heavy. like lead. more backstorying.

notes: uhhh minor bug squick when allen shows up at the common rooms. some zalgo text at the end. should show up fine, but if it doesn't, the zalgo'd text isn't required reading it's just there for Aesthetics.

for the curious, it's currently about 2 weeks into october. time is real but is also a lie.


4: tastes like charcoal and rye and things that lie.


Allen was never sure what to think about winter.

He'd been likened to the snow too many times to count, from his hair to.. just his hair actually. It was mahogany before, a reddish sort of brown that looked too much like Cross's hair for both of their comforts.

Not that nearly white was any less conspicuous, but Allen had gotten used to seeing it in the mirror by now. It'd take a few more years before he felt alright having his hair color match Cross's.

For now, he liked it white. And Neah was more than happy to take over Cross's job of keeping it white, or as white as he could make it.

Which was why Allen's hair now looked like old lace that'd been sitting in the attic too long instead of its usual eggshell color.

"You're terrible at this, uncle."

"I hate Transfiguration," Neah chirped, smiling back at Allen in the mirror. "You look fine."

Allen frowned, picking at the longer strands. "It doesn't match my shirt anymore."

Neah clapped both hands on Allen's shoulders. "Wear a yellow shirt. It's Saturday. No one will care."

True enough. Allen had seen his peers going around in jackets, jeans, sweatpants, all manner of 'normal' clothes lately. Wizard robes weren't necessarily the warmest thing on the planet, unless one had the money to shell out for one Charmed with heat retention or self-heating spells.

..Which technically they did, and they could, now that Allen had more or less stopped sprouting like a weed. He should look into that at some point, or some other method or keeping warm but mobile. He'd seen Harry and his group going around with a bit of blue-colored fire in a jar.

"Uncle," he said, turning around after straightening out his collar again. "Do you know of anything I can carry around to keep myself warm? Besides 20 blankets and a bucket of coal."

His uncle looked at him from the liquor cabinet, already holding a bottle.

"...Never mind. Is that brandy? At 8 in the morning, Neah?"

"It's an 8-in-the-morning sort of problem."

"Are you sure it's not an all day problem?"

Neah's eyebrows went up. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh," Allen said, trying not to sigh. "Nothing."

Sometimes, he really feared for his uncle's liver.

Allen had intended to hang out around the fireplace to do some homework, but Neah was always a little.. odd when he was drinking, so he ended up in the library. Not odd the way Cross was odd, although he suspected Neah must have picked up the drinking habit from someone. He counted himself lucky that neither of them were the, well, unlikable sort of drunks. Whenever they managed to drink enough to actually get drunk.

Cross drank like he was trying to distract himself, going out and cavorting with any 'beautiful people' he could find. Most of the time they weren't even magical folk.

Neah, as Cross described it, drank like he was trying to drown out his own thoughts.

"Best to leave him to it," Cross had said, a few days before Allen was supposed to meet his uncle. "Drinking's good medicine for things like this, as long as he doesn't do anything to you. If he does, use the TeleFloo and call me... Actually, jinx him black and blue first, then call me."

He hadn't needed to, yet, and hoped he never would.

On the plus side, Allen was really good at Deodorizing Charms now, and he and Neah had been working on something for hangovers that didn't involve actual hair from a three-headed-dog's tail, a Liondragon egg yolk, and spittle squeezed from a Albanian muddy toad. Not that it hadn't been effective, but the ingredients and recipe had ended up being too complex to get and produce for someone suffering from double vision.

...Hangover cures was probably not what Snape wanted addressed in their writing assignment, but an antidote was an antidote, even if it wasn't as 'commonly known' as the assignment called for. It wasn't like anyone else was going to read his dissection and study of a self-concocted remedy for something as inane as a hangover.

"Kneazles?"

Allen looked up from the book he was poring over. "..Ms. Seymound?"

"Malinda." The girl cheeked a smile at him. "Allen?"

"If you must." He smiled back. "I'm still working on Snape's essay."

"..Is there an antidote that uses Kneazles in it?"

"Mine does. Have you finished yours yet?"

"More or less. I picked something out of 1001 Topical Toxins and How To Treat Them. Mum swears by everything in there. Mind if I sit?" Allen made a vague gesture to indicate yes, she can sit, and she slid into the seat across from him at the table. "Now, Trelawney."

"I hear everyone just makes up stuff for her homework," Allen said humorously. "I wonder how she does her grading? Creativity and originality? Or an uncanny eye for details?"

"I think she just likes tragedies. Everyone in my dorm takes turns 'predicting' everyone's deaths. Anisa said I'd suffocate from a Bat Bogey Hex gone wrong once."

He tried really hard not to snort out a laugh. He failed. "Oh, gross!"

She was grinning at him. He could tell it was about something other than his reaction, because she looked very self-satisfied about something, too.

"...What are you smiling at?" he asked, rubbing his cheek with his free hand. "Did I get ink on my face?"

"Nah, it's just— it's just something silly." She shook her head. "Y'know, you should drop by the common rooms sometime, especially if you need any help with homework. And it's warmer besides. Well, once you get past the cold dungeons part."

"Oh. Um... I'll try? I don't really go in that direction too often, except for Potions. I don't really have a reason to."

"It's your own House! That's all the reason you need."

