"I fucking hate Surrey."

Lukas laughed, knocking his elbow against Jack's arm. It was the middle of the night, and there was no one to be seen. All the houses were shut up tight, curtains pulled and lights off. Their footsteps echoed off the neatly kempt pavements, echoing softly between the widely spaced houses as if the quiet hushed even these unconstrained phenomena of nature. Those footsteps were their only company on the dark streets. It was a strange feeling after spending all the time he could remember in London; he'd never walked through streets this silent before, other than last Christmas Day.

They were dawdling. The later they got where they were going the better really – the deeper everyone would be asleep – but Jack was clearly bored out of his skull. It was bin day in this area and every set of black bags they passed, Jack slashed open with a knife and chucked them into the gardens. This – along with knocking loose stones off walls, throwing a brick through a window (and they'd run, cackling, for three streets after a scream came from the room), painstakingly removing a gate from its hinges and carrying it for several blocks, pissing on a couple of walls, and several other acts of petty vandalism and theft – was how Jack amused himself on the walk. Lukas amused himself by watching.

They reached their destination at about three in the morning, and Lukas would be glad to get inside. The last chill of winter still clung to these nights, and it drove its spite into his bones even through these thick layers. Lukas always got cold so easily. Jack had noticed him shivering a while ago and Lukas had watched him war between wanting to warm Lukas up and knowing that Lukas really wouldn't want to be hugged. He'd settled with offering his hoodie, but Lukas had turned it down. Jack would be cold then, and that wasn't any better.

"What number was it again?" Jack asked when they paused by the sign at the top of the street. Lukas held up four fingers. Jack peered down the street. "Looks just the same as the rest."

That was all that could be said really, same as for every other house they'd passed. It wasn't one of the well-off areas where the houses turned their own wealthy flair. Here, they all stood as little dollhouses along the road, cheap and churned out on a production line, and on the store shelves, they stood resplendent in their conformity side by side.

Lukas hated this sort of area too.

There wasn't much need to sneak around. No one was up, none of the curtains were open, and Jack could get them out of there quickly if the police showed up, according to him. Some sort of magic thing. Lukas sort of hoped the police would show up so Jack would show him what it was – he was so loathe to use magic otherwise.

So they walked straight up the driveway and around the side. A wide lawn stretched out behind them, neat little flower beds bordering it, although most of the shrubs were skeletal and featureless, still guarding their bones against winter's chill. Lukas had slaved in this garden with the boy, beaten down by the baking heat.

The back door had the sort of lock that Lukas could pick in less than a minute, and he did just that. It swung open and Lukas slipped through, paced through the kitchen and into the hall on silent feet. When no alarm went off, he gestured Jack inside.

Jack stopped just beside a mirror on the wall, and as Lukas caught sight of their reflections, he had to stifle a giggle.

They looked so bizarre. Jack looked too rough wherever he was, just a little bit too wild for any sort of civilization. It was something in his eyes, Lukas thought, in his stance. People always gave him a wide berth when they walked by. Sometimes he looked as if, if you said the wrong word to him, he'd snap and rip your throat out. Lukas knew he had more self-control than that, but there was just too much of an animal in him. Too much of the wolf.

Lukas was the exact opposite, but the same. He knew the thoughts he had of himself were strange sometimes, but he could see a killer in himself as much as in Jack, a deadened one, one full of barely restrained, ice cold fury.

A voice whispered it in his ear whenever he looked at himself. The voice whispered of violence and gore and murder so vividly that sometimes Lukas blinked, and his reflection howled, blood smeared across his mouth and down his throat while it plucked its fingers in its cheeks to bear its knife-sharp teeth.

It scared him a little.

Even if you ignored all of that though, even the way they dressed looked strange in here. They wore too much black and metal, and their clothes were just that little bit too shabby, over-worn and second-hand.

"This is grim." Jack's whisper was a little too loud, the rough edge of his voice dragging against the silence.

Lukas nodded in agreement. It was so bland. Only a faint orange off the streetlights illuminated the hallway, but in the day, it was just as bad. Lukas's boots muddied a cream carpet, and the road dust off his coat left murky streaks on white walls as he brushed past. The bare light breathed amber into the family pictures lining the walls. None of them showed Lukas or the boy, just the rotund son – the actual son, with his odd-looking parents.

But Lukas wasn't here for them. Not this time. The room he recalled sharing with the boy was upstairs, one crowded with the son's toys, hardly enough space for them to sleep. The boy – Lukas wished he could remember his name – had always wanted to play with them but he'd been too fearful.

