They went to the beach before Emma's school started up again. There was a small cottage with just enough bedrooms for them, and Devlin had the feeling he'd been there before, but he couldn't quite place when. The sand was hot beneath his feet as he rushed away from Harry and Emma. They were playing a game named tag apparently, but they had turned rebellious and formed some kind of treason group, agreeing to simply chase him.
Zee was keeping up with him fairly well, he noticed. It had been a long time since he'd felt his muscles twinge with self pity. Euphoria swelled in his stomach as a mischievous smile transformed his face.
"This isn't fair!" He cried.
"I'm gonna get you!" Emma jeered, who apparently was the tagger.
His muscles pulsed and ached and his smile grew. Muscle memory had him spinning deftly on his feet, even in the sand. His wand was perfectly aimed, and Emma suddenly burst out giggling.
"Not fair! Not fair!" She screamed over the giggles. "Pick on someone with a wand!"
The spell stopped and Devlin turned to the amused Harry, swaggering his eyebrows like Sirius. Harry's eyes widened as he seemed to realize what Devlin was about to do. To slow.
Harry ducked the tickling spell deftly, and when he rose up, his own wand was in his hands. Emma laughed.
"Daddy's gonna get you! Daddy's gonna get you!"
"Not likely," he drawled.
Harry didn't say anything, but Devlin could see the laughter in his eyes. A blue spell flew well-aimed from his wand. Devlin spread his feet, ducking and rising as deftly as Harry, except that he'd switched wand hands mid-shift and now surprised Harry with a better-aimed levitation spell. Harry tripped mid-air as he fought against the surprising sensation of floating, and toppled over onto the sand.
Devlin had his wand against his neck a second later, smirking.
"I like this game better," he said. "I used to get to play a lot more."
There was a thoughtful look in Harry's eyes and maybe it was because he was being too much of Devlin, looking into Harry's eyes to try and read him, and not enough Dubhán, that Harry was able to physically trip him with a leg. He was sprawled out next to Harry, who was leaning on an elbow looking at him innocently.
"Yeah, I like this too. We should do this more often."
Devlin rose to his knees, looking down at Harry.
"Teach me how to do that."
Harry quirked a brow.
"It wasn't magic," he said, as if Devlin hadn't known that.
"I know. Show me how you did that."
Harry looked at him for a long time.
"Alright."
OoOoOoOoO
Dumbledore was at the kitchen table, eating biscuits with Harry and Emma. When they had been little, Devlin had always been awake before Emma, but lately he'd found dragging himself out of bed was becoming harder and harder.
He knew there were only two reasons the Headmaster was there. Devlin was either going to Hogwarts, or wasn't. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, accessing the possibilities and if he really wanted to know. Surely, they would tell him either way, later.
"Hello, Devlin," Dumbledore said kindly. He'd stopped looking at him with that glint in his eyes, after that day at the Ministry. As if somehow Devlin's foolish reaction to the piece of clothing had erased all notions in his head that Devlin was like his grandfather. Devlin did not immediately say anything, still trying to decide whether he wanted to know. "I have a letter for you," Dumbledore finally said.
He pulled it out of his pocket and put it on the table. Emma leaned across childishly to peek at it.
Last spring, he had told Harry how he would be happy, in a years time, to send him off to some distant castle, hundreds of miles away. He had meant it as a jab at what he had felt was over-protectiveness on Harry's part, but part of him had also believed it all - believed Harry's protectiveness would be short lived and easily tossed aside. After all, he'd been too old for it at six for Voldemort - surely he would be too old for it at eleven for Harry. So he looked at Harry, and was surprised to see that the smile that was just for Devlin was still there.
It wasn't really how he had imagined.
He wasn't sure exactly how he had imagined he would get this - but somehow he was aware that he hadn't thought he'd be in his pajamas, his hair almost as messy as his fathers, with his soon to be Headmaster settling at the table drinking tea. He wondered, briefly, how Voldemort had received his own letter and whether this letter would have found him, even at Voldemort's side.
