. Shit's happening," Lucas said, not even looking at her. Was that protective gear they were dressed in? "We can't talk."

"But he's in danger!" She followed Max and Lucas into the static home—and stopped short. Nancy and Robin were gone. A sheet rope was hanging from a hole in the ceiling. When Lily focused on the hole, she almost gagged. "What is that?"

"A gate to the Upside Down, and shit's about to get dangerous. Leave. Go home, before things go south." At a look from Lucas, Max added, "Further south."

"No. No, I am not leaving. I am not leaving!"

After she was pushed out of the static home unceremoniously, her wounded pride first told her to go in search of her brother elsewhere. There were other cars in this caravan park! She could steal one! Find him in that! But after stewing angrily in the  humid air for a few minutes, she realised she couldn't drive, and besides, even if Max and Lucas were being dicks, they were obviously in possession of knowledge that would lead her to Albus, if she only persisted.

On the floor was something that had been dropped from one of the carrier bags. She reached down and plucked it up from the trampled grass, turning it in her fingers. A lighter. What must it be like to need one of these things to conjure flame?

Albus smelled of cigarette smoke sometimes these days, but he always got her to vanish the scent before anyone else could pick up on it. She supposed he smoked to cope with the stress. So did Teddy, not that Dad or Grandma Weasley knew about it. Not that Teddy's stress was the same as Albus'.

With a flick of her thumb, a tiny flame burst from the lighter, and she let it hypnotise her for a few seconds.

Lily had not come all the way to Lake Winsome to wait for answers. But following Max and Lucas would mean going into the Upside Down. With a leaping pulse, it hit her that Albus must be in the Upside Down as well. Why else would his clock hand point to Mortal Peril?

She thought back to the Russian base, to the first gate she had ever seen, the huge one burning into the wall. The rot and decay of it, the negative energy. The way it sapped the magic from her veins, turned it bad.

It frightened the life out of her, but to save her brother she had to follow him.

Off to the side was one more ransacked carrier bag from Tesco that had been forgotten; four cans of deodorant were inside. Max and Lucas had cans strapped around their waists, and lighters as well. It must be for a reason. She looked from the cans to the lighter in her hand. It only took another second to tie a strip of cloth around her mouth, as Max and Lucas had done, and force open the door to the caravan.

She could already feel it sapping the magic from her veins. No matter. As she marched into the static van, a question occurred, in the back of her mind. Where in the name of Merlin's Underpants was Scorpius Malfoy?

Albus found his chest was beginning to constrict as he waited. Nothing was happening. He felt it in his gut; Vecna was saying no. But then, even after promising he wouldn't, Scorpius went off-script.

"Albus, this isn't working." He sounded tetchy, and when Albus turned to look at him his face was twisting with frustration. "It was silly to think this would work. I mean, we're dealing with a mind reader." He huffed, as Albus tried to work out what was going on. "I should have known that letting Lily hide me would be a waste of time. But I might have known; my father has told me about the Potters, and this? This whole thing has just screamed of classic Potter arrogance."

"Listen, I'm sorry, okay?" he snapped. "We will make this work, I won't let you go to jail, but you've got to be quiet or he'll—"

Scorpius' eyes rolled back in a snap, vanishing into his skull, mouth falling slack, arms raising up at his sides, biblical. Merlin, he was—Shit—

He rose into the air before Albus could do anything to stop him, and he had just latched onto his ankles, hoping to drag him back down to the floor, when the first crack sounded. Then the second. Scorpius' legs severed at odd angles, jutted out of his flesh in a garish nightmare display, and his arms snapped next. Before Albus even had the chance to scream, Scorpius' eyes were reduced to a red and white mush, exploding back into his skull.

He dropped to the floor in a heap, bones poking grimly through pale flesh.

Silence reigned.

"Scorpius?" he whispered after a moment, to the corpse, and the empty eye sockets stared back at him.