He was right about to lead Jack up there, but something stopped him halfway down the hall, outside the cupboard beneath the stairs. A faint stirring against his skin brought him up short. Lukas turned on the spot, sniffing the air. What was that?

Like toffee. Toffee apples, that was it.

Jack tapped him on the shoulder and made Lukas's gesture for 'what?' when Lukas looked around. Lukas pointed at the cupboard and put a finger to his lips. Now that there was silence, he could hear it, the faint sound of panicked breath. He waved Jack back and opened the door.

The boy didn't scream, as Lukas had half-expected. In fact, he didn't make a sound. He just scrambled back into the corner with his hand pressed over his mouth. A light-switch dangled in the darkness, and hunching into the small space, Lukas reached out and pulled the cord.

The boy jumped so high he almost hit his head on the sloping ceiling. Behind thick wire-framed glasses, the boy's eyes went round as the lenses.

Tiny. The room was fucking tiny, and the longer Lukas looked around, the more this anger built, pounding red at the base of his skull.

It was a bedroom, oh that was perfectly obvious. That bed was little more than a cot, but it was there, and a meagre collection of belongings were arranged neatly in one corner, a stack of those oversized clothes that Lukas just about remembered in the other. It was a bedroom. In a cupboard under the stairs. A cupboard that Jack would have to kneel in, and the boy lived here.

"Lukas?" The boy's whisper brought Lukas back to reality. His hand had fallen from his mouth and his lips made a perfect 'O'. "Is it really you?"

Lukas pulled out the small notebook he kept on his person and a pen. His chest felt heavy doing it. It was stupid – it wasn't as if seeing some shitty relic of his past should've changed anything, but … in those memories, he had spoken. But here he was, amputated from them and perhaps the part that had really been cut out was his tongue.

'It is,' he wrote, 'I think.'

"You came back!" The boy was smiling now. It seemed to capture enough of his thoughts that he didn't question why Lukas wasn't talking. "You promised you'd come back! I thought you'd forgotten about me. I saw you but…"

Should that make him feel guilty? Beneath the flickering light of the bulb, purple bruises peeked from beneath the baggy sleeve of the boy's t-shirt, but … nothing. Nothing but this low, absent pulse in his skull. What should he feel? Apologetic?

'I did forget. It wasn't my fault, I'm sorry, but I remember now. Will you come with me? I have somewhere else for us to live now.'

"Is it … is it better than here?"

'I wouldn't take you anywhere else. Get your things, quickly and quietly. We'll talk more outside.'

The boy nodded vigorously and jumped to his feet. He could still stand straight in the cupboard, but he wouldn't for much longer. Miraculously, the boy had a practical edge. No whining or fussing as most kids tended to do; he put his things in a small backpack with haste, although Lukas tapped his shoulder and shook his head when he started cramming the clothes in too. The boy didn't question it; he just dug under the cot and pulled out a deflated football instead.

When they both emerged into the hallway and closed the cupboard behind them, Lukas noticed Jack had disappeared. A mystery quickly solved when he heard a door open and close upstairs with a muted snick. Lukas ushered the boy outside and Jack met them there about ten minutes later with a sour look on his face.

"We gotta walk back. C'mon."

'Taxi?' Lukas wrote.

"With two little kids who look shit all like me at this time? Nah, I got legs, thanks."

It took a little less time to walk back to the tube, (and Jack grumbled about catching that as well). They walked much quicker but the boy – whose name Lukas still didn't know – near fell to sleep on his feet halfway there, so Jack had carried him on his back. There was no time for conversations once they got home. Jack put the boy on the sofa, covered him with a blanket, and then he and Lukas retreated to bed.

•─────⋅ ⋅ ⋅─────•

The next morning, Lukas dragged a groaning Jack out of bed around eight, about six hours before he'd usually get up. The boy was already perky and alert, lying on the sofa with the blankets pulled up to his chin. Jack gave him a sort of look that seemed to question his sanity for looking bright-eyed at this ridiculous time – he was used to it with Lukas by now – and stumbled over to the little kitchenette to make coffee. Lukas laughed and walked over to the boy, writing a note while he went.

'What would you like for breakfast? We might have it and if we don't, we can buy it for tomorrow.'

The boy blushed and shuffled into a sitting position. "I—I don't know. You know what…" He trailed off and stared at his lap. Lukas did know. As if the boy, or Lukas while he was living there, had ever had a choice of what to eat before.

