Wow, I'm not even sure how long it's been since I posted something. I know I haven't posted since A-school. Sorry about that. I'm not going to make any promises about being better though because I know I won't be. This chapter is longer than the last few though. Hope y'all like it.

Chapter 16: Headed Home

Stiles laughed nervously, digging his nails into the arms of his chair. "It'll be fine. Everything will be fine. We'll figure this out over summer break and then you guys won't be blood thirsty beasts on the full moon trying to tear out my spleen. Derek will teach you all the wolfy techniques and such, and everything will be Gucci."

"Stiles, don't ever say that again," Lydia muttered with a roll of her eyes, curled into an armchair. She was still recovering from the bite in her side, but the wound had since faded into a puckered pink scar that took over most of her side. No matter what Madame McCall did, she could not smooth the scar into something less intimidating. Cora sat on the arm of her chair, looking over the rest of the group with watchful eyes.

"Sorry," Stiles laughed too loudly, his voice echoing from the far corners of the deserted Slytherin common room. Everyone that would usually be filling the vast space was off enjoying their last day across the campus, saying their goodbyes and making out for one last time. "Anyway, how does that sound, Derek?"

Derek looked away guiltily from where he sat beside Cora in the armchair across from Stiles, rubbing at his arm. He refused to meet Stiles eyes.

Stiles' chest tightened with misgiving. "Derek?"

"Stiles, we're –Cora and I- are not going back to Beacon Hills this summer," Derek murmured, ignoring the holes boring into his side from every member of the pack.

…..

"Scott, what happened to you?" Stiles shouted, stumbling after Derek as they nearly tripped over Scott's prone body. Dropping down beside his best friend, he shook Scott gently, recoiling at the blood coating his fingers. "Holy shit, he's bleeding a lot! Derek, we need to get him to Melissa now!"

"Yeah, I get that Stiles, but Malia and I can't do that with you leaning over him freaking out!" Derek snapped sarcastically.

Stiles shot a glare up at him. "Well, that didn't last long," he muttered.

"Enough with the lover's spat," Malia interceded with a roll of her eyes, limping around Stiles' other side, "Are we going to wait around for that alpha to come back and finish us off, or are we going to get Scott to the Hospital Wing?"

Sighing and damping down on their sudden animosity, Derek and Stiles muttered together, "The Hospital Wing."

When they were finally on their way back up to the castle, Malia loping along beside them, Derek asked, "Do you know who the other alpha was? Was if Peter?"

"Are you ever going to put any clothes on?" Stiles asked, breathing heavily as he supported Scott's legs, his unconscious body seemingly three times heavier than usual.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?" Malia asked, a smirk curling up her lips.

Stiles shrugged, "Maybe a little."

"Then no." They were silent for a moment, watching the castle slowly come closer, but not fast enough. "No, it wasn't Dad. Need I remind you, Dad's not an alpha. I didn't know the alpha's scent. He smelled strongly of several other alphas, but he was definitely the most alpha out of all of them. I don't know how that works, but apparently it does. Oh, and I think you should know, Scott got bit."

Stumbling to a halt, Stiles stared at her, mouth slightly open. "Bit like Lydia got bit, or bit like a wild animal bit him?"

"Same thing, basically," Malia said with a shrug of her shoulders, "But if you must know, bit like Lydia got bit."

Stiles swore under his breath. "You're telling me that both of my best friends are going to turn into werewolves? You've got to be fucking kidding me. Why is my whole life being filled by the supernatural?"

Derek and Malia exchanged a quick glance. "Possibly."

"Possibly. Possibly? What the hell does that mean?"

"Well, the bite doesn't always take. So hope that it takes because if it doesn't, you're going to be short a best friend or two," Malia told him, ushering him forward, "If we don't get to Melissa soon, though, you're going to be short one best friend because he bled out."

Turning his eyes to Derek who only nodded the affirmative, Stiles pushed forward, forcing him back towards the castle.

…..

Stiles stared at him, shock and hurt and fear and something like anger warring within him. "What do you mean?" he asked, voice trembling, his emotions shoving through into the open. Derek was going to leave him with four newly transformed werewolves, two wolves that, though they had been turned for a good amount of time, were still stupidly terrible at controlling the turn, and a were-coyote that was more coyote than she was girl. Not to mention that Peter still hadn't returned from when he'd disappeared the last time. His voice rising, he repeated the question, "Derek, what do you mean that you're not coming home this summer?"

Derek flinched away from the harshness of Stiles' tone as if he'd been struck, keeping his eyes trained away from any of his pack. "There's nothing for us to go back to in Beacon Hills. Our home was burned to the ground, our family burned to ashes along with it. We… we can't go back."

Everything in Stiles had gone quiet. His mind, his panic, even his magic, had all gone silent. "What about Malia? She's coming back with us. She is as much your family as your father, your mother, the rest of your pack. Is she not worth staying for?"

"Malia… didn't want to come with us."