He looked up.
Harry was smiling that smile that was just for him, and Alexandra was beaming. Emma was the only one rushing him to open it. He felt that, while she was unaware, everyone else could feel the paradigm shift in the air. Freddie Weasley's Mum had told him last Sunday brunch that he would be a young man soon, and she expected his foolishness to stop when he opened his Hogwarts letter.
Even though Devlin never thought he was ever quite as little seeming as Freddie, he had still only been a boy. It was a sort of fall back in his head that he would not be afforded any longer.
He broke the seal.
The parchment was the good kind that Voldemort had always had in his study drawer, smooth and sturdy and slightly bendy beneath his fingers. It was unlike the things Harry's mail from the Ministry came in, or the pale white pieces that Alexandra filled so quickly that Devlin wondered how they did not consume the whole house.
There had been a lingering doubt in him until just then, as to whether he'd get in. The fact he was a werewolf was not secret like it had been with Remus Lupin and the board had not been able to be snuck around as they had in that case. They had made a fuss, of course, and Devlin had known, despite Dumbledore's assurances, that his acceptance was really not in the old man's hand but in the hands of a couple wealthy old-blood families.
"Erm...my middle name is Augustus?"
He looked up at them with incredulously, trying to figure out which one to blame. Why such a formal name to follow such a terribly dull one?
"Yeah," Harry said, touching the back of his head.
He narrowed his focus onto Harry, clearly the criminal of this atrocity.
"It's not as though you have to tell everyone," Harry said, smiling sheepishly. "Your first and middle name came as a set."
He rolled his eyes.
"Someday I'm going to insist that you tell me, exactly, how they came as a set - as if you bought them or something..."
He turned his attention back onto the much more important paper.
There was a calendar page behind his acceptance letter that he felt was surely not in everyone else' welcome packet. He passed it to Alexandra, who was the only organized adult in the house - at least according to her admonishments of Harry's planning skills. It covered all the days he would need to leave Hogwarts, seventy-two hours each month at minimum. He had honestly expected it to be more.
"Do you think that'll hurt his grades?" Harry asked - always the first one to have a justice-issue on Devlin's behalf - or anyones, to be honest. Alexandra used her wand to whisk the paper over to the calendar corner of the kitchen.
"No," she said.
"But that will mean he will miss three days of lessons!"
Alexandra gave Devlin a bemused smile, but it was Dumbledore who chuckled and responded.
"Harry, I do believe your son will learn how to float a feather in the first day. I would not worry overly-much. In fact, it has been proven to me over the years that students actually spend the majority of their time on other things while at school - as a whole, they seem to flourish despite their distractions."
The paradigm shift had happened. His world had been tilted on its axis. He was no longer a boy but a young man, and yet - he felt it was all much duller than he had imagined. Perhaps he was just becoming an expert at shifting and adjusting to the things life tended to hurl his way.
OoOoOoOoO
He'd been to Diagon Alley a handful of times before. Harry seemed to make an effort, every once and a while, to gather a handful of his friends and take Devlin along, trying to ignore the fact that Devlin knew these weren't just friends but warriors like him. It meant books, and Devlin was willing to forgive most small things for a pile of books.
Today, there was less of a feeling of purposefulness to the friends that accompanied Harry, since all their children were there as well. Freddie was dancing foolishly with his list waving like a flag above his head. If he got too near to his mother, she would attempt to grab hold of him - but he was smarter than that. August and Thomas were trying to figure out a plan to make the adults see reason in their desire to go to the Joke Shop owned by Freddie's father and uncle.
Maria was up by her father, her hand in his hand.
Don't talk to me on the street, he'd told her, firmly but kindly, before they had left Mrs. Weasley's house. She had known without him saying that Devlin was afraid 'a bad man' would be watching and that they would surmise from their friendship that Devlin had rescued her. Sometimes Devlin thought he most enjoyed that she did know, even if it wasn't everything that he did. She did not even glance at him. The idea that Grandfather would know still terrified him more than most things.