Lukas tried to write as quickly as he could. If it were Jack, it wouldn't matter, but most people got antsy with it. The boy was probably no different and confused to boot. 'Well, you can have what Jack's having but that'll probably lead you to an early grave, or you can have what I'm having, which is nothing and I doubt you want that, or you can poke around in the cupboards, which you can do whenever you're hungry and you can have whatever you find in there.'

The boy's eyes widened. "Whatever?"

Well … the image of the gun beneath the kitchen sink came to mind, a dull centrepiece surrounded by a corona of drugs, knives, alcohol, and a good few other things this kid shouldn't get hands or eyes on. Lukas, of course, no longer came under the banner of 'sheltered child' with Jack, if he ever had.

'And whenever. Only thing I'll ask is that you don't go under the kitchen sink, that's me and Jack's stuff, not food or anything. Other than that, make yourself at home, and consider this an actual home.'

The boy nodded slowly. "L—Lukas?" Lukas nodded. "Why aren't you talking?"

Lukas grimaced and beckoned the boy over to the table. They'd need another chair, so for now Lukas let the boy have his and jumped up onto the counter. He rapped his knuckles against it, the surface coming up a little sticky, and when it drew Jack's bleary eyes, he made a smoking gesture with his hands. Jack tossed him the rolling stuff without a word.

There'd been a few weeks before Matthias had gotten the address for them, and since then Lukas had gotten firmly into a smoking habit. When Jack had come out of the bedroom to find Lukas lounging at the table with a cigarette, he'd groaned, slumping back against the wall, and said, "Come on, kid, don't make me parent you."

And after receiving a few choice written words from Lukas, Jack had given in and told Lukas he could fuck off refusing to roll him any cigarettes ever again, that was for damn sure. He'd had a few charms for it in the end too, although he didn't use many of them on himself, and Lukas already had the works on him, so there'd been no need to worry there as well. Jack would put some on Harry too as soon as his brain was functioning.

Smiling at the memory, Lukas rolled two cigarettes and passed one back to Jack when it was lit. A moment of quiet filled the flat. Gulls gabbered up on the roof and traffic grumbled past, but to Lukas, that was silence. The background of life overlaid only by his rustling breath and the whir of the failing heating. For a moment, he breathed it in, eyes fluttering closed and wrapped up in the scent of cigarette smoke and ground coffee, but as ground coffee always meant, Jack hit the button on the machine and with a wail of protest, it came to life.

End of quiet moment. Lukas took a long drag and picked up his pen.

'Would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee?' Lukas was about to hold up the notepad, words written much larger to account for the distance and the way the boy had squinted at them earlier, but he paused and added a word. 'Juice?' Jack did keep some in, but it wasn't drunk frequently. Usually wound up with Jack picking it up to take a swig then gagging the whole mouthful out into the sink and binning the bottle of mouldy liquid.

"Um, could I have some juice, please?" The boy still sounded shy and uncertain, but he'd warm up. Lukas rapped the counter again and pointed between the boy and the fridge. Jack glowered at him but got the juice anyway. The orange liquid sloshed about in the glass as he set it on the table in front of the boy with a clunk.

The motion brought a flash of imagery back to Lukas. The careful way Jack had set a glass of water in front of him the first day he'd come to live here. It drew a smile to his lips and a warmth in his chest while he started writing a short explanation. He tore the finished page off and set in front of the boy for him to read at his leisure

'After I left you, some weird things happened to me, and most of them weren't so nice. The 'not talking' thing started unintentionally but a lot of things happened since then that made me not want to talk. I don't like it, so I don't. Are you okay with me just writing notes to you like this?'

The boy took a lot longer over reading than Jack did, but when he finished, he looked up with those wide eyes again. The messy hair and the round glasses gave him a real innocent look, nothing like Lukas. The way his clothes completely dwarfed him just made him look younger, and those bright green eyes completed the look nicely.

He would have made a good tool for stealing and begging and pickpocketing, the perfect distraction or enticement. It was a shame the boy hadn't been stuck out there with him.

"I don't mind at all!" the boy exclaimed.

Lukas grinned and gave him a thumbs up, which made the boy giggle.

The grind of the coffee machine came to a blessed halt, and Jack handed one of the cups to Lukas before collapsing on his chair with his own. The boy's face shuttered off in a snap, eyes cast down at the table. Lukas scribbled a note and handed it to Jack to slide over. 'Please don't be scared of Jack. He's harmless, really. He's looked after me for a couple of years now and he's nothing like them.'