Standing, Stiles glared at Derek and Cora. The air around him began crackling with magic, like a thunderstorm ready to snap. The pack jumped to their feet, backing away from Stiles.

Derek and Cora turned wide eyes to him, curling in on themselves. Lydia remained in her seat. She possessed not the strength nor the patience to be running away from Stiles' magical outbursts. She reached into her sleeve, the spell she would need to protect not only the siblings, but the rest of the pack on her tongue. Standing shakily, she said, "Stiles, you need to calm down right now. This is not the time or the place for this. They haven't done anything wrong. Think of when your mother died. Did you and your father want to be home, where your mother was everywhere, in everything? They don't even have a home to return to. Think about it, did you even want to be in Beacon Hills?"

Stiles stared at her, his eyes filling with tears and his throat tightening at the mention of that time so long ago. "This is different," he whispered thickly, "It was only my father and me. We had no one, but each other, no other family, not any close family friends. And when Dad disappeared into a bottle, there was no one left for me. They're not alone though! We're their family! We're their pack! We're their home! Just like we are here at Hogwarts! That doesn't change when we go back home."

…..

"So, now you're a werewolf," Stiles sighed, tired of trying to explain the whole situation to Scott. He hadn't so far been able to come up with a story that satisfied Scott enough to stop the torrent of questions, and Derek, Malia, and Cora had been absolutely zero help. Currently, they were sitting in Headmaster Deaton's office, discussing only Trelawney knew what. Probably what to do about Scott's knew werewolf status, or maybe the thing that had attacked him and Lydia, and killed Laura. "Would you stop asking questions? Someone's going to overhear."

Lydia, flipping through a magazine with twitchy movements, muttered, "A little late for that." She lifted her eyes, locking on Erica. She had her hand pressed over her mouth, her eyes wide and bright despite the sickly pallor of her skin and the deep sleepless bruises colored beneath her eyes. Turning, Erica took off into the castle. "You really need to find better places to do this. Better yet, learn to use a quieting charm around you."

"Lydia," Stiles groaned, staring after Erica, "Not helpful. Not helpful in the least. What are we supposed to do about her? I'm terrible at memory charms, and plus, she's already gone."

"Well, you could just summon her back, wait for the hairy trio to return, and have one of them do it for you," she suggested, returning to her magazine, "One of them has to be halfway decent with a memory charm." She'd yet to heal from her bite, still laid up in the Hospital Wing, but other than being more irritable than usual, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with her. She wasn't accepting or rejecting the bite.

Stiles and Scott blinked at her. "Use a summoning charm… on a person? Is that even legal?" Scott asked, looking to Stiles.

"I don't know. Dad's a muggle police officer. It's not like he works for the Ministry of Magic," Stiles said, dropping his head on the edge of Lydia's bed. "This is going to turn from bad to worse, isn't it?"

"Yep," she replied simply, licking the tip of her finger and turning the page of her magazine.

…..

"Madame McCall! Madame McCall!" someone shouted frantically, rushing down the darkened halls.

Stiles jerked up, eyes flying open, his hand already clutched around his wand. Lydia was already awake, her eyes watchful and sparking, trained on the door. "Looks like it's turned worse. Give me my wand." She held out a waiting hand, never turning her eyes from the door. He scrambled for her wand, passing it to her quickly.

Yawning, but more widely awake than Stiles would have thought, Melissa bustled towards the doors, pulling them open just in time to emit Isaac, Boyd, and Erica. They were splattered with blood. Isaac's hand was covered with it. The shoulder of Boyd's shirt had been soaked through. Erica was the worst through. They'd wrapped a scarf tightly around her throat, but blood was already pooling in her collarbones.

"What happened?" Melissa screeched, levitating Erica out of Boyd's arms to the closest bed, and shoving the boys down onto another.

"We followed Erica into the woods, and we were attacked by a giant black wolf!" Isaac shouted, jerking up from the bed to grab Erica's hand. Melissa shoved him back down. "We thought it would leave us alone if we just left, but it attacked us instead! We all got bit!"

Stiles and Lydia locked eyes. 'Black wolf?' he mouthed, 'The one who bit you?' She shook her head.

Melissa worked feverishly, spells flying over her tongue as she pressed gauze to Erica's throat. Pausing for a breath, she snapped, "First Lydia, then Laura, after that Scott, now you three. What were you doing in the woods? You know how dangerous it's gotten, and after curfew on top of that!"

Isaac shrank away from her ire, fear flashing in his eyes. Boyd spoke up, putting a stilling hand on Isaac's knee, "We saw Erica leaving the castle. We didn't want her to get hurt, so we followed her."

"It's a good thing you did, then. Go get me that needle and thread. These wounds aren't going to close with a spell."

…..

Shaking her head at the intrusion of her own long ago heartbreak, when her parents divorced, Lydia said, "Eventually, Stiles, that might be true, but right now, everything is too new, the wounds are too fresh. You need to give them time, time to grieve and wrap their minds around the atrocity that had ripped their world to shreds."

