Ever since Lincoln and Johnny moved into her house, Lucy Loud had a hard time finding a quiet dark place to hide in.

Eight and pasty with dark hair, Lucy liked being alone. She didn't hate people nor did she hate herself; she didn't hide because she couldn't bear to show her horrible face to other human beings like the Phantom of the Oprea, nor did she do it because of disdain toward the human race. She did it because she liked peace and quiet, and those were two things - along with money and good food - were extremely hard to come by when you have more sisters than Chicago has shootings. She was perfectly content to draw the curtains and sit in her room, but that wasn't really an option in the Loud House; someone was always going to barge in. Lynn was her polar opposite - loud, mouth-breathing, and a lover of light and sunshine. As spoon as Lynn came into the room, she snapped the light on and threw the curtain open, talking at the top of her lungs as she did so. Maybe it was strange to like sitting alone in the dark with your own thoughts, but Lucy enjoyed it - she did her best thinking then - and because of her rowdy sisters, she rarely ever got to do it.

To get away from it all, she was forced to find out of the way hiding spots. Her first was the network of vents over the second floor. The ducts were narrow, save for a few wide spots here and there, but she didn't mind. In fact, being in a confined space was comforting, almost like a womb factor or something. She would put on miner's headlamp, grab one of her favorite books and some snacks, and spend entire days in the vent reading. She was eventually forced to abandon that because it got way too hot in the summer and way too cold in the winter. It was fine in the spring and fall, but only for a few weeks during either. She switched to sitting in the fireplace and in a dark corner of the basement. The basement wasn't hgh traffic but it still wasn't as isolated as she would have liked, since the washer and dryer were down there and laundry was an every other day chore in the Loud house.

Then things got more hectic.

A massive tornado destroyed Lincoln and Johnny's house and they and their parents moved in until their house could be rebuilt. That added four more people to the total and created more chance for Lucy to be barged in on and driven out of her dark spaces. She couldn't use the fireplace anymore because Johnny's mom loved fires and built one every single evening. Lucy couldn't remember her family ever using the fireplace before, and seeing it filled with fire made her sad. I like to hide there, she would think mournfully and bow her head. With four more souls, the amount of laundry increased and because of the backlog, the basement turned into Grand Central Station.

There was nowhere left, nowhere for her to go and be by herself. She tired the spot under the porch but there were massive ant hills and she got eaten alive. The garage was too hot and the smell of oil and gasoline on the air was too thick and cloying. She began to despair and lapsed into a deep, dark depression, Like a flower needs light and water, she needed quiet and solitude, and not having it made feel tense and restless. She was like a drunk who couldn't drink, or a singer who couldn't belt out their favorite song. She imagined that this is how a writer would feel if her hands were chopped off and she were unable to type and free herself from the words burning ember-like in the middle of her brain.

One day, an idea struck her in a flash or revelation and her eyes widened. Of course, the attic. Why didn't she think of it before? There was a full attic over the second floor. The trapdoor was in the bathroom closet, out of sight and out of mind, which is probably why she kept forgetting it existed in the first place.

On a warm Sunday morning in late July, Lucy used a bathroom, took a shower, and then climbed through the trap door in the bathroom closet. She had to perch on the top shelf, lean over the side, and stretched out her arm to pull the door closed behind her. She didn't want anyone to know she was up there, because Mom and Dad would likely make het get down. The few times they had acknowledged the attic at all, they said that it was filled with breakables, family heirlooms, and other precious and fragile things. Telling them that she was not your average kid would do Lucy no good; they had it in their heads that every kid was just like Lynn: Loud, crackling with energy, and as destructive as a hurricane. Lucy, of course, was none of those things. She actually had respect for other people's property and could value and appreciate antiques. In fact, she loved old things. Sometimes she liked to page through her parents' photo albums and look at yellowed and sepia-toned pictures from 1997 and 1998. The world of 2000 looked so much better and brighter than the world today...and the way people dressed lol. It was insane.

Mom and Dad didn't know this because she got lost in the crowd sometimes and they couldn't really keep up with her. She didn't blame or resent them - they had ten kids and a mountain of bills and debt to worry about, so she understood that they didn't have the time and energy to know everything about each one of their children. Lucy didn't mind losing herself in the shuffle of life because she was an independent person who enjoyed her own space and her own company. If not spending time with her parents and not getting attention from them was a problem, she could always seek it out on her own. She didn't. Still, in certain situations, it kind of sucked.

Oh well.

Pushing the trap door up, she slithered into the attic. She had long wondered what it was like up here and now she saw.

Nothing special.

It was like a thousand attics she had seen on TV: A wide space with sloping ceilings, a window, and spreading piles of junk from one end to the other. A steamer trunk sat against one of the walls, and a dressing mannequin on a stand basked in the dusty sunlight falling through the window. It had no arms or head and instantly creeped Lucy out.

Wicked.