Allen laughed, then ducked his head when he quite literally felt the librarian's glare through three rows of bookshelves. "We don't have houses at Rosa Croce, so I don't really understand how it all works. It just seems to make things more complicated."

"Hogwarts was founded by four different people, which is where the Houses come from.. I've heard there's a few other schools that are like that too."

"That would explain it. I mean, I don't really know how many founders Rosa Croce had. We don't exactly learn about our school's history."

Malinda looked shocked. "You don't?! That... that sounds... I don't know, actually. That sounds kind of cool? We're not exactly tested on Hogwarts history, but pretty much everyone is kind of expected to know it already. Well, the ones that aren't Muggle-born, anyway. I can't imagine not knowing anything at all about your school, though."

Allen smiled in a way he hoped was disarming. He scratched idly at the back of his hand. "I don't think Rosa Croce has as many students as Hogwarts does.. or that much of a history. We know enough about it."

"Doesn't sound as though you like that school very much," she said. "Bad crowd?"

"Not really! Just... okay, maybe a little bit."

If she only knew.

"Well, I hope you have a better time here at Hogwarts." Malinda took out a heavy tome that Allen recognized as their text reference for Divination. "I like to think of this place as home away from home. My family hasn't got many wizards in it, see, so using magic at home is a bit more.. well. Difficult."

"I thought everyone in Slytherin was a.. what was it, Pureblood?"

"Merlin, no." She made a face. "There's a lot of them— us —who like to think that, but Purebloods are really rare these days. They all pretend they're Pureblood though."

"..Why would they do that?"

"Halfbloods are fine," she said flippantly, even as Allen withheld a cringe. Halfblood. "But it's the Muggle-borns that no one here likes. I don't know if we have any in Slytherin."

"With that kind of attitude towards them, I don't blame them for lying about it."

"Did you lie about yours?"

Allen looked up sharply, his quill scratching a jagged line across half of the parchment.

"Oh- oh! Sorry!" Malinda yelped, immediately taking out her wand. "Sorry, let me— I'll clean that up for you—"

"It's fine," he said. "Sorry, that was—"

"Bit sudden of me to ask that. I wasn't thinking, sorry. It's just—" She made a flustered gesture before remembering that she was still holding her wand, and put it away before she knocked over someone's stack of books or something. "—Well, that is. I haven't.. told anyone about my parents either. I know some of them suspect it— Anisa knows, our families have always been good friends. She doesn't like that I want to hide it, but..."

Allen thought back to all the times he heard Malfoy calling someone a Mudblood.

"I never knew my parents," he said. He tapped his wand on the parchment and siphoned off the errant scrawling ink. "I don't... remember much about them. I'm adopted, see— my father knew my birth parents, which is how I ended up with him. At least I think he did. I can't recall anything, and my uncle doesn't know them either... but he wasn't really around much."

Allen paused.

"...Actually, I have no idea where my uncle came from. I can't believe I never thought about that before. He just started sending me letters out of the blue last year."

Malinda stared at him, open-mouthed. "And you just wrote back without thinking about it? What if he's lying? What if— what if he's some weird psycho kidnapping mass murderer?"

He opened and closed his mouth several times, and then decided that 'I'm pretty sure he is one' was probably not the best thing to say.

"I think he's fine?" Wow, he didn't sound very convincing. "Hang on, I thought the Campbells were practically famous? And weren't murderers?"

She leaned in close and lowered her voice to a whispery hiss. "He could be lying about being a Campbell."

Allen wondered why he'd never considered that option before.

"He looks like my dad," was all he could think to say. It was true? "..A little. They've got the same, uh... eye-crinkle. You know? When people smile? Their eyes do the— okay, bad example. But they do look alike, and my guardian says it's true too, and I'd rather not be a complete orphan?"

He paused again.

"That came out wrong."

Malinda made a noise that suggested she agreed, but didn't really know how to put it into words. He appreciated the effort.

"Your, um. Your uncle isn't your guardian? He's the Campbell, right?"

"He's... supposed to be.." Allen muttered something under his breath about vaguely irresponsible adult figures. "I think they're having paperwork issues."

Not to mention Cross was sort of... off doing something or other, somewhere in Europe.

"Paperwork?"

"Mmm." He shuddered. It was a sound of discomfort. "Paperwork."

She, wisely, did not ask of it any further.

"So, you haven't got any idea of your blood status? Not even a clue?"

Allen shrugged. "Blood status wasn't important in Rosa Croce. None of us really cared to find out."

"Everyone thinks you're a Campbell here, anyway. One of the best families to have at your back, I hear. Used to be, anyway."

His writing slowed down to a crawl again until he stopped halfway through a word, and then promptly forgot what it was he'd meant to write.

"..Used to be?"

Malinda looked at him weird. Wynford did mention that the Campbells were notoriously wealthy— though the very fact that he'd said notoriously should've told Allen all he needed to know. Good families were never known to be notorious about anything.

"Draco asked his dad about it, apparently. A few weeks ago. Said that the only wizarding Campbell family worth knowing went missing years ago. No one knows what happened to them."

Toenails, he told himself and forced his hand to keep writing. Kneazle toenails may be substituted in absence of their hairballs. Grind thoroughly with mortar and pestle before adding to cauldron, to properly counteract the toxic effects of

"Zabini, that third year friend of Malfoy's? He heard they'd been killed off. Freak accident or something. It's all they've been talking about the past few days. Kinda creepy, really. Them, I mean, not the Campbells. I think I've seen your uncle around, Allen, he's not bad."

