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It was a week after he and Master Whitaker began their residency in California that Caelum caught himself thinking: I wish I'd come here instead of Durmstrang.
It was a familiar train of thought—he couldn't begin to recall how many times he'd thought the same thing about Hogwarts when he'd been in school, but the way it infiltrated his mind so easily still made him hesitate in the middle of what he was doing, hand pausing for just a second between movements of his knife as he sliced ingredients for the next potion he and Whitaker had planned to make.
Further inspection did not make the thought dissolve like the intrusive nonsense it was.
It was ridiculous. It didn't even make sense as a daydream—Caelum was graduated, for magic's sake, and A.I.M. wasn't even a good school, at least not when it came to potions—which was the only thing he cared about. Both Potter and her muggleborn friend had been rather vocal in informing him that the rest of the school's curriculum was much more up-to-standards than he'd been led to believe before coming there, but still. It was an inferior institution—if it weren't, the party wouldn't be nearly so unbothered as they were leaving it almost entirely to the lesser blooded.
Caelum tried not to think too hard about how none of that reasoning made the fantasy of having gone there feel any less appealing. The fact was that he quite simply liked it in America, far more than he'd ever thought he would, and far more than he'd ever liked Durmstrang. He liked the open design of the campus, the way the sun warmed his skin when he traveled between buildings. He liked being able to speak his own language. He liked the reassurance and safety of knowing his parents were half the world away and would almost definitely lose interest before they got there–on the off chance they ever got angry enough to come after him here.
He liked being able to see and speak to Potter (whenever he could track her down), without any concerns of what the rumors would sound like to his mother if they made it to her ears.
He was even growing to like the suspiciously omnipresent Granger, who had proven herself to be both a thoroughly adequate companion for Potter on the occasions that she hadn't vanished into thin air, and a surprisingly capable brewing assistant when she hadn't. He was almost entirely certain she was only cooperating with him on that front to trick him into teaching her more about shaped imbuing, but it was gratifying enough that he didn't really care, especially once he realized the reason she hadn't already known more was Potter's inability to explain the process in a way that was at all comprehensible to those with reasonable scientific minds.
It was immeasurably satisfying when he was finally able to successfully coax her into imbuing a common color-changing charm into a base solution.
Potter's expression was hard to read when Caelum made Granger do it again later, in front of her, her body going strangely still as she stared at the cauldron. "You've been teaching Hermione to shaped imbue."
"Why yes," said Granger in a sugary sweet tone. "You've been leaving us alone together so often lately. Don't tell me you're surprised we've been working on things without you?"
Potter turned to her, face showing complete and utter betrayal. Granger looked unrepentant.
"If you'd wanted to teach me yourself, you could have. Don't blame me for resorting to other options."
Potter made a cut-off choking noise.
Caelum sniffed. "Don't squabble, children. It isn't Potter's fault her teaching skills are inferior to mine."
Granger's face went red. "Children?"
"Excuse me," said Potter, "I taught you."
Ah. It was excellent to see some of her spunk returning. She'd been unusually quiet ever since he got here. "Much less efficiently. And you were unable to get her to do it at all, which means clearly my methods are superior."
"Mhm. Sure. And I'm sure your "efficiency" has nothing at all to do with the fact Hermione is just smarter than you."
Caelum bristled. He took it back: Potter could return her snark to wherever she'd recovered it from. "As if."
Granger scowled at him. "You aren't going to get out of this with empty flattery, Harry."
"Not empty. I legitimately think you're smarter than he is. By at least a factor of ten."
Caelum decided to ignore that, as it was obviously false. "Granger," he snapped. "Fetch the ginger. I have something else to show you."
She rolled her shoulders, giving Potter another pointed look before strolling painfully slowly over to the ingredients cupboard.
Potter's eyes moved back and forth between them. "This was a mistake. I regret this."
"You should," Granger called back over her shoulder.
***
Potter was even more avoidant the next few days. Caelum was not a fan of this new aspect of her personality, although, admittedly, he shouldn't have been surprised given how utterly terrible she was at properly keeping up with her correspondence. (Something Caelum was not relieved by. He'd already been completely sure that her intermittent periods of extended silence were entirely a her problem that had nothing to do with the possibility she was just getting sick of him.)
Granger abandoned being his lab assistant about 3 seconds after Potter was no longer around to provoke. Caelum wasn't exactly surprised—he'd probably have done the exact same thing, had he been her—but he hadn't expected her to be quite so cutthroat. His levels of respect and annoyance rise simultaneously.