The boy glanced up from under his long fringe and met Jack's eyes. Thankfully, Jack didn't smile. Some sappy bit of Lukas that existed in a sliver entirely for Jack would probably say it was the best smile he'd ever seen, but that was Lukas, and more than likely it'd just scare the boy.

Jack settled on giving the boy the same thumbs up as Lukas did, and put on a friendlier expression while he did so. It worked and the boy smiled sunnily. He was a trusting thing, really; it was sort of nice.

"Do you have any cereal?" the boy asked after a minute. It came out a bit bolder, but not enough to cheer about.

"Cupboard above the kettle," Jack said before Lukas could indicate. "Milk in the fridge. Help yourself then chuck 'em here when you're done."

The boy bounced up out of his chair and Lukas raised his eyebrows when Jack glanced in his direction. He must really be feeling tired. Jack yawned and gulped down more of his coffee, as if to confirm Lukas's thoughts. The boy came back with the cereal – cheerios – and Jack poured some into his bowl and doused it with an obscenely large helping of milk. Halfway through pouring it, his eyes seemed to glaze, and Lukas sniggered into his hand when Jack started and jerked the carton upward, scowling at his drowning breakfast

Both of them dug in. The boy's hair hung too long in his face, and he brushed his fringe back as he took his first mouthful, exposing a thick, jagged scar on his forehead in the shape lightning bolt. It was a strange—

A bang echoed around the kitchen. Jack spit his mouthful of coffee over his cereal, then knocked the whole damn bowl over when he slammed the mug down spilling milk and tiny multigrain rings and more fucking coffee all over the table. Then he just sat there, coughing and staring with big old saucer eyes and a hanging mouth like Casper the goddamn Friendly Ghost had just line-danced across the kitchen.

The boy whimpered slightly, and Lukas gaped.

"You—" Jack choked on the word. His eyes flashed up to Lukas, the whites showing stark against the insomniac bruises that cradled them and he lifted his hands, gesturing wildly across the table at the shivering boy. "He—You brought Harry fucking Potter to my flat for fucking breakfast! Lucky, what the fuck?"

Lukas shook his head and scowled, pen scrawling across the page '"Jack, what the fuck?" How the fuck do you know who he is? And what the fuck kind of reaction was that?!'

Jack jumped up out of his seat, the distress coming off him so effusively it almost felt tangible. He looked so stricken Lukas had to struggle not to burst into laughter. "He's Harry Potter! What did you expect me to do? Just fucking sit here?"

'WHO IS HARRY POTTER?'

Jack pointed wildly. "He is!"

'I gathered that.'

Under the continued barbs of Lukas's icy glare, Jack grimaced and sat himself down, but the little incredulous glances he sent at the boy only made Lukas want to laugh more. The boy – Harry, Lukas supposed. The name seemed to fit in his head. Harry's features were all splayed out in bewilderment and he hunched down as if he could hide behind his cereal bowl.

What a goddamn scene. At least it looked like something interesting was going on. Maybe it had been worth getting the boy after all. Lukas gave Jack one more look and wrote out a note.

'I would like you to tell me, or us rather as Harry seems just as confused as I do, three things. Those things are: (1) How do you know his name is Harry Potter? (2) Who is Harry Potter? – Don't you dare give me a stupid answer to that – and (3) Why you reacted like someone sat Pamela Anderson down in front of you? Also, clean the table.' Lukas tore this note off too and handed it to Jack. He read through it with a growing grimace until he reached the last bit then—

"Hey, come on, I'd be way more googly eyes if fuckin' Pamela Anderson sat at my table looking like she's gotta first thing in the morning."

Lukas winked and stuck out his tongue, and Jack gave him the finger before turning back to Harry, putting on his serious face.

"I'm sorry, kid," he said to Harry when he'd finished reading. "You surprised me, is all. I really wasn't expecting to see you here of all places. Got nothing against you."

Harry nodded slowly. "Okay, I'm sorry for surprising you…"

"Nah, don't be. My fault for acting like an idiot. I'm gonna surprise you now, anyway, so we're even. Watch this." Jack leant over to fish his wand out of the drawer. Harry Potter must be of wizarding importance or Jack wouldn't be showing him magic so readily.

One flick of his wand the entire mess vanished. Harry jumped up out of his seat and gasped, doing a good imitation of Jack earlier. He even pointed at the clean (clean-ish) table.

"How did you do that?!"

Jack chucked his wand to Lukas, who put it back in the drawer. "Magic. No, seriously," he added when Harry started to frown, clearly thinking he'd been made fun of, "straight up magic. I'm not bullshitting you."