Maria's father led the crowd towards the wand shop first. It was small and dim inside. A layer of dust seemed to evenly coat the room. There was a shuffling sound, and then a man came out from the back. His hair was unruly and pure white, his eyes a crisp blue that was like broken glass reflecting a summer sky. He stared at them all, unblinking, until Harry said hello. He'd called him Ollivander.
"Hogwarts wands?" He asked, his gaze seeming to narrow down onto the smallest people of the crowd. Harry nodded and said something else, but Devlin was not listening. Ollivander was looking at him, his blue eyes intense and Devlin saw something like recognition flash across his face, except that Devlin must have misread, since he had never met the man before. His gaze lingered.
Freddie went first. Freddie always went first, because he couldn't sit or stand still for any period of time, and his mother often had to drag him out if the activity or place required peace. He stepped forward and Devlin could tell he was both in awe and intimidated by the idea of his own wand.
Ollivander had it right the very first try with Freddie. His wand made a woosh, disrupting the dust so that it floated into the air and spread out evenly across the store once more. Devlin frowned as he felt the magic around him: cool and certain, focused and purposeful. Everything that Freddie had never seemed to him at all.
August went next. He stood diligently still at Ollivander's request, but perhaps Ollivander's measurements had been a bit off, because it took him three wands before he had the right one. Purple sparks flew into the air and fizzled around the room. August gave a cheer that Devlin had expected from Freddie.
Thomas went before Maria, and his was the hardest to find yet. Ten wands later, he swished one through the air and Ollivander proclaimed it had chosen him.
"It didn't do anything, though," Thomas objected, politely and quietly - glancing at his father. But Devlin had felt the magic in the air, strong but without focus. He thought of Thomas' ability to understand but his inability to see the large picture, and thought his magic suited him well. Thomas shook it again and it gave out some golden sparks, as if it were reassuring him.
Maria came next and Devlin watched carefully. It took only two before she had the right one. Oak with a unicorn core. Her magic crackled like a clap of thunder through the store and she looked taken aback by herself, glancing at Devlin who was equally surprised. Her father whooped in cheer and there was a smile alighting his face as if he had been hoping for this sort of reaction from her wand. Harry patted David on the back in congratulations. Devlin wondered what Maria had been like when they were children - before the Death Eater's.
Freddie, August, Thomas and Maria came towards him and they grouped together while their parents went to pay.
"I certainly hope I am not becoming forgetful," came Ollivander's voice, soft and mysterious, seeming to float toward him with the oscillating dust, "I do not think I have measured you yet, child."
He was pointing at him, his pale blue eyes scrutinizing him again. To answer, Devlin produced his wand.
"I already have one," he said softly. Ollivander motioned him forward, as if to prove it were real, and Devlin, in bemusement, went up to him.
In Wizarding Society, one did not touch another wizard's wand without express permission, and so Ollivander asked him if he might hold it.
"I remember this wand," Ollivander said. "I sold it some time ago, but not to you. It is a nice wand. Now, stand still and we will measure you."
Harry had gone sort of green as Ollivander returned the wand. The adults had gone hushed. Devlin took a step back.
"I told you, I already have one. It chose me from a lot of them."
Ollivander stared at him intently for a moment, unblinking. He leaned in close, so that their faces were inches apart.
"I sold it to a boy your age, many years ago. His name was Leonard Easlick - I believe. Willow and Dragon Heartstring - stiff and good for charms."
Devlin had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he consented to be measured. It felt wrong, with Harry holding his wand, and Ollivander measuring him for a new one. His willow wand had gotten him through impossible situations and it had never failed him once.
By the sixth wand, Devlin was feeling more and more like Ollivander had made some huge mistake. Maybe it had belonged to someone else. Maybe someone had bought it before Devlin was even born, but maybe, if that boy had never been to Ollivander's, the wand would have sat waiting for Devlin. It was his wand.
"I told you I already have one," he said, and he lifted his hand to illustrate. He meant to bring his wand to him, but instead there was a rattle from the back room that Ollivander eagerly went to investigate.