He would admit to exactly nobody how relieved he was that after that announcement, she went straight to setting up another cauldron and organizing a list of her own experiments instead of leaving the spare student lab they'd somewhat unofficially co-opted. It was still annoying of her, but it was… soothing to have another person there. Whitaker had mostly left him alone on the time they'd been there, to work on his own projects and his mastery thesis, and he'd always hated being alone. Almost as much as he hated most other human company.
The fact that nearly every single person he'd interacted with since arriving there had neatly excepted themselves from that (aside from Tallum, who was a menace to both this school and the field of potions as a whole) probably had something to do with the recurring wistfulness over not having gone there as a student.
The line of experiments Granger had immediately jumped into working on were also interesting, which also made him care less that she was no longer helping him with menial tasks. He still wanted another lab assistant, though.
"Granger," he said, brushing off his robes as he set his most recent potion aside. "I am going to co-opt more school resources in order to test a hypothesis. Come or don't, I don't care."
She looked up from the beetles she'd been absorbed in crushing. "What hypothesis?"
"That I'm a better teacher than Potter is."
She only looked flustered for a moment before setting her hands on her hips and giving him a firm frown. "You can't just go and start co-opting students. They have classes! And they're people , not objects."
"People can be resources. There are wizards whose entire jobs are to imagine humans like they are resources."
Granger scoffed, looking away from him as if she were afraid to acknowledge that particular vocal misstep. "I know what an HR department is, thank you very much."
"Whatever," Caelum scowled. "Are you coming?"
She blew a lack of hair that had fallen over her nose out of her face, and picked up her bag from where she'd set it on the floor next to the table. "Only to keep you under control."
Caelum huffed as they started off down the hall. "I don't need to be kept under control. I am an actual adult, thank you very much."
Granger just let out a wordless snort. Apparently, she didn't agree with that. Joke was on her, the only reason she'd been allowed to spend all her free periods for the last week and a half brewing experimental potions in a mostly-empty student potions lab was because he technically counted as adult supervision.
Caelum would have had no qualms tracking down the N.E.W.T. potions students in whatever classroom they happened to currently be in and just taking over whatever they were doing—it's not like they would have complained, honestly, with how mind-numbingly pathetic their standard curriculum was, and he was pretty sure Professor Tallum wouldn't have cared either—but Granger insisted on "keeping their education in mind" and "respecting the professors" so instead they went to the library, where they recruited a bunch of charms students who had study hall at the same time as the healing track fourth years. It turned out to be for the best, anyway, because it turned out more than half of them already knew how to perform wandless magic, something Caelum definitely wasn't going to admit he hadn't considered before Granger asked them.
"What?" the girl at the front of the group said when he expressed his surprise, blinking at him blankly. "Anyone can learn to do it if they go about it properly. There are schools in Africa where it's the entire curriculum."
"It's a pretty useful skill for freeform spell creation," another chimed in, "Helps you understand the shaping of magic more instinctively and whatever."
Caelum gave up. This school was definitely better than Durmstrang. Even if its potions program was trash. Durmstrang hadn't even had a separate potions program.
It took longer to teach the experimental charms students than it had Granger. He had to unteach some things, first—no matter what Potter kept saying, the process was not the same as "wandless casting imbued into a potion," and some of them had to be taught what conscious imbuing even was (which. Really? Caelum was not impressed with Master Tallum, most of them were sixth years) but admittedly they picked that up quickly.
Potter was even more horrified when she found out about him teaching them than she had been about his informal lessons with Granger.
"Really?" he said in response the next time he got her alone, arms crossed over his chest and lips pursed into a firm line. It was late in the afternoon, and most everyone had filtered out of the lab, except Granger, who had been just about to leave—he was pretty sure he'd caught Potter coming to meet her. "Whatever happened to Menesthes and Zosimos or whatever tripe you fed me at our internship about working together to advance the field as a whole—"
"Caelum."
That was Granger. He hadn't noticed her get up.
She shied in between him and Potter, wrapping an arm around her friend's shoulder. "H—she's not mad. Harry just gets really nervous when people try to talk to her about shaped imbuing. She doesn't like the attention."
Caelum gaped at her. "You what."
Potter cleared her throat, avoiding his eyes. "Er—yeah."
"But you taught me."
"It's really hard to care about your opinion," Granger answered for her.
Caelum was tongue tied for a second longer. "But—I always thought you liked—?"