Thundering footsteps sounded from the rickety old stairs and then Dustin appeared, framing himself in the doorway, taking in the scene for all of two seconds before he let out a low, gravelly groan.

"What did you do, Albus? Vecna was meant to kill you!"

He couldn't conjure up the words to say, to ask Dustin how he had heard the commotion from over the street, to ask if something else had happened, or what they should do with Scorpius' body—

But instead he just sat there, shaking, with the destroyed body of Scorpius before him like the worlds grimmest body shots table, and then Dustin’s eyes rolled into whites, and Albus really screamed, because this was the worst nightmare, the most unforgivable failure possible—

He was useless as Dustin's limbs fractured, his jaw cracked apart and split the skin of his face, which hadn't even begun to grow stubble yet, he was so young. Nothing was left behind of his eyes. The empty sockets seared into him. The floor opened up beneath Albus' body and swallowed him whole—or at least, that was how it felt.

Vecna had called their bluff, and Dustin's blood was seeping into the hem of his trousers.

Lily froze up when first she set foot in the Upside Down.

The magic in her veins, which usually she never even noticed, felt leaden, like her blood had turned to—well, not to be distasteful, but like it had turned to mud. It was sludging through her veins, clogging up her arteries. She knew without having to try that no spell in the world would work here. Every instinct in her body screamed at her to leave, her magic calling out to some resonance of nature that did not exist in the Upside Down.

And somewhere in this place, she thought, was her brother. That was enough to set her feet falteringly into motion. The air was clearly toxic, huge dust mote-like things floating across her vision. Rot was the only word she could think to use. This entire world was rotted away, a carcass.

She pushed away the sickness in her stomach that being cut off from her magic induced, but when she tried to exit the static home, she found herself barricaded inside, and shoved uselessly against the door, crying out in frustration.

"Hello?" She hammered on the flimsy material with her fist, cans in the bag clinking together. "Is anyone still out there?"

As she pounded away, she heard muffled curses from the outside, and the sound of barricades being hastily stripped back. The door was ripped open and Lily was yanked out by a furious Max Mayfield, as Lucas slammed the door again and started rebuilding the barrier. Lily had no idea what to make of it, but Max was rearing up indignantly before she had the chance to.

"What the shit, Lily?" Max's eyes were covered over with round goggles, Lucas' the same, and suddenly, her mouth covering felt inadequate. They were dressed for war; she for afternoon tea at the Burrow. "What the fuck are you thinking coming here? What if you were seen? What if someone followed you?"

"What if you die out here, and Albus kills Max and boils her head and then makes me eat it!" Lucas hissed, getting his face up close to Lily's as soon as he turned away from the barricade.

Max went to say something else, was waylaid by Lucas' statement, and let out a small, "Ew. Lucas—"

"Look, I'm here, and I won't leave without my brother. Alive," she added.

"Well tough shit, your brother's not here," Max spat.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. "What?"

"But she can help him, I guess. Seeing are she's here now..." Lucas said to Max, who had turned away and kept lugging things out of the bags they had brought with them.

"What do you mean he's not here?"

"It's a long story. We're all working together in different places. It's our job to help Nancy and Robin, and Nancy and Robin are helping Albus. We save the girls, the girls save him. Simple."

Max turned to look at her from where she was crouched on the ground with a handful of wires. "So are you helping us, or leaving? Because we're wasting time right now and we can't keep taking down that barricade."

The girls stared each other down for a long few seconds while Lucas went about his work, before a crackle broke the quiet, and Robin Buckley's voice said, "Phase three is go."

Robin's voice had come from the bulky machine in Lucas' hand, and he immediately set about resting speakers on top of the static home. Max was scanning the horizon for approaching creatures in between detangling wires, so Lily decided that the circumstances had come together to make her choice for her, and she jumped in to help. She only hoped she wasn't choosing wrongly.

The bag of deodorant swung from her wrist and the lighter joined them shortly. She was trying to figure out, as she went, how she could to weaponise them. But she had to concentrate, or fall victim to any sort of monster. Her heart was jack-hammering against her ribcage, and she was painfully aware that the route home had been blocked off.