When he returned it was with a slender box that he opened gingerly.
"Willow, Phoenix feather, twelve inches," Ollivander said in his mysterious voice. He looked up, his eyes a bright blue that sunk into Devlin in an odd way. "It is an old wand. It has been in the shop for longer than I have been alive."
He touched it once more, as if to say goodbye. Devlin did not have as much confidence, and he glanced back at his wand as if to reassure the wand of it's importance to him. More than anything in that camp, that wand had saved him.
Ollivander extended the wand to him. Freddie, August, Thomas, and Maria were eagerly watching him. Harry had that encouraging smile on his face that was always for Devlin. Alexandra's eyes were on him, as if he were the most interesting thing in her whole world; he was always most amazed by this expression of hers.
He extended his hand and took the wand.
For a very, very, small moment, Devlin felt as if he would die. The wand seared at his palm, then seemed to cool to the touch as the burning seeped into his skin. Part of him recognized he should drop the wand, but it was his wolf, and the wizard side of him made him hold on tighter. It was rushing up his wrist, foreign and exhilarating, and Devlin realized he felt more alive than ever. His magic pushed itself from his chest and raced down the arm, and the two magics met. The dust rose into the air, his hair whipped around his face, and there was a crack as the wand let out golden sparks.
When the dust had settled Ollivander was peering at him with his pale blue eyes.
"That, child," he said, "is how your magic is meant to feel through a wand."
He felt drowned in a feeling so pleasant he could hardly move. His mouth was dry and his cheeks flushed and he felt as though something that had been coiled tense and cold in his chest had at last been released. Like cracking your neck after a bad nights sleep.
Harry stepped forward to pay Ollivander. If Devlin were a regular boy, he wouldn't have heard them over the cheers from the other children, but he wasn't and he did.
It's a different Phoenix, right?
Ollivander had nodded, and Harry had seemed to relax.
OoOoOoOoO
He packed his trunk with the same meticulous care with which he chose his words or memorized a spell. Things from the trip were thrown haphazardly onto his bed in a mess Harry had said he 'recognized', but brought and packed with meticulous care into his trunk in a way Harry said was all his mother. He wondered how Grandfather's trunk might have looked.
He saved an entire end of the trunk to stack his books. He knew he would want to dig them up too often to leave them at the bottom. Until then, he brought them to his desk and inspected each copy with piqued interest. He'd read many of them before, he knew; Harry had the whole seven years downstairs and he had borrowed them years ago, but these were his and they were newer editions than their kin downstairs. He thought charms would be his favorite class, and he settled this book off the pile of the others, cracking the spin open.
It was then, of course, that he saw it.
A bit of paper.
Harmless and invaluable, except for the words scrawled with meticulous care across their surface.
I hope you have not forgotten.
He had spent hours, days, weeks, years trying to mimic that handwriting perfectly; he would know it anywhere. Grandfather.
Of course he hadn't forgotten. He would never forget.
Part of him, the largest part of him, belonged to the Dark Lord.
He taped the bit of paper onto the inside of his school trunk lid, because he knew it was deadly if he let himself forget.
Part of him had expected this, of course. Other bits of him had gone beyond mere expectations and had planned, considered, and hypothesized all the ways along his journey to Hogwarts that Voldemort might drag him back.
OoOoOoO
That day, no one needed to drag him out of bed. He was up, showered, and dressed before Harry had even risen to use the loo. His hair was perfectly parted and his wand perfectly hidden beneath a perfectly inconspicuous muggle button up shirt. His trunk was already downstairs and the black owl Harry had bought him and he had not yet named was preening his feathers on the back of his desk chair. He watched Zee as the dog watch his owl.
"Do not even think about it, Zee," he said softly. "He is not yours."
