Okay, a bit shorter, but it only took me a day, rather than the week I'd planned on, so, it's good enough in my opinion. I'm super excited about this story, dear readers, so you may be able to expect semi-regular updates for at least a little while. In other news, I know I summarized a lot in this mess, but I didn't do a lot of research for it because I really want to get on to Hogwarts, which should be next chapter.

Enjoy!

CHAPTER 10

It was three days later that Ianto and Hayden were sitting in a room with his doctor.

"So, he was off his meds for four days? Why was that?"

"In the… events, with the children, we didn't have a chance to get to them."

"How did he react to that?"

"Badly. He tried to harm himself at least three times, and more than once, Tom seemed to speak through him."

"Really?"

Ianto nodded. "It was… disturbing, but he's okay now."

"Hmm, and you say he came into contact with severe brain trauma in the form of sound waves?"

"He-" his voice was strained with emotion, "the signal that stopped the children from talking in unison—the one that made the aliens leave—it was- channeled through him."

The dr. looked shocked, but didn't ask for more details on that. "So, have there been any episodes since then? How do you feel now, Hayden?"

"My head hurts. All the time. And my scar—it throbs. But… Tom, he's, not there anymore. At all. I can't hear him."

ooo

Hayden was happily talking to Mica and David in the other room, chattering in every language he knew to entertain them, and they were giggling, obviously enjoying the show. Ianto was sitting in the kitchen across from his sister.

"So, spill it!"

He groaned. "I… we…"

"When did you start liking men?"

"I don't. It's… it's not men. It's just him. Jack, he's…" he trailed off a bit before getting himself back on track. "He was my boss. I was dating Lisa then, but when she died, well, after that, Jack and I started… dating. It wasn't serious. I didn't think he could ever want to be serious with me. But it was less than a month later that Hayden… I didn't know how to tell you, but aliens are out in the open now. He's… not human.

"He was six when we got him. He'd bonded to a childless couple, which suited everybody, but then they died and he was abused by his aunt and uncle, and we found him. We didn't realize he wasn't just a kid until after he'd bonded to us. There was nothing we could do after that. Stuck with him, not that we didn't want him. But after that, well."

She'd awed and gasped at all the right spots, only leaving Ianto redder in the face than he already was.

"But Jack, he, we're fighting, I suppose. I haven't talked to him."

"What? You idiot!"

"Maybe, but he almost killed our kid! I can't forgive him, Rhi!"

"You lot have got to work it out somehow, for that kid's sake. And you lot are all coming round for dinner sometime soon too, yeah? Now, details, what's he like?"

Ianto groaned and hid his face again.

ooo

The doctors were incredibly confused. They were concerned that the brain trauma might have somehow changed the schizophrenia into the phantom pain around his scar somehow, but they didn't have a clue how it had happened or what to expect from there. But since Hayden hadn't had another incident of self-harm in weeks, they'd dropped his dosage, and he seemed to be doing fine. He went to dance and skating practice again and was keeping up with his schoolwork. He seemed really happy. It was odd though, that suddenly, anyone touching him was met with very negative reactions. He'd never been comfortable with strangers touching, but with friends and family, it hadn't been a problem since the first couple of months. He was changing, but overall, Ianto thought it was for the better.

Hayden wanted to see his dad though.

Jack had went to travel. To clear his head or something. Ianto hadn't asked. But he'd be back in another week and Ianto wasn't sure what he'd do then. He didn't know if he could trust Jack anymore, which was something he hadn't worried about in years.

ooo

Jack had knocked, and Ianto had let him in, but the Welshman was frowning and Jack looked uncomfortable.

"I… I won't go back on what I did, but I know that you probably can't forgive me and I understand." He understood because he couldn't forgive himself either.

Ianto glared. "Of course I bloody well can't forgive you, Jack. You willingly put Hayden in life-threatening danger!"

Jack didn't respond.

"It's a miracle he didn't die!"

The captain nodded. "I think I might leave. This planet is too small and-"

"Don't. You. Dare. Don't you fucking dare, Jack Harkness, because if that child has to wait another single day to see you, I don't know what he'll do. You most certainly will not abandon him because he needs the both of us, no matter how much better off he'd be without the danger of you. I thought I could trust you, sir. I thought you loved him; both of us."

Jack was shocked at first, looking up sharply at Ianto interrupting him, but when he paused, a tear sliding down his cheek in anger, Jack didn't know what to say. "I- Ian, I do love you. Both of you."

"No, no, you do not get to say that. After what you did, you do not get to say that!"

"Ianto, I did what I had to do! I didn't want to! How could you think I would want to? But there were millions of lives at stake! Millions!"

"I don't care!"