She twisted her hands, still not looking at him. "I do, sometimes. It's just—when I'm at school, people are always asking me about it, and it's just. It's a lot."
Caelum's jaw clicked shut. "This is why you've been avoiding me," he realized.
"I—" She bit her tongue. "Yes."
"You don't want to talk about potions," he said, slowly, as if the idea would make more sense a second time.
She squirmed. "Maybe just—not for now? I've been focusing more on healing for school anyway and it always makes me feel really guilty and… you know."
Caelum did not, in fact, know. In fact, he found it completely incomprehensible.
That was just what he got for being friends with two teenage girls, apparently
He squinted at her. "Okay?"
She swallowed, still looking way too nervous. He was pretty sure she was sweating. "...Alright. Yeah. I'll… call you up this summer or something. I'll probably be feeling better about it by then."
"Okay."
Yeah. Caelum just didn't understand teenage girls.
***
Potter stopped avoiding him after that. Soon enough, she was spending just as much time in the labs as Granger was, though she spent almost all of that time reading through healing textbooks and doing homework rather than actually brewing anything.
He expected her to leave the next time his charm students came by to work on their shaped imbuing, but instead, she just curled up in the back corner of the room under a notice-me-not charm.
He'd assumed she was just reading again, but after they left, she came up to his table and gave a soft smile. "Hey. That was good."
He beamed.
"He started doing this in order to prove he'd be better at it than you," Granger said from the next station over.
"Yes, well," Potter patted him consolingly on the shoulder. "We all have to be good at something."
Caelum sputtered.
The longer the sessions went on, the less silent Potter got. She never quite reached the fiery levels of excitement that he remembered from her, and that was bittersweet, and she still seemed wary of talking with potions with him specifically for some reason, but she started talking more with the others, circling around the room, voicing the occasional suggestion and listening in quiet interest to whatever they had to say. Sometimes, she'd hang around his brewing station and help prepare ingredients, though she never asked to do the imbuing herself.
It was still strange, and he couldn't help but feel like something had been lost, but it was much, much better than her avoiding him. He could only hope that whatever was missing would eventually come back.
It was a few days before he and Master Whitaker were scheduled to return to Britain that Caelum was approached by AIM'S Headmistress, a tall, curly-haired woman named Letitia Rogers.
"Ah," she said. "Mr. Lestrange."
"Headmistress," he said back, with a slight incline of his head.
It was strange. A month back, he wouldn't have given a gesture of respect like that to anyone other than a pureblood. He had no idea what her blood status was, but he wasn't sure it would have changed anything. Running a school like this… she deserved it no matter what she was.
"Master Whitaker's told me you two will be leaving soon. I hope you've enjoyed your time here?"
He kept his expression carefully bland, but it was a little easier to be honest than it should have been. "More than I expected."
She smiled at him warmly. "I've heard about what you've been doing down in my potions building. Some of the upper years are very excited about it."
His lips pulled into something a little closer to a smirk. "They should be."
"Indeed. Professor Tallum is too—he can't seem to stop begging your master for details. He couldn't seem to get much about it from Miss Potter before, and it's left him quite exuberant now that he finally has someone to answer his questions."
Caelum let out a soft laugh between his teeth. "She gets nervous."
"I suppose she is quite shy. Never has said much to anyone besides that Granger girl."
"It's a different side of her. She was quite… fearless when she met me."
The Headmistress chuckled. "That'd be the Evans in her."
"Evans?"
"Her mother." The woman gazed out the window, a fond expression on her face. "She was a student of mine, back when I was a professor. Quite the firecracker, that one."
Caelum blinked. "Lady Potter?"
"Indeed. Brilliant at spells, and even better with runework. Quite the mind, that girl."
Charms. Would Lady Potter be able to pick up Shaped Imbuing, if she'd wanted too? If she was as capable as the students going through AIM's experimental charms track now…
He remembered what Harry had said, once. About parents who cared, but didn't understand.
"But that's enough of an old woman's reminiscing. I've been told you have quite the mind yourself. Your master said you were already working on your mastery project?"
"Yes," Caelum nodded. "Your students have been helpful with that. Part of the problem with Shaped Imbuing is that it's just so strange that people struggle to even conceptualize it—experimenting with how to get it through their heads has certainly helped me refine some of the explanations. And some of the ones studying experimental charms have introduced me to theoretical systems a little more applicable to the problem than what we have in potions."
"I'm glad to hear it." She was smiling even more widely now. "Do you have any idea when you'll be ready to publish?"