"Thanks," Allen said dully, and then felt a bit like an idiot. "He's a real nightmare."

She grinned. "How come he's staying at the castle? We've all tried to ask Snape, but he won't say anything. Figured it was top secret, except no one's really got the guts to ask the Headmaster."

"If Snape won't tell you, why would I?"

"Oh, come on!" She whined, then clapped her hands over her mouth and looked around to see if Madam Pince was going to show up. "...This is the gossip of the century! —Well, no, maybe of the school year. Maybe just of this term. Your family's like, ghosts, Allen. They're ghosts."

Allen thought about Mana. Thought about holding Mana's hand when they crossed streets. About Mana helping him reach things too high up, about how it took weeks for Allen to let Mana pat him on the head for doing something right. He thought about Mana's hugs.

"They're not ghosts," he said, with a smile that felt more painful than it looked. "Pretty sure ghosts don't down an entire bottle of extra-strength Firewhiskey in one sitting."

"Ew," Malinda grimaced. "He does that?"

"Why do you think I'm out here instead of in my room," Allen replied, completely devoid of any humor whatsoever.

"That's... That's really quite awful of him?"

"I think he's working on it. " He shrugged. "Oh, you said you were working on Trelawney's assignment, right? Do something with ghosts! Like... you'll meet the ghost of a vengeful ancestor whom your great-great-grandfather wronged by putting his shoes on in the wrong order, thus dooming you to a life of haunting and incessant scolding every time you so much as touch a pair of clogs."

"Are you sure you're not a mind-reader?" she said lowly and with a rising sort of cautious alarm. "Because there's a painting in our house foyer that does exactly that—"

/ / /

"Frigidi."

The gray bricks began twisting and pulling away, not unlike the wall leading into Diagon Alley.

"How do you know what the password is? It changes, right?"

"It's written on the inside if it changes, or if it's about to change," Malinda said. "As long as you keep an eye out for it, you can't get locked out."

Given that Allen didn't really plan on coming back any time soon, he promptly forgot about this bit of information as soon as the common room was visible.

"Hey guys!" she called out, jumping through the hole in the wall. "Guess who I managed to pry out of the library?"

"Madam Pince?" someone said.

Allen tried to imagine the librarian outside the library. He managed a fuzzy image of her in the courtyards before his mind shut it out for his own safety and sanity. He shuddered.

"I don't think she can survive even a minute outside her natural habitat," he said solemnly as he climbed in through the doorway. "She might... I don't know. Evaporate."

"Is that Walker?" piped a voice from the chair near the fireplace. "Thought you said you weren't ever gonna come in here."

"Hello to you too, Glenmoor." He grinned and waved at his Divinations tablemate. "Ms. Seymound is very convincing when she wants to be."

"Malinda."

"Ow, ow, yes, okay, Malinda." Allen curled away from the elbow digging into his ribs. "Ms. Malinda is very convincing."

The room wasn't too full, luckily. He'd been prepared to bolt if there were more than a handful of people in the common room. Classrooms he could sit through as a necessity, but he wasn't exactly willing to spend much time around that many people if he could help it otherwise.

As long as he left before curfew, he figured he'd be fine.

"I'll admit, I do have ulterior motives for coming here."

"You wanna copy my Diviniations paper after all?"

"No, Glenmoor. I wouldn't want to copy your pithy predictions if my entire future depended on it."

Glenmoor gasped, putting both hands to his chest like he'd been hit with a particularly strong Stunner. "How dare you say such things to me, Walker."

"Flobberworms, mate. Who in the world predicts that they'll be eaten by Flobberworms?"

"Getting devoured by Flobberworms is a perfectly fine nightmare to have!" he mock-cried, and was promptly struck in the face by a pillow.

"They don't even have teeth," hissed Adler, who had thrown the pillow from where she was sitting across from Glenmoor. "What'd they do, swallow you whole? Oh, yeah, that's terribly frightening and absolutely something I want to be thinking about for the rest of the evening. Thanks, Slàine."

"You're welcome, Bindy. And for your information, I wasn't talking about your garden variety Flobberworm. Apparently someone in Bulgaria went and bred a one with a Flesh-Eating Slug..."

"I'm never coming back," Allen whispered loudly to Malinda. He caught the pillow that was sent in his direction with a laugh. Maybe it wasn't so bad in here. "So, I heard someone's been talking about me. Well, about the Campbell family?"

A few more heads popped up in his peripheral vision from various chairs and tables.

He slid on a grin, nice and cheerful. Just like he'd seen Neah do countless times before.

"I want to hear more about this."


Neah Campbell was not a stranger to seeing shapes in the shadows, dogging his every step.

He was not a stranger to having enemies, and even less of a stranger to having not a single ally to his name. Although, if one asked very specifically, in a very certain kind of way, he might admit to Marian being one of the few people he counted as 'on his side'. At this point he would take them where he could find them.

The problem was, of course, finding them.

Noah's Academy was, in hindsight, quite possibly the worst sort of learning environment for a child to grow up in. He really was rather proud of himself for destroying it when he did. The Rose Cross Institute was... only mildly better, from what Marian and Allen had to say of it.

But Marian had been at Noah's Academy with him, and Allen was Allen. Neah could only take the truth of their words so far.