Images of the fleshy Mind Flayer chasing them down a moonlit road in the Honda still stained the insides of her eyelids to this day.

"What are the deodorant cans for?" she asked. "And the lighters?"

"Insurance," Max said curtly. "In case Plan A goes to shit."

"We torch them," Lucas clarified. With a small startle, Lily resisted the urge to re-examine the two objects, wondering how to produce fire with them.

It was a scramble to be ready in time. They lined up speakers and plugged wires into the speakers, and then connected different old phones and MP3 players to the wires, and then set about lining up the same song on each of them; Running Up That Hill. A Kate Bush song.

"We need to blast it loud," Lucas said.

"How loud?" she asked, preparing to drop back down to the ground.

"Loud enough to raise Hell," he said. "Or at least Hell's occupants."

The black and red sky sparked and swirled overhead, striking a galling fear into her heart, and somewhere out there was a hoard of monsters. Ash from the atmosphere seemed to settle in her lungs. Distant shrieks reverberated across the landscape.

There was no worse a place in the universe than this.

"And this is going to save Albus?" Lucas nodded, and Lily looked back up to the speakers. "Don't we have any more of them, then?"

Albus was frozen by horror, so bereaved he couldn't summon the strength to move back from the bodies, not even when he thought that he should be trying to warn the others about what had gone wrong. Dustin's empty sockets bored into his soul.

"Shit... Oh shit."

The band around his chest was constricting tightly now, leaving him scarcely able to breathe; he was having a panic attack. He was having a panic—

Scorpius sat up, his dislocated limbs dragging along the floor, and his head flopped to one side in a horrid parody of his tilt.

"Albus..."

Before he could skitter away from one corpse, the other was reanimating, and as Dustin's body hauled itself up onto all fours, head hanging loose, Albus' back hit the wall. Dust rained over his head. Dustin was dragging his way over to him, but Scorpius was resting in place, watching.

"Albus," Dustin's flopping head hissed, and his heart lurched.

He tried to scramble back to his feet, hit his head and collapsed to the floor in a haze of pain. Dead Dustin crept closer. He pushed his feet against the floor, skidding backwards, heaving, panting.

And then he realised.

"This—This isn’t real. Oh." A desperate laugh tumbled over his lips, half-crazed, as he kicked out at the corpse reaching for him. "He's after me, he's taken the bait, the—"

The termite-eaten boards of the wall he was pressed up against began to shift, then to give way, and just as Dustin's corpse planted its splintered hands either side of him, it collapsed completely, and Albus was falling through freezing air, out of the Creel House and into a cluster of forest, the pines beating his body from all angles. Then he was falling through empty air again, until his back hit water, and the air was stolen from his lungs.

He sank until his body was seized by vines and wrenched back up into freezing cold air, and he was hanged, suspended, over the lake until he saw a face emerge through the dark. Vecna, he knew, from the faltering description given to him by Nancy.

"Albus Potter."

Well, there was Vecna, the mirror image of the description both Max had given, all rotten flesh and unnatural anatomy. "Did you really think I took your bait? You. Took. Mine."

Then before he could blink he was submerged, dragged down, down, into the depths, until the light of the moon was completely blotted out and his vision failed. This time, when he was dragged through the gate, he wasn't in the Upside Down.

He was sitting in the passenger seat of the CR-V, in the driveway of his parents' house, and he was ten years old again.

Nancy's neck was burning, the ghost-sensation of vines scraping across the delicate skin there making her shudder.

She took a half-second pause to steady herself, before she continued creeping towards the attic. Vecna was in there, they knew it, and they were oh so close. Would the house have tried so hard to kill them otherwise? She thought about posing the idea to Robin but fear had frozen her vocal cords.

She couldn't have talked if she wanted to.

The floorboards creaked and sagged beneath their feet no matter how lightly they trod. The door to the attic was weirdly moist as she touched her fingertips to it, and nudged it open. The smell of decay was worsened by the sudden rush of blood.