Stiles' magic fizzled from the air, a single bolt streaking into the sky, ramming against the ceiling and skittering across the stones. In moments, every light, whether it was magically lit fire or electronic of some kind fizzled into darkness. Save for the whisper of shocked breath and the drip of water from a window, the common room was quiet.

Lydia sighed, bringing the lights back into life. Stiles was gone, either somewhere in the castle or the dormitory. "Really, he needs to learn to control his emotions better. He's almost an adult now."

Sighing collectively, the pack nodded. "Yes, but you have to give it to him, he hasn't had a magical outburst since that time with Kate Argent," Scott pointed out.

…..

Scrunching his nose up, Scott sneezed loudly, ramming his knee into the underside of the table. Groaning, he clutched at the throbbing spot.

"What's that ugly look on your face for?" Cora asked, batting at Lydia's hands as she dusted powdered sugar over her French toast, "Not that your face isn't ugly every day, but it's particularly hideous today."

"I smell something. Like… I don't know how to explain it, but it makes me really annoyed," Scott muttered, rubbing at his nose, staring around at the Great Hall. His eyes slid over Jackson and Danny, focusing on Ethan and Aiden.

"It smells like… werewolf?" Erica asked, licking the yogurt off a spoon with a slow, deliberate sweep of her tongue. "But not like us?"

"Yeah," Scott muttered, irrational hatred growing in the pit of his stomach at the sight of them. It grew even more so when Ethan ran his hand down Danny's leg. He shook his head, tearing his eyes from the scene.

Cora glanced over her shoulder, wrinkling her nose at the sight herself. "That's because they're werewolves, but right now, they're not entirely part of our pack." She turned her gaze back to Scott, watching him fight against the fact that his nails were claws. "And that," she made a circle around him with her finger, "is because Danny is part of our pack even if he doesn't know it yet, and another wolf is trying to mark him. It happens to the best of us."

Stiles dropped down beside Scott, Derek finding a seat across from him. "More werewolves?" he asked incredulously, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling.

Scott nodded, jerking his head towards the twins.

"Awesome. Isn't the full moon just around the corner? So we're going to have eight werewolves running around the school, four of which don't know how to control a damn thing yet. And two of which are emotionally compromised."

"Actually, we'll all be home for the next full moon," Isaac interjected, methodically cleaning beneath his fingernails. He glanced up at Aiden and Ethan, scoffing in the back of his throat.

Throwing his hands into the air, Stiles followed them up. "Even better!" he shouted sarcastically, "Now they can destroy our town instead of our school! I can't wait!" He turned away from the table, snatching a piece of buttered toast from Scott's plate. " I can't do this right now. I'm going to Transfiguration."

…..

"It's still annoying," Lydia muttered, feeling for her seat as she lowered herself back into it.

Worrying at her hands, twisting them and squeezing them together, Cora stared fixedly at the carpet beneath the coffee table strewn with sweets between them. Lydia placed only her fingertips on the back of Cora's hand, bringing her to a stop. With a deep breath, she muttered, "Derek, I- I'm not going with you. I'm going back to Beacon Hills."

Derek's eyes jerked over to her, but she remained studiously fixated on the carpet. "Why?"

"I just… there's some things I need to sort out, but I have to be in Beacon Hills to do that. I want to be home right now, even if our home is gone," she explained.

Not wanting to push her in any way, Derek nodded simply. "I'll see you before school starts next year then." Standing, he made to leave.

"Wait," Cora sighed, standing and dragging him into a crushing hug. The rest of the pack was drawn to them like moths to flame, even Ethan and Aiden who were nothing if not resentful of their new pack. They curled around the pair, snuggling into them. "See you in a few months."

"See you in a few months," Derek whispered.

…..

Melissa sighed heavily as she dropped down into the passenger seat of Sheriff Stillinski's van, running her hand up through her hair. Stiles and all the others were already piled into the car, some dropping off to sleep, others texting their parents.

The Sheriff held down a smile, glancing over at her. "Hard end to the year?"

"Harder than you know. The last part of the year was completely filled with blood."

"Isn't that every year?"

Rolling her eyes, Melissa slung her seatbelt across her lap. "It was worse this year. I had five kids get bit in the woods in the last month. All of them in this car, and all of them bit by the same type of animal. I don't think it was the same one specifically. I think it was two different ones. Hopefully next year, the kids will be safer, or I'm going to have to take things into my own hands."

"Well, you'll have to be careful yourself."

Nodding, Melissa glanced over her shoulder. Without Derek there, everything felt off, as if they weren't completely home. She hoped that everything would return to normal soon, and Stiles would return to his boisterous self instead of the quiet sullenness he had taken on.

I don't remember if Liam's come into the story as of yet or not. Any who, everyone should be coming in in the next year. That includes Allison and Kira. I'm having a little too much fun, I think, with the pairing I'll be bringing up probably… in the next couple chapters. Hope y'all don't mind crack ships.