Harry had been encouraging him non-stop to name the owl, but Devlin had taken to just calling him 'my owl', to differentiate it from 'Harry's owl' or 'Alexandra's owl' and what he supposed might someday be 'Emma's owl'. At school Harry said there would be many more owls, but Devlin still figured 'my owl' would suffice; it was a clever bird, as far as he could tell. It knows it is mine, Devlin had said to Harry, and Harry had peered at him as he sometimes did, with a lingering something in his regard and reminded Devlin that the owl was a him.
Alexandra came in first. Most of him had figured Harry would.
"You're all ready, I see," she said, and she lingered by the door, peering at him with that all-consuming interest that made his stomach twist pleasantly.
"Yes," he replied. "My trunk is downstairs."
"Taken all the fun from Harry, I see," she said, laughing.
He smiled charmingly and laughed softly. He did not understand the joke, or perhaps it was not a joke, but a nice smile and a mimicry of the other persons reaction usually sufficed. By fun, he supposed, mulling the idea around in his head as he followed her out the door, she had probably meant something else; the indescribable satisfaction Harry seemed to experience doing those silly things. Maybe regular boys did not carry their own trunks. Maybe when Devlin was a man and had a child, he would feel it was fun to drag a trunk down the stairs.
This was all getting too far afield for Devlin, and he shook his head as he experienced that sense of not quiet being able to fully grasp his own train of thought. He'd lost it around some corner, he supposed; he often thought his mind must be full of more corners than most.
Feet padded against the floor behind him, and his thoughts ended abruptly as the inescapable need to know who the sound belonged to overcame him. He glanced out of the corner of his eyes and saw Harry's shadow against the hallway wall.
"You're late getting up," Devlin remarked, his humorous smirk tinting the edges of his tone. "Mum says you missed all the fun of dragging my trunk down the stairs."
Harry took a couple large steps and made it to be beside him.
"No way! Did you drag it down already?"
Devlin thought, for someone so war-hardened, that Harry had a particular ability to pout rather convincingly. Devlin wondered if he could mimic the expression, but couldn't quite identify any situation in which he would validly use it.
"Yes, and the owl is already on it's way to Hogwarts."
Harry had taken it for a trip up there just the week before, so it would know how to get there. They wanted to travel light on the way to the train.
Harry was blocking the stairs and Devlin was forced to pause in front of him. His green eyes rested intently on him, seeming to trace his face into his memory.
"Sometimes, you remind me a lot of myself," he said softly.
Devlin hadn't been expecting that. If anything, he had been expecting a comparison to his mother; ever responsible and organized. He looked back at Harry and wondered, for the first time, what he had been like as a boy. Had he been regular?
"Come on!" It was Emma, already downstairs. Somehow, Devlin had missed her decent down the stairs, let alone her feet padding past his door. She was dressed in her navy button down jacket - the muggle one - and ridiculously bright green pants. Her bright red hair seemed simply to complete the total incompleteness of the outfit and make it sort of hilarious and so very Emma.
Harry let him by, and they were off.
They were driving a car. Devlin hadn't yet seen it; Harry had borrowed it from a friend, supposedly. It was a shiny silver and did not appear to have a roof; Devlin wasn't exactly sure why, but he had thought it would.
"Really, Harry?" Alexandra said, who apparently hadn't seen the car last night either. Harry grinned at her and clicked a small black box in his hands. The car beeped and the red boxes on it's front and back blinked on and off.
"It's cool, I promise."
Emma, seemingly far more familiar than Devlin, ran up to the car and pulled at some sort of handle and opened the door. She climbed in and made herself comfy. Devlin followed suit...much more carefully.
"Buckle your seatbelt," Emma said to him, pulling at her own and motioning to a small squarish device that appeared to accept and lock the 'belt' in place. He pulled cautiously at his belt.
"Oh, let me," she said, and unsnapped her own squarish box from the belt, and leaned across him to do his own. It pulled itself taunt against his body, which he wasn't very sure he enjoyed much. She redid her own.
"We're ready, Dad," she called up the front. Harry was reciting some kind of list to himself about mirrors, petals, and seats.
"Alright, Emma," he said, and continued to fiddle. Finally, he did something that made the car jerk and Devlin held onto the seat for dear life.