Starting at the far end of the attic, Lucy made her way through the space, touching, investigating, and rummaging through everything. She tried on ancient, moth-eaten hats and dresses from, like, the eighties or something, and paged through old, dusty school books that some older relative has either stolen or forgotten to give back. Her movements stirred up dust and by the time she reached the far end of the attic, she was coughing and choking. Another steamer trunk sat beneath an old oil painting. Lucy spared it a quick, uninterested glance...then froze. It was of a girl holding a cane in one hand and petting a gray cat with the other. She wore a wide brim top hat and a velvet dress with a square neck framed in ruffles. The first thing Lucy noticed was the cat - seriously, whoever did this painting should never paint cats again. The second was the girl.

She looked just like Lucy.

The brass plate on the frame said HARRIET. Lucy vaguely remembered hearing Mom talk about someone named "Aunt Harriet" who died stark raving mad in a nursing home at the ripe old age of ninety-eight.

This must be her.

Lucy stared up at the portrait for a long time, blown away by the uncanny resemblance. What if she was the reincarnation of Aunt Harriet? What if Aunt Harriet had come back from the grave through her and was even now plotting to step to the fore and take over her body?

Honestly, that would be pretty cool.

Kneeling, Lucy opened the trunk and went through it. It was filled with Aunt Harriet's possessions: Framed photos, letters, post cards, trinkets, and other junk that Lucy didn't recognize. At the very bottom of the trunk was a dusty leather bound book with gold writing on the cover. POTIONS AND SPELLS it said. She opened it. The pages were yellow and brittle with age; the words were written in ink and accompanied by sketches depicting what each spell and potion could do.

She could learn magic with this.

Excitement filled her and she snapped the book closed. She had to show somebody.

Five minutes later, she barged into Lincoln and Johnny's room. Lincoln was playing a game on his phone and Johnny was sitting at the computer playing a recorder like his life depended on it. His pitch and tone were absolutely perfect and Lucy recognized the song as something by Nicki Minaj. "Guys, look at this," she said. She sat at the foot of Lincoln's bed and laid the book in her lap. Lincoln sat up and Johnny dropped onto the bed beside her. She was so caught up in her excitement over finding the book that she didn't even think to make a pass at him.

"What'cha got, Luce?" he asked.

"It's a spellbook," Lucy said. "I'm going to teach myself magic."

She hugged the book to her chest and rocked it back and forth. Lincoln and Johnny exchanged a knowing look. "Uh...that's cool, Luce," Johnny said.

"Magic is totally real," Lincoln agreed.

There was more than a trace of sarcasm in his voice, but Lucy ignored it. She didn't expect either one of them to embrace the magical arts sight unseen. She believed in magic wholeheartedly but most people are skeptical. That was totally understandable. There was nothing wrong in doubting something fantastical, especially when you've been conditioned to think it impossible. If they still felt like that once she proved to them that magic was real, however, that would be a problem.

And she was indeed going to show them that it was real.

Taking the book, she went back into the attic and sat in a bar of sunshine. She opened the book and began to read. Some of the passages were hard to decipher because the writing was so florid, but she managed to spell them out. She decided to try something small at first. There was a spell for levitation, so she picked that. She laid a crumpled piece of paper before her and started to read out loud.

Nothing happened.

The instructions said to visualize the object you want to levitate and to focus all your mental and emotional energy on it, to clear your mind until moving the object was the only thing that mattered. She took a deep breath and forced everything out of her mind, which wasn't easy for someone whose mind was always working. She called up an image of the paper while staring directly at it. She repeated the magical incantation and willed it to move, shaking with exertion. For a moment, nothing happened...then the paper moved ever so slightly. The book fell from Lucy's hands and she sucked a deep gasp. "Oh my God, it worked."

For some reason, even though she believed, she didn't think anything would happen.

She picked the book up again and repeated the process. The paper shook, rocked, and skidded a few inches across the floor, but she could never get it off the ground. Even this tiny show of power took so much energy that by the end of it all, she was spent and quivering with exhaustion. She took the book down to her room and paged through it, reading and rereading all the different spells.

Her next attempt was at a potion to induce pliability. That is, it turned the person who drank it into your slave. She gathered a witch's brew of ingredients from the forest and mixed it up. She slipped a little into Lynn's Gatorade and fed it to her. She didn't use much, just enough to make Lynn do what she said for a few minutes. They were in their room, Lynn talking a mile a minute, when Lucy suddenly said, "Cross your arms."

Not missing a beat - not even seeming to realize what she was doing, Lynn crossed her arms over her chest. Lucy's jaw dropped but Lynn didn't notice. "...into a mud patch," Lynn was saying. "He begged me to stop but I said if you're gonna play the game, you gotta get ready to be tackled."

Maybe it was just a fluke.

She had to order Lynn to do something she would never normally do; crossing your arms was too generalized and she may have done it on her own. "Do I'm a little teapot," Lucy said.

Still talking, Lynn began to make the motions of I'm a little teapot.

That proved it.

Aunt Harriet's magic worked.

After that, Lucy threw herself into learning magic full time. She carried the book with her everywhere she went and read from it voraciously, learning every work first and then going back to actually try the spells. She made a hair growth potion and put it in her father's coffee; ten minutes later, he ran out of the bathroom screaming because his face was suddenly covered in hair. She made a weight loss potion for Mom and in moments, Mom went from chunk to hunk. "I can't eat whatever I want now!" she cried joyously. Suffice it to say, in a week she was right back to big. Lucy concealed herself in the attic and practiced every spell. Most of them were so draining that she couldn't pull them off, but over time, she managed to master the easier ones.