Allen was starting to get as good as Neah was at lying through his teeth, except for the small fact that Allen only ever lied about how things affected him. Small things.

Neah did not lie about small things. Small things were too inconsequential and numerous, not worth lying about anymore. He was making progress on the bigger ones, though. It helped that Marian had finally caught on after an entire decade.

Still. The problem here was Allen. Allen, and how he was almost too uncautious for his own good.

The boy returned to their shared dorm with a look on his face that Neah well all too well. It was the sort of look that Marian used to find on him.

He described it as something torn between a hollow acceptance and all-consuming guilt, which, Neah figured, was actually quite accurate. Though he had more of the hollowness, and Allen just looked like he'd been forced to the most unspeakable things.

Not wrong.

"That's quite a look you've got there, Allen," Neah said from couch in front of the fireplace.

"I visited the Slytherins," his nephew said morosely. "Are you done drinking?"

"Mm." Mostly. He felt better now. "Sorry you can't have any."

"I don't want any. Nor do I need it."

"Don't you?"

Allen looked at him funny. He came over to the couch Neah was in, dropped his bag next to it, and took the only other available seat. Rather than answering a rhetorical question, Allen stared into the fireplace.

Neah turned the page in his book, allowing it to continue reading itself aloud. For the next while, it was the only sound in the room, besides the crackling fire and popping wood.

There was a question on his nephew's tongue. It wasn't hard to tell; he was only a boy, only a child, and while the both of them were adept at reading and deceiving people, Neah had been doing it for over twice as long as Allen had been alive.

Plus. Allen was just really easy to read sometimes.

Neah turned another page. The Oratus Charm really didn't do a good job of emulating Marian's verbal tics from the writing, but he supposed that was all the better for classroom purposes. No one needed to hear Marian running every other word together and trying hold back a swear every time Neah made some off-hand commentary.

"So?" he asked, finally. He did not elaborate.

Neither did Allen.

"So, what?"

"So... you've been watching wood burn for the past half an hour."

"Sometimes you just want to watch the wood burn," Allen said, dully.

"Here I thought you would've wanted to save it."

"Obviously you don't know me as well as you think you do."

Neah hid a smile behind the next page. "Don't I?"

Unfortunately, it seemed that was the last straw that Allen was able to handle. "Okay, what is up with you today?"

"I don't know what you mean, Allen."

"You—" Allen made a series of frustrated sounds and movements that ultimately culminated in refusing to look at Neah at all, instead choosing to cross his arms and sulk down into his seat. "Why do you always sound like you know exactly what I've been doing all day? Did you— jinx me with a bug or something? Are you sending people to spy on me?"

"Good lord, nephew. I'm not Rosa Croce," Neah stated, the words leaving behind a taste like unfiltered tap water. Sharp and metallic. "You walked out of here chipper as could be this morning, and you come back at—"

He checked the clock.

"—9pm, looking like you've kicked someone's puppy. Or killed someone. Did you kill someone?"

Allen's head turned to him slowly, almost like a doll, only far more fluid and concise in execution. The fact that he did it silently just made it all the more eerie.

"..I'm not you, uncle."

Neah laughed. "And aren't we glad for that?"

He used the flesh-colored string attached to the spine to mark his place in the book, despite instructions on the inside cover clearly stating not to do that, lest it be damaged. The side effects of using a damaged Auricular Enhancer included injury to the eardrums and loss of hearing, subsequent nausea and dizziness and the staunch belief that one was, in fact, a hatchling denizen of the Finnish Dragon Sanctuary.

In other words, no big deal. Neah snapped the book shut and set it down in his lap, drawing his legs up to cross them where he sat.

"You're still here," he said.

Allen was looking away again, unresponsive. Quite possibly ignoring Neah, which was fine. The important thing was that he hadn't yet left the room.

"Allen," Neah repeated.

The boy's head snapped up like he'd just realized something. When he looked at Neah again, it was with all the shock and surprise of someone who'd just been caught eating their birthday cake out of the fridge the day before the party.

In Allen terms, this usually meant getting ready to drop a load of bullshit in order to get himself out of this situation. Marian had warned him about things like this.

"-Sorry, I was, um. Thinking about... stuff."

"Stuff."

"Yes, stuff."

Neah hummed. "Allen."

It took all of two seconds to go from 'about to lie his ass off' to 'sulking like an actual child' again.

"Don't you Allen me like that," he huffed. Neah blinked at him. "...Like I said. I went to the Slytherin common rooms."

"Oh," Neah said, utterly despondent. "Oh no."

Allen rolled his eyes. "It was fine, there weren't that many people there. Nothing happened. It's just.. Well. They were asking about you."

That didn't sound particularly concerning.

"You and Mana."

Ah.

"Ah."

Allen dropped his hands into his lap and fiddled with the root fingers of his left hand, still hidden behind a layer of illusory Charms. Neah was still casting it for him at this point, though Allen was learning slowly how to do it himself. When he wasn't opting to just cover it with a pair of gloves, anyway. Apparently he'd been doing that a lot back in Rosa Croce.

Unfortunately, not everyone was as welcoming to the idea of having a highly venomous plant for an arm. Honestly? Neah didn't blame them.

Didn't mean it didn't suck.

"They said you're supposed to be dead, Neah," Allen said quietly. "Mana, too. Malfoy's been asking around and apparently the Campbells are pretty famous? What did you guys do?"