"Are you sure this is safe?" He asked, as Harry did something else with a round wheel up front and the car jerked against and began to back out of the driveway.
"Yup," Harry replied.
"It's made by muggles," Devlin said. "They don't know any charms."
Emma was giggling, and he shot her a glare.
"Nope, but still safe. I'm a good driver."
"Really? Because I have never seen you do this before."
"It's like learning to ride a broom - you never forget."
Devlin clung to whatever he could grasp and tried to remind himself that he did have a wand. His perfectly parted hair went spilling around his face and Emma's laughter was lost in the wind.
OoOoOoOoO
Miraculously, they arrived alive at the train station. As he climbed out of the car and trekked into the hubbub of the muggle portion of the station, he paused for a half-step to wonder if this was where Voldemort would choose to interrupt his journey.
He made it through onto 9 3/4 and Harry's face was split into a grin as he strung an arm over his shoulders and brought him close.
"Are you excited?" He asked, squeezing him.
"Sure," Devlin said, but he hadn't put much energy into sounding convincing.
It was times like these that Devlin became especially aware of why Harry might welcome muggle crowds over ones full of magical folk. Parents pointed them out to their children, older students gazed openly at Harry. Emma hid herself behind Alexandra, her navy blue woolen coat with it's crazy green pants now seeming sort of ironic in the face of her shyness. Harry's face was set in a mark of eagerness; the sort of expression that he knew wouldn't be caught unknowingly glaring or scowling by a camera. Alexandra tended to Emma, and that would excuse her, surely.
Devlin stood straighter, ran a hand through his hair, and felt the whispers and attention pass him by.
He had been used to this, at one point. Once with Harry when he was small, once more with Voldemort with the hum of the little dark one spreading through Death Eater meetings. Parents and children crowded at a train station seemed somehow playful and humorous, in exchange.
"I see a camera," Harry said to Alexandra, out of the corner of his mouth. Alexandra's nose twitched in distaste, but her expression remained calm and peaceful.
Devlin had never really seen a camera like the one flashing towards him now. Usually, when they went to Diagon Alley, Harry went through a bit of trouble to make sure they wouldn't be noticed. He had experienced the whispers and the looks, but this was a whole new creature.
"Mr. Potter!" The camera seemed to say, flashing in his eyes. In reality it was a person behind the camera speaking. They let it fall around their neck for just a second. It was a man, curly haired and be-speckled, that greeted him. It took Devlin a moment to realize that he was 'Mr. Potter.'
"Call me Devlin," he said, with an automaticity that had Harry close to groaning beside him. The man behind the camera's face split into something more than enthusiastic. It was as if Devlin had just given him something priceless.
"Of course!" The man said. "Are you excited about going to Hogwarts, Devlin?"
Harry drew an arm around Devlin and tugged him closer.
"Hello, Miles," Harry said, "I hope you understand we're in a bit of a rush. Devlin has to get his trunk on the train."
Miles' face fell a bit.
Devlin got the sense Harry wanted away from this man. Sometimes, Devlin took pity on Harry.
"I'd love to chat," he said to the be-speckled man, "maybe another time."
He offered him one more smile and stretched out his hand to shake the mans.
"I found Freddie!" He said, and began to walk away. He glanced back and saw Harry speaking to the man, calm and cool, but with a firmness Devlin was rarely privy to.
He really had spotted Freddie, but came up beside him far less eagerly than he had led the be-speckled man to think.
"Hey Genius," Freddie said, clapping him on the back. August and Thomas laughed.
"Let's not start trend of giving one another academic nicknames," Devlin said mulishly, observing the boy from the half inch taller he was. Thomas and August elbowed each other and Freddie mock glared.
"Academics are over-rated," he claimed, nodding.
"I'm sure your mother would disagree," Devlin said, but did not protest much. Academics were over rated. They would not help much without context and real experience.
oOoOoOo
He had spent so much time anticipating Voldemort that he hadn't really anticipated this.