"It's an entire new field," Caelum said, speeding up his pace. "I don't know that I'll ever really be done with it. But I'm aiming to finish the mastery project by summer."
Her eyes sparkled. "That's wonderful."
Caelum flushed, feeling his ears go warm, and he had to stop looking at her face.
"When you do," she said, "You should consider returning for a while. You're an excellent educator, Mr. Lestrange, and I daresay some of our students would appreciate a professor a bit more… research focused."
***
"I think you should." Potter nodded her head hard enough Caelum thought it might fall off. "Absolutely. It's a great idea."
Caelum's eyebrows slowly drew together. "Really?"
"Yeah," she nodded again, flopping back onto her beanbag. They were actually in a private study room in the library, for once, instead of their lab. Potter was doing homework for her transfiguration class, and Caelum was working through a stack of books on spell invention and magical theory, before he had decided to have this conversation. Or accidentally tripped into this conversation.
He hadn't really meant to bring it up seriously—he'd expected Potter to laugh at the suggestion before moving on, but she'd perked up almost immediately, a light going on in her eyes.
"I think it would be good for you. And for the school. We seriously need another potions professor, most of the other tracks already have multiple teachers."
Caelum scoffed. "Tallum's problem is not that there's only one of him; it's that he's incompetent. "
"Yeah?" Potter spread her arms. "And you aren't. You can cover for his bad teaching and he can cover for his bad social skills, and everything will be peachy."
Caelum crinkled his nose in disgust. "Did you just say peachy?"
Potter gave him a soft, mysterious smile.
"I can't believe you think this is a good idea."
"It is."
He growled. "Do you even know how my family would react if I up and moved to America to teach potions at AIM?"
"Probably badly. But they'd be in Britain and you'd be here, so is there really anything they could do to stop you?"
Caelum took a step back from her smile, feeling a little bit sick. "Harry—"
"I think it would make you happy," she said, green eyes going a little bit liquid as she looked up at him. "That's all."
"You know what they're like," said Caelum, pressing his lips tightly together. "You've seen enough to guess. Don't—don't pretend you don't."
Potter's eyes widened for a moment, and she took a sharp breath, as if she hadn't expected him to address it so directly.
"Caelum…" She sat up fully, and leaned forward. Swallowed. "If that's what they're like… then that's all the more reason to get away."
Caelum froze. He felt like she was looking right through him, the look in her eyes pitying, but also understanding—and that was why he'd always liked her, wasn't it? Because she'd understood.
She still understood, even if it was no longer about potions.
"I think you want to," Potter said carefully. "If you didn't, this wouldn't be the issue."
"I don't want to. I wasn't even considering it."
She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye. "That's a lie."
A laugh escaped his throat, quiet at first before blowing up into full blown heaves. "You're the expert in those," he managed to get out in between gasps of air. "Aren't you?"
Potter's fingers tightened their grip on the bean bag, tightening like claws. "Yes," she said, voice coming out a little choked. "Maybe you should trust the expert."
Caelum frowned as he looked her over. She had gone a little pale—with worry, he thought. Concerningly so. It made sense enough for her to care, but she shouldn't have been so freaked out by this. So… invested?
"This is personal for you." His voice came out accusing. "Why?"
Potter was quiet for a long moment. Caelum didn't interrupt. He could almost… see her, processing. She was looking for an answer, was going to give one, and he would get it, if he only waited.
"My uncle," she said eventually, chewing her lip. "He went through a… similar situation, when he was younger. He's talked about it a little with me… and Archie. You… it's not why I'm friends with you, I promise, but you just… remind me of him. Sometimes."
Caelum tasted something bitter in his mouth. It made sense. More than a little sense—more than was comfortable. Something would have been wrong with him if he couldn't see all the parallels, but that didn't mean he wanted to.
"I'm nothing like Sirius Black," he said, because it was easier to argue against that than the things that so obviously were alike, even if it was only nebulously true. He didn't really know his cousin that well, but he'd been told by Regulus that he was like him before more than once. Mostly when he was drunk.
Potter just shrugged. "Maybe not. You don't pull nearly enough pranks."
Caelum rolled his eyes, tightness in his shoulders easing. "I don't pull any pranks."
Potter stretched out her arms, cracking her muscles inelegantly. "You're still here for a couple of days, right? Plenty of time to fix that."
Caelum sighed, and felt his face reddening even before he spoke. "I can't be pulling pranks if I want to be a professor here, now, can I?"
Potter grinned like a feral doxie.