"Why is the Malfoy boy even so curious?" Neah's eyebrows went up. "Did you say something bad to him."

Allen looked away, but more out of self-conscious embarrassment than anything. "...I kind of threatened him? I, um. Told him not to rag on Mana again or I'd, y'know. Jinx his toes off."

"Well, that would certainly get his jimmies twisted enough to dig up history from decades ago," Neah mused. "I hope you added to these rumors."

"Oh, god, yeah," Allen said with a snort. "I think I said something about a coup in the Seychelles that you gatecrashed? And that you hexed Mussolini's corpse into dancing in his coffin."

"Allen," Neah said. "This isn't to say I wouldn't do something like that, because I absolutely would, but I'm 50. 52. Not 80."

"That's not what Cross says."

"Cross Marian is an immortal hellion who has assumed various identities in the 30—" Neah stopped to count off on his fingers. "... 40 years I've known him. He looks as good now as he did on the day he turned 25. It's maddening."

"I'm not going to agree or disagree with that," Allen said robotically, "but is this actually true or are you pulling my leg? Again?"

"...Yes." Neah said, very confident. Allen made the most constipated face Neah had ever seen before, so he elaborated. "I'm quite sure he's changed his name a few times. And he does look amazing. Still looks amazing."

Allen seemed like he had something else to say, but abandoned it in favor of glancing rapidly back and forth between Neah and the stairwell leading to his room, as though calculating whether he would make it there in time to escape.

Neah smiled at his nephew and leaned in, eyes alight. "And? What else?"

"I— I don't actually remember." If that was a lie, it was a very good one. Neah was tempted to let him off the hook on the mere principle of managing a convincing lie. "I said a lot of things? They kept insisting you and Mana were supposed to be dead, and every time they did, I just—"

Allen mimicked the motions of vomiting, but without any actual heaving, and more like he was trying to describe the physical sensation of astral projection.

"Have I ever told you that you're my favorite nephew, Allen?"

"Um." Allen seemed to physically recoil at the thought of being anyone's favorite anything. "I'm your only nephew?"

"My only favorite nephew." Neah grinned and reached out to ruffle his head. "Tell them whatever you want, alright? The less they actually know about the Campbells, the better."

His hand was swatted away once and then returned with a vengeance. Allen suffered the headrub with a slightly flustered look.

"What's so special about the Campbells?"

Neah took his hand back before it turned into a death grip. "The less you know about the Campbells, Allen, the better."

"That sounds ominous."

"It's meant to be. C'mere."

"...What."

"I said." Neah reached out again as Allen leaned sharply away. He caught his nephew by the shoulder and pulled him in when he didn't show any immediate signs of revulsion, throwing an arm around him and digging knuckles into the top of his head. "C'mere, boy."

Allen squawked. He kept squawking. He squawked and he flailed and he laughed, whined, ow, stop! Stop! until Neah finally let him go.

"Any homework left you need to do?"

"Nothing I can't finish up tomorrow," Allen said, shooting Neah a glare. The effect of it was ruined by the fact that he was unable to hold back a smile. "Why?"

"Want to listen to the rest of Marian's book with me? The first one, anyway."

"...Isn't it your book, too? Don't you already know everything in it?"

"I know everything that it's about, which doesn't really help when trying to construct a lesson plan based on it."

"Euugghh." Allen made a face, but scooted over anyway. Neah didn't make any move to pull him closer this time, instead letting him find a comfortable distance at which to stop on his own. "It's not going to be Cross reading, is it?"

"God, no. We couldn't pay anyone enough to Charm that level of accuracy into the entire line of books." Neah sighed heavily, cracking open the book i his lap again. "Pity, really."

"You're probably the only one who actually likes listening to him talk. Besides himself."

"He's got suitors, too, Allen. Lovely lot, actually. Have you ever met them?"

"Have I ever met them."

"I'll take that as a yes."

Allen groaned and kicked his legs up onto the table. Neah did the same. Everything important had already been moved off of it earlier, anyway.

He opened to book to where he had left off and got halfway down the page when Allen spoke up again.

"..Neah?"

"Hmm?"

"Weren't you born in Italy? Or raised there?"

Neah looked over. Allen had taken off his shoes and was now staring at his sock covered toes. Neah wondered what he would've looked like with a plant for a leg, too.

"Mana and I left England when our parents died," he said, soft over the Oratus Charm's enchanted reading. "That would've been... some time after Mussolini kicked he bucket. Wish I could've been there to hex his corpse though."

"Did you move into Italy, then? Er. Into the Vatican?"

"I've never lived in Italy, Allen. Did Mana not tell you any of this?" Allen shook his head after a moment. Neah frowned. "Nor Marian?"

"...I didn't even know Cross knew that much about you? He never said anything. I.. well, I thought he was just being.. respectful of your privacy and such." Allen glanced over, then made another face at the face Neah was making. "I know he's nothing like that now! I'm not that much of an idiot."

"He'd spill our entire life and history to a stranger if he thought he could get them on our side," Neah said, entirely deadpan. If he let any emotion creep into his voice it would probably tip over into catastrophically mild irritation. "Yours, too, Allen."

Neah was highly tempted to say some very colorful things at the very idea of suddenly gaining 'allies' who knew everything about him, Mana, and Marian, all because Marian couldn't mind his own business. Except he did, and the problem was that his business was Neah's business, and there was just no escaping the man's general impulsiveness.