She heard Robin's breath take before Nancy saw him herself. Vecna, present in body only, while his mind was reaching out into Lake Winsome. Her mind roiled with revulsion.

"C-C'mon," Robin breathed, eyes flickering in their sockets.

They had crossed the Upside Down to face this creature, and now they were there, she wanted to be anywhere else in the universe.

She and Robin moved across the sinking floor as quietly as possible, almost hearing the slithering of the vines that surrounded Vecna, who still didn't realise their presence.

They stopped and stared a few paces away. Too close for her liking, but she also knew they needed to be closer if they wanted to pull this off. Her instincts kept her rooted in place.

"Ready?" Robin said, so quietly, that were they not surrounded by the death-silence of the attic, she might have missed it.

Nancy nodded even though Robin probably couldn't see it.

She groped at the hunting rifle strapped to her side with her hands, readying it, checking for the bullet once more just before she aimed it. Her arms were trembling. She tried to steady them.

There was the short sharp sound of a lighter flick, a faint wave of heat, the hiss and crackle of fire catching. Robin, ready with her first molotov.

Nancy rolled her shoulders, quite forcefully, because fear had made her muscles seize up. She breathed in, breathed out, steadied her nerves. Vecna's mortal body was ready to be destroyed.

Albus' life depended upon them making it happen.

The molotov was released from Robin's hand.

Nancy started shooting a split second later.

The light was low and red, and his father soaked in it, framed against the glass window, face not quite right but not quite wrong either. Albus remembered this day, but not like it was playing out now.

I've never done any magic, ever, he'd cried. And his father had said—

"I always knew." 

"Dad—"

"I always knew there was something wrong with you," came the hiss of hot breath by his ear. "I sensed your lack of magic from the moment I laid eyes on you. Did you always know? That you were born wrong?"

He shook his head, but the head that sat on his weedy ten year old's shoulders was not as convinced as the man he would become was, and he had to fight to make it feel real. Even then that belief was tenuous at best.

"Out of the way in a muggle village. Out of sight, out of mind. I concentrated my energy on the boys who succeeded. Teddy and James. With two strong wizards I could do that easily."

"Stop," he uttered, but his voice was thin and childish.

"It was like I never lost a son at all."

"No..."

"And then you had the nerve to hide away in this town, and lie to me." The end of that sentence was spoken so ominously, so gutturally, that it made Albus gasp out in fear.

Softly, softly, his father said, "You were never going to win, Albus..."

It was just an illusion. It was all an illusion, designed to weaken his mind, convince him to give in to Vecna's Curse. But he'd been living this nightmare for years now, and he could handle it. He could handle it for long enough for the girls to save him.

He was strong enough to fight it.

Just as this thought solidified in his mind, as soon as it gained an ounce of certainty, the landscape erupted again.

An array of tiny, dead bodies lining the tunnel beneath the town.

Getting dragged to the bottom of Lake Winsome, but there was no portal, no screaming voices, no one diving after him. Just the unending void, and his lungs, pressurising, until they exploded.

Belinda Stookey, author of the preeminent novel, A Study in Squibs: On the Outskirts of Society, spoke to a crowd in Flourish and Blotts. She was ranting, raving, and the crowd was baying and rabid and closing in.

"I always said he'd come to no good in the end! If they'd done things my way they could have flayed him into shape!" she snarled. Bellowed. Lunatic, raving, closing in on him. She leant in close to his face and hissed, "You little shit, you're in it now. I hope they throw away the key."

He closed his eyes to escape her nightmare visage and told himself that he had moved on, that he was beyond the reach of the Wizarding world's scorn, when he felt a fist swinging down as his life flashed before his eyes, but it was too masculine to be Stookey's. He took a punch that he knew he had taken before.

Barb, standing tall on the shore of the lake, watching him as he dragged his weighted bones to safety , staring pitilessly as his ankle was snared, dragged back in lower and lower, and then she was ripped away by the jaws of the Demogorgon.