Lukas held out his notepad with the note he'd started writing as soon as Jack got his wand out. 'I'll write you an explanation later, I promise. All you need to know immediately, I think, is that Jack and I – and you, I expect – can all do that, or at least we'll learn. We're wizards and there's a big community of people who can as well. Now, Jack is going to explain why he was so surprised by you.'

"Fucking hell," Jack groaned, "where do I even start?"

'How you know he's Harry Potter? You saved me some work remembering his name.' Lukas was careful to show that note just to Jack, then he flipped the page over once Jack had finished.

"It's the scar." Jack tapped his forehead. "Ain't no wizarding person who don't know Harry Potter's got that scar, even me and I'm years out of the loop."

"M—My scar?" Harry asked hesitantly. "But I got it—"

"Look, kid, I don't know nothing about them muggles you live with, but I sure as fuck know people like that and what they've told you about that scar is gonna be bullshit. The story of how you got that is famous, except I've got some, uh … inside information that'd suggest some of that is bullshit too. So…" Jack's voice trailed off, his features tightening as his eyes drifted around the room, until with a groan, he dragged his fingers back through his hair and turned to Lukas. "Look—I mean, I'm like half-fucking-dead right now, can I tell the whole story later? It's long."

Lukas grinned. 'Alright, short version. Do you mind, Harry?'

Harry, with a certain tightness around his lips, shook his head. Of course he'd mind, but he'd be compliant enough being new here not to complain.

"Thank fuck." Jack started at his own swearing. "Uh, I mean god. Thank god, right?" A helpless look flashed to Lukas, who just laughed. "Don't be a little twat. Put me another coffee on, huh?"

'No, I want to hear first.'

A grudging smile twitched at Jack's lips as he slumped in his chair. "So you're gonna be a little twat, huh? Fine. You remember me telling you about the Dark Lord, right? Voldemort?"

Voldemort? Jack had never mentioned his name before. Why did that sound familiar? Lukas nodded anyway, and wrote a brief explanation of what Jack had told him about the war while Jack talked – a story about the Dark Lord going off the deep end and trying to put a Killing Curse on a toddler, and getting bitch-slapped by some kind of backblow magic in the process.

Jack kept it very vague, and it looked like that alone took more of his mental energy than just a story would've done, but considering he was keeping it vague, Lukas had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't a story that'd reflect favourably on the Dark Lord. A tight sort of frustration grew on Harry's face while Jack mumbled around the story, but it broke into splayed disbelief when Jack concluded with Harry being famous for ending the wizarding war and killing the Dark Lord.

It was a lot, that was for sure. Both Harry and Lukas sat blinking at Jack for a long moment, but god knew the boy wouldn't be thinking anything like Lukas was. Disappointment was prominent. The Dark Lord – offed without even being able to kill a baby.

Lukas snorted and scrawled out a note.

'You're telling me they think a baby killed the Great and Terrible Dark Lord?'

"Stupid, ain't it?" Jack said to Lukas, then turned back to Harry. "Don't want to burst any bubbles that might be forming, kid, but I'm like ninety percent sure that one of your parents or Old Man Greater-Good worked some magic that killed him. Or got rid of him at least. I don't think he's really dead. Either that or his magic and – I dunno – soul were so unstable something else happened to him. Whatever it was, you ain't some blessed child-saviour like the wizarding world likes to think. Just remember all that when you go back, huh? You might be famous, but I reckon it's someone else who should be."

Harry gave a sombre nod. "I will."

How cute. He really was taking to Jack already.

"Now," Jack said loudly, freeing one of his arms from their lazy cross to wave his finger at Harry, "I'd also like to make something very clear to you. Like, you're gonna go back to the wizarding world and when you do, some of them gossiping fuck—" Jack hissed, biting off the curse. "Ah, shit—I mean f—shit, you know what I mean. Someone's gonna tell you a story about a man called Sirius Black, and I am eventually gonna tell you a long story about why that whole story is total bullshit, but that's for another day, huh?"

Sirius Black. Lukas's father.

Oh, he'd heard the whole story. The betrayal and the false imprisonment, but he hadn't realised it was related to Harry. Looked like his 'father' had gotten Lukas in bad books before he even went near anything magical though, no matter the truth. Great.

"So," Jack said to Lukas, "that enough then?"

'You're in the clear. Is he famous then?'

"Probably the most legendary figure in the wizarding world right now. Like, I mean I guess things might have died down a tiny bit since I left..."

Lukas pulled a face.

"Yeah."