"If he didn't say anything, he likely just didn't want to. Some things don't feel good when they're dredged up." He rubbed at the side of his face, like he was trying to feel out an old bruise. "We only went to school in Vatican City, we never lived in Italy itself. Marian, too, though I don't know where he's from or where he stayed. He was a few years ahead of us. Not that it mattered much. Not for schools like Noah's Academy. You know?"

"Mmm." Allen dropped his head onto Neah's shoulder as he went back to staring into the fireplace. Neah flicked his finger towards it and sent the dying flames roaring up again.

"We used the Floo thing to get to the school, mostly, since it was long distance. First time I saw Marian, we were both covered in soot. Mana made fun of him for it, he was so offended."

"You didn't?"

"Oh of course I did, but I actually look the type to make fun of someone for being covered in fireplace dust." Neah gave his nephew an impish smile. Or as impish as he remembered it being, a few decades ago. No telling how well that kind of thing held up over time. "Mana doesn't. Usually."

"...Usually."

"Usually. We were 11, Allen. I suppose he was behaving a lot more responsibly when he adopted you, Allen. Adoption is a pretty responsible thing to do."

"Usually."

"..That doesn't sound good."

Allen shook his head again. "Not Mana. Cross is just... you know."

"Ah, him." Neah clucked his tongue as he turned to the next page. "Cross is not actually allowed to adopt you, just so you know. If he tries, punch him."

At that, Allen lifted his head to give Neah a bewildered look. "Why isn't he..? I thought he was already my guardian?"

"As far as Hogwarts is concerned, yes. We weren't sure how talk would spread if an actual Campbell were to be listed as your guardian, so Dumbledore let us apply under just Marian. Technically, he did take over guardianship of you after what happened to Mana, and Rosa Croce allowed it for school purposes. There wasn't any viable reason for him to not accept it."

Allen looked like he hadn't processed a single word of what he just heard. Neah didn't blame him. It had taken him and Marian a while to work out paperwork issues together, and he still only barely understood most of it. He didn't want to think about what Babbano adoption was like.

"But why isn't he allowed to adopt me? Or at all?" Allen's confused face flatlined into something pinched and judging. "Is he banned from adopting kids."

"No, just banned from adopting you." Neah wished he'd kept some snacks nearby. This would've been a perfect time to start eating. "I called dibs."

"But I was already adopted by Mana, right? And you're actually related to Mana by blood, so are you allowed to adopt me? Do you even need to?"

Allen stopped, and then frowned.

"I can't be adopted twice, can I?"

"You know," Neah said, slowly, "that's a very good question. I'll have to ask Marian that next time."

"...And you call yourselves my dads," Allen finally said after a long, long moment of unbroken book-reading.

"I never said we were actually dad material," Neah hummed thoughtfully. "You didn't seem to have a problem with that before."

"Uncle. I have so many problems, I don't even know where to begin."

Neah turned the page. "Let's start with, Name two things about Cross Marian that really piss you off."

"Only two? Not more? At least 20."

"...Sure, why not. Name twenty things about Cross Marian that really piss you off."

/ / /

They never got past 15, because after 10, Neah started chipping in with his own contributions and derailing Allen's thought trains. What should have been a rather domestic bonding session between uncle and nephew talking about their innermost issues instead turned into an entire hour of blunt-force lambasting one of the few people they had in common.

Cross bloody Marian.

The entire thing ended with Allen falling asleep on the couch after they finally managed to stop laughing so that Neah could finish his book. Which he did, since it was close to the end anyway, and he'd only put it off to give Allen his undivided attention.

It was close to midnight when he decided to shake Allen awake. It might have been a weekend, but sleeping on the couch was no way to spend it, unless one had a very nicely Charmed one. And it was, but that meant of course that Neah had to claim it for his own.

Allen, however, did not want to wake.

"If you don't get up," Neah said quietly, "I'll hang you by your ankles and float you up to your room like that."

The boy groaned loudly and rolled over onto his stomach. An amazing feat, considering the lack of space.

"..This isn't my bed," he said.

"Well, no. You fell asleep on the couch."

"Oh."

Neah hefted the boy's arm over his shoulder. He had to bend a little to keep Allen's feet on the ground, but managed to trudge the both of them up the flight of stairs to the room Allen had claimed as his own.

A wand-flick cleared stay clothes from the bed, and another one tucked him in.

Looking around the room, Neah felt a strange sort of nostalgia settle into his bones. Allen's personal belongings consisted of various medieval items from his morbid curiosity for the witch hunt era, an actual coffin, and some really weird paintings hanging from the walls. Neah wasn't even really sure where Allen managed to pick up these things.

Neah's room on the first floor was much... emptier. Having personal belongings wasn't a thing he'd never managed to get used to, so it remained as empty as it'd been when they first moved in. The placed seemed to have been used to house the various tenured professors, back when Hogwarts had more students. He supposed the somewhat-recent Wizarding War had something to do with the lowered attendance rate.

His old rooms had looked much the same, both at the Academy and in the mansion where he and Mana had grown up. Impeccably clean and impersonal. He didn't like being in them then any more than he liked it now.

Allen's wasn't so bad, though. Marian had told him it once that it was on the more unsettling end of things, so Neah had automatically decided he was going to like it, and he did.

Maybe could start by putting a few skulls in his room. Those always seemed to set Marian off, even after he'd taken to carrying around a dead body with him at all times.