Three weeks after first picking up the book, she decided to put herself to the test. On a Friday morning, while everyone was sitting around the breakfast table, she came in and sat next to Lola. She opened the book in her lap and looked around for something to focus on.

A fork on Lincoln's plate.

Reading silently and concentrating all of her mental energy on it, she fixed it with an intense glare, then jerked her head to one side. It flew off the table and hit the wall. Lincoln's dad glowered at him, and Lincoln went completely whjite. "What's wrong with you?" Lincoln's dad demanded.

"It wasn't me," Lincoln swore.

"It wasn't you, who was it then?"

"I-I don't know. Honest."

"Pick it up."

Lincoln got up and grabbed the fork. Lucy grinned and looked at Lola, who was currently pounding pancakes down her little fairy princess gullet. She stared at Lola's glass, called up her energy, and tilted her head. The cup fell over and apple juice spilled all over Lola's lap. Lola jumped to her feet with a cry and Lucy broke out laughing. "Honey, be more careful," Mom said.

"I didn't do it," Lola snapped, "Lana moved the table."

Lana narrowed her eyes. "No I didn't."

"Yes you did," Lola insisted.

Lana stood up. "Prove it."

Lola lunged at her and they started to push, slap, and pull hair. Lucy, Lincoln, and Johnny watched in amusement as Leni and Lori pulled them apart. "Stop this right now," Mom said. "That is enough. Lola, go get some paper towels and clean this mess up."

"But, Mom -"

"No buts."

Sighing, Lola wwnr into the kitchen and grabbed a wad of paper towels. Lucy finished her breakfast and went upstairs to her room. She wanted to try something new...something big.

Following the set of instructions at the back of the book, she drew a pentagram on her bedroom floor using salt, then placed a candle at the tip of each point. She lit then, rocked back on her knees, and read from the book. Just then, the door opened and Lincoln and Johnny walked in. "Alright, Luce," Johnny said, "spill the beans, we know something's - uh, what are you doing?"

Lucy gulped. They both came over and studied the pentagram. "Are you worshipping Satan?" Lincoln asked sternly. "It looks like you're worshipping Satan."

"I'm trying to summon a spirit," Lucy said.

Lincoln and Johnny looked at each other.

"Either get on your knees and help or get out."

Johnny scratched his head. "Well, I always have wanted to summon a spirit."

"I have my doubts," Lincoln said and knelt, "but I'm open minded."

They flanked Lucy on the left and right and stayed quiet as Lucy read the magic incantation. A random and sourceless wind blew through the room, making the candles flicker, and an eerie circle of green light appeared in the center of the pentagram. Johnny's eyes widened and the color drained from Lincoln's face.

The light formed a beam that shot upward, forming a giant cone. A second later, the ghostly form of Aunt Harriet appeared inside. Lincoln and Johnny hugged each other and sobbed and Lucy got to her feet, amazed and a little scared. "Hi," was all she could think to say,

Aunt Harriet's mouth moved but no words came out. Lucy was able to read her lips enough to understand "my broach back" and "Lori."

Without warning, the light disappeared and the candles went out. The door opened and Lynn came in talking. She saw Johnny and Lincoln crying and Lucy standing over a pentagram, hesitated a second, then turned around and walked out. "Ghosts are real," Lincoln weot.

"I know, bro, I know," Johnny said.

"Come on," Lucy said, "we have business."

Lucy found Lori in hers and Leni's bedroom texting on her phone. Lucy put her hands on her hips and glared at Lori while Lincoln and Johnny cowered in the doorway, doing their best to comfort each other. "What did you do with Aunt Harriet's broach?" Lucy asked.

Lori looked up a little too quickly and missed a half beat too many before replying. "W-What are you talking about?"

"Where's Aunt Harriet's broach? She wants it bacl."

Lori laughed nervously. "First, I didn't do anything with it. And second, Aunt Harriet is dead."

"She's a ghost now," Johnny said.

"We saw her," Lincoln confirmed.

Lori looked nervous. "Ghosts aren't real."

As soon as she said that, her end table lifted several inches off the floor and slammed back to the floor. Everyone look at it and Lincoln shrieked. In the mirror on the wall, Aunt Harriet's face stared at them. Lori screamed and fell out of bed and Johnny passed out, falling limply to the ground. The ghost disappeared and Lori broke down. "I gave it to Bobby's mother. S-She has it."

"You better get it back," Lucy said.

Lori called Bobby and Lucy helped Lincoln drag Johnny out. Later that day, Lori gave Lucy the broach, and Lucy took it to the attic, leaving it in the steamer trunk beneath the portrait. When she had first seen the painting, Aunt Harriet's expression was neutral, but now it was smiling.

Lucy smiled too.

Thank you, a ghostly voice seemed to say.

"You're welcome," Lucy said.

Getting up, she went back downstairs to practice her magic.