The yelling continued for hours, but the next day, his head was clear enough to give it another chance, for Hayden.

ooo

Ianto still couldn't trust him, but they had made up enough to pretend they'd made up all the way. They'd spent the previous few days talking to the queen to fund a new building-If they didn't get one soon, Myfanwy would be captured or shot down by someone from where she was hiding out near a cave by the sea—and they'd just come from UNIT headquarters, where they were making sure things were pieced back together correctly. Hayden was running ahead of them, jumping and twirling in the air and giggling as they got closer to their flat. He hit a crack in the sidewalk though, and he went sprawling. Normally, it wouldn't have been a bit deal, but somehow, a streetlamp exploded and three cars went skidding away from him.

They'd got him to sit up so they could see the damage to his knees and were assuring him that it was only minor damage when three people appeared out of thin air with loud cracks and the smell of ozone. Two of them were wearing dark red robes and the third was wearing dark blue. All three of them were holding polished sticks.

One of the men in red pulled out a badge and cleared his throat before speaking. "We're with the Improper Use of Magic Office."

"What?"

ooo

An hour later, the three ministry-workers had aparated the family into the ministry office—an experience that neither Ianto nor Hayden ever wanted to repeat, but was compared casually to time travel without a capsule by Jack. Not that he was at all put at ease by the similarity—and they had been shoved into a small conference room to wait. When the two red-robed men returned, it was with some interesting news.

"According to our records, Mr. Harkness' eleventh birthday isn't until October, 4 years from now. This… has never happened before." The man looked distinctly disgruntled and a bit embarrassed.

"We won't be charging you with anything though," the other one assured them.

"Ah, well that's good to know," Jack said sarcastically.

The two gulped and then left and the family began going over the events, what they knew and didn't know, and their options. The 'wizards' were obviously idiots, because both Jack and Ianto were still well-armed, what with going into UNIT headquarters with anything other being a ridiculously stupid thing to do. Their debate on whether or not to shoot their way out though, was interrupted by a tall, severe-looking woman, who was wearing green robes and whose hair was pulled back into a tight bun beneath the floppy pointed hat.

"Hello. My name is Professor Minerva McGonagall and it seems we have quite the mess to work out."

Hayden tried to raise one eyebrow and succeeded in raising both, then reached up to scratch his scalp nervously, pushing his hair off his face in the process.

McGonagall gasped. "More of a mess than we thought."

ooo

Jack was more than a bit dubious when magic was explained, and Ianto, who'd been watching cameras and tackling sensitive data for years, wasn't exactly jumping straight onto the bandwagon either, but they had to admit, it did explain some of the things that had happened a lot around Hayden for the first year before the antipsychotics got too high. The drugs had probably suppressed some of it. And as ridiculous as it seemed, if they tracked births, the changing of DNA probably counted as some kind of birth, which explained why he hadn't gotten a letter and a visit when he was 11, like they said he should have. And the scar, which was apparently from a curse, could actually explain why it had reappeared after the change and its creation could have contributed to the mental illness, which was an interesting revelation if nothing else.

But what was much more worrying was the fact that Harry Potter, the child he'd been before Jack and Ianto, was famous. And he still had the scar that was the symbol of his fame. So no matter how much he tried to insist that wasn't who he was, unless the magical government and the school worked with them, everyone would insist on putting him on a pedestal for something he hadn't done, using the scar as proof.

And Hogwarts, which was where he was supposed to go to learn to use this magic, was a boarding school in Scotland, run by people who would have no idea what to do if the psychosis came back without warning.

It took some doing, but Jack and Ianto finally convinced the ministry officials and the school's deputy headmistress to hold back on enrolling him till the next year and to not reveal his identity to the public. The convincing process came with quite a lot of suspicious questions though, about how a couple of muggles managed to magically adopt a child and how they came across Harry in the first place.

"Well," Jack replied, "it's Hayden, not Harry. As for the adoption thing, it just sort of happened."

"He was in an abusive home," Ianto added, "and we came across his situation while on an inspection job. Radiation in the area."

Jack nodded. "As soon as we made the decision to adopt him, his features changed."

"And you didn't question this?"

"Of course we questioned it, but then we decided it was," Jack smirked, "an act of God, and let it be."

Ianto rolled his eyes in response to that ridiculous explanation.

The ministry worker sighed.

It was after midnight when they finally decided that as long as their home life passed inspection, the adoption would be held up by magical law and Hayden's former identity would be kept secret, and finally, they were aparated back to their flat. Hayden puked in response to the uncomfortable travel and Ianto claimed a migraine for days afterwards.

When Jack decided to put a wooden cross on their entryway wall as evidence that they'd actually believed the act of god nonsense, Ianto almost got angry, but descended into uncontrollable laughter instead.

Oddly, the whole magic situation went a long ways towards rebuilding the couple's ability to work together.

If there's a specific HP character, especially in the year below canon!Harry, that you'd like to see Hayden interact with, leave it in a review and I'll see what I can do!

Thanks for reading!

-MP