"Uncle?"

Neah looked over. Allen was still in bed, but had rolled over onto his side again. He looked very sleepy and seemed to be having a hard time keeping his one good eye open.

"Yes, Allen?"

"Wanted to ask before I forget tomorrow," Allen murmured. "Where did you and Mana go? After you left England. Y'weren't avoiding that, were you?"

"Why would I avoid something like that?" Neah laughed. He had a million lies on the top of his tongue, and settled instead for— "We ended up in Portugal. The Campbell family owns an estate there. Mana and I lived in the manor house when we weren't in school."

"Until you ran away, right? Cross mentioned that much."

"He takes all the easiest parts for himself." Neah's smile tightened.

"What was it like there?"

"Curious, aren't you?" His face softened though, and he sat down on the edge of Allen's bed. He could indulge in a bit of reminiscing every now and then.

"..It's warm there. A lot more than Scotland, and a lot of rain, too. The house was in the middle of a wheat field, between Alandroal and the Spanish border. They used to grow wheat there— everyone in Alentejo did, even the wizards. Of course, there weren't many wizards to begin with, so you had to grow your own foodstuffs or buy from the Muggles, the Babbano. Father, the one who took us in, didn't like associating with them, and magic made growing things easier, anyway. He had people around the place to do the work while we studied, mostly, sometimes played with visiting relatives.. I liked running out into the fields before harvest. Mana used to always nag me about falling asleep out there, in the springtime... If there's anything I'll always remember, it's being woken up just before sunset. Watching the swath of green-gold turn to a lake of rippling red and orange. Like a field of.."

"Like fields of fire," Allen murmured, in a tone so familiar that it took Neah a moment to respond.

"Yeah," he said. Like a field of fire. "..Did Mana tell you that?"

"Yeah," Allen parroted back, mumbled into his pillow. Then he went silent.

Neah looked over and realized he'd fallen asleep again, and decided to leave it at that.

He was smiling as he left, easing the door shut behind him. He went back down to the common room and settled onto the couch again, this time with a blanket and another book, the first in the series of three that he and Marian had penned together.

Allen had been right, though. He did already know the contents, had read them often enough that he could likely regurgitate then word for word when prompted, albeit more gracefully and with much more feeling than the Oratus Charm did. At this point it was no longer about refreshing his knowledge of the subject. The only difficult thing about making lesson plans was how to actually teach in an effective manner. Something he might try consulting Marian about, if not one of the teachers here at Hogwarts.

Neah wasn't rereading all three books over and over to make sure he knew what he'd be talking about next year. He just wanted to relive the memories of everything he and Marian had done while researching for the books.

Because he was so god damned bored here.


"Wake up, *̶̡͚̖̯͇͈͔̣̑ͫ̑͑̑̃̄̈́͢ͅl̡͉̩͇͓̯̗̲̻̩͒ͣͤͬ̓͒͠*̠̲̠ͦ̉̎̊͌͢e̤̮͔͈̯̙̤̖ͩ̃͟$̡̱͔̘̦̽̈ͬ͂ͨͪ̓."

Allen stirred.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he didn't have to wake up yet. It was still the weekend, wasn't it? He was allowed to sleep in on weekends now.

"Wake uuuppp."

"I'm up, I'm up," he groaned, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders. Both shoulders, because plants apparently knew how to feel sore, too. "..Wh't time is it?"

"Hey. **͚͇̞͉̟͕̜̙͑ͫ̄̌͒ͅe̘͓͙̲̰͐ͨͬ*̫͂̿͒ͧ͆̚̕͟͝$̛̜̮̟̠͔̭͕ͥ̃a͚͈̪͒̇̂͌ͦͣ*̷͎͖͈̥̙͚ͬ̀́̆ͩ̔̌. Wake up, sleepyhead."

"I'm awake already, I'm—"

He'd gotten halfway out of bed when he realized the room was, in fact, empty. The curtains had not been thrown open— it looked like it was still dark out, actually —and the door was in its usual not-quite-shut state.

"Are you going to sleep forever?"

Allen shut his eyes and rubbed at them with the palm of his hand, hard, until white spots blinked in the darkness. It'd been a while since he had nightmares like that, dreamt of things like that. It'd been a while since they followed him into the waking world, too.

"It's getting cold out. You can sleep again when we're inside."

He was definitely going to blame his uncle for bringing back memories like that. Granted, Allen had been the one to ask about it. He just hadn't expected it to sound so familiar to what he remembered of living with Mana, just about every detail down to spending time with distant relatives and running through fields of wheat.

Even the color of gold and orange and red, vivid washes of pink and violet as the night sky turned blue-black.

"Wake up, N̵̼̉̓̄̿͢*̻̙͔̩͚̭̏ͤ̋̆̾ͣ͌ė̵̴̵̼͖̑a̖̫̖͊͗͒̔̅̃̂*̭͇͈̭̞̮͍̭ͦ—"

"Allen?"

He pried his face out of his hands with a muffled, sharp inhale.

His uncle stood at the doorway, shadows coalescing into a solid form and the whites of his eyes going dark again, then light up with the point of his wand. He must have flown up here.

"Are you okay?" Neah asked, without entering the room. Something that Allen both hated and appreciated. "I heard you moving around."

Allen's throat felt dry, thirsty, his tongue swollen and unmoving. Only after several swallows did he manage something that souned like words.