He was dragged out of the water—sprawled out on his back as he was thrown back to the shore. He couldn't feel sand, though, and when he opened his eyes, he recognised Mrs Byers' ceiling, through a haze of pain and confusion.

There was a weight around his waist and it only took beat of time for dread to stew in his gut, because Billy was straddling him, looking just as he had on the night he and Albus first came to blows; tight jeans and red shirt and tease of bare chest, golden curls falling all around. A cigarette held tight between two fingers.

Billy bared his teeth at him. "And here we go. Your house of cards collapses. I gotta say, Potter, you're looking pretty wretched right now."

"No worse than you were the last time I saw you."

"Do you think I didn’t know what you were doing?" Billy said, this time in Vecna's voice. "All you have done is delay Max’s death. When I kill you I will rip a hole into your world, and Max will die anyway."

"There’s one problem with that idea," he said, struggling against Billy's iron grip. "You haven’t killed me yet."

"You're finished. Vecna has your friends trapped beyond escape..."

And Vecna made sure Albus could see them too; Nancy and Robin, trapped and suffocated by vines in the Upside Down-Creel House, Max and Lucas trying to flambé the army of demobats but being overwhelmed—

The third and most wrenching image, his sister, his—Lily—in the Upside Down, alone, and running for her life.

"And when you die, the fourth gate will open." Billy bared his teeth in a barbarian smile. "You've failed them."

"And how am I supposed to live with something like that?" he asked, feeling despair trickle into his head as it rolled at the top of his neck.

Billy considered this for half a moment. "You carry that weight. For the rest of your life." Then he took one long drag on the cigarette, threw it to the side, and punched Albus square in the mouth. "However long that might be."

And he hit him again and again and again—and he remembered that somewhere in the midst of Billy pulverising him, Max should have stopped him by now.

But she couldn't do that this time, because Max wasn't there. Just Vecna watching him die, waiting for the moment when he went from struggling to passive, so that Billy could become the Russian, could become the Demogorgon, and this time he had no way of stopping those rows of nightmare teeth from ripping into his flesh—

And he screamed, because there was nothing else he could do.

This isn't real, this isn't real—but it didn't matter how not real it was, when it felt so real.

His stomach lurched until he was back in the toilets at Starcourt, on his knees and choking on his own vomit. Nancy's fingers were in his hair, pulling the strands painfully tight and whispering horrid things in his ear. She released him so suddenly he fell forwards, and rolled onto his back in a panic, to find himself in the Byers house again, this time in the living room.

Glass on the floor, a bloody sun rising outside, and Will standing to the side, staring down at him where he had been resting on the sofa.

His eyes were stained black and the veins spidering under his translucent skin the same. A thin finger raised, and he pointed it at Albus' heaving chest, and then at his own, skin so translucent that Albus thought he could almost see the kid's heart. An accusation; why didn't you reach out to me more? Why didn't you tell me what our connection was? Why were you so ashamed to be what you are?

Maybe it was punishment for his arrogance, for thinking that he would be able to fight this. Or maybe Vecna just wanted to really enjoy his final kill, because when Will vanished, there was just the hooked hand, splayed out in front of his face, and Albus at last felt himself start to cry.

They were all going to die. It was his fault. After everything he had done he still wasn't strong enough. He closed his eyes and waited for the brutal conclusion to what he could safely call the worst experience of his life.

And then there stood Eleven.

She was right in front of him, and somehow, he knew she was real. She locked eyes with him.

"Run!" she commanded.

It was very real of her when she lifted her hand, and tossed Vecna across the hellscape of his own making. The clock, floating, the fragments of Creel House overhead. All of a sudden the illusion was gone, and they were at the heart of Vecna's kingdom. El was tossing him clean across it.

Albus scrambled to get away.

"Scorpius!" He was desperate, now, looking for the sign Max described when they saved her at Billy's graveside. "Scorpius!"

