A/N: This is it until 2020, my friends! Happy Christmas! Happy New Year! And I'll be back with more stories on January 4th.

A/N: Thank you, GryffindorHealer, for the name Potterbox!

A/N: Also, Portent is technically the next chapter in this story, but I won't post it here. Just hop over to my stories (it was posted on May 17, 2019) and enjoy Jamie and Ted finding out about Ellie a little sooner than Al had planned. ;)

It required a few trips to the Hogwarts library, but Al finally found out that he could give priority to spells the same way he could to computer code, and that was the breakthrough.

Well, the first part at least.

The phone case did beautifully in keeping his phone from dying whenever he did magic around it or used magic to move it.

But the phone couldn't receive calls or make calls or access the WiFi or use data or send texts or anything else that had it accessing the cellular network or WiFi when magic was being used. The phone functioned exactly as it should unless Al was using magic

Then his mobile stopped being a communication device until the magic stopped.

At least it kept technology from dying completely around magic, Al had reminded himself again and again. And it helped that Ellie loved her new phone case.

"Can I paint it?"

She turned it over excitedly in her hands.

"I guess so," Al said as they rummaged through his cupboards for what they needed for dinner. "You'll want to put that white stuff on it first, like all the other cases you've painted."

Ellie grinned as she popped the case on. "Have you thought of what you're going to call it?"

"It doesn't even work properly, El," he shook his head, "So no, I'm not thinking about marketing right now."

Ellie rolled her eyes at him, "You'll make it work, you always do."

Al hoped she was right.

"Merlin! I know just the name!" Ellie cried out causing Al to drop the pasta box. "You should call it a 'Potterbox'!"

Al stooped to pick up the box as El's words processed.

Then he laughed, and then he laughed harder, and then he was gripping his stomach as his body and mind finally found an outlet for the strain the case not working right had put on him.

"That's absolutely bril, El," he reached out for her as he tried to calm himself, loving how quickly she agreed to come into his embrace. "You're a right gem, you know that?"

Ellie grinned up at him and slid her arms around his neck and pushed up just a fraction on her toes. "I always enjoy hearing it."

"I'll set a reminder to tell you more often then," Al teased, slowly closing the distance between them.

"If I hear any of them I'll take your phone case off and levitate it into the pond." El smiled and tilted her lips towards his.

"I'll just have to be sneaky then, won't I?"

Al finally brought his lips to hers and couldn't help but enjoy the easiness of it. They'd been together a year now and he knew her. He knew what she liked and what she didn't in so many aspects. He knew what to do if he wanted her to smile against him, or to laugh, or to grip her fingers in his hair. And it felt like home.

The oven clock read a bit later when they managed to get back to making dinner.

"Have you called your mom yet to set up a time for me to meet everyone?"

Al tried to look relaxed, even when his gut reaction was to curl in on himself.

Midterms had been over for almost two weeks now, and he still hadn't managed to make himself follow through on his promise.

"Er, I was planning to do it tonight actually."

Maybe it would be easier if he had El with him and put the phone on speaker. Maybe she'd get excited and just ask for him. Or maybe his mum would be so excited to have El on the line that he and El would conveniently forget to bring it up because his mum would want to know everything that had been going on since the last time they had lunch with his parents.

"No time like the present, love." Ellie smiled sweetly at him.

Al held in his groan of protest.

"Sure," he tried to sound confident, "I'll just put it on speaker."

Al tapped the picture of his home to call the landline.

"Potter's," his mum's voice came with the sound of typing in the background.

Al sighed, she must have been on a deadline which meant this call would need to be straight to the point or she'd ask to call him back.

Wait, maybe that was a good thing…

"Hi, Mum, how are you?"

"A bit busy dear, is this important or can I call you back?"

Ellie looked up at him and Al knew from the look on her face he was balancing on a knife-edge.

"Just wanted to set up a day to bring Ellie over and introduce her to my siblings, perhaps over dinner?"

The typing stopped.

"That sounds wonderful! How does Sunday sound?"

Al looked at El and she smiled.

"That sounds perfect, Ginny," Ellie said.

"Wonderful! I'll send owls to Jamie and Ted and I'll let Lils know tonight when she gets home from Dominique's."

Al tried to calm the anxiety in him with a deep breath. "Thanks, Mum, we'll let you get back to work. Text me with what to bring and we'll see you Sunday."

"Perfect! Love you both!"

Ellie beamed. "We love you too!"

Al slid his phone back into his pocket and turned to see the water boiling on the stove.

"That went well, right?" He asked as he poured the pasta into the pot.

"Exceptionally so," Ellie winked at him. "But I think you could use a nerdy documentary to relax to. So why don't you go and pick something while I get the sauce going?"

Al pulled her in for a quick kiss before she pushed him toward the telly. He had been making a point to find documentaries that were applicable to his experimenting to help Ellie start to learn a little bit about what he was doing on a scientific level. But today he decided on a documentary that focused on quantum mechanics because it just seemed appealing.

Snuggled up on the couch with El, bowls of pasta in their hands, Al let his mind unwind as the narrator took them through the basics of quantum physics.

"So there's really space between everything?" Ellie asked enthralled.

Al nodded, "Yep, you don't actually touch anything, you just get close enough to function on a macro scale. There's space between every molecule of oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and all the other gases that make up the air we breathe."

"I wonder if magic is in the space between everything." Ellie mused as she continued to stare at the screen.

Al felt everything in his brain shift.

What if Ellie was right? What if there was magic in the space between. What if he could pull magic from those in-between spaces? What if he could pull magic from in between the waves of WiFi and cellular signals?

Tomorrow was Thursday. Al smiled. He'd have all morning tomorrow to see if Ellie was right, and he'd bought a few old routers recently too. He had everything he needed, and tomorrow he'd find out if the answers to making technology and magic work lay in the quantum world.