"What.. time is it?"

"Just around 4 in the morning."

No wonder it was dark out.

"..I'm fine. Just a.. a nightmare, I think."

Neah's head tipped to the side, the movement caught and highlighted by the light of his wand against the curve of his jaw.

"You think?"

Allen closed his eyes again. Colors bloomed once more behind his eyelids, gold, orange, red. Greens and pinks and violet. They were nostalgic, the colors of his time with Mana. Or they should've been.

Instead they seemed lurid, harshly bright, and thinking about it only made him more nauseous.

He smiled, wan and twisted with practice. "Yeah. Just a nightmare. About what happened to Mana."

"Mm." Neah was quieter now and his wand lowered just slightly, enough to leave much of his face to the shadows again. "Did you need anything?"

He sounded stiff. Mechanical.

"No," Allen said. "I'm okay now."

He felt bad for playing that card sometimes, but it was always the easiest way to get out of a conversation with his uncle. Now Neah would feel like he'd done his duty as Allen's uncle, as Mana's brother, and retreat back downstairs, open up another bottle of wine or sherry or whatever else it was that the school was letting him keep in the dormitory. He'd have a glass or two, and if Allen wanted, he could wander down for a bit and Neah would finish off the entire bottle.

One day he would ask about it. Because he wanted to know why. He felt like he deserved to know, if they were going to keep living in the immediate space together for the year. Or the next few years.

Allen stayed in his room instead, even long after Neah left, trailing darkness like wisps of an ominous cloud.

He stayed in his room, in his bed, and tried to forget the smell of burning wheat. And in the morning (in the later hours of the morning) they would both wake up again and pretend this never happened, like always.

Mana was a chasm between them, and sometimes it was easier to keep shouting across the distance than to build a bridge and meet halfway.

/ / /

"..Walker?"

"Ms. Granger," Allen said without looking up. When he did, the Gryffindor girl had her mouth pursed and frowning. Her friends were nowhere in sight. "..Something wrong?"

"No," she said. "Just that.. I didn't expect to see anyone studying on a Sunday."

"Light reading," he said humorously, despite being surrounded by about a dozen books at his table. Allen looked at the tomes in her arms, recognizes titles for books related to several of the elective class choices. "What's your excuse?"

Granger looked like she didn't want to be caught dead speaking to him, but she hadn't stalked off yet either. "..I enjoy it. Studying."

"I don't." Allen almost laughed at the face she made, she looked so much like Lavi. Lavi loved learning things and studying up on stuff that most of the world had forgotten ages ago. "..But I've got something I want to do, so I need to do well in school. You know how it goes."

"Hm." She looked down at his books. "What could you possibly need Memory Charms for? Unless you plan to be an Obliviator for the Ministry."

"I'm trying to find the best way to make Malfoy forget I exist without leaving any irreparable damage."

She cracked a smile. "Then you might want to look at just modifying memory. Or memory reversal, for mishaps."

He nodded. And then asked, out of nowhere, "D'you ever wonder what it's like to have a modified memory?"

"Oh—" Granger seemed visibly startled, but not so lost and confused that he couldn't determine that, yes. She had thought about it. "..Well, I know there's St. Mungos for those who've had Memory Charms used on them. I don't.. I've never had to consider something like that. Until recently. The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher last year had one backfire on him, forgot everything about who he was."

"That sounds unfortunate."

"He was awful," she said, shoulders drawn like a bird ruffling its feathers. Her cheeks were a bit pink, though. "..But it was. Very, um.. uncomfortable to see. My parents used to talk about their grandparents getting old, and they had Alzheimer's— it's a Muggle disease? Where older folk start, um, forgetting things. I don't know that wizards have anything similar. Anyway, I thought he deserved it at first, because he'd been.. cheating people and Obliviating their memories for his own fame, but.. I can't imagine having to live with it."

"Yeah," Allen agreed. "Me neither."

It felt like grasping at smoke, just out of reach. Chasing a memory that might have been a dream. Might not even have been his own.

"Wake up... Neah, wake u—"

"Thanks," he said. He smiled up at her. "Any ones in particular that you recommend?"

"Well," Granger began, chuffed. She set her books down and he glimpsed briefly at the titles without making it obvious that he was curious. She sifted through the pile he had amassed and selected out a few of them.

"I've read most of these, but I think, if you wanted something about living with a modified memory, then My Life In The Mirror would be your best bet. It's probably in the biography section, so you don't have it here. Connecting Tarot Cards, that one's a classic for learning Memory Charms, actually. Oh, and this one, too, very informative..."


changed some divider formatting while trying out a new way to set up docs.

frigidi: latin. 'coldblooded'?

oratus: from latin 'orator' and/or italian 'oratore'. a charm designed to make a written piece read itself upon activation. magical screenreader for parchment. can be tweaked to sound like certain people, emulate eccentricites. like a howler, but nicer, and less mouths. wears off over time, leading to slurred or skipped words, or outright mispronunciations. is related to the talking canary from ch3.

auricular enhancer: basically like a hearing aid / earphone. contains an oratus charm to automatically read written text when attached to something. clean regularly for proper hygiene.

muggle / babbano: according to the hp wiki, the portuguese translation uses muggle as well. babbano is, again, italian.

thanks for all the feedback so far y'all. as always if you feel there's anything else i should probably warn for content-wise, pls let me know.