And he ran because it was all he could do—but then the red perdition around his ankles tightened, he tumbled to the ground—

On the drive to the Creel House, Scorpius had been beset by Dustin Henderson, a young man with ego issues and a rather significant hero worship problem with Albus Potter.

Using a lot of colourful language, he'd threatened Scorpius and his entire bloodline, should he let anything whatsoever go wrong with the plan on their end.

He had up until that point thought that Dustin seemed very fond of him—not that he was familiar with the sensation—but understanding that the boy was just scared, Scorpius took care to answer these threats well. He'd had practice over the years, and never felt it more important to get right.

"Dustin, I swear to you that I will keep Albus safe," he'd said, quietly. "And should I fail..." He cast about for an appropriate bargain; Dustin was watching him through narrowed eyes. "Should I fail, I will forever give up my name. I'll stop being Scorpius Malfoy, change it to—Dave, or something."

"Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack."

Then Dustin's eyes widened appreciatively. "You do have a killer name. That's a pretty solid vow."

And despite the innate silliness of the offer, that had almost stilled his tongue—his father would die if he heard Scorpius making vows like that—he intended to take it seriously. Though he had only the faintest idea of the scope of this thing, he knew when he was in on something bigger than himself. He knew Albus needed protecting. It was fully his intention to never let Vecna hurt a hair on Albus' head.

A lot of that would be down to Nancy and Robin managing to find Vecna and kill him, before he could kill the rest of them.

Tendrils of discontent still stirred in his veins when he thought back to his conversation with Nancy. As Albus and Dustin embraced by the front door of the Potter house, Scorpius took a moment to corner Nancy, sitting by herself in the passenger seat of the car.

He asked her what the song to save Albus might be.

She bit her lip. "His favourite song is Layla.”

”Layla? Layla what? By who?”

Again it took her a moment to open her mouth. “When we were together—When Albus and I dated, we made a mixtape together. I think he still keeps it in the glovebox. You’ll find it on there.”

There was one, a white plastic thing, with from Nancy x written neatly on the front. In smaller scribe was a tracklist. Scorpius had done his best to memorise it.

In the attic, Albus' phone was ringing. Scorpius stared at the screen, seeing Dustin's name and photo light it up, and tried to remember how to answer. He and Dustin had gone over this in the car, among other things.

As a seventh ring pierced the room, he dragged a hesitant finger across the screen, and that seemed to do the trick. These muggles didn't half come up with some funny inventions.

"Dustin?" he asked, putting the phone to his ear.

"Scorpius," Dustin panted, "we have a problem."

He straightened up. "What sort of problem?"

James Potter slammed down the door of the attic of the Creel House, face as venomous as the tail end of a pissed off skrewt. Scorpius had once had a nightmare similar to this, being cornered by one of the Potters, and suffering the consequences.

"Scorpius Malfoy. You've become a hard man to find in the last few days. The whole Wizarding world's going mad looking for you."

"How did you know I was here?"

James didn't answer. Scorpius didn't know what to do, where to stand—so he settled for positioning himself in front of Albus, like a child trying to cover up a mess they'd made.

"You haven't exactly made tracking you down easy. Albus? Al, can you hear me?" Circling, James tried to get a better look at his brother, and found Scorpius planted firmly in his path. "Step aside, Malfoy. Albus? What have you done to him?"

And Scorpius, though he did hesitate, stumbled a little to the left—because if he got killed here, there was nobody left to save Albus, and then they were all fucked anyway.

Four deaths? That was game, set and match. Unfortunately, letting James see Albus' face made any chance of negotiating his way out of this attic alive about a million to one.

"What have you done to him, Death Eater?"

Scorpius choked out an earnest, "I didn't do this, James, you have to believe me."

The wand tip got up close and personal in Scorpius' face. "I won’t ask you again!" James Potter was literally spitting with rage.