***
"I actually hate you," Caelum said to his cousin a little over eight months later, standing on his front porch.
"Then why are you here?" said Archie, pulling the door open a little wider.
Caelum just stared at him with his most dead-eyed looking expression. Archie stepped out of the way to allow him room to enter.
"Thesis article went out today," Caelum said as he stepped into the house. "I also took the opportunity to tell them what I plan on doing with my life once school starts. The wards on my apartment aren't good enough to deal with that level of drama."
"So, what, you decided to invite yourself to live here?"
"This is your fault," he said, looking at him flatly. "So yes."
"It actually isn't," said Archie.
Caelum kicked off his boots, too. "I'm blaming you anyway."
"Because you're a responsible adult who makes your own decisions."
Caelum stared at an overstuffed red couch that looked like it had been ripped right from Gryffindor-themed house pride hell. "I'm suddenly regretting all my life decisions. Why am I doing this. I hate children."
Archie cracked the gum in his mouth which, apparently, he was chewing. Caelum hated him even more now, just for that. "You're only four years older than me."
Caelum made a circle around Archie's face with his hands. "You are the picture of the obnoxious teenage youth right now. You are literally chewing gum while wearing basketball shorts and socks that don't match."
Archie followed him over to the couch. "I'm sure I don't need to remind you that you are also still a teenager. Also, Dad pranked them this way. This morning they were both green, but he's been slowly gryffindorizing every green item in the house ever since he learned I'm not actually a Slytherin."
Caelum spun around on him, pointing a finger at his chest. "We are going to talk about that."
Archie sighed, a little of the pep draining from his shoulders now that it had been made clear this was going to be a Serious Discussion. "I don't suppose we could just… skip that? Because I'm totally willing to just accept that you live here now with no further questions as long as we don't have to have this conversation."
"You lied to me. For a month."
Archie winced. "Yes?"
"No!" Caelum gesticulated wildly, nearly hitting himself in the face with the sleeve of his robes. "Not even for a month! You have been lying to me by proxy since you were eleven."
Archie sighed. "I could argue that that's not even really a thing, but I won't. Listen… I understand that what happened with you was like… a huge breach of trust. Neither of us meant for it to happen, but the fact is that I now know a lot of things about you that I shouldn't, personal things that you told Harry in confidence, and the only thing I really have to say in my defense is that I was terrified you would figure out something was up and it would put her at risk. Her and Rigel."
Caelum nearly bared his teeth at the thought of Rigel, but did his best to forced the thought of his imposter cousin out of his mind. "You think I didn't figure out something was up, Brat?"
Archie's face scrunched up into something resembling a pout. "You never suspected I wasn't her."
"No, because I'm not a conspiracy theorist . Did you know that the irrational belief that a loved one has been replaced is considered a mental illness? No sane person would have ever jumped to that conclusion."
Caelum figured out what he'd said a second too late when he saw the light shining out of Archie's eyes. He placed both hands over his heart. "Awww Cuz. You love us?"
"I literally wasn't talking about you. Also that's the dictionary definition , I don't—"
The smile had already spread across his face. Caelum gave up, letting his body slump against the wall. "I don't love Harry either. My heart is cold and dead." He lifted a hand. "Now shoo."
"I'm telling her you said that."
"Feel free."
"I'm also going to tell Dad you're here," he said, voice receding as he backed down the hall. "I figure there's a good seventy percent chance he won't mind because Dad's impulsive like that, but just in case he does, you might want to prepare yourself. Actually, you might want to do that anyway. Even if he lets you stay he's definitely gonna prank you."
Caelum groaned loudly into the wall.
He had a feeling this was going to be a disaster. Didn't think he would regret it, but… definitely a disaster.
Archie's footsteps stopped a little ways away, not quite as far as he remembered the foot of the stairs being. "Caelum?"
"Yes?"
The footsteps picked up again, this time coming closer. "Okay, I know this is stupid and you're probably going to say no, but… the entire time I was pretending to be Harry and trying to stay in character… I really, really wanted to hug you.
Caelum sucked in a breath of air through his nose, moving his hand to cover his eyes. He couldn't believe he was indulging this. "Fine."
He could practically see Archie's beaming puppy dog face through the back of his head. Silently, he raised his arm again, and wasn't surprised when he felt a body settle underneath it, burrowing into the side of his neck.
"This is sickening," he said. "And I still hate you."
"Yeah," Archie said, and—no. Caelum really could hear the smile. "I know."