Blond hair, unicorn blood eyes, pale features; Scorpius Malfoy stared resolutely at him through the open door to their compartment.
Luis Weasley, a boy who was almost set to graduate Hogwarts, had been 'assigned' to their compartment by his father. He was a playful boy but had a cautiousness about him that Devlin thought came from his father.
He stood now, tall and strong.
"Can we help you?" He asked. He must have recognized the boy.
"I was looking for a place to sit," the boy said, neither kindly nor unkindly but with the air of not really wanting to speak to someone twice his size.
"Well," Luis said, kindly, "this compartment is full. If you like, I can help you find another."
His arms came up to curl around his front, crossed and clenching. He moved his chin to stare purposefully at Devlin.
"I'm not him, that's all," he said, a flush rising to his cheeks.
Thoughts, pictures, and memories bloomed to life in Devlin's mind at his words. He raced and circled and grabbed until he had rounded them up and made some sense of them: past, present, and all the possibilities. Some were lost around the many corners that filled his mind.
He might have been content to ignore the boy, but Maria was beside him, and one quick glance her way revealed her own terror. He didn't think she'd ever been tortured by Malfoy, but at this point everyone knew who this boys father had been. When the boy opened his mouth to say more, Devlin reared to his feet.
His hands were on the boy, pushing him back through the door and out into the hallway. He didn't like people talking about this sort of things around Maria. His arms were still crossed and all Devlin could think was how stupid he was, to have his wand hand all tangled up and useless.
"I'm not him," the boy said again. There was a flush of humiliation spreading across his cheeks, and Devlin knew someone had put him up to this.
"You can say that a hundred times," Devlin growled into his ear, leaning closer. Luis had come out into the hallway. "But it won't matter. I don't care. You're nothing to me. Nothing good. Nothing bad. Nothing at all. Remember that and don't bloody act as if you mean something to me."
"I'm not him. You don't even know me."
Luis was just beginning to utter Devlin's name.
"You're right and I want to keep it that way. You're nothing to me. Don't try to make yourself something."
He pulled himself away right before Luis had the opportunity to do so himself, and stalked back into the compartment. The door had been left open, and it was only Maria who wore an expression other than surprise. He supposed no one else had ever seen him quite like that.
He cracked his Charms book open and resolutely ignored them.
OoOoOoO
He threw his robes on over his muggle clothing. Freddie, August, Luis, and Thomas entirely changed, but for Devlin to do so, he might have accidentally exposed his scars. He supposed he hadn't thought of everything that morning, or he would have put a plain shirt on or had Harry transfigure his school shirt one so it could be returned to normal on the train. Maria had thought ahead, or likely her mum had, and she was wearing her school things under her jacket and only had to throw on her robe.
"You might get told off for that," Luis said, pointing at the incorrect shirt peeking out from under his robes and the trousers that were the wrong color. "Did you forget your uniform in your trunk?"
"It will be fine," Devlin said, and he turned to glare out the window.
He hadn't quite figured out how to talk about the things Freddie, August, and Thomas so often did, but he had grown accustom to the lull of their speech as it all blended together. The train passed comfortably. There were no Death Eaters. No charming Grandfather come to take him away.
When the train pulled to a stop and Luis led them off, Devlin held his breath before he jumped off. Would he be here. Was it now that he would get Devlin?
"That's Hagrid," Luis said, although Devlin thought everyone in their group, except perhaps Maria, knew Hagrid by sight. "He'll lead you to the boats."
The boats were dingy, old, and held together by formidable charms. Maria stayed close to him, but the boats only held three students, and Freddie, August, and Thomas went together.
"I'm Kendall," a boy said, sitting opposite them. "Kendall Green."
Devlin looked him. Hair darker than Devlin's, eyes a bright brown, skin a healthy tanned.
"I'm Devlin Potter," he said.
The boy smiled sheepishly.
"Well, yeah!" He said, and laughed. "I knew that."
Kendall talked a lot skipping from one topic to another as if he intended to find at least one that would engage Devlin.
Not even halfway across the lake, it began to pour.