“It wasn't—James, James—" Taking only light gasps of air in through his mouth, Scorpius' back hit one of the wood supports holding the roof up and he held onto it, to keep his knees from knocking together. "I promise you, this—this isn't me, this, the—the—All of it, nothing—it wasn't me, it still isn't."

James's breath is hot on his face, and Scorpius whimpered, for shame, for fear, for guilt—because if this went any further sideways, they were all going to die.

"Whatever you've done, it's all—all been leading up to this, hasn't it? He's your true target, isn't he?” There was a wildness to James' eyes, something so out of reach that Scorpius was frightened, because it removed any avenues through which he might talk him down. "What I don't get is why him? Why did it have to be my brother? My squib brother, who couldn't even defend himself from you?" Scorpius couldn't stop the strangled laugh that escaped his throat. "If you were doing it because you hated him, it makes no sense. He's never done anything to you, Malfoy. Undo the curse."

Albus' milky white eyes glared back at them. He had made this choice, Scorpius reminded himself. It wasn't unthinking. He got the sense that nothing Albus Potter did was unthought of beforehand.

Someone needed to act as the human sacrifice, and if it wasn't Albus, it was Maxine, so there was no question that it would be anyone but Albus. He had showed no hint of hesitation, no bitterness, at least not towards the kids. He just did what had to be done.

And now Scorpius had to do the same thing if he wanted Albus' sacrifice to mean anything.

"I can't. If—If I wake him up now, more people will die."

"No, Malfoy, if you don't wake him up, you die. For dad, for Craig Bowker Jr, for Al, I'll kill you right where you stand."

It was at that moment that Albus decided now he had to start levitating.

Scorpius' heart hammered violently in his chest; he wanted to be sick at the slow unfolding of his legs, the effortless lift into the air. James' head snapped up to marvel in horror, and then back to Scorpius, who was scrambling to sort some blasted music out, with this alien technology and a wand pointed at his head.

"Malfoy, you listen to me! That is my brother—"

"I know! And Albus has been looking after me, and you wouldn't want to undo his work, would you? He's kept me safe, he protected me from the mob, like I'm trying to protect him here, and if we wake him up now then he will die, James. We all will. Do you understand?"

"I don't think you understand!"

"I'm not lying, James!"

He couldn't help the desperate tears that began to coalesce, couldn't stop them from falling, because he couldn't believe this was how it ended, after all of that, how Nancy's plan came to ruin, because Scorpius Malfoy was about to be done in by James Potter in the attic of the Creel House and nobody would be there to save Albus, and the world would fall to Vecna.

And then there was a crack, an ugly, gruesome noise.

It didn't sound like any killing curse he'd ever heard of, but Scorpius supposed it might sound different when it was aimed at his head.

Then a few seconds passed, and he realised that it was not the tolling of his death; it was the first of Albus' limbs, snapping in twain.

The searing pain in his arm that came with the first crack was different. He could feel the difference, because it was real, and it made him scream, using the last of the life in him to writhe and toss and bite, biting down on one of Vecna’s fingers, stalling him for just a second.

But it was enough, because across the way, he saw it; an opening to a room bathed in blue light, the thrums of music ruminating from it like a heartbeat from a pulse point. It was enough—because El was able to drop from where Vecna had her stuck—and she made it count, sending Vecna soaring back, away from him.

What'll you do when you get lonely, and nobody's waiting by your side?

Blood streamed from her nostrils, her ears, her eyes—but she looked at him, and mustered the strength to shout, "Run!" He listened. He began to run like he never had before, and heard the hypnotic twang of a song echoing across the red sky.

You've been running and hiding much too long.

Vecna's vines whipped after him, he narrowly missed the curve of one around his ankle, tears streaming down his face unrestrained as he threw all of himself into listening and running.

You know it's just your foolish pride—

He hurled himself over vines and obstacles in his path, every burning step getting him closer, hugging the dead, aching weight of his broken arm to his chest. Vecna was after him, on his tail even now, but if there was one thing in the world he believed in...

Layla, you've